Catch a Falling Star

November 27, 2013 · 8:59 pm

Paffooney Wisdom

Life is like a cartoon car chase in one of Floyd Gottfredson’s 1930’s Mickey Mouse comic strips. No, really, it is! You never know what is going to happen in the next frame. Will the alien space craft scoop up Junior as he flies out of the rumble seat? Fifty-fifty chance, don’t you think? Will Crocko Diddly-Dial catch up and eat everybody in the car? Probably not if it was a G-rated comic strip… and it was.

The only control we have over life are the reactions we can manage as we go and bad things continue to happen to us. We are trapped by the cliff and the river, so we jump the car successfully across. If we are successful, we bounce onto the road on the other side, and Crocko falls into the river. Of course it is the road to nowhere and the chase only ends when the cartoon of life reaches the last panel.

Okay, so that all sounds very scary, and we must hope that Mickey is merely crazy, and not on to something real in this metaphorical thesis of mayhem. Yet, there is a way to effectively deal with the car chase. We need to treat it all as a cartoon, a comic book story, and simply laugh.

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November 27, 2013 · 1:32 am

The Thumb-Sucker

Darkness surrounds us

As the nighttime moves in

And we feel overwhelmed

And burdened by sin

But comfort can come

From a place we’ve all been

Just open your mouth

And shove your thumb in

Our childhoods were happy

And made us all grin

And simple we were

With our little thumbs in

So as we’re all worried

And all feeling dumb

We can make it all better

By sucking our thumb

(Silly poems and blue cartoons are a specialty of mine. I’m no Ogden Nash, but I make it all rhyme.)

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November 26, 2013 · 12:47 am

Diz, Boz, the Bard, and Me

I wrote the other day about the fact that my writing is music in my head. Now, I realize there are probably a number of things wrong with my head, and Lord knows, it may truly need a good cleaning… er, well, not a brainwashing if that’s what you had in mind. No, what I need is to clarify the meaning of what I said, to restate in a less metaphorical and obscure way.

I have this insane notion that I am a good writer. Believe me, I am aware of the fact that every Indie author with a self-published novel has the same crazy fantasy right now. I imagine that my humor is like Mark Twain’s, my characterizations like Charles Dickens (Boz), my themes and insights like William Shakespeare (the Bard), and my creativity akin to that of Walt Disney (Diz).

I plan to write about it in a novel that used to be called The Little Boy Crooner, and now labors on under the title Sing Sad Songs… with Clowns. Don’t be fooled by the fact that I call this idea-thing a novel. It is not complete. There is no flesh on the bare bones. If it were one of the walking dead, it would not even qualify as a zombie. It is an animated skeleton. It is a notion about how words and ideas become and are transmitted by musical means.

The main character is a young boy named Francois Martin, the singing clown-boy in the Paffooney above. He is orphaned by a terrible car wreck in France, then sent to the only living relatives he has, who happen to live in Norwall, Iowa. Yes, that same goofy little farm town where I grew up and far too many of my novels are set. The Norwall Martins own the town tavern, where the bachelor head of the family, Victor (also known as the Vicar), is trying to make a go of it by putting in his bar a new-fangled bar-thing called karaoke.

As you’ve probably guessed, Francois, though he is awkward and unable to communicate in English, is a natural at singing karaoke. He puts on the clown paint and sings for his supper, and brings people into the bar from all across the State, and eventually the whole Midwest.

The clown images come through his connections to the Dreamlands… the same fantasy world of dreams alluded to in the novels of H.P. Lovecraft. Three clowns, Mr. Disney (Diz), Mr. Dickens (Boz), and Mr. Shakespeare (the Bard) help the boy and his American cousin Billy travel back and forth to the Dreamlands and learn to understand each other in ways that family members should. I should warn you, the new title reveals the fact that all dreams are not happy dreams and all endings are not happy endings. But we shall try… Diz, Boz, the Bard, and I.

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November 24, 2013 · 9:13 pm

Why Sci-Fi?

In 1969, the summer after I had to travel to a new school in another town, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. I stayed up and awake that entire summer night, as did my whole family, watching everything the TV was able to show. I vowed to myself that summer that I, too, would one day walk on another world. My fantasy was, as I’m sure most thirteen-year-old boys in the entire world agreed, was to be the first Earth man to set foot on Mars.

I set out to get myself into the Air-Force Academy in Colorado Springs. We visited there during one of our yearly family tent-camping car trips. It was an elegant, pristine dream. But life has a way of putting needle holes in the balloons that make up the loftiest of dreams. I developed bursitis and eventually arthritis by the time I was eighteen. My eyes were always too myopic to ever become an astronaut. Then Challenger blew up. Reagan, who didn’t believe in the U.S. Government as a way to accomplish important things, or at least, didn’t believe in spending money for such things when that money didn’t go into the pockets of his rich friends, changed young boy’s dreams. Our trajectory towards Mars was slowed.

So, do you let dreams die? Never me. No, not I. I would still travel there. But I could not take my physical body. I would have to go by the ship of imagination. I would have to rely on the fantastic inner eye.

Some of my junior high English students and I took up role-playing games. We graduated from Dungeons and Dragons into the space fantasy game called Traveller. We fought space wars, built space colonies, absorbed Doctor Who, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Last Starfighter. All things were possible. With a role of the dice, you could save the universe. And so my novel Aeroquest was born.

Catch a Falling Star and all the stories I have percolating now continue that plan, that goal, that young boy’s dream of placing his feet on another world. Today’s Paffooney is a symptom of that illness, not an absolute definition of it. Young Buster Crabbe, if you can’t tell, is the human boy in the picture.

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November 24, 2013 · 12:13 am

Hear the Music

Hear the Music (a love poem)

The singer sings his song,

And wants the world to sing along,

Though the world has gone all wrong,

And the darkness stays too long.

The singer warms and croons,

Under bright romantic moons,

And carries hopeful tunes,

To the listening dolts and loons.

Can a song bring truth to light?

Can it help us win the fight?

Does it ease the world’s plight?

And set the wrongs aright?

Yes a song can save the world,

Though the truth must be unfurled,

And the listeners’ ears are twirled.

So the hurts will all be pearled.

Okay, okay… goofy poetry, I know. That’s the way I am. I have a goopy-sappy-goofy faith in the power of words. I call the chapters of my fiction Cantos because I believe them to be musical compositions and pieces of poetry. Ooh, what a goof that I am! But I really do believe that the words of a song, the stories in a book, or the beat of a poem can save lives, change worlds, and make all things better. Why would I believe that? Because words and ideas have power. And as I feel my mortality creeping nearer and nearer, I am feeling more and more power in my words. I almost have to burst into song like some sappy musical… like Camelot, like My Fair Lady, like Man of LaMancha. Like the stupid boy in the Paffooney, I have to sing. I have my impossible dreams.

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Image

“A Portrait of Mark Twain”

Here is an old pencil drawing from 1980. It shows MT as an observer of all that country cornpone stuff that makes up his humor and written genius. It also shows the loyal dog that would dearly love to get his teeth into that piece of chicken.

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November 21, 2013 · 2:38 am

November 20, 2013 · 12:06 am

Many, Many Murphys

In both the books Snow Babies and The Bicycle-Wheel Genius I used the characters of the Magnificent Murphy Clan to weave actual people from my past into my stories. The Murphys; Mary and Warren, Warren’s father Sean “Cudgel” Murphy, Mary’s and Warren’s kids, Danny, Dilsey, Mike, Little Sean, Daisy, Sarah, Thomas “Pumpkin” Murphy, and Baby Jane all live together in a small, four- bedroom house dubbed “Murphy Mansion”.

Here is a look at a Paffooney of the irrepressible Mary Murphy with daughter Dilsey, and Little Sean on her shoulders.,

And here is one of my anti-hero Pirates, Mike Murphy with his little girlfriend Blueberry Bates.

Mike has the distinction of being in all three of my Norwall Novels, a very rare character indeed. And, NO, that doesn’t mean that he is me just because we have the same first name… Okay, maybe a little bit me, but that’s just the nature of writing silly novels about adventures through time and space and farm-town Iowa. I’m hoping to make you curious enough to buy one of my books. Catch a Falling Star is available as a hardback, paperback, or e-book from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and the link here to I-Universe. But I know you are far too smart for me, and I can never hook you just on the strength of my nerdy humor or my implausible Paffoonies. Here’s hoping a look at the Murphys will help.

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Valerie Clarke; the Latest Paffooney

I submitted my 2012 novel Snow Babies to a novel writing contest. I learn more about the results November 30th. I have a lot riding on this contest, but the book will get published if I have to print it by hand.

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November 19, 2013 · 3:23 am

November 17, 2013 · 9:50 pm

Mixing the Old Gray Matter with Color

(This old picture paffooney won a blue ribbon at the Wright County Fair in 1979.)

I am repeatedly told by people willing to tell me all the many things I am doing totally wrong in social media marketing that I should be creating fresh new content every day for blogs and Facebook. Ooftah! I don’t work hard enough as a teacher and a writer already? I have to imitate George Takei and master the internet just to make headway as a writer? It makes me wonder why I am actually doing what I am doing.

So why am I doing what I am doing?

First of all, I am an artist. I have always been one no matter what else was going on in my life. Arthritis limits my drawing time. Teacher work-time limits it more. Still, I like to blog and I like to post Paffoonies. Now, I know perfectly well you are saying, “What the heck is a Paffooney?” I also know you are probably using stronger language than “heck”. A Paffooney is a piece of full-color art that I have created matched with a silly little essay. It takes a lot of work unless I do like today and re-post old pictures with new flubbergraphy. (What’s flubbergraphy, you say? Oh, don’t start!)

Secondly, I do have important things to say. I have a somewhat rough road as a parent, the thing that led me to write Catch a Falling Star, a YA Sci-fi novel about an intelligent alien invader race that eat their own young. You can tell it’s a comedy just by that, right? Just because my kids always do the opposite of what they should do and never listen to my hard-won wisdom, it doesn’t mean I’m thinking about cooking and eating them. That would require a whole lot of ketchup, right?

My contest-submission novel, Snow Babies, is about loneliness and loss, about dealing with mental disorders like being bi-polar, and how you help people who are lost in the metaphorical snow. It is a hilarious comedy about freezing to death and suicidal thoughts. Dang, I have such humorous themes, huh?

Now, when I have the chance to write my newest novel, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, it will be about lonely old men befriending young boys, murder, government agents, and time-travel. It also has a parallel subplot about a little boy who thinks he is a girl. Cross-gender angst and goofy stuff like that. I am making comedy out of suffering, fantasy out of science, and hoo-hah out of oh, no!

So, now I have made the complete mistake of telling you all my goofy plans as a writer. Unrealistic and impossible fictionary goals from a foo-bah who really believes that stories can change the world and ideas can save humanity from itself. If you have an ounce of sense, you will forget every last word of mine you have ever read and swear to delete me from the internet at every possible opportunity. But I am counting on you not having any sense.

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November 16, 2013 · 9:23 pm

Call Them Action Figures, Not Dolls

Yes, I am an addict. I have a mania for buying dolls… er, I mean, action figures. It began when I was nine back in 1965. Yes, G.I. Joe got me hooked. Specifically, the G.I. Joe sailor. I still have that sorry pusher. He has detached arms held on by strings and the shirt that he wears. He is play-worn and so far from mint that he’s only valuable to me. I still have the Marine dress uniform hat on him, the sole surviving piece of the second costume set I ever got for him. The first costume, given to me for the same birthday, big number nine, was the frogman uniform, long since disintegrated into black rubber pulp.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly like my sister’s Barbie. Yes, the idea was to buy costume after costume, the drive for fashion being the primary source of income for Hasbro and Mattel. I did a bit of that. But in 1966 I wanted the German G.I. Joe from the Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog for my birthday. Mom and Dad bought me my first Captain Action instead. After many tears and bitter disappointment, I actually started to play with it. Christmas brought the Aquaman suit for Captain Action, along with the German G.I. Joe. After that, Spiderman… Captain America… more Joes, and a 1969 G.I. Joe Mercury capsule complete with astronaut. Man! What you could get back then for less than twenty dollars!

So this is the foundation of my obsession. Of course, as a child I did not have my own money to spend. I always wanted more than birthdays and Christmases could account for. Once I became an adult and had my own money… look out! I could’ve impoverished myself had I not established the rules for my personal collection. Twelve inch action figures are rule number one. Rule number two is twenty dollars or less. I try hard not to break those rules. The collection has grown all out of proportion.

I got married, and that had an effect on my addiction too. I began to buy Barbie action figures too. (Heck, she’s a twelve inch figure too.) I had kids too, but never even thought of using that as an excuse. I bought Barbies for my beautiful wife, but if I bought action figures for my kids, then they wouldn’t be mine, and how do you explain to a six year old that you can’t actually play with that cool Batman figure?

I am showing off a few of my figures here and now. Maybe more will come later. But for now, it’s enough to get this terrible secret off my conscience.