Tag Archives: novel writing

October 3, 2015 · 2:48 pm

Lazy Plugs for Small Holes

I have been working on final edits for my novel Snow Babies. I have also been struggling with diabetes, arthritis, and COPD. At the same time, I have been writing up a storm on my blog and posting all kinds of incredibly goofy and somewhat creative stuff. So today is a break without leaving a hole in my goal of posting a blog post every single day of 2015. I have to go all the way to Balch Springs, Texas today for a flag football game. So, if you are disappointed with this meager post, go back and look at any of the other recent posts you may have missed. I’m not saying they are worth the effort, but wasting your time is what I do.

2 Comments

Filed under NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, writing humor

Tagged as humor, novel writing, paffooney

September 21, 2015 · 2:28 pm

The Beg-Eye

“I want that chip… yes, that chip… that Pringle’s chip!”

“Are you talking to me again, dog?”

“Yes. I need that chip. If I eat that I will be a people again.”

“But I am eating this chip. I like Pringle’s. And I need energy if I am going to finish editing my novel Snow Babies. Let me finish eating my chips.”

“Look at my eyes. Can’t you see I NEED that chip? It is the most important thing in life that you give me that chip.”

“No, I will not look at your eyes. I know about your Beg-Eye super power. All dogs have it, and little dogs have it in spades.”

“Seriously, just look into my eyes!”

“Oh! Uh, I shouldn’t have looked into your eyes just now.”

“Smack! Crunch! Chew-chew-gobble! Um, yes, you should have. Always look at my eyes when you have food in your hands!”

“Well, maybe I need to start writing now. I am putting the food back in the pantry.”

“Awww! Shucksies!”

“Look into my eyes!” says Jade the talking dog. “You want to buy this book when it’s published, don’t you? Yes, I think you do.”

The Doorway at the Top of the Stairs (A silly rhyme of Paffooney making)

At the top of the stairs and the end of the hall,

Is a doorway to wonder and the pith of it all.

I have lived a long life, and I’ve lived it well,

But a life isn’t over with a story to tell.

So I set to work justly with my ink and my pen,

And I draw and I write and remember when…

But there has to be more to this door in the hall,

A studio’s not just a hole in the wall.

I write about Seuss and his silly red rhymes,

And I think and I write and remember the times…

And the verse can come faster, or the verse can come slow

But the verse is about all the things that you know,

And you must pass it on to them that come after,

And you post your ideas on door, wall, and rafter.

And when the long day finally comes to its end,

There will be a sharing with a good ear to bend,

And a book, or two books, or three they can read,

That reveal all the secrets that they’ll ever need.

4 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, poem

Tagged as art studio, autobiography, goofiness, humor, my room at home, novel writing, Paffoonies, poem, poetry, rhymes, work space

September 12, 2015 · 2:58 pm

The Unquiet Teacher Brain

Yesterday, as I was reviewing a movie that is almost as old as I am (in December, 1961 I was 5), I couldn’t help but think like a teacher. If I were going to teach this movie as a piece of literature (and movies ARE literature! Don’t argue with me!!!), I would start with an anticipation guide… or I could call it a lesson focus. I would tell the students a little bit about why this movie is important to me. I would give the background information about how Walt Disney wanted to make a musical picture like The Wizard of Oz, and even bought the rights to Oz books by Frank L. Baum to make it happen. It was supposed to be a starring vehicle for his popular Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers, and ended up starring Annette Funicello (and I would never mention anything about my childhood desire to see Annette naked because information like that mixed with giggle-happy teens and hormones is an explosive mix and would get me fired). I would also start a discussion of heroes and villains and what sort of patterns we might anticipate as the story went down that well-traveled path of the hero (I might mention some of Joseph Campbell’s work on myths because it is almost relevant enough to fit in the lesson… and it would not get me fired). But, suddenly, I realize as the teacher-brain machinery is churning on this idea… I am no longer a teacher. I am retired. I am not even well enough to go be a substitute teacher for a day or two. And besides, Texas principals all frown on showing movies in class when you could be doing worksheets to prepare for State STAAR Tests. And Disney sues teachers for using their copyrighted materials in the classroom because, well… evil fascist corporate empire ruled by a mouse, right? So I am bummed.

When do you stop thinking like a teacher so much that it hurts? Probably never. I got even with Fate just a little bit by writing the novel Magical Miss Morgan, in which I gave some of my old lesson plans to the fictional version of me as a teacher (the version of me that is not a cartoon rabbit as a teacher). I had Miss Morgan teach a class of sixth graders about J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and tried to incorporate some of my goofier teaching ideas into the story as evidence that Miss M is, in fact, a very good teacher (hard to fake if you are not a good enough teacher to at least recognize what good classroom practices look like). And I had enough fun pretending to be a female teacher with goofy imaginary students like Mike and Blueberry in the Paffooney above, enough fun to create what I think is my best work of fiction so far. I submitted it to the Chanticleer Book Reviews YA novel-writing contest. I have to wait like 30 years to find out if I failed to win anything… but that’s okay. Doing it quelled the unbridled teacher spirit in me that keeps threatening to kick down the stall gate and run away from the safety of the brain barn in the middle of a tornado… or something equally horsey but dangerous. So, I guess I am okay for the moment. But what do I do next when the teacher brain in me fires up and goes into overdrive yet again?

Ah well, I will think of something.

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as autobiography, goofiness, humor, novel writing, paffooney, school teacher, teacher brain

August 20, 2015 · 2:15 pm

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.

borrowed from artistsUK.com

12 Comments

Filed under book review, humor, NOVEL WRITING

Tagged as book review, books, Discworld, fantasy, favorite author, humor, novel writing, satire, teaching, Terry Pratchett

August 13, 2015 · 5:04 pm

A Low-Fat Essay With One Third Fewer Calories

Yesterday I posted a political satire in which I accused Rand Paul and Chris Christie of being the reincarnation of Laurel and Hardy. I may have also suggested that Republican Presidential candidates are mostly possessed by the spirits of old comedy teams who share the bully and the idiot style of comedy made famous by Stan and Ollie. That post had about 380 calories from empty carbohydrates and the saturated fat was off the charts. If I am to provide a healthy diet of low-quality purple paisley prose to those who ready my pretentiously faux-literary blog, then I need to alternate in some high-fiber, low calorie fare. After all, this is a place where people come to sample my ideas and my so-called humor. Any and all fat that they get from here goes straight to their head. It can clog the arteries of the thinking organ. So, let me offer something light and fibrous today.

Yesterday I finished the first-pass edit of my novel Snow Babies. I also got it sent to my editor at PDMI, Jessie Cornwell. Her edits caused serious pain and minor bleeding, but that is merely an indicator that she is very professional and does the job well. And on occasion, she makes me laugh. She identified and corrected my creepy fascination with the word “penis” and cut it out of my novel. I am sure you can imagine how painful something like that can be. But I deserved it. A writer has to be aware that there are quirks in his thinking that interfere with communicating ideas to the reader. And the nutritional value of the ideas and thinking in a book are not only what makes it worth reading, but worth writing in the first place.

It is a little odd to be working on a novel about a blizzard in Iowa in deep December when it is August in Texas and we are undergoing 100-degree plus weather during the yearly heat wave and drought. It is hard to imagine deadly cold and Christmas-wish thinking when you have to sit naked by the air conditioner and you still sweat out gallons. (Notice I did not use the word “penis” even once in this paragraph, Jessie.) (Oops! Okay, don’t count the parenthetic expression, please.)

But I love these characters.

Valerie Clarke, the main character, is an eleven-year-old girl trying to make her way in a cold world after the death of her father. She finds and latches onto a mysterious old hobo who goes by the name Catbird. The man wears a coat which is a crazy quilt of colorful patches. He carries around a dog-eared copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and quotes from it as if it is his Bible. She gives him a place to stay, with her and her grieving mother in the nick of time before the blizzard hits her little Iowa town. Valerie is based in part on my own daughter.

A bus gets stranded in the rural farming community and the bus contains four boys who are not only passengers, but runaway orphans escaping from the Illinois foster care system. The youngest boy is crippled.

So, I am for the moment only posting something light that you really don’t have to work too hard to consume. The main idea is simply that I have finished another step in the process of publishing my long-delayed novel. And hopefully this post isn’t needlessly fattening, like many of my posts are.

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as humor, novel characters, novel writing, Paffoonies, PDMI Publishing, Snow Babies, working with editors

August 10, 2015 · 2:13 pm

Timeline – Finale

So how do I end this little trilogy of timeline terror? I have to fit in the remaining novel projects that are related or at least partially done. And the unrelated ones too. I have way more in the Mickian bag of tricks than I will ever have the magic-using years to actually use. The thing about wizards is that, by the time they have accumulated all the knowledge, wisdom, and arcana that it takes to do the wizardry, they are already old and near to death. How much time is left for the actual magic? I have been living this weekend in fear of imminent stroke. But I believe the random brain pain has actually turned out to be sinus problems. So here are the projects that finish the timeline and are the projects least likely to get written and published.

Connected to Catch a Falling Star is its sequel, Stardusters and Space Lizards. This is a novel I have most recently been trying to finish. I am in the home stretch at 40,000 words. It is the story of the failed Earth invaders continuing their journey to another planet, an even worse place than Earth. Galtorr Prime is the planet of the humanoid lizard people. Their world is on the very brink of extinction by global warming, toxic politics, and war. The remnants of the Telleron aliens who tried to invade Earth and their Earther-human friends not only have to make a colony for themselves here, but have to save the planet itself as well. It is a cautionary-type science fiction tale in the same comedy-young-adult-novel genre as Catch a Falling Star. It also happens in the early 1990’s (intended to mean the time on Earth which is not relevant in any case).

The next novel is Monstro, a ghost story in which the Norwall Pirates have to take on the Lonely Ones, the spirit-echoes of the crazy people of the past in a haunted farm house that awakens to feed on the living. The story is more than half written, but is looking at a near total rewrite to make it conform better with comedy young adult fiction. It is set in the mid 1990’s, around 1995.

None of my Hometown Novels will go beyond the 20th Century. Monstro is ostensibly the last of the novels.

I am a science fiction writer as well, though. The first book I ever published, Aeroquest, is set more than three thousand years in the future, at a time when the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy (where Earth has its street address) is largely colonized and thoroughly inhabited. As the novel now stands (a sorry mishmash that no decent publisher would’ve ever printed) it is in need of a total re-write and make-over. It is a novel that I humorously say is about teachers in space… though I do realize that “humorously” has to be qualified as a big bald-faced lie.

So this is run-down in time order of all the stuff I want to do as an author. How much gets done in reality is anyone’s best guess. Who knows? I may live another twenty years and finish at least one novel every year.

Timeline

Editing my novel Snow Babies has led me to realize that I need to align the events and character progressions in all the related Home-Town Novels. So here is a feeble attempt to make sense of the wealth of crap that this whole project has generated.

The first novel in the series is called Superchicken.

This story is about a boy who comes to live in the small town of Norwall, Iowa and struggles to make friends and fit in with a close-knit and inter-related group of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. It contains the origin story of the Norwall Pirates, a boys’ gang and liars’ club who cause most of the chaos in the story. It is intended to be an Iowa-River version of Tom Sawyer, a picaresque novel where the main character uses his natural instincts to try and gain the recognition of the world that he exists and has worth as a person.

The second novel is not completed yet. It is a story called The Baby Werewolf. It is about the Norwall Pirates pursuing an encounter with a very unusual child shut away in the attic of an aging house by the harried adults in his life.

All of these stories are humor novels written for a Young Adult genre audience. This one, however, also introduces elements of the horror genre.

Three more unwritten novels exist between this set of Norwall stories and the next set which introduce a whole new group of Pirates. Of the original Pirate stories there is an encounter with immortal beings who are somehow more than human and include a villain who is secretly an un-dead Chinese wizard looking to kill and consume another immortal who has taken refuge in Norwall. This novel does not yet have a name. The working title is The Forever Boy. Another novel involving the Pirates is called Sweet Pickles. It takes up the story of a girl nicknamed Pickles who is desperate to be loved and joins the junior high football team to impress boys. The novel includes the sexual awakening of more than one member of the Pirates, and though it is half-written, it may never see publication. I am not a pornographic writer, but the issues of this book have become so explicit, that it would have to be gutted and rewritten completely to be acceptable to my chosen genre. A more likely story is Under Blue Glass, the story of the Pirates handling their teens and high school and the excitingly horrible prospects of leaving home.

The next set of Pirate novels cover the 1980’s. The Captain Came Calling is about the reformation of the Pirates with Mary Philips, the story-teller’s little sister, taking on the daunting task of leading the Pirates through a new decade. South Pacific island magic brings the cursed Captain Noah Dettbarn to a farm town about as far away in all of North America as you can get from any ocean. The captain is cursed with invisibility and has to get to the bottom of a terrible family secret to cure it. Meanwhile, another terrible secret is destroying the family of Valerie Clarke, the main character of the novel.

Snow Babies is actually the second novel of this group, although it is the second novel being published. I will talk more about it as the process goes along and it actually reaches a state of publication.

After that comes a group of unwritten novels that are nebulously plotted out. I am thinking I probably need to declare halftime on this post at 600 words and do the second half of this timeline tomorrow.

Mickey’s Blue Summer

Okay, this is not going like I had hoped. Medical bills are overwhelming. Impacted molars are going to cost my family over three thousand dollars when we still can’t afford bills of bigger than 50. And I got word today that I did not win in the Chanticleer Book Reviews novel-writing contest. I was beaten out for the prize by Elisabeth Hamill’s book Song Magick.

I am bummed out. It is not that I expected to win that contest, but Magical Miss Morgan is a better book than Snow Babies, and that one at least made the list of finalists. I seem to be getting further away from the goal. If I placed, or got a prize in that contest, I would at least get the attention of literary agents and big publishers. Perhaps it is God’s wish that I remain an unknown novelist who makes no money at writing. It is consistent with His divine sense of humor. The angels get a good laugh whenever I fall on my figurative face for wishing too hard for money and success. God wants people to be happy being poor. Right? That’s what Republican politicians in Texas keep saying.

But if I keep playing the same sweet-sad songs and singing in the lonely darkness… at least I can make a melody or two that lifts the souls of my fellow dwellers in the dark.

But, wait a minute… something is not right here! Why are the winners the same ones they told me about a couple of months ago? Ms. Hamill’s book is also listed on this… 2014 list? Did I jump the gun? Look at this list for me; Dante Rossetti Awards

Am I wrong, or does that say these are the 2014 winners? There’s the due date by which I sent in my novel for the NEXT COMPETITION in 2015! That means I won’t actually hear about my novel until next summer! Hang dang it! Both bad news and good news in one fell swoop. So, I am not out of the running yet. Perhaps there is time to do more and be more and write more after all!

6 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, self pity

Tagged as adventure, humor, Magical Miss Morgan, novel writing, Paffoonies, self pity, writing contests

August 3, 2015 · 2:03 pm

Working on Snow Babies

I really don’t have to put very much into this blog since most of my 500 words are already taken up with novel editing. So I will just put in a few comments on this novel that has consumed me since 2012. It is called Snow Babies

because it is basically about lost children and a blizzard that threatens to take them away completely. Now, there are fantasy creatures in the story, child-like ghost-things that come in the teeth of the blizzard to take away the souls of those who die in the cold. But the title actually refers more to the child characters in the story, Valerie Clarke (as seen above) and the four runaways from the Trailways bus. It is a story of survival during a blizzard, and survival when you have lost the ones you love. It is also a story of quilts… patchwork quilts… of many colors and varieties all stitched together seemingly at random. Because that is what life is like. Random stuff. Stitched together…to make something beautiful that can save your life in the cold.

This novel was submitted in manuscript form to the Chanticleer Book Reviews novel writing contest for Young Adult fiction. The contest is called the Dante Rosetti Awards as seen in this logo. The book didn’t win, but of the many manuscripts submitted it made it all the way through to the final cut and was a finalist in the contest.

I am currently working with editor Jessie Cornwell of PDMI Publishing to get the book ready for print. I hope to have it published soon. Clay Gilbert, Managing Editor of PDMI LLC recently did a profile on me because of my upcoming book. Here is the link for that;

Portals and Pathways by Clay Gilbert

Let me leave you with a look at the frost spirits from my novel.

I hope you don’t feel hopelessly mooned by that, because there are worse things that Snow Babies can do than that.

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, Snow Babies

Tagged as humor, novel characters, novel writing, Paffoonies, publishing, revision, Snow Babies

Tag Archives: novel writing

Lazy Plugs for Small Holes

The Beg-Eye

The Doorway at the Top of the Stairs (A silly rhyme of Paffooney making)

The Unquiet Teacher Brain

Terry Pratchett, the Grand Wizard of Discworld

A Low-Fat Essay With One Third Fewer Calories

Timeline – Finale

Timeline

Mickey’s Blue Summer

Working on Snow Babies

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