Tag Archives: books

January 10, 2024 · 1:48 am

Krazy Kat

I told you before about a cartoonist from ancient ‘Toon Times” named Fontaine Fox. He was a master, and I acknowledge him as one of my greatest inspirations. But he was not the original master mentor for my teenage ‘Toon Training”. That honor goes to the inestimable George Herriman. He was the Krazy Kartoonist who died more than a decade before I was born, yet, through his Kreation, Krazy Kat, did more to warp my artistic bent into Krazy Kartooniana Mania than anybody else. I discovered him first. I found him through Komic books and the Kard Katalog at the local library. I own a copy of the book I pictured first in this post. It is the first Kartoon book I ever bought. I couldn’t post a picture of my actual book here because I have read it so often in the past forty years that the Kover has Kome off. It is now more of folder of loose pages than a book.

Krazy Kat is a newspaper Komic strip that ran all around the world from 1913 to 1944. Comics Journal would rate Krazy Kat as the greatest work of Komic art of the 20th Century. Art critics hailed it as serious art, and it fits snugly into the surrealist movement of Salvador Dali and others. It has been cited as a major influence on the work of other artists such as Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Bill Watterson, and Chris Ware.

The centerpiece of the strip is a love triangle. Krazy Kat the Kharacter is a feline who may be female or may be male but is definitely deeply in love with Ignatz Mouse. The Krazed rodent hopped up on seriously stinky fromage (cheese to us non-French speakers), is Konstantly throwing bricks at Krazy’s head… obviously out of serious disdain, however, Krazy sees it as a confession of love. Offisa Pup, the police watchdog, wants to jail the malevolent mouse for battery and protect the precious Kat, whom he obviously loves with an unrequited love. Explanations are superfluous in the weird world of Krazy Kat. How can I explain the charm, the humor, the good-natured violence of a strip such as this? There are echoes of it in Tom and Jerry animated cartoons, but nothing like it really exists anywhere else. Krazy has her own unique language, a language that you naturally learn to interpret as you read the strip. Ignatz exhibits psychotic frustrations that he takes out on the world around him in our name, that we might experience hubris at his expense. And what’s with that mysterious sack of “Tiger Tea” that Krazy carries about and keeps a Klosely guarded “sekrit”?

I honestly hope you will give Krazy Kat a thorough “look-see”. Because if you like Kartoons at all… and it doesn’t have to be the Krazy Kooky love of a seriously overdosed addict like me… you will fall desperately in love with this one. It is a world of its own, a superbly superfluous abstract anachronism. It is a surrealist’s dream of fun with puns and tons of buns… or something like that. Simply put… read it and don’t like it… I dare you!

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Tagged as art criticism, artists I adore, book review, book reviews, books, cartoons, classic cartoons, comic book, humor, reading, reviews

December 31, 2023 · 1:25 am

The Journey Through 2023

2023 has been a year of recovery. I don’t believe I published a single book in 2022. I experienced in that year the very first complete year with both of my parents gone. Neither of them died of Covid, but I lost both of them during the pandemic. My father died of Parkinson’s Disease in 2020. My mother died of heart and kidney failure the year after in 2021. Then in 2022, I came down with Covid Omicron Variants twice even though I took every vaccine and booster I could up to the time I first came down with it. Depression, fatigue, and serious degradation of both my ability to see color due to increasing color blindness and my loss of some of my drawing skills due to arthritis.

My sons have both left me behind, the former Marine now going to college on a military scholarship in Oklahoma, and my number-two son joining the Air Force. My daughter is still at home, but she is an independent adult in most of the ways that matter, and I am now more or less unemployed in the job of parenting, really for the first time since 1981 because when I became a teacher I was suddenly swamped with fatherless boys and girls who attached themselves to me as the significant adult father-figure in their lives. I didn’t become a parent of my own children until 1995. And now that I am no longer really accepted in my wife’s religion for reasons of atheism and agnosticism, as well as retired from teaching, there are no more captive audiences in my life. (My wife only talks at me rather than to me… for reasons of atheism and agnosticism.)

My books do not really take the place of having a captive audience to carry the big pencil in front of. When you write a manuscript, it never laughs at your jokes… or at you when a joke fails spectacularly. You don’t really get feedback from a book the way you do from a captive audience… even an audience of sixth-grade non-readers. It is a one-way conversation with nobody but whatever fools make the mistake of picking up one of my books and actually reading it. To be fair, though, there are some who read and review my books to tell me how well I connected with them across the void. Mostly being an author means speaking into the void to the greater universe and the future, where whatever answers or echoes you get come only after you are dead. It is frustrating to put on a show with all your best tricks now refined… to a visibly empty theater.

But I have rediscovered my writing mojo (hiding under my bed with stacks of old notebooks and drawings and Paffooney-making materials.) And I bought an electronic stylus and a Chromebook computer with a touch screen to start doing digital art. (The Chromebook, however, died a mysterious virus-related death before I had it a year, making me regret not buying the Best-Buy warranty that usually is only a waste of money.) I started doing art digitally, a process much easier to make corrections and changes on. And I even found an AI program called AI Mirror that can edit my art and remove entire ranges of mistakes I could never alter before. (This last thing proved crucial because the only touch screen I had access to was the tiny one on my phone where my fat, arthritic fingers make whole ranges of mistakes.)

I used the rediscovered mojo and new digital art skills to create and publish another book, the first one since my mother died. And it has proved to be a real boost to my author’s delusions, scoring about three days on the top-seller list for its category. It is an essay about overcoming the loss of innocence, and it is filled with stories, poems, and art about writing about nudism, drawing and painting nudes, and being one myself. It is a delicious irony that this is how I recovered in 2023, and I hope to recover more in 2024.

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December 27, 2023 · 2:31 am

Chuck Dickens and the Origins of Writing

Don’t make the mistake of thinking I have any earthly idea where writing comes from or how it began. I am only talking personal history here, nothing grander or more meaningful. This post is only self-referential hoo-haw, which is a fancy way of interpreting “conceited crap”.

So, the truth is, I am writing about Charles Dickens because he is the author I most want to become. True, I rant on and on about Twain and his humor. And a good deal of my artwork owes everything to Disney, but everything I am good at in writing is based on Dickens.

The first actual Dickens novel that I read was accomplished during my extended illness as a high school sophomore. I read in bed, both at home and in the hospital, from my library copy of The Old Curiosity Shop. I was enthralled by the journey and subsequent tragedy of Little Nell. I thoroughly loathed the villain Daniel Quilp and was roundly thrilled by his well-deserved fatal comeuppance. It was my first encounter with the master of characters. I followed that reading with a biography of Dickens that revealed to me for the first time that his characters were based on real people. Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield was actually Dickens’ own father. Little Nell was the cousin he dearly loved who died in his arms. The crafty Fagin was a caricature of a well-known fence named Soloman, a Jew of infamous reputation, but not without his redeeming quality of caring for the orphaned poor. So it is that I have chosen to make my silly stories about real people in much the same way Dickens did. If you are now worried that since you know me, you may end up in my books, never fear. I change names and splice characters together. You will have to make an effort to recognize yourself. And, besides, nobody reads my books anyway.

I also like the way Dickens uses young characters and follows them over time as they grow and change. Oliver Twist was the first child protagonist in English literature. David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, and Pip in Great Expectations are also like that. David Copperfield, in fact, is Chuck’s own fictionalized self. I fully intend to do the same. It is the reason my books fall into the Young Adult category. I also intend to employ the same kind of gentle, innocent humor that Dickens used. I mean to portray things that are funny in a disarming, absurdist way rather than resorting to attack humor and bad words.

There it is, then, my tribute to Charles Dickens, a writer who makes me be who I am and write what I write. I am not supposed to do Christmas posts because of my avowed religion, but you can consider this to be as close as I can come. The author of A Christmas Carol… it doesn’t get much more Christmassy than that.

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Tagged as artwork, as Christmassy as I get, barbara-kingsolver, books, Charles Dickens, colored pencil, david-copperfield, demon-copperhead, drawing, humor, novel, paffooney

December 23, 2023 · 2:44 am

Where Do Ideas Come From?

When you make the mistake of admitting to others that you are a writer, they immediately assume you know things that are kept secret from “normal” people. For instance, they will simply assume that you can tell them where you get your ideas for writing. Well, I am fairly sure that I got the idea for this post from watching a YouTube video in which the Master, Neil Gaiman, says that every author has a joke answer for that one with enough sarcastic wit in it to punish the asker with public humiliation.

I asked the dog if she knew any jokes like that which I could use to prepare for someone asking me that question in public. She said, “You could tell them that your family dog tells you what to write every day.”

“No,” I said, “people would never believe it.”

“Well, it is supposed to be a joke. But you are right. No one would ever think you were actually smart enough to write down what a dog tells you.”

“Yes, it’s a good thing for me that you know how to speak in English. I could never translate and transcribe Barkinese.”

So, I began thinking of where some of my best ideas came from.

Dreams

Some of my stories come directly from dreams that I had. The nightmare about being chased down a street in Rowan at midnight by a large black dog with red eyes was an actual dream I had in the 1970s. So was the nightmare of the werewolf climbing out of the TV during a late-night viewing of Lon Chaney in The Wolfman.

Those two dreams together were the start of the story that became my recently published novel, The Baby Werewolf. Both dreams visit the protagonist in the story I wrote almost as if they were his dreams and not actually mine.

Events

Snow Babies, the best novel I have ever written, was based on two different blizzards I experienced, first as a child in the 1960’s, and then again as a high school kid in the 1970s. Each blizzard involved being snowed in for a week at someone else’s house. As a child, I was stuck at Grandpa’s farm place until the snow plows could finally do their work and open the gravel roads. As a teen, I was stuck in Great Grandma’s retirement apartment near the high school in Belmond.

That novel also is based on the next source of ideas;

Characters

I can’t think of any story I have written that isn’t based on real people I have known in one way or another. Valerie in the novel above is based on three different girls I have known or taught. One of those three is my own daughter. The four orphans on the bus in that story are all boys from my junior high classes in the 1980s.

Lucky Catbird Sandman, the hobo who wears the quilted coat of many colors, is based on the poet Walt Whitman, whom I knew well in a past life, and my own shiftless, storyteller self. Some characters are just so key to a story idea that they themselves are the reason for a book to exist.

In conclusion, the dog doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. None of these things are really where I get my ideas. But I am out of time. I will have to write about the bottle imp another day. No, really. A magical imp trapped in a bottle. You can make one of those give you ideas for novels with only a slight risk to your life and soul.

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Tagged as author, books, creative-writing, NaNoWriMo, writing

December 19, 2023 · 1:40 am

Ugly Christmas Sweaters and the Criticizing of Them

In the Midwest

where I spent my childhood and early youth, there is a great tradition of making fun of the exceptionally eye-bonking ski sweaters and Norwegian-middle-layer clothing that dads and grandads are given as presents less often than only neckties.

Yes, they are functional in the land of 100-degree-below-zero wind-chill. And they also work as defenders of your male virginity when you are in college in Iowa. But we make fun of them not out of derision, but of love. These are gifts, after all, that are given on winter birthdays and Christmas because the giver loves you. And the creative criticism of them is given only as a sign of appreciation for what they are truly for.

And if you tried to click on the X’s on this sweater of mine, and it did not immediately close on your screen, that’s because this one has special meaning. I didn’t get this as a Christmas gift. I inherited it from my father who died in November 2020. And it will keep my heart warm now until it falls apart, or until the time comes to pass it on to my own eldest son.

What…

this essay is actually about is the nature of good criticism.

The fact that this one is a red Christmas tree decorated with lawn flamingos is not the actual point. One has to look past the flaws and try to judge the effectiveness of how it achieves… or fails to achieve… its intended purpose… apparently to keep rats and small birds out of your yard… or from within a hundred yards of the thing.

And…

if I were to be offended by the revelation of Santa’s sexy black thong, then the thing to do as a proper critic is not to use my power to condemn it, but not to take up the critique of it at all. I mean, if you are actually offended by the thing, you would not want to offer an opinion that some would take as a challenge.

“What? You are telling me that I can’t like Santa’s sexy black thong? I will not only like it, I will love it! And I will buy one for myself.”

Following…

the philosophy of the uncritical critic, I would only review this green nightmare sweater of a Christmas mutant demon-dog if I really liked it. Of course, since you are seeing a review of it here, it means I am actually quite charmed by the sweater itself, and amused by whatever seventy-plus-year-old grandmama that has the kitsch-defiant attitude that allows her to proudly wear it… even if it was given to her as a gift by a relative she probably doesn’t really like but, never tells them so.

Doing book reviews one after another (as I have been doing for Pubby in order to get reviews on my own books in return) I have done a lot of the uncritical critic bit. Some of the people I have been reviewing the books of should never have tried to write a book in the first place. But do I tell them that? Of course not. If I have taken the trouble to read the whole book, even though it may be horrible, I am not going to pour cold water on their flame. I have done reviews with innumerable editorial suggestions of what would make it a better story, or a better non-fiction book, or children’s book, or poetry book, or self-help book… I have read terrible books of all of these kinds. And I know the authors did not rewrite the books as I suggested. But in my many years as a writing teacher, I have learned well that you must always point out the fledgling writers’ strengths and ask them to build on those. And some will. Besides the points I earn to spend on reviews of Mickian books, that is reward enough.

Ugly Christmas sweaters and the criticizing of them is how American culture works. Being good at negotiating that fact is a critical skill, especially in the Midwest. But nothing compared to having talent in the wearing of them.

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Tagged as book review, book reviews, books, Christmas, romance

December 15, 2023 · 2:32 am

The Art of Being Mickey

I have published my eighth novel in the last six years. Sure, it is through mostly self-publishing of novels that no one but me has ever read. Catch a Falling Star and Snow Babies both had a professional editor, one who had worked for Harcourt and one who worked for PDMI. Magical Miss Morgan has had a proofreader who made numerous stupid-mistake errors that I had to change back to the original meticulously by hand. But all three of those novels won an award or were finalists in a young adult novel contest. I do have reason to believe I am a competent writer and better even then some who have achieved commercial success.

But what is the real reason that I am so intent on producing the maximum amount of creative work possible in this decade? Well, to be coldly objective, I am a diabetic who cannot currently afford insulin. I have been betrayed by the for-profit healthcare system that treats me as a source of unending profit. I am like a laying hen in the chicken house, giving my eggs of effort away to a farmer who means to eat my very children if time and circumstance allows. I am the victim of six incurable diseases and conditions that I got most likely as a result of exposure to toxic farm chemicals in the early 70’s. I am also a cancer survivor from a malignant melanoma in 1983, and for three years now I have not been able to get the preventative cancer tests I am supposed to be receiving every year for the rest of my life. My prostate could very well be cancerous as I write this. If that is so, it will kill me unawares, because I don’t even want to know about having a disease I can’t possibly afford to fight all over again.’

So, the basic reason I am going through the most productive and creative period of my entire life is because I have a great rage to create before I die and I could be dying as soon as tonight. All of the countless stories in my head clamoring to be written down before it is too late cry out to me desperately for my immediate attention.

I will, then, continue to write stories and draw cartoons and other Paffoonies for as long as I am still able, and possibly even afterward. I have, after all, threatened repeatedly to become a ghostwriter after I die. And, yes, I understand when you scream at my essay that that is not what a ghostwriter is. But if a woman can channel the ghost of Franz Schubert and finish his unfinished symphony…(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist))

—then I should also be able to tell my stories from beyond the grave. I have been percolating them in my head and writing and drawing them in whole or in part since 1974. I have too much time and too many daydreams wrapped up in them to let it all just evaporate into the ether. In summation, I am claiming stupidly that my novels, crack-brained and wacky as they are, are somehow destined to exist, either because of me or in spite of me. So just be happy that I write what I write, for there is an art to being Mickey, and I am the one artist and writer who is the best Mickey possible if truly there ever was a real Mickey.

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Filed under battling depression, commentary, goofy thoughts, humor, novel writing, Paffooney

Tagged as book review, books, fiction, thriller, writing

December 7, 2023 · 2:01 am

The Rest of my Classroom Gallery

Here’s what’s left in my camera from school white boards and lessons.

There you have it, the results of 31 years of doodling on the chalkboard (which became the dry erase board). And yes, I did tell them the cartoon fairy drew all the pictures. Especially when they were in my class for the second or third year when they asked, “Who does all the pictures on the board?” And yes, I started doing this back in dinosaur days in white chalk on a green blackboard, followed by colored chalk, which later became a gray marker-board for washable marker, and finally became dry erase white board. And I really bought my own chalk and markers too. Teachers do that, you know.

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Tagged as art, books, cartoons, chalk board drawings, education, food, goofiness, humor, Paffoonies, poetry, teaching, travel, white board art, writing

December 2, 2023 · 2:15 am

Reading Assignments

Yesterday I revealed that I have no earthly clue how to be a best-selling author with a blog and a brand and all those other things that marketing racketeers keep pettifogging at me about. I may not know anything about marketing and being an author, but I do know how to be a writer. I have learned to say things flat out when they are on my mind and I know how to do the two essential things that a writer has to know how to do… I can practice writing every day, and I can read.

If you are one of those few who actually read my blog regularly, you may remember some talk about the classic novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Believe it or not, I know how to read and understand great books. You can find me on Goodreads.com to see some of the wonderful things I have been reading, and to decide if you might like them too. If you are not on Goodreads already, why not? That is now your next assignment, young reader. Oops. You know what they say, “Old English teachers never die, they just lose their class.”

Today’s little self-imposed book report is about a book that I read my senior year in high school, 1975. It is called The Other by Thomas Tryon. It is a book that was made into a movie. The author is also a Hollywood actor that has been in many films. He wrote the screenplay for the movie version. But I have to tell you, the movie pales in comparison to the book itself. Movies simply cannot give you the rich depth of atmosphere and the delicate psychological nuances that a book can. Movies show you something. A book can explain something in detail. And that is a key difference.

Michael Beyer‘s review

Dec 22, 14 · edit

5 of 5 stars

Read in April, 1975

This is a fascinating book for it’s ornate description of long-ago New England life, and the eerie way old houses and long-gone people can twist and mangle our lives. It is a psychological horror story about twin boys, Niles and Holland Perry. They are polar opposites. Niles is warm and loving. But Holland is distant, cold, and sinister. Their grandmother Ada, a lovely old woman with deep Russian roots, has taught the boys to play an ESP-sort of game, reaching out with their minds to feel what a bird feels, or a squirrel, or a magician to find out how he did a certain disappearing trick. She has no idea that the mind-game will have such a devastating effect on both the twins and ruin so many peoples’ lives. I cannot say more without revealing the magic the author uses to bring this book to a totally unexpected and devastating conclusion. This book is not everyone’s cup of tea… and it may be many readers’ cup of arsenic… but it worked its spell on me. I recommend it if you wish to be chilled to the bone marrow.

I am reading this book now for the third time. It is rare that I read a book more than once, because every time through changes your perception of it and risks making you dislike it. But certain books are immune to that effect. And I am re-reading it now because I want to closely analyze the techniques he used to create his surprise ending. There-in lies the reason for this reading assignment that I have given myself. That is how I roll as a writer.

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Tagged as acrylic painting, autobiography, book review, book reviews, books, fantasy, fiction, horror, humor, literature, novel writing, paffooney, poetry, reading, why aren't you on Goodreads?, writing

August 5, 2023 · 1:51 am

Terry Pratchett, the Grand Wizard of Discworld

image borrowed from TVtropes.com

I firmly believe that I would never have succeeded as a teacher and never gotten my resolve wrapped around the whole nonsense package of being a published author if I hadn’t picked up a copy of Mort, the first Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett that I ever encountered. I started reading the book as a veteran dungeon-master at D&D role-playing games and also as a novice teacher having a world of difficulty trying to swim up the waterfalls of Texas education fast enough to avoid the jagged rocks of failure at the bottom. I was drinking ice tea when I started reading it. More of that iced tea shot out my nose while reading and laughing than went down my gullet. I almost put myself in the hospital with goofy guffaws over Death’s apprentice and his comic adventures on a flat world riding through space and time on the backs of four gigantic elephants standing on the back of a gigantic-er turtle swimming through the stars. Now, I know you have no earthly idea what this paragraph even means, unless you read Terry Pratchett. And believe me, if you don’t, you have to start. If you don’t die laughing, you will have discovered what may well be the best humorist to ever put quill pen to scroll and write. And if you do die laughing, well, there are worse ways to go, believe me.

Discworld novels are fantasy-satire that make fun of Tolkien and Conan the Barbarian (written by Robert E. Howard, not the barbarian himself) and the whole world of elves and dwarves and heroes and dragons and such. You don’t even have to love fantasy to like this stuff. It skewers fantasy with spears of ridiculousness (a fourth level spell from the Dungeons of Comedic Magic for those fellow dungeon masters out there who obsessively keep track of such things). The humor bleeds over into the realms of high finance, education, theater, English and American politics, and the world as we know it (but failed to see from this angle before… a stand-on-your-head-and-balance-over-a-pit-of-man-eating-goldfish sort of angle).

Terry Pratchett’s many wonderful books helped me to love what is ugly, because ugly is funny, and if you love something funny for long enough, you understand that there is a place in the world even for goblins and trolls and ogres. Believe me, that was a critical lesson for a teacher of seventh graders to learn. I became quite fond of a number of twelve and thirteen year old goblins and trolls because I was able see through the funny parts of their inherent ugliness to the hidden beauty that lies within (yes, I know that sounds like I am still talking about yesterday’s post, but that’s because I am… I never stop blithering about that sort of blather when it comes to the value hidden inside kids).

I have made it a personal goal to read every book ever written by Terry Pratchett. And that goal is now within reach because even though he is an incredibly prolific writer, he has passed on withing the last year. He now only has one novel left that hasn’t reached bookstores. Soon I will only need to read a dozen more of his books to finish his entire catalog of published works. And I am confident I will learn more lessons about life and love and laughter by reading what is left, and re-reading some of the books in my treasured Terry Pratchett paperback collection. Talk about your dog-eared tomes of magical mirth-making lore! I know I will never be the writer he was. But I can imitate and praise him and maybe extend the wonderful work that he did in life. This word-wizard is definitely worth any amount of work to acquire and internalize. Don’t take my convoluted word for it. Try it yourself.