Do I believe in the little people? Of course not. If Tinkerbell depends on me, she is dead meat… or maybe dead fairy dust.
But if they do exist, then they are like the rooster riders in my picture, exploiting the world in the same way the big old slow ones do.
They are not our inferiors or our superiors. They are us. They mirror us and our beliefs, our dreams… our nightmares, and all the things deep within us that could ever possibly go bump in the night.
Filed under Uncategorized
Here are the newest pages of Hidden Kingdom;
If you would like to see how it fits into the whole of chapter 2, then you can visit it at my vault with this link; Hidden Kingdom – Chapter Two
Filed under artwork, comic strips, fairies, Paffooney
I have added another page to the ongoing story of the fairy folk of the Hidden Kingdom of Tellosia. I will append it here to the whole of Chapter Two as it exists so far;
So, there you have it. What will happen next? Will Zam be killed? Will the Mouse rescue her? Will Captain Pomegranate fly off into the sunset? I tell you what, I really wish I knew.
Filed under artwork, comic book heroes, fairies, humor, Paffooney, pen and ink, Uncategorized
One never knows how things are going to turn out. My car, which was nearly paid off, gets destroyed by a passing motorist as it was parked in front of my house. I endured two weeks of driving the rented Chibi Clown Car from Enterprise, I endured a financial set-back for an accident that was completely not my fault, but it resulted in being able to buy an updated version of the same make and model from Enterprise, lowering my monthly car payments and now owning a car that is superior to the one I lost. Of course, I got a letter in the mail yesterday from a bank that is denying me credit for buying a car. Every wave is followed by a trough and then another wave. That is just how life works.
I pitched a no-hitter yesterday in EA Sports Baseball ’04 on my X-box. Of course this game and game machine are more than 12 years old, so I have had time to practice, a lot! And the game is still set on rookie level. But, what the heck, I deserve a little bit of easy victory now and then.
My writing goals took a few shots in the last two months. My publisher has experienced a financial hardship and slow-down before my novel actually gets into print. My novel sales for Catch a Falling Star have tanked and I have the publicist from that publisher calling me, asking me to invest lots of money in a new publicity campaign. Like I want to invest $4,000 in a campaign that may only yield another 16 dollars in a year’s time. But I found a much cheaper way to get reviewed and promoted by Serious Reading ( http://seriousreading.com/ ). They promise the same or better results for $3,950 less. And I also learned from my publisher that they are making a come-back. So, it is even possible that I can get further novels published through PDMI.
I remain a pessimist. I will never be disappointed by unrealistic expectations. I anticipate nothing but disaster and misfortune. But as long as the house is still standing and Armaggedon is not happening as fast as the Jehovah’s Witnesses anticipate, there are still good things to be found and to have happen. And since I wasn’t expecting any good things, they are all pleasant surprises.
Filed under autobiography, battling depression, fairies, humor, Paffooney, pessimism
When you are reading a good book, it is hard to stop even though you know you’ve no reading time left. It is hard to put the thing down. My comic book, Hidden Kingdom, is absolutely nothing like that. I am doing five pages today, and no more. I am adding them also to my vault. So maybe today’s the day you would be better served to go look at the whole thing (so far) in the vault.
Here are today’s five pages (along with another look at my goofy cover)
Today, feeling quite lazy, I decided to revisit Hidden Kingdom. It will add to what I already have in the vault at this link;
I will pick it up with the last two panels that appeared a little too fuzzy for my taste. I will edit them in to the vault.
So now you know what a cartoonist does after writing a thousand words yesterday and feeling quite lazy today. He cheats and ducks responsibility. What are the going to do about it anyway? Turn me into a bird?
Filed under cartoons, Hidden Kingdom, humor
In the novel I recently entered in the Chanticleer Reviews YA Novel-Writing contest, I used the fairy kingdom of Tellosia to be the land of the little people integrated into hometown Iowa. As part of my cartoon stories page, I intend to take up the tale of The Hidden Kingdom once again and expand and complete it. I will post it as a web comic on Word Press. I know I can’t make money giving it away for free… but I hope to have my stories and cartoons read a little bit more through the buzz I hope this generates. And perhaps Petit Zam can come up with some fairy magic that will help… so I can cast a spell on you.
Here is installment one of The Hidden Kingdom;
In my book The Magical Miss Morgan, the teacher, Miss Francis Morgan, has to deal not only with a crisis in her personal teaching world, but a crisis brewing in the magical fairy kingdom of Tellosia. The fairies have come seeking Francis’ aid because she, as a teacher, has direct access to children and can affect what they believe in. You see, the fairies suffer from a general lack of belief in fairies, something that has been plaguing them more and more as the modern world makes it more and more difficult for children to actually believe. Soon they will wink out of existence for lack of believers. Francis’ younger brother, Milt, is a wizard. He knows some fairies personally, and he has told them that Francis can help them. So, because Milt revealed her to them, the Erlking, leader of the fairies of Tellosia, has sent three chosen representatives to plead for her help.
The leader of the trio is Donner. He is the dragonfly-winged pixie who is a leader of the wasp-riders. At three full inches in height, he is one of the biggest and most leader-ish of the fairies, the reason he was chosen to head the mission. He speaks very much in the old style and has a hard time getting his ideas across to a creative teacher-type from the 1990’s.
Silkie, the Storybook, is a beautiful fairy who, because she is a Storybook fairy, is immortal. She has been immortal since Hans Christian Andersen used her adventures that she had related to him to create the story of Little Tiny or Thumbelina in 1835. Any time a fairy is immortalized by a human author, that fairy becomes a Storybook and is destined to live forever. She is very old and very wise, but also very human-looking and very-very small.
Garriss, the third fairy, is a wisp. Wisps are elemental beings made of fire, water, stone, or air. They are rumored to be incredibly stupid, because their little brains are composed entirely of one element. Garriss is a fire wisp. He has a temper because his brain is made of fire. Torchy, also pictured, is also rather stupid and foolish. But fire wisps prove to have a very warm heart.
So, if you can stand fairy tales at all, I hope you will clap your hands and believe in the fairies in my book. I intend to submit it to the Chanticleer Book Reviews’ YA Novel Contest in April of 2015. The hand clapping should definitely help… unless James M. Barrie lied to us in his book Peter Pan.
In the novel I just recently finished, The Magical Miss Morgan, there are several different kinds of fairies. The fairies in the book may or may not really be there. They are a part of the magic the teacher, who is the main character, uses to be a superior teacher. She engages the imaginations of her students and they love her for it. Still, an important part of the plot revolves around a small group of fairies intent on a quest meant to save their fairy kingdom called Tellosia from a take-over attempt by evil fairies. One of the main character fairies is the fire wisp, Garriss, seen here with his little brother Torchy. Fire wisps are fairies made of elemental magic, so they can be fire, water, wind, and stone. They are made of the element they represent, and so, with a brain made of fire they are not terribly smart. They do, however, have very warm hearts, which Garriss proves to Miss Morgan, to Blueberry Bates, and to all the school children who dare to believe in fairies and fairy magic. Garriss is totally contained by fire magic, and therefore doesn’t set the teacher’s desk on fire when he walks on it. In fact, the only way he can burn anything is through the cone of fire spell written on his hands. And even then, since he is not very bright (in a mental capacity), he has to be allowed to use it by his fairy friends, Silkie, the Storybook fairy, and Donner the Pixie.
This Paffooney is the first one I drew of any of the fairy characters in Miss Morgan’s story, but it is not the last. I intend to draw more of them in the coming days.
Catch a Falling Star 