The Series Character, Part 1

When I was a kid I think my favorite kind of reading was the "series." John Carter of Mars, Conan, Travis McGee, The Sacketts, the Black Stallion, The Three Investigators, The Hardy Boys, etc, etc. When I first started writing, and started thinking about a novel, I immediately thought "series." My first western, the unpublished "The Bear Paw Valley," was conceived as an introduction for the gunfighter character of Quint Maclang. He was modeled quite a bit on the youngest of the Sackett brothers, Tyrell. Well, I was the youngest of brothers so why not?

The "Maclang" western series never got off the ground, but the Maclang fantasy series did. I've now written four books about Ruenn Maclang, who would be Quint Maclang's nephew. Three of these have been published and a fourth is supposedly scheduled for it. I'm about 33,000 words into book 5, which will be the last one for a while, I think.

One thing I've started worrying about is repeating myself. The first book, Swords of Talera, was an introduction, and then books 2 and 3, Wings Over Talera, and Witch of Talera, dealt with a war against a sorceress named Vohanna. Books 4 and 5, Wraith of Talera, and Gods of Talera, deal with another war against a sorcerer named Vessoth, who was Vohanna's husband. There's a lot of new adventures in the 4th and 5th books, but there is some commonality as well.

As I was thinking about this the last few days, I stumbled on a link to a blog where John D. MacDonald is talking about writing Travis McGee. I'm reading this closely and giving it some thought. He certainly knew the pitfalls and promise of the series character. One thing I found interesting was that he said it was harder to write first person stories than third person ones. I don't know. It doesn't really seem that way to me. The restrictions of the first person tale help me quite a lot, I think.

Anyway, I'm going to have more about writing a series character as I give it more thought. As readers, are you a big fan of series? Or would you prefer stand alones? For those who read series, do you commonly find that the formula starts to pale after a while?

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PEDESTAL MAGAZINE, 76, REVIEW

As I mentioned in my last post, Pedestal Magazine, Issue 76, is available. It was published June 22, 2015. I have a piece in it called “Gaunt,” which is about the creature I consider to be my muse. When I first got access to the magazine, I posted about its availability on my blog. Then I began reading the other poems and was blown away. I realized I wanted to do a longer post and review. This is one of the best collections from varied poets that I’ve ever read, and I feel very lucky to have my piece in this mix. Bruce Boston and Marge Simon, who served as editors for this particular issue, deserve a lot of credit. I don’t normally do reviews of magazines like this but felt compelled to in this case. Here are my capsule thoughts on the poems, without any spoilers: 

1. Lewis Carroll Knew My Family: A Series, Diana Smith Bolton: The Red Queen, The White Rabbit, The Cheshire Cat. They’re all here. Alice’s Adventures are such surreal works in their own right, and here we have the surrealistic elements taken to another level. The resonance here is intense.

2. Miracles, Ken Poyner: Genetics gone wild. This is a poem of ideas, touching on one of the biggest scientific advances of our age.

3. Critique of Car Accident Art Museum, Ross Wilcox: The melding of the machine and human. The stanzas consist of “exhibits” described. Each alters your reality a little further.

4. Lunar Eclipse by the Chitose River, December 10, 2011, Stephen Toskar: My favorite poetry often revels in contrast. Here we have such contrasts as warmth and cold, sex and fear. The last stanza is perhaps my favorite in the collection. I won’t quote it; you have to read it with all that’s gone before.

5. And Then the Stars… Mack W. Mani: Very grounded piece. A poem about reality, though it has the stars. Lots of subtext. I’m sure I didn’t catch it all.

6. Time Capsule, Rose Blackthorn: What comes after. The post-apocalyptic world as a time capsule.

7. Tourists Do Not Touch the God, Andrew Pidoux: What happens when even the Gods grow old. I liked the humorous images in this.

8. Venetian Red (for Michael Nathan), Steven Ratiner: Images of the old world’s beauty. An invocation to a past age, and a present.

9. Tether, Christina Zawadiwsky: a free for all of beautiful images and thoughts. Not quite free association. A stream of resonant consciousness. Perhaps my overall favorite of the pieces, although my favorite also seems to change with every reading of these works.

10. Gaunt, Charles Gramlich: The shortest poem in the mag.

11. The Dark Side of The Force in Relation to Art (Remarks by Lord Vader), Frederick Pollack: If Lord Vader gave a commencement address, what might he say?

12. Whatever Happened to Scott Carey?, Richard Bruns: Metamorphosis. Why me? Why not you?

13. Selenites, John Philip Johnson: How many will know that word, “Selenites.” I know it. So alien this piece, and yet familiar to us from the history of philosophy.

14. Crow Mother (for Frida Kahlo), Linda Rodriguez: The juxtaposition of beauty and the grotesque. Great fun to read aloud.

15. Schizophrenic Conversation at the Four Winds Bar: A Poem of Blues-Rock Numbers, and Crap-Game Numerology, Fred R. Kane: Reads like your favorite drunken night in an old blues bar. It happened, if only you could remember more than snatches. At the right moment, this one could be my favorite too.

16. Analog Reincarnation, Gary Singh: Life captured by a camera, and then by words. We step back two paces from reality to get a better view.

17. The Alien Ruins, Daniel Ausema: My favorite title. It already evokes my imagination. What will we find when we first make contact? A living race, or a lost one? And how will we come to know them?

18. Copernicus, Dane Cervine: Life and death and wonder.

19. Flyology, Gabrielle Bates: A feeling of lightness of being comes through in this one. Sometimes this is my favorite. The language flows so smoothly.

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Pedestal Magazine

Pedestal Magazine #76 is up, and I’m very honored to have a poem in the magazine. My piece is called “Gaunt,” a poem I wrote a couple of years back about how I see my literary muse. As I’ve been reading through the other wonderful works in this issue, I feel very lucky to have had a piece chosen for this company. I’m really blown away by the depth of language and emotion shown. You can check out the issue here.

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Harvest of War, A Little Experiment

Sales of all my own Amazon titles had been decidedly low and flat for some time so I thought I'd try to shake things up with a free promotion. I made my fantasy story, "Harvest of War," free for three days, July 15-17. It's still too early to tell much probably but here's a quick synopsis of the results so far.

I gave away 87 free copies. I also gave away one PDF copy that someone on Goodreads requested from me. I had made this story free back when it was first published in 2012 and it moved a 'lot' more copies, but 87 is respectable I suppose. And maybe quite a few folks already had it. I promoted it on facebook and Goodreads. It reached its highest ranking at about 11 hours in on the giveaway, but about four hours after I started promoting it. Here are the numbers:

At 11:45: #2,745 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#4 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 45 minutes (22-32 pages) > Science Fiction & Fantasy

#13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Anthologies & Short Stories

As of today, June 19, I've gotten one additional sale on the title, but it came at the end of the free promotion period and, quite likely, the person thought it was still free and clicked buy before seeing the .99 cent price had returned. Sorry about that. There have been no additional sales on any of my other titles so far, but many who downloaded "Harvest" have probably not read it yet. It did look like the numbers on Swords of Talera dipped so someone may have picked that up, though whether it had anything to do with the promotion I don't know. 

I was/am also hoping for some reviews on the story and the first one came in this morning from Prashant over at Chess, Comics, Crosswords. It's a very good one and I'm really happy Prashant enjoyed the tale. At the heart of why I write is to tell stories that I love and that others love too. It's gratifying when you hear that it has worked, and particularly gratifying to make that connection with someone in another part of the world. Thanks very much to Prashant for his great review!

At some point in a couple of weeks, I'll have another post on this to see if any new developments have occurred. In the meantime, happy reading. 

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Heroika: Dragon Eaters Review

Heroika 1: Dragon Eaters, Edited by Janet Morris

I first became familiar with Janet Morris through her stories in the Thieves’ World Series. Morris generally wrote my favorite stories throughout that series, and when her characters from there, “Tempus” and “Niko,” appeared in several spinoff novels I also read and enjoyed those. So, when I heard of a new fantasy anthology edited by Morris, I quickly picked it up.

In Heroika: Dragon Eaters, Morris has put together seventeen short stories that all feature dragons and some aspect of dragon consumption. There are all manner of tales here, including many that use the kind of fantasy setting one might imagine, as well as others set during the Civil War, in the swamps of Louisiana, on a modern earth, and in a post-apocalyptic world.

This is a big book, chock full of stories. I read the kindle version but the paperback is apparently 436 pages. That means plenty of bang for the buck. The stories are also uniformly well done. The biggest names are Janet and Chris Morris, who have two pieces in the book. Most of the other writers are not household names but are definitely experienced and talented writers. I’d read and enjoyed material by such authors as S. E. Lindberg, Walter Rhein, and Mark Finn, and had heard of some of the others although their writing was new to me. I’m not going to do a detailed review of the stories because I don’t want to give things away. Here are some capsule comments about things that I found particularly memorable.

“The First Dragon Eater,” by Janet and Chris Morris has an interesting structure that reminds one of the ancient Eddas.

“Legacy of the Great Dragon” by S. E. Lindberg is set in an ancient Egypt where the gods are real. Great atmosphere and characters in this one.

“Bring Your Rage,” by Janet and Chris Morris has some beautiful writing in it: “When I first saw Rhesos, he came riding a horse white as sunlight, a black dog at its heels…” Also very interesting characters.

“Aquila of Oyos,” by Walter Rhein features the Dragon’s point-of-view, and has a nice twist featuring a second dragon.

“The Wyght Wyrm,” by Cas Peace takes us to the age of Stonehenge and the Druids. Great setting.

“The Old Man on a Mountain,” by Jack William Finley features an aging warrior on his last dragon hunt. You really feel a lot of empathy for this character and his suffering.

“Of Blood and Scales,” by A. L. Butcher. I liked the concept of the “bloodsister.”

“Night Stalkers,” by Travis Ludvigson takes place in the time of Charlemagne and features Roland in a “northern thing” adventure.

“Forged,” by Tom Barczak features a nice surprise before you see the dragon.

“The Rhyme of the Dragon Queen,” by JP Wilder has a great cadre of heroes and rogues, including Spera, an excellent female character.

“The Dragon’s Horde,” by Joe Bonadonna. There’s a lot of creativity in this tale and a very interesting twist on who the villains are.

“Wawindaji Joka,” by Milton Davis. Great character conflict in this one. Jimbia is an excellent character and shows some interesting development.

“Against the Sky Tomb of the Earth Kings” by M. Harold Page wins for best title. Great inventiveness and action here.

“Red Rain,” by William Hiles. Here we have a dragon appearing during the Civil War, and Union and Confederates must join forces against it. A lot of emotional intensity in this one and I’d have to say it was my favorite piece in the anthology.

“La Betaille,” by Beth W. Patterson featured the youngest hero and I loved the details of the swamplands and the people who live there.

“Arctic Rage,” by Bruce Durham features a kind of “Alien” and “The Thing” riff in a post-apocalyptic world.

“Sic Semper Draconis,” by Mark Finn was full of action. Reminded me a bit of David Drake. 

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Books versus TV/Movies

Some time ago now, during a riot in London, it was reported that in one area every shop had been picked clean by rioters except—the bookstore. That one had been left untouched. I can’t imagine the same to be true of the video store. 

It’s a familiar refrain and sometimes even I get tired of hearing it.  But it does often seem that our society’s values are a little skewed.  Sports often appear to be valued over education, infotainment over actual news, and—yes—movies and TV over books and literacy.  I generally find that when I’m reaching for an example to illustrate some important point about writing, that a reference to a “movie” often works best. The books I want to use as illustrations will work only for a subset of people.  The movie will work for nearly everyone. In fact, I sometimes feel as if I watch most TV and movies just so I’ll have something to talk about with other people and to use as examples in my classes.

Along a similar vein, I’ve had dozens of folks over the years find out that I’m a writer and immediately recommend that I 1) write for the movies, 2) read screenplays as a way to improve my writing,  3) read a book about screen writing, or 4) all of the above.  This is in spite of the fact that I, 1) don’t really find movies very interesting, 2) personally find screenplays the most boring thing to read outside of technical manuals, 3) don’t ever want my written prose to sound like it came from a movie, and 4) it just plain irritates me.

Now, I have nothing against folks who like movies. I like plenty of them myself. I also think that writers can learn something from studying every form of writing, including screenwriting, and there are movies that contain great dialogue, although I generally find them strongest at the “one liner” verbalizations.  But what irritates me about people making the “movie” suggestions to me is that these folks seem clearly to value movies more than books.  It almost seems they are saying, “well yes, write your little novels until you develop the professional skills to write for the important markets, TV and the movies.”  Frankly, most TV and movie writing isn’t very good, and that which is good generally comes originally from books, as with the Harry Potter movies and Game of Thrones.

I’ll admit that I probably sometimes overstate the case against movies, but that’s because hardly anyone else seems to question the “movies are just worth more than books” vibe that we live with in our society. I question it.  If my TV/video system was gone when I woke up tomorrow, my life would go on almost exactly as it did before.  When Lana is not home, our TV is off 99% of the time. But if I woke up and all my books were gone, I’d be devastated and would probably head for the nearest bookstore immediately to start replenishing my shelves. 

For me, and for always, books are where it's at.

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A Louisiana Boat Ride

To revise a line from one of my favorite movies, “Well, Mister, we’ve got something in this country called a Louisiana Boat Ride.”  Sunday morning, June 7, Lana and I left the house around 4:50 AM to go and join Scott Schexnaydre, a local photographer who graciously offered to take us out in his boat. We went out to an area of marsh lands called Lake Boeuf, and had a great time. Scott took us to several rookeries where we saw hundreds of adults and young herons and egrets of various species. There were numerous grackles as well, and these were some of the biggest I’ve ever seen. Many of the dark black males were nearly as large as crows. Lana got a picture of a female grackle with a mouthful of dinner. “Yum! Yum!”

 

Lana also captured an Eagle in flight, and got pictures under a bridge of some baby barn swallows still in the nest. 

At that same bridge, I spotted some Lubber grasshoppers. We watched one of these complete a molt. These are a huge variety of local grasshopper. The babies are young and mostly black with stripes of red. They are found in large numbers together and look almost like crickets. The adults, though, are yellow and black and easily stretch the length of a man’s palm.

 

Most insects, and other normally small critters, grow big in Louisiana, which has close to a tropical environment. As we were going out toward the lake this morning I noted masses of pink slime on many tree trunks and on the reedier grasses. Scott and Lana knew what this was, the eggs of a type of invasive snail species called the Red Apple Snail. Pictures will be forthcoming. I found one emptied snail shell, which was about the size of a golf ball, and later saw a live snail on a tree extruding its eggs. It was much bigger, about the size of a tennis ball. Scott got us close to get pictures, and almost put his hand on a normally unseen denizen of the marsh area, a very large water spider about the size of a baby’s fist.

Nature simply can’t be touched as a provider of beauty and entertainment. (All photos courtesy of Lana Gramlich)

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Forgotten Books Friday, Brackett and Hamilton Double

For Forgotten Books Friday this week I’m looking at Tor Double Novel No. 8. This contains “The Nemesis from Terra” by Leigh Brackett on one side, and “Battle for the Stars” by Edmond Hamilton on the other. That makes this a family affair since Brackett and Hamilton were married.  Both books would be classified as space opera. They were originally published separately in 1961, and combined in the Tor edition in 1989.

I read Battle for the Stars first, many years ago, and for my Goodreads review simply have the phrase, “decent space opera.” I read it as a standalone, probably checking it out from the small library in my hometown when I was a teenager, and obviously from the review I didn’t remember it all that well. It’s probably been over 40 years. I preferred the stories in Hamilton’s Crashing Suns collection, which I reviewed last week.

I discovered Brackett later than Hamilton but I’ve read more of her work and rate her as the better writer. At least, I tend to like her work better than Hamilton’s. Reading The Nemesis from Terra now shows me why.

First, Brackett had more poetry in her work than Hamilton. Here are some lines: “The winged ones drifted out from the white towers, and across the little racing moons. They were light and indescribably beautiful, and their wings shimmered with soft secret fires like opals under mist.”  I’m afraid I’m just a sucker for that kind of descriptive poetic language.

Second, while both Brackett and Hamilton wrote a lot of action into their stories, Brackett’s characters seem, to me, to have more heart. We see more of their inner thoughts and emotions. We see more things through their eyes. To make a comparison, reading Hamilton is like watching a movie, while reading Brackett is more like playing a video game. The video game involves you more directly in the action rather than letting you passively receive the information.

Brackett wasn’t an early influence on my writing, but has become one during my adult years, as I’ve read more of her work and have studied why I enjoy her stuff so much. She, and C. L. Moore, were particular influences on Under theEmber Star.  Here’s a particular little snippet of Ember Star that, perhaps, evokes a Brackett kind of feeling.

“The seven hovercycles Ginn saw hidden now beneath the overhanging bank of the dry river were typical of nomad machines. Low slung. Predatory. They seemed molded out of rust but that was only camouflage against the umber and ochre shades of the desert rocks. Ginn noted the hand-stitched seats of local leather, the exquisite etchings in black and red that embellished every metal surface, the displays of bone beadwork that dangled from handlebars and saddlebags.”

I like doing these forgotten book Fridays so I’m going to try to do a few more while it’s still summer. Once school starts, all bets will be off.

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Mommas Don't let Your Babies

Mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be barbarians.

Don’t let ‘em wield swords and steal dragon gold.

Let ‘em be sorcerers and live to grow old.

Barbarians ain’t easy to love ‘cause they like to kill things.

They’d rather carve your guts and rob all your jewels,

than live in your stone huts and follow your rules.

Barbarians like taverns and wenches and looted rings.

They drink ale and eat meat over smoky old fires.

But they like a good battle and often end up on pyres.

So, Mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be barbarians.

‘Cause they’ll decorate their helmets and armor with bone.

And they’ll wander the world and they’ll never come home.

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Stampede the Wind

A lot of flooding going on around the country the past few days. Texas and Arkansas have been hit. I called my brother yesterday and they were safe on the farm, although there had been street flooding in Charleston and the nearby town of Lavaca. Paul David said the Arkansas River was as high as he'd ever seen it. I hope everyone will be safe.

We've had a lot of rain here as well, although we're more used to it. Louisiana gets 80 + inches of rain a year. Last night we had more heavy rain and a hard wind. Our back yard is a pool this morning and I had to feed the birds around the edges of it.

Around 4:00, I woke up to a banging sound and thought either something had hit the roof or the door to our tool shed had blown open. I grabbed a flashlight and went outside. I barely needed the flashlight because of non-stop lightning. I didn't see any bolts of lightning, just a strobe-light effect in the clouds.

The rain was mostly holding off for the moment. A few heavy drops. But the wind! It ran like a stampeding herd of mustangs through the trees. We are surrounded by trees, mostly pines, which reach very tall. When I looked up I could see the top of the pines bending over in a steady wind. But on the ground where I was it as only a little breezy. Even our trash cans didn't blow over.

I stood there in the dark a bit. I like the feeling of energy and power that a storm births into the world. Finally I went back inside and lay down. The wind rushed on, then slowed as if the stampede had finally passed us by. After a while I slept again, and dreamt of horses.

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Where Micro Weird Came From

I thought I might occasionally try a new feature here on the blog wherein I talk about the genesis of certain projects. Today’s choice is Micro Weird:Tiny Tales of the Strange. Back at the end of 2012, I was working on the third piece in my Fiction Techniques series, “The Twist Ending.” As part of the research for that work, I both read and wrote a number of flash fiction pieces with twist endings, and I went back and analyzed all the twist ending stories I’d written in the past. A lot of things became clear during that period.

FictionTechniques #3: The Twist Ending, was published in January of 2013, and I’d already started to consider publishing a collection of the twist ending pieces I’d written. Turns out I had quite a few of them lying around that had not been collected, and over the next couple of months I wrote several more.

In March 2013, I published these under the title Micro Weird: Tiny Tales of the Strange. Micro Weird is the most eclectic collection I’ve ever produced. It contains horror stories, science fiction tales, humor, and even some mainstream pieces. The common denominator that ties the stories together is the “twist ending.” If you like twist-ending tales, Micro Weird might be just the collection for you. It’s only 99 cents.

Here’s the Table of Contents for the collection:

AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART

EYE SPY

SEASON OF RUST

HIGH IQ

GIVING UP THE GHOST

PAST PERFECT

LOVE STORIES

THAT CAT IS ON DRUGS, MAN

INSPIRATION

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

A FACE ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE

FAR BEYOND HOME

THOUGHT FLOW

THE TEETH OF THE WIND

FOREVER, OUT OF LOVE

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David Goodis: The Wounded and the Slain

I first heard of David Goodis probably ten years ago. I’d never read anything by him but I heard he was a noir writer, generally lumped in with folks like Jim Thompson. Most people who knew of him seemed to like him. I finally found a book by him at a bookstore, The Wounded and the Slain, and picked it up. This last week I finally read it.

Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed. I probably won’t be reading any more Goodis unless something falls into my lap. The book was billed as a Noir/crime novel but I'd classify it largely as a romance. It’s certainly not even in the same species as Thompson’s work, which I like quite a lot. There is one criminal act shown in the book, and the plot does turn in part on it. However, the story is really about a marriage on the rocks. A man is drinking himself into oblivion because his wife is frigid. He loves his wife and she loves him, but something that happened in her childhood makes her unable to enjoy sex. That is all resolved in the end, but in a very simplistic fashion that bears no relationship to the actual psychology of such cases.

The main problem, for me, though, is that the book is almost all introspection. There’s almost no action outside of one bar fight. We see the man drinking in this bar or that bar. We see the woman alternately wondering about where her husband is and appreciating the manliness of another man. This is all done through internal monologue. The worst part of it is that the internal monologues didn’t seem very realistic to me. At least in this book, Goodis didn’t seem to have much of a feel for the way real people think and act.

I see from reviews on Goodreads that quite a few people enjoyed the book, and it was well enough written for what it was. It certainly wasn’t my cup of tea but who knows if it might be yours.

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Coming Late to Game of Thrones

I'm sure everyone here knows about Game of Thrones. It is both a series of massive fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, and an HBO TV series. The first book was published in 1996 and the series is actually called "A Song of Ice and Fire."  It stands at 7 volumes now. The TV series is based on the novels, although they have apparently parted company with the books over time. It is up to season 5 now, and a 6th and 7th seasons are planned.

A couple of years ago, Lana started watching the TV series on DVD. She clearly loved it because she binged watched whole seasons in a day. I caught snippets here and there and it looked like something I'd like, but she was always watching it when school was in session or I had writing deadlines so I never got to catch it.

Since I'm off for the summer, though, Lana brought season 1 home a few days ago. We watched the first four episodes on Saturday, and the next five on Sunday. This is the first time I've ever binge-watched a TV series like this. I reckon that means I enjoyed it. I thought the first three episodes were good but a little slow, full of a bit more dialogue than I might have liked, but it was a slow burn that really ignited at about episode 5. From there it was a race to the season ender, with well developed cliffhangers at the end of each episode.

Great sets, though I might quibble with a piece here and there. But mostly some really fine acting and writing. I definitely enjoyed it and it's so nice to see some serious fantasy work brought to the screen.

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Lucid and Semi-Lucid Dreams

I know I've talked a lot on this blog about my dreams. I hope it isn't too boring. This post is going to be about dreaming too, particularly about two dreams I had this past week. 

I've mentioned "lucid" dreams here before. These are dreams in which the dreamer becomes aware that he or she is dreaming. I have these fairly often. There are two layers to lucid dreaming. In the first layer, you become aware of the dream but are unable to change anything about it. You're along for the ride. In the second layer, you can actually manipulate things in the dream. I have both experiences, though usually when I become aware that I'm dreaming I can manipulate it. And when I do, I immediately start to fly!  What can I say, I just love flying.

At the end of last week I had a lucid dreaming and was flying through a cityscape when a new idea occurred to me. I was flying "around" the buildings. Why? Since I knew it was a dream, the buildings were only there in my imagination. I immediately decided to fly "through" a building. I turned toward a big brick skyscraper and accelerated directly into the wall. It shattered as I hit it and the whole top of the building exploded in a scene worthy of a modern action thriller. I came out the other side unharmed, exhilarated as flames and smoke rose behind me.

Two nights ago, I had a different lucid dreaming experience, another first for me. I'm calling it a semi-lucid dream. Here's what happened.  

Lana and I had company at our house, although the place was different. There was no tin roof on the back porch and the yard was more open. We could see a stream not far away. We were outside in the late evening when I noticed a distant silhouette of some huge flying creature. A plane was flying by at the same time and distance so I could compare. I told Lana the silhouette looked like a dragon. Lana said, “I wish.” (Jeopardy that evening had a dragon category that both Lana and I enjoyed.)

As I looked back to our yard, a huge hot-air balloon without a basket came floating through the trees and then hovered, billowing in the air over the stream. It was shaped like a clown face, very pale, almost mime-like. As I looked at it, it spoke to me, though I can’t remember what it said.

At that moment I realized I was dreaming and told Lana. This is where I have to use the term semi-lucid to describe this dream. Although I knew I was dreaming and that the clown-face wasn’t real, I actually kept Lana in the dream with me. I told her that we were going to fly, which I do in lucid dreams, and stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her.

As I tried to lift off, however, I could barely budge us, as if we were too heavy together to fly. Then I sort of laughed and realized how ridiculous that was. Weight made no difference in a lucid dream. I relaxed myself, held Lana tight, and lifted off slowly into the air. As we rose, we spun around and around as if we were dancing. Lana clung to me very tightly, and as we reached the height of the trees around us, I could tell she was a bit nervous. I let us slowly sink back to earth.

As we landed, Lana was all smiles. She turned to go in the house and I moved to follow her but glanced back one more time at the sky. The hot air balloon face had been replaced by a gigantic fantasy moon. It was red/orange/black, with a clearly defined face of shadowy eyes, mouth and nose. “See,” I called after Lana. “It’s a dream.”

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Frustration

Most of Friday afternoon, May 8,  and Saturday morning, May 9, were spent in graduation ceremonies at my university. As faculty, we get to sit and listen to a lot of speeches and a lot of cheers. One thing we get time to do is think, though. Since graduation marks the true beginning of summer writing for me, I generally do a considerable amount of planning on how to proceed.

These days, of course, writing is only a part of what we do. We also have to promote. I seldom get a chance to do promotion during the school year other than an occasional post on facebook and blog. During the summer, though, I always try to do more. I believe my stories are good but just haven’t seemed to generate either steady sales or buzz.

Anyway, here’s where the frustration of the title comes in. I came up with a promotional plan during the graduation ceremony. I got home and did a couple of quick posts in that vein and made announcements or sent emails requesting information. Then I had to nap because I’d only gotten 4 hours sleep the night before. I get up to see if there have been any responses to the stuff I sent out before the nap. But before I can make the needed replies, the internet goes down.

Turns out, it’s not the net per se but our phone line that is down, and that’s how we get our internet, through AT & T. I call them. They say there’s a problem on the line but they are working on it and should have it resolved by Monday sometime. That means two days at least without internet access at home. Of course, I quickly realized that they are likely lying to me. I remembered in 2014 we had a similar problem, and checked my journal. On May 11, 2014, the day after graduation ceremonies that year, our phone, and net, went out for a week. Those kinds of coincidences don’t just happen so this is some kind of planned outage by them.

Certainly, there are plenty of writing related things I can do, not least of which is actual writing, but—in many ways—the net has become a big part of actually stringing together a story. I’m constantly looking up things, maybe something about sailing ships, or the economy of Roman cities, or what a particular sword hilt looked like. Some I can find in my collection of pre-internet reference books, but much of it I don’t have in hard copy. I found myself on Saturday night leaving lots of phrases and words printed in red with question marks around them that I’ll have to look up when we do get the net back.

If I lived in the city, I could take my laptop next door to the coffee shop or library to connect. Abita Springs doesn’t have a coffee shop with Wi-Fi. Their library branch is so small that there’s no place to sit inside with a laptop to work. The closest place to get access to Wi-Fi and a seat is the Covington library, which is about a 25 minute drive one way.

I should be used to it by now in life. The frustration. It’s an ongoing and constant thing. But to have to wait for time to put a plan into action, to get to the point where you have the time and start to implement things, and then that chance is snatched away…. It makes me want to scream.

Here’s what it’s like. Imagine you’re a kid and every day on your way from school you walk past a candy shop. One Monday you see, in the window display,  the most delicious looking chocolate chip cookie ever. It’s as big as both your hands together and looks warm and gooey and like it was baked in heaven. The price is a dollar and you don’t have that much, but you will as soon as you get your allowance on the weekend. You get a huge grin on your face thinking about next Monday, about how on your way home from school you’re going to get that cookie and sit down in the sun under a tree somewhere and devour it to the very last crumb.  

Monday comes. You wait all day in anticipation. As soon as school is over you rush to the candy store, hurry inside with your allowance money in your hot little hand. Maybe you’ll buy two cookies. You’ve got the cash. You run up to the counter and tell the lady that you want one of the big chocolate chip cookies in the window. You point to the display. You beam with delight as you lay your money on the counter. She says: “Sorry, we’re sold out of those. Not sure when we’ll get another batch in. But try back next week.”

Maybe, for a minute, you think about just stealing that cookie from the display window and running off with it. But you know, that cookie isn’t real. It’s just a clever facsimile meant to make you want what you can’t have.

NOTE: To give credit where credit is due, our phone and net were actually out for only about twenty-four hours. They got it up faster than I expected and I was happy for that. I’d already written this post, however, and still wanted to share that cookie metaphor. Twenty-four hours is still long enough to generate some frustration.

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Crashing Suns, by Edmond Hamilton

I tried sending Patti a notice that I'd like to take part in Forgotten Books Friday but I don't think we managed to connect. It's the first time in a long time I've had a chance to do anything for that. Anyway, here's an unofficial entry for Forgotten Books Friday: 

Anything that I could find at our small-town library that smacked of science fiction got checked out and brought home. Thus it was I stumbled upon a little paperback called “Crashing Suns,” by Edmond Hamilton. I didn’t recognize the author’s name at the time; I was more familiar with Asimov, Clarke, Anderson, Heinlein. It didn’t matter. The cover showed a rocket-ship and a round, pink, fuzzy alien with multiple limbs pointing a blaster at an astronaut. More importantly to me, the words “Crashing Suns” and the catch phrase on the cover of “Red alert for the Interstellar Patrol” ignited my imagination. Many, many years later, I found a copy of this book in a used book store and snapped it up. It’s too brittle and worn to read again but I still cherish it.

The book contains five novella length space opera stories, the title piece, “The Star Stealers,” “Within the Nebula,” “The Comet Drivers,” and “The Cosmic Cloud.” From what I can find out, all five of the stories were published in Weird Tales between 1928 and 1930. All but the first involve the Interstellar Patrol, sort of a pre-Federation Starfleet that defends the galaxy from evil. Hamilton apparently wrote these tales in a white heat and they sometimes show it. The science is often inaccurate and the language is quite overblown with flights of fancy in many places. But, you know, I don’t care. Hamilton was clearly enjoying himself and I enjoyed right along with him. There’s passion and excitement and that can make up for a lot of technical slights. I still want to join the Interstellar Patrol. I may be 56 on the outside, but inside I’m still 12 when I hear the siren call of “Crashing Suns.”

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Summer Writing

May 3^rd: This was the first day in almost two weeks that I had a chance to think about writing. It certainly was pleasant. I got one story revised and submitted, and then submitted five poems to a market. Today, Monday, I plan to spend much of my time thinking about how exactly I want to proceed.

My main long-term goal is to finish (or get close anyway) to completing Gods of Talera, the fifth (and last for now) of the Talera series of books. This will be #5.

My first short-term goal is to see Wraith of Talera, the 4^th book published. I sort of thought it was going to be published last week so if I don’t hear anything by the end of this week I’ll need to contact the publisher again.

My second short-term goal is to get the rights back to Cold in the Light, my first published novel. The publisher has apparently gone bye-bye and is not responding to my attempts to contact them, but the book is still for sale. I can only assume that I’m not going to get any royalties from any sales that happen now. So, I want the rights back and will then try to sell it elsewhere.

Other goals include, 1) finishing a new Krieg story, which is about 3/4ths done, 2) finishing a horror short story involving Halloween, which is at about the same level of completeness, and 3) finishing a western novella called “The Scarred One,” which is only about 1/5^th done. I’ve got two other western stories at various stages of completion that I’d like to get to but don’t know if I’ll have the time.

I’d hoped to be completely out from under being chair of the IRB this summer but it looks like I’ll be stuck with that the first six weeks or so. Unfortunately, that will take a big bite out of my writing time. It’s gonna be a busy summer!

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A Pink Pig of Power

So here's the most interesting dream I’ve had in a while. I was at an outdoor seminar with fellow psychology faculty members. As we were seated listening to the speaker, I noticed a bunch of long silvery insects flying around near an electric pole. Two crows flew over and landed on the wires. A third dark flyer followed but was much, much larger than the crows. It landed on the side of the pole itself, clinging like a woodpecker. It’s shape was humanoid; the wings were bat-like.

Someone made a joke about a vampire, and most of us got up and went toward the thing for a better look. As we approached, it let go of the pole and flew across a highway to land on the sidewalk on the other side. People quickly gathered around and we pushed through that crowd to look. Here’s where it gets weird.

I saw a small pink pig marching back and forth along the sidewalk on his hind legs with his bat-wings spread out behind him. He was about beagle-sized and was pontificating in English. “Yes,” he said, “this is the end for the human race. Your time on earth is done.” I remember thinking,“WTF,” but only about the threats the pig was making, not about the existence of the winged pig himself. About that time the police showed up and surrounded the pig. They began to lead him somewhere and he went willing along, still spouting his statements about the end of the human race.

The next scene switched. I was no longer me but was seeing through the eyes of a doctor newly assigned to observe the winged pig. The doctor went through a number of institutional type metal doors into a basement where he found the pig living in a large barred cage. There was a big window on one side and the pig was looking out at a playground where children were playing. The doctor thought he was unobserved by the pig-creature, but suddenly the creature turned and made eye contact, then pointed toward the playground as if he wanted to be allowed out there.

The doctor gave no acknowledgement of the pig’s behavior, but started to move further away from the cage. There is a janitor there who is mopping the floor. As the doctor glances toward the janitor, the man looks up and makes eye contact. The pig creature is looking at them both and suddenly the janitor’s eyes flicker and turn dead white. He smiles, and most of his teeth are missing.

The doctor stumbles backward in shock, then turns to leave the room. Another janitor is just coming through the door and as he looks at the doctor, he blinks and his eyes turn dead white as well. Afraid now, the doctor pushes past the man into the hallway outside. He starts along it, moving swiftly. A woman with a handkerchief over her hair comes out of another door and her eyes are the same as the men.

Realizing that something seems to be infecting the others who’ve been around the pig creature, the doctor starts hurrying through the corridors to get help. More and more people begin to pour into the corridor, though, all with the same eyes, and all moving slowly and steadily toward the exit. They make no threat against the doctor but in moments he is almost completely swallowed up in the mass of people. The dream ends with him crying out desperately, “Help me. Someone help me.”  

The first part of the dream, where we first meet the winged pig, was interesting and, in retrospect, hilariously funny as he marched back and forth on his short stubby legs pontificating about the end of the human race. But the ending, with the people being infected with something and that infection spreading rapidly, was creepy as all get out.

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A Pleasant Synchronicity

I had a somewhat surreal, but very pleasant, experience last night. I was invited to a pulp fiction reading group meeting at St. Joseph's Abbey and Seminary College. This is on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, about a twenty minute drive from my house now. As I turned across the one lane bridge onto the grounds, I glimpsed a small lake/pond off to my right, with several stone benches located around it for meditation purposes. Although I thought I’d never been to St. Joseph’s before, I realized as I saw the lake that I had in fact been there, and that certain elements of the location had stayed with me for over twenty-five years.

A couple of years after I came to Xavier, probably about 1987/88, I went on a retreat with some other Xavier faculty to an abbey. We all rode together so I didn’t drive, and at that time I lived in the New Orleans area and had no idea what the “North shore” was. Years later, I still had pleasant memories of the peacefulness of the location and began using that remembered setting in a post-apocalyptic story called “The Razored Land.” I tried to figure out where the real location was so that I could do some research on it, but no one that I remembered from that retreat was still at Xavier so I had no luck finding the place. I went ahead and constructed the story with an abbey I called “St. Peter’s” as an important setting. 

Just a few weeks ago I submitted “The Razored Land” to a publisher and it looks like it will indeed be published (although I never count my chickens before they hatch). Last night, as I turned onto the grounds of St. Joseph’s, I realized I’d rediscovered that lost setting. It gave me a nice feeling of synchronicity. And, the pulp meeting and discussion went very well. It was extremely nice to talk about Robert E. Howard, and Lovecraft, and pulp fiction with folks I could physically set down at a table with. The group had wide ranging experience with the pulps. Some were extremely well versed while for others it was an introduction. It was certainly fun, though.

Thanks to Casey Edler for the invite. 

Also, by the way, I start giving final exams and getting final papers tomorrow so I will likely be largely out of touch on the blog until Wednesday of so of next week. I trust there won't be any blogpocalyse while I'm gone. I'm leaving Riot Kitty in charge until I return!

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Second half of the Quiz

Here's the second half of that quiz I gave my writing students. Sorry the spacing isn't quite right. Not sure why but probably due to how I set the format up for the quiz originally.

11.  I tell you that mammals bear live young. If I tell you that giraffes bear live young and you assume          this means that giraffes are mammals, you have engaged in deductive/inductive ____________              reasoning.

12.   A __________ is a false belief, a ________ is a false sensory impression, and a ________ is a         distorted perception of a real physical event.  Choose from among/between ___________                 delusion/hallucination/illusion.

13.  Be discreet/discrete ________ when talking to your professors about whether you read the             textbook or not.

14.  I hope the judge in my speeding ticket case is disinterested/uninterested _______________.

15.  In our experiment, we used a food prompt to elicit/illicit hunger.

16.  PhD students are expected to conduct exhaustive/exhausted ___________ reviews of the relevant      research in their fields and be completely familiar with the extant/extent _____________                 literature.

17.  Pharmacologically speaking, amphetamine is classified as a stimulant/stimulus ______________.

18.  That which you can call to mind rather easily when you try to is said to be in the subconscious/             unconscious ____________ mind while that which you cannot recall at all under normal               circumstances is in your unconscious/subconscious ______________ mind.

19.  Color is a qualitative/quantitative _____________ variable while height is a quantitative/qualitative       ___________ variable.

20.  The principal/principle _______________ investigator of the study is sick today.

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