The Devil's Horn

In the new Markhat Files book, The Devil's Horn, the world seems to be falling apart.

Monsters walk the streets. Each night brings new terrors, and each dawn reveals a fresh crop of corpses. The dead wagons have all the cargo they can bear, and then some. 

Still, life goes on. The people of Rannit have bills to pay, businesses to run, lives to get on with. A numb acceptance of the new normal spreads. Even as the dead wagons rattle past in increasing numbers, people retain their routines, falling back on the familiar in some unspoken and irrational hope that if they just keep living as they always have, the monsters will simply go away.

Sound at all familiar?

I don't want to scare you away from the book. Yes, there's trouble on the home front -- but Markhat and Darla made their decision to stay and fight at the end of Way Out West. 

So stay and fight they will.

The book will be out as soon as I can finish it. Until then, here's the rough draft of the opening to The Devil's Horn. I thought a few Markhat fans might enjoy reading it. 

 

THE DEVIL’S HORN

Father Chide was a bastard.

He kept his red priest’s mask close to his face as he spoke, but his eyes showed. They were rheumy and narrow and mean. His thin bloodless lips were also visible, set in a permanent scowl, hiding crooked yellow teeth that looked loose and diseased, the perfect lair for a lying priest’s tongue.

“Have you listened to a word I’ve said?” barked Father Chide, using his best frighten-the- flock pulpit baritone.

I shrugged. Three-leg Cat sauntered in the office and, with the unerring ability cats have to draw close to people that loathe them, Three-leg leaped atop my desk and settled right in front of Father Chide’s gold-trimmed mask.

“A few,” I said, as his brow knotted in anger. “But like everybody else these days, I stopped listening when you started preaching.”

He sputtered and nearly stood up. I’d hit a sore spot. As what the papers were calling the Summer of Monsters entered its third month, the Churches had failed to slow the flow of supernatural beasties taking to Rannit’s streets. The faithful were deserting Rannit’s five Church mainholds in droves. I imagined Father Chide wasn’t any too happy about that, and a petty part of me decided to twist the dagger a little more.

“So tell me again, Father. Without the religious commentary, this time. What brings you, a mighty priest favored by the Host itself, to seek out the likes of me?”

“We have sent six letters,” he replied. “Two were formal summonses, affixed with the Holy Seal of the Holy Primate himself.”

I nodded agreeably. “On a fine grade of paper, too. They lit up like a treat, and burned with an exceptionally pure flame. I commend your taste in stationery.”

“You burned them.” It wasn’t a question. He forgot to hide his face from the sinful world by letting his mask of office dip.

“I did,” I said. “Send more, and I’ll burn them too. Let’s get something straight, Father Chide. There are maybe three people in all of creation who can summon me. My wife, Mama Hog, and the proprietor of any middling good brewery. But not you, and not His Holy Whatshisname, and not every painted angel in every holy book. I don’t recognize any authority you claim to exert. So knock it off. Speak plain, or get out.”

“Twenty thousand crowns.” He remembered to raise his mask.

“That’s plain enough. Now what is it you want, for twenty thousand crowns, plus expenses?”

He turned his mask slightly this way and that, inspecting my tiny office for big-eared sinners, I suppose. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper.

“That will not be discussed here. Ever. You will accompany me to Wherthmore. My carriage awaits.”

I leaned forward, matched his whisper.

“Nothing doing, you sour old goat.” I’d once ridden a stolen horse up Wherthmore’s steps and right down the middle of the Grand Chamber itself. For all I knew this was some bizarre attempt at chastisement. “You want to try and hire me, fine. I can put my personal distaste for you and yours aside. But I do my business my way, and that means we discuss business right here, right now.”

Father Chide gave Three-leg Cat a savage shove when Three-leg sniffed his mask.

Three-leg whirled and let the bastard have a good hard swipe with his remaining front paw. Father Chide yelped and raised his staff to strike and if I wasn’t bound for Hell before that moment I am now because I took his holy stick away from him, broke it over my knee, and then threw him out into the street by the neck of his greasy red robe.

His attendants, a foursome of armored Church soldiers who’d been napping atop the carriage, were caught off guard. I managed to plant a kick on Father Chide’s backside and beat a hasty retreat through my heavy door before they could clamber awkwardly down.

I threw the bolt just as the first blows landed. I spent the next hour idling with Three-leg, who kept a murderous glare aimed at the door while he licked his forepaw in feline triumph.

With a final barrage of threats and curses, Father Chide and his corpulent honor guard departed. I waited a bit before stepping outside, wary of crossbows bolts or sermons.

Neither manifested. Old Mr. Bull cackled and waved from across the street. An ogre hurried past, pulling a sausage cart, pursued by crows and stray cats. The Father’s gaudy Church carriage, festooned with gingerbread-house trim and flying a dozen flags, was nowhere in sight.

“Throwed him out on his ass!” yelled Mr. Bull. He slapped his knee in delight. “You in trouble now, sonny!”

“I’m seldom out of trouble,” I said, tipping my hat. “How goes it?”

Mr. Bull spat. “Some damn imps or other tried to slip through my window last night,” he said. “Third time this week.”

That gave me pause. Cambrit had been spared the worst of the recent supernatural invasion’s traffic, but now that Mama Hog was away inspecting her orphanage out west I wondered if we’d start seeing our share of things that go bump as well.

“Give you any trouble?” I asked.

The old man guffawed, jerked his head toward the alley beside him. “I strung up their heads,” he said. “Ain’t much to ‘em. A few whacks with my stick and they quit trying to bite.”

“Need me to look at your window?”

He spat. “That’s kind of ye, but I seen to it myself. What you better do is make yourself scarce. You know they’re coming back. Won’t be for tea, neither.”

Mr. Bull had a point.

I developed a sudden irresistible urge for one of Eddie’s sandwiches, so I set sail for his place a couple blocks north.

Two dead wagons passed me, their pale burdens shifting bonelessly beneath the tarps that hid them from the early morning sun. Before the Summer of Monsters, the halfdead had been Rannit’s apex predators, but even during the worst of their nightly predations I hadn’t seen a dead wagon packed past the high side-rails. Certainly not a pair of wagons in tandem.

“Bring out your dead,” chorused the drivers, in bored monotones. “Mister, seen anything we need to pick up in any alleys you passed?”

“Not a thing,” I said, and I hadn’t.

The wagons rattled on, making for the crematoriums that line the Brown River. I added a block to my walk, but I took a right on Sorrow Street just so I’d not have to ponder the movement of the tarps all the way to Eddie’s.

Taking that detour saved me from another Church carriage, one bigger and grander than Father Chide’s. I caught a glimpse of a toad of a priest through a window as it passed. His mask was down, and his fierce expression suggested he was en route to deliver some first-class hellfire and industrial-strength damnation to the kinds of unrepentant sinners that might have the temerity to toss lesser priests out by their robes.

I pulled my hat down and set a leisurely pace. Eddie welcomed me with a grunt and a wave of his ever-present bar rag.

I stayed all morning. Had two sandwiches, two coffees, and a glass of milk. Eddie didn’t say two words, but that suited me just fine. Father Chide had talked enough to fill any three mornings.

Darla and I had lunch in the park. I dropped her off at her shop, had the cab take me past my office without stopping. Two fancy carriages were camped outside it, manned by a trio of red masks and a bevy of grumpy Church soldiers idling on the sidewalk.

Someone high up in Wherthmore must be in deep, I decided. The Church itself must be teetering on the edge of ruin, to provoke the offer of twenty thousand crowns to unrepentant ne’er-do-wells such as I.

Spurred on by that thought, I rounded up Slim, my runt Troll deckhand, and we took Dasher a couple of miles upriver, cast our hooks in the muddy waters, and enjoyed an afternoon of fishing.

Between us, we pulled half a dozen fat catfish from the turgid waters of the Brown River.

“Hard work,” opined Slim, who is quickly mastering not just Kingdom but the fine art of sarcasm. “Deserve raise.”

“How about an increase in rank instead?” I replied. “Effective immediately, you’re now an admiral. Take the fleet home, if you please.” I pulled the brim of my hat down over my eyes. “Wake me when we’re tied off at the slip.”

Slim chuckled. Dasher’s pistons thumped, and we raised a noisy wake.

“Storms tonight,” Slim said, as he steered. I didn’t look, but I’d seen the thunderheads building far off in the west.

“Good. That should keep the priests indoors.”

“Is that a humorous euphemism for rain?” Slim asked.

“Nope. I’ve been pestered by priests all day. But they won’t go out in a storm.”

“Why do holy men seek you out?” Slim gave Dasher’s wheel a nudge. A fisherman cussed as we threw up a wake.

“They seek my wise spiritual counsel,” I replied. “The purity of my soul is the stuff of legends.”

Slim boomed out Trollish laughter, and Dasher churned towards home.

END EXCERPT

That's all I'll say about the book, for now. The writing is going well, and I hope to have the book out by October.

I'm trying to build a digital model for Darla (and one for Markhat too), but that's taking a little longer than expected. I can't use the same model for Darla that I did for Meralda. The Meralda model is too young, and doesn't look at all like Darla, so I'm starting from scratch.

Darla and Markhat have a more 1940s film noir look than Meralda's Victorian style. I love the 1940s, and often wish we still dressed that way. Even portly fiftysomething gentlemen such as myself can still look good in a suit and a hat.

MARKHAT and DARLA

In case you're curious, here are some images that represent the Darla and Markhat in my head. We'll start with Darla. 

darla3.jpg

You may recognize her -- this is a photo of silent film actress Louise Brooks. Those are Darla's eyes, and her guarded expression. She is clearly not a woman to be, as Mama Hog would say, "Trifled with, nor put upon. She won't hesitate to return in kind, and you won't see it comin' and you won't walk right for a month if'n ye walks away at all."

Here's Darla at a fancy party. The face and hair is all wrong, but the gown is about right. She could hide plenty of small but lethal surprises under all that lace.

bachrach-greer-handrail.png

Now for Markhat. He's easy, because I've always seen him as film noir actor Robert Mitchum.

90666-004-E45DCBD4.jpg

The lady seated beside him could be Gertriss. It certainly isn't Mama Hog.

mitchum 2.jpg

Mitchum is the right age. He has a face that looks a little tired, a little jaded -- but not so much that he's bitter. 

m and D.jpg

Finally, that's Markhat and Darla sharing a tender moment after Darla empties her revolver into something or someone so incautious as to incur her wrath.

Those are the looks I'm going for. 

If you haven't read any Markhat Files books, I suggest reading them in this order:

1) THREE MEAN STREETS. Markhat's first adventures. 

2) HOLD THE DARK. Markhat meets Darla.

3) THE BANSHEE'S WALK. Something ancient lurks the forest...

4) THE BROKEN BELL. Weddings can be deadly.

5) BROWN RIVER QUEEN. A cruise on a vampire riverboat -- what could go wrong?

6) THE FIVE FACES. How can you defeat a killer who knows the future?

7) THE DARKER CARNIVAL. Death stalks the carnival midway.

8) WAY OUT WEST. All aboard a train bound for Hell...

9) THE DEVIL's HORN. Coming soon!

Time to get back to work. Have a good week, everyone.

And be careful out there.

 

 

Things to Come

Now that the new Mug and Meralda book is out, I've been looking at other projects.

First up is completing the new Markhat book, The Devil's Horn. I'm 25 thousand words into it, so that's the obvious choice for top of the 'finish me' pile.

Then there's the Darla novel, A Gun For Sorcerer. Ever wonder what Darla gets up to while Markhat is out on his cases? Sure, she designs clothes and keeps the books at her dress shop. She also runs a marina right off the Brown River, and occasionally shoots bad guys in the face without warning. But that's hardly all she does, because if you've been reading the books, you know she isn't a stranger to magic herself. Too, she's not the only member of the Markhat household keeping secrets...

I've also written the first chapter of a book I'll call Ghost Queen. In this book, a ghost escapes her magical bottle just as her prison burns. She has no memory of who she was, and no knowledge of how to be a ghost. Accompanied by a sarcastic kitchen imp named Pickles, who gleefully confesses she started the fire, the ghost sets out to discover her past. Pickles and the ghost quickly learn that they've been locked away in the tower for a long time. The world they knew is ashes and dust -- but it's never too late for a bit of vengeance, is it?

And of course there's the fourth Mug and Meralda book. I won't give any clues as to what it's about yet. But there are some hints in the end of the new book, Every Wind of Change.

So I'll be busy. As a way to relax but also stay plugged into the writing, I'm planning on showing some Darla and Markhat images in the next few weeks, using the same digital modeling software that brought Meralda to life. 

OBLIGATORY BEGGING FOR REVIEWS SECTION

If you've bought Every Wind of Change, thank you! I do hope you enjoyed it. If you did (or even if you didn't), might I drop to my knees and beg for a quick review on Amazon?

Even a quick "I liked it" helps. To those of you who left a review, thanks! Amazon promotes books based in part on the number of reviews. I know it's a bit of a pain, but I'm also not above asking, obviously.

Same thing goes for the Markhat Files books. I lost quite a few reviews after Samhain shut down and the books were re-issued.  The ways of Amazon are mysterious, and not always in a good way.

Pestering mode off. 

EQUALLY OBLIGATORY MERALDA IMAGE

Here's a (very rough) image of Meralda working in the new Void Corps laboratory. Smudges are hard to do; that's grease on her face, although it looks a bit like she's smoking a cigar.

I think perhaps Meralda's willingness to get dirty is why people identify with her character. She's a bit of an unlikely heroine, in that she doesn't carve enemies up with swords or blast away with spells. She's more Doctor (from Doctor Who) than action hero. All she really wants is to be left alone to tinker in her laboratory. Saving the world just gets in the way of her work.

She still wants to thank you all for joining her on her adventures. There are more to come!

Void Corps 3blog.jpg

 

 

 

Every Wind of Change -- on sale now!

I said Wednesday June 27 was the release date for the new Mug and Meralda book. 

As is so often the case, I was wrong. Every Wind of Change is live now on Amazon and Kobo in ebook format. 

Here are the links:

Every Wind of Change on Amazon

Every Wind of Change on Kobo

cover for blog.jpg

 

That moment when a new book goes live is both terrible and wonderful. Wonderful because the book is finished. I've raised it from a pup, done the best I could by it, put it in new shoes and a hat and sent it out into the wide world to fend for itself.

Terrible because I can no longer pretend it's a sure-fire best-seller that will be optioned for a movie by sundown. This is the moment reality looks daydreaming squarely in the eye and says 'You wanna see something REALLY scary?"

I'm taking some chances with this one. The cover, for instance -- conventional wisdom says 'don't use a digital model on your cover.' I'm using a digital model. I also put touches of science fiction in my fantasy novel. And I added a new character to the mix -- Meralda's estranged mother.

I have plans for a fourth book. Look at the titles for the Mug and Meralda novels thus far:

All the Paths of Shadow,

Every Turn of Light,

Every Wind of Change,

Something Something Night.

Yeah. The titles, when arranged in order, are meant to form a short poem. Because that's the kind of harebrained idea you consider a good one when you're young and stupid, as I was when I first conceived the series back in the prehistoric days of 1995. I thought the arrangement would look good on a bookshelf. I also thought my rattletrap red Ford Mustang made me look cool. Ah, youth.

Here's my post-release plan:

1) Check Amazon rankings every 13 seconds until Google Chrome refuses to comply.

2) Ask Alexa for my rankings until she says 'Give it a rest, dude' and redirects all my web searches to cat pictures.

3) Scream in anguish over the prospect of negative reviews (8:00 AM until lunch).

4) Vow to stay off the net for a full day. Four minutes into vow, spontaneously combust.

5) Resume work on new Markhat book.

I should probably skip straight to #5 and get back to work.

I do hope you like the new book. If you do, please, we live by reviews!

 

 

Release Date for the new Mug and Meralda book!

The new Mug and Meralda book, Every Wind of Change, will be released on Wednesday, June 27.

The first release will be for the ebook on Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. The print release will be soon after (probably the first week of July). 

I know it's been a long time coming, and I hope fans of the Mug and Meralda series will forgive the wait. 

I thank you all for your help during the cover teases. I do have a final cover, but I'll save it for the release.

I hope you'll like this entry into the series. It's a bit of a departure from the others in several respects. Mug has a job as a newspaper columnist. Meralda has grown into her position as Royal Thaumaturge. The Realms are still at peace -- until a message from the sky upends everything.

There's a major new character as well. If you've ever wondered about Meralda's childhood, well, those questions will be answered. 

Mainly, I hope it's a lot of fun to read. My Markhat books go into some dark places. I try to keep a lighter tone in the Mug and Meralda books, although this one steps into shadows from time to time as well.

Every Wind of Change will be priced at $2.99. I think that's a fair price for a full-length novel if one is not Stephen King, and despite my numerous attempts at crossroads bargains with Faustian devils I am still not Stephen King. 

With Every Wind of Change done, I'll resume work on the new Markhat immediately. Since it's well underway, I should be announcing a release date for it too about the time the summer heat takes on a hint of autumn.

And now -- rejected tag lines for Every Wind of Change!

1) In space, no one can hear your dialog tags.

2) We're going to need a bigger steam-powered airship.

3) To boldly go where no one has made tea and argued over waistcoats before.

4) Almost entirely dissimilar to The Return of the King.

5) Nominated for five Academy Awards and recipient of the AutoZone 'Windshield Wiper of the Year' award.

So that's the news! Spread the word. Paint it on a subway train. Proclaim it from the highest tower, or at the Customer Service desk at Target. I'm not picky. 

 

Another Turn Round the Sun

I was born on this day in 1963. 

To quote Douglas Adams, 'This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.'

Adamas was talking about the creation of the universe, but I think the same sentiment applies here.

I've learned many things in the last 55 years. A surprising portion of these learned things involve restaurants or avoiding interactions with the police, but I'm sure that's just a statistical anomaly. 

It's bewildering to realize that, just a few centuries ago, I'd now be regarded as a wise and revered elder. Youngsters would gather at my gnarled and probably unhygienic feet. There, in the light of a flickering campfire, I would be expected to guide them toward the path of wisdom.

I believe just such an event, in a past life, may be responsible for the practice adopted by some tribes in which they abandon their elders on ice floes. I can only imagine the kind of advice I might have offered.

"Avoid bears. When strangers throw pointy sticks at you, run away. When the chief instructs you to throw pointy sticks at strangers, run away. You there, with the bone through your nose. Go invent me a recliner. The rest of you shut up if you're not fermenting something."

In these modern times, surpassing the half-century mark is no great accomplishment. No one seeks your counsel. You get called 'sir' at restaurants. The young view you with mild disdain while they wait for you to misuse the latest slang or keel over dead. And if you nod off in a Starbucks, that shake to your shoulder isn't so much to wake you but to confirm that the coroner should be called.

Still, age has its perks. 

Oh. It doesn't, really, unless you are a health care provider billing persons of my age. Then aging is a bonanza, because even the most casual inspection of a 55-year-old body reveals a financial cornucopia of latent or emerging maladies. I have no idea what half my organs are supposed to be doing, but I am assured they are doing it badly, if at all, and are leaking transmission fluid the whole time.

But, here I am. I still have my hair, although I suspect it is thinning in places the mirror can't show. I still retain sufficient dexterity to wield a knife and fork. My ability to go from deep sleep to complete waking in a mere three and a quarter hours remains as sharp as ever.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. And I still mean the bit about pointy sticks and bears. No good ever comes of dabbling with either.

ANOTHER COVER

Below is a new cover for Every Wind of Change. I reversed the background image so I could add lights from the model's left and avoid the problems caused by the magical stuff casting shadows on her face.

mirrored final 1 resizedc  .jpg

Expressions are difficult. Still working on that, but I'm pleased with the rest of the image. Would love to know what you think!

Time to go put the gobble on some birthday cake. Have a great week!

 

 

 

 

 

Cover Art, Pantaloons, and Shenanigans

I'll kick things off with a new pair of rough-draft cover images for the new Mug and Meralda book.

First up we have a cover using the Oranienbaum font:

Everywindorienblog.png

If you're wondering where Mer's glasses are, well, so was I. I took them off to adjust the reflectivity of the glass, and just as I do with my own glasses, I forgot to put them back on. 

Moving on, here is the same cover with the text rendered in Optimus Princeps:

EVERYWINDOFCHANGEOPTIMUS.png

Any preference between the two? I'm leaning toward the second cover, myself. Also, the size of the text. Too big? I can reduce it, but the small-text covers look -- well, weak and indecisive.

I also changed Mer's clothes from the brown outfit of previous images to this more colorful one. It's a good thing I'm married and was able to seek advice concerning color schemes, or poor Mer might have wound up wearing this:

BLOGIMAGE3.jpg

Well, *I* thought it was festive. Too, the book might involve a circus, but maybe the cover is better off leaving that small Easter egg alone.

The ball of magic she is holding took hours to perfect. The version above looked fine, until I started lighting the scene. It was then I realized all the magic bubbles cast shadows on her face, giving Meralda a bad case of arcane chicken pox. 

I have yet to try a full-scale rendering of the final step, which will turn the digital image into an oil painting. I may save that for the actual cover and the book's publishing.

Which should be in a week or so. I've been editing, but that's nearly done.

Free Stuff

I've got a couple of short titles up for free today. One is a short story that appeared in Weird Tales (issue 319). The other is a guide to writing, based on the material I used when I taught a fiction writing class at the local library. 

Click here for Passing the Narrows

passing.jpg
new.jpg

Editing Tips

Science Fiction author Isaac Asimov, who wrote more books than there are stars in the observable universe, seldom edited his first drafts. Somehow, he got things right, most of the time, the first time around.

I'm not Isaac Asimov. I wish I were, because even though I'd be dead now I'd never have to edit anything again. 

My advice for struggling through the edits on a longish book is this -- drink a lot while the writer you kidnapped does the work. Your disheveled appearance and sunken, hollow eyes will make everyone think you've been working. Throw a rug over the trap door to your editing cell, and you'll get through all this just fine. Play loud death metal music to mask the screams of anguish from below.

Editing reveals just how incompetent you truly are. Your editor knows the extent of your clumsiness. You know it. The trick is to stamp out all the missteps so no one else catches on.

None of my Markhat books required such a deep dive into their structure or contents. Which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that my fictional character Markhat is a better writer than I am. 

Here are a few things this episode has taught me:

1) When writing third person, I use too many dialog tags. From now on, I'll be conscious of that.

2) Overuse of the words 'this' and 'that.' Most of the time they need to be deleted or replaced with something more specific.

3) This is a lot of work for a projected 0.0002 cents per word. Sorry. Writing is a lot of work for a projected 0.0002 cents per word. See how specificity improved that sentence?

4) Never let the dog write pivotal scenes, no matter how many classic works of literature the pup has ingested. The entirety of Chapter 4 consisted of pleas for walkies and a long rant about the vet's office. 

5) Set aside plenty of time for edits. I'm 55, which means I have enough years left to edit maybe one more Mug and Meralda book after this one. Expected release date: Sometime in 2048. 

Let me know what you think of the covers in the comments or via email (franktuttle at franktuttle.com). I'd better get back to work. Have a good week!

 

Our Stupid Bodies: A Guide to Health

Your body is either a wondrous living engine powered by a spark of the divine or a ludicrous assemblage of evolutionary short-cuts, depending on your point of view.

Having seen myself naked (police video enhancement techniques have shown a marked improvement in recent months), I know where I stand on the whole wondrous construction versus meat-based Rube Goldberg contraption controversy.

An injury to my back not long ago left me thinking about the fleeting and fragile notion of health. Since the injury also left me in a crumpled heap on the floor, I had plenty of time to ponder my attitudes toward wellness in between bouts of cursing and attempts to raise myself by climbing a nearby window-frame.

So, with a renewed appreciation for the simple things I took for granted -- walking, standing, crouching to hide from store detectives, lifting liquor bottles or barrels filled with deep-fried hamburgers -- I'd like to offer a few thoughts on our bodies, and how to keep them healthy.

Your body is a biological machine, powered by food and air, which will give you many years of trouble-free use if you perform regular maintenance, especially routine oil changes. Wait. I got my body mixed up with my riding lawn mower. Let me start over.

Your body is a wildly inefficient hodge-podge of finicky, unreliable chemical processes and damage-prone tissue structures. Even with the best of luck, it's going to start failing faster than a Russian-built sports car after forty years, and probably well before that.

Let's take a look at the major structures and systems that make up the human body:

dreamstime_xs_28594204.jpg

1) THE SKELETAL SYSTEM

Beneath your skin is an appalling volume of gooey wet stuff.  Hidden inside this gelatinous mass of goo are your bones. Each bone connects to another via muscles, tendons, ligaments, and cleverly-hidden wires. This complex arrangement of jointed bones and opposing muscles allows you to wave awkwardly at strangers who you thought waved to you, but were in fact waving at their friend behind you. Whereas the lowly ant can only lift a mass fifty times its own body weight, your skeletal system grants you the ability to beg for help opening a jar of mayonnaise. Maybe that stranger has a stronger grip than you do, from all that bloody waving.

The most common skeletal problem is that of having a skeleton in the first place. Face it, used skeletons wind up wired in humorous poses by bored medical students or spend decades popping out of doors in carnival spook-houses, and even then the things are prone to make a lot of clattering noises and require frequent repairs. Many commercial and medical establishments have switched to sturdy plastic skeletons these days, which is a move you should check into as well.

dreamstime_xs_26163982.jpg

2) THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

Your nervous system conveys the brain's instructions to your muscles via a series of nerves. Given the poorly thought-out nature of most of your brain's instructions, this crude and error-prone delivery system is probably a blessing in disguise, since it gives you time to reconsider flipping off the burly, tattooed Neanderthal who just bumped you in a checkout line.

Humans share virtually all of their nervous system chemistry and neurobiology with the graceful soaring hawk and the surefooted mountain goat, but you'd never suspect that after watching the average person put on a drunken rendition of the 'Mashed Potato' dance at a karaoke bar. Honestly, half the population is likely to suffer minor injury just playing 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' and the other half couldn't walk across a foot-wide plank without falling if their lives depended on it.

Nerves are composed of neurons, glial cells, and quite a number of other microscopic structures which are wasting their time and effort on a species that still hasn't quite mastered the rhythmic finger-snap.

toilet.png

3) THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. 

Your body requires proper nutrition to function at its best. A quick appraisal of your body's so-called 'best' clearly explains the shelves lined with Cheetos and the presence of a McDonalds drive-thru every sixty feet in the developed West.

You can spend forty years nibbling on nothing but free-ranch kelp and gluten-free naturally-occurring whole-grain tofu and still wind up diagnosed with the exact same terminal diseases as the 400-pound trucker who has eaten nothing but tobacco-soaked gas station burritos since 1987.

Still, you might improve your odds a tiny bit if you maintain a body that conforms to the following simple formula:

Height > Maximum girth.

Thus, if your waist measurement is six feet, remember to maintain a height of AT LEAST six feet. Seven would be better. Eight is just showing off.

Choose a height and stick with it. Your digestive system will seek to undermine your efforts at every turn, but if you can ignore the aching constant hunger and nearly-irresistible urges to consume the entire Sarah Lee cake display in a single sitting, you can at least maintain a healthy weight. This ensures your last words can be smug ones.

dreamstime_xs_23416939.jpg

4) THE CARDIOPULMONARY SYSTEM. 

Your heart and lungs comprise your cardiopulmonary system. The heart pumps the blood, which passes through the lungs. In the lungs, the blood releases carbon dioxide, absorbs oxygen, and craves tobacco just like it's done day after tiresome day since Prince released his breakout '1999' album.

Much ado is made by physicians and the media concerning blood pressure and the importance of keeping one's blood pressure within certain clear limits.

Regardless of your age, general health, or activity level, doctors have determined that your blood pressure is well beyond both the upper and lower safe limits and you will soon expire unless you:

  • Switch to a healthy diet by removing all food from your diet.
  • Pester harried waiters with demands that your tablecloth and silverware be certified gluten-free.
  • Lecture everyone you know about the benefits of a Vegan lifestyle.
  • Reduce your body mass by no less than 67% between now and the next celebration of Earth Day.
  • Stop using bacon as both dental floss and chewing gum.

By taking care of your heart, you will ensure that Cyborg Dick Cheney has a steady supply of cardiac tissue for at least the next half-century.

science!.jpg

5) THE BRACHIOSTATIC - ARTERIOPEDIOTIC SYSTEM. 

All the squishy things not covered by topics 1 through 4 above. Feet, nose hair follicles, ear wax glands, etc. Basically, all the squirming bits of this and ropy parts of that which ancient Egyptian mummy-makers hurriedly sealed up in jars. Because, yuck.

If something goes wrong here -- and it will -- odds are you'll first learn of it in that brief moment between floating above your motionless body and being pulled into The Light. Early symptoms of a sudden demise from brachiostatic complications include itching, sneezing, feelings of calm or well-being, anxiety, hunger, thirst, any sensations of fullness, sounds or vocalizations from the mouth, blinking, yawning, skin, or regular bouts with sleep.

There is a way to keep your complex brachiostatic system in perfect function by consuming a half teaspoon of a certain Greek plant pollen per day, but this same pollen causes rapid, irreversible heart failure. Who says Nature doesn't have a sense of humor?

Really, the best you can do is keep those toenails trimmed so the morgue attendants won't snicker and post awful pics on Instagram.

HEALTH CONCERNS: AGING

From the moment you are born, your body begins to renew itself.

Sadly, your body is no better at this renewal business than it is at regenerating limbs or developing acute night vision. Now, if you cut a starfish in two pieces, each piece will heal and become a really pissed-off starfish, and no one will ever leave you alone with their pets or small children.

But cut off the tip of your pinky finger, and aside from profuse bleeding all that happens is a rapid realization that your Blue Cross insurance coverage is woefully inadequate.

Aging is merely a slow-motion fatal car crash into a rather solid stone wall. You are placed in the doomed car at birth, the doors are locked tight, and the steering wheel and brakes don't work. But take heart; each year, advances in medical science bring us closer to a truly lifelike embalming process.

HEALTH CONCERNS: DISEASE PREVENTION

Not a flu season passes without dire warnings from the CDC that the current strain of bird flu will wipe all of humanity from the tortured face of the soon-to-be-barren Earth. We are bombarded with media instructions to get flu shots, wear breath masks, and refrain from huffing the missing CDC canisters of experimental bird flu viruses.

This year will be no different, and the outcome will be the same. The worldwide death toll from the latest incurable superflu will be dwarfed by the sum total of all Nerf-related injury deaths suffered while riding atop a rhinoceros at noon on Arbor Day. If this is pointed out, CDC spokesmen will mutter under their breath and hint that next year the Great Unwashed are really gonna get trashed.

The only way to prevent disease is by avoiding childbirth, especially your own. Once you're here, disease is both inevitable and a vital component of our thriving Health Care and Mortuary industries.

dreamstime_xs_14360972.jpg

HEALTH CONCERNS: EXERCISE

Use it or lose it, they say. They also say five times five is thirty-six and London is the capital of China, so listening to them is a complete waste of time.

Another complete waste of time is exercise. You can run, you can lift weights, you can practice Yoga every hour of every day for your entire life, but your body will still direct its energies toward devising ways to undermine your efforts. If you run, you will ruin your knees. If you lift weights, you will tear things with cryptic names such as the 'ACLU' or the 'Isles of Langerhams.'

You may forestall this inevitable decay by injecting steroids directly into your muscles, which will make you stronger, faster, and easily capable of swinging that blood-soaked claw hammer for hours on end while a SWAT team peppers you with rubber bullets.

An alternative to this is low impact aerobic exercise, which consists of rapid-fire channel surfing while seated at an athletic and unyielding 46 degree angle. Additional motion may be added to the workout session by incorporating the chip-dip arm action, or by walking briskly to the refrigerator at regular intervals for another Coors Lite.

Marathons, triathlons, paragons, pentagons, and the Running of the Bulls are best left to the obsessive-compulsive, the rabidly insane, and the Spanish.

dreamstime_xs_24673902.jpg

HEALTH CONCERNS: YOUR DOCTOR - PATIENT RELATIONSHIP

Finding a competent, caring physician is an important step in maintaining wellness and a healthy lifestyle. However, you could achieve the same results by engaging in a quest for solid physical evidence of Bigfoot. In fact, that's altogether the better idea.

The modern physician left medical school only to find him or her self buried under a veritable mountain of debt. The only way to ever hope to pay it off is to run patients through their practices at speeds normally reserved for slaughterhouse cattle-chutes. Pharmaceutical reps help out by pushing thousands of pills and saving the poor beleaguered doctor the time of actually listening to his patients, who are by nature a whiny complaining lot anyway.

The modern doctor-patient relationship works like this -- you, the patient, are presented with a bill. You pay the bill. If the bleeding resumes return for another rapid-fire office visit, receive another bill, and this time, a blue pill.

Repeat until wellness or a body temperature equaling that of the ambient air is achieved.

It's just not that hard, people.

dreamstime_xs_22703600.jpg

HEALTH CONCERNS: MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

Many mental health care providers recommend quiet introspection and frequent self-examination as part of a health-conscious lifestyle. These health care providers recommend these practices because that BMW 328i with the 36 speaker Bose sound system and the heated leather seats isn't going to pay for itself, and the usual reaction to any interval of honest self-appraisal is panic followed by weekends in Vegas spent mainlining pure grain alcohol.

An important first step to achieving true mental health is learning to distinguish between the voices of friends and family, the voice of Grolog, Dark Lord of the Underworld, and the voice of Mark, who will be your server for this evening. Honestly, if you can refuse to loan your cousin Theo money, ignore Grolog's suggestions that you emulate the dietary practices of Hannibal Lecter, and convey to Mark your wishes for iced tea, the turkey club, and a side of spicy fries, then you're already in better shape than 75% of the other diners in Chili's.

Spiritual health is best achieved by waiting to become a disembodied spirit yourself, and if you keep ordering the spicy fries, you won't be waiting long, Mr. Unchecked Hypertension.

I intended to end this section on health and wellness with an audio recording of the noises my back now makes when I stand, but the FCC stepped in and I'll either have to skip that altogether or move to and post from Singapore, where the rules are more relaxed.

 

 

Images from Dreamstime: IDs are 24673902, 14360972, 26163982, 23416939

The World According to Mama Hog

Mama Hog, Rannit's oldest and most powerful witch, claims to be a hundred and twenty-five years old. She's seen it all, done it all, and she's not shy about sharing her opinions concerning this messy tangle of circumstance we call life.

For years, I've kept a file of Mama Hog's witticisms. A few found their way into the Markhat books, but most still languish, waiting for the right time to grace a page. 

Today is the day, and this is the page. So, in no particular order, here are some select Mama quotes, on subjects various and sundry.

Mama's Guide to Life and Love and Such

Mama on money:

"You come into this world without a copper and you're goin' out the same way. It don't make no sense to believe otherwise. If you got coin sufficient for a roof and a bite of supper, you're better off than most, so quit your whinin'. That said, I charges for my services. If you ain't payin', that's my door, and you'll be wanting to take your leave through it, thank ye very much."

Mama on heartbreak:

"Fallin' in love is akin to putting the gobble on mushrooms plucked in the dark. You'll see bright colors and hear Angels playin' harps and your heart is gonna race and leap like a young goat in a sun-dappled meadow, oh yes it is. That's the first bit. Now, only time will tell whether you got a good mushroom or a bad one. The good ones is rare. The bad ones is plentiful and at best you're gonna regret bitin' into one pretty damned soon. At worst, it'll kill you dead as a door-nail. But you ain't dead, so sit up straight, quit your bawlin', and have a cup of tea. Life don't need to stop because you ett the wrong fungus."

Mama on kinfolk:

"Kinfolk is to be treasured. Hallowed. Revered. They is your family. Ain't no bond stronger. That's why I lives in Rannit when my kin is all in Pot Lockney. I can do my treasuring and hallowing and such better from a couple hundred miles away. Up close, my kin is a ragged bunch of ne'er-do-wells, and I ain't got patience for 'em."

Mama on poor folks:

"You can get that pointy nose down out of the clouds, Mister Fancy Pants. Only difference 'tween you and that there beggar is the name you was born to. If'n you had been hatched in some mean alley and wrapped in rags till you was old enough to steal or beg, I reckon you wouldn't smell none too fragrant either. Does ye want the other shin kicked too?"

Mama regarding magic:

"I sees things. Hidden things. Secret things. What I don't do is poke my nose into the dark places where haints and devils and all them twisted spirits hide. Cause boy, I tell you this plain -- them dark ones takes twiced what they gives. There ain't no fair dealin' with the dark. They sets their claws in you from the first, and if you keep goin' back, you'll wind up in the dark with 'em, scratching and scrabbling and hungry till Doomsday."

Mama on strong drink:

"Now I knows ye sets a high regard on your beer. I ain't opposed to such myself, in what they calls moderation, but when ye come stumbling in here with eyes like day-old bacon and clothes smellin' of a brewery, I reckon you needs to stumble your ass back home. Take yourself a bath and ponder your wicked ways for a mite. Then scrub up and come back sober we'll talk sense."

Mama on marriage:

"Gettin' married ain't all bouquets and carriage rides, boy. You got to be set in your mind for the long haul, and you damn well better know that there's times you'll be carrying her and times she'll be carrying you. If you ain't ready to bear her, or you're too proud to be borne, all them high-sounding vows ain't worth a beggar's butt-rag."

Mama on gender equality:

"Does I look like some frail damn petunia? I've buried a husband, I have. Took down a bear with a fireplace poker. I've delivered stillborn babes and looked the mother right in the eye in that deathly silence. I've shivered in the cold. Baked in the sun. Seen the dead stir, heard them whisper. I've walked the deep forest on many a moonless night, naught in my hand but a stick. I was young, you toothy bastard, and now I done got old. But you think 'cause I'm a woman I'm gonna go on my knees and beg for mercy and suchlike? I ought to gut ye just for that, and now that I thinks about it, I reckon I will."

Mama on ghosts:

"I don't give a tinker's damn what you think, boy. Ghosts is real. They got their business to tend, and we got ours. Sometimes paths cross. Best thing to do when that happens is be polite and mindful of your manners and let them do what they come to do. A vengeful ghost ain't to be trifled with, cause if being dead don't stop them, odds are you won't either."

Mama on foreigners:

"We's all foreigners. Some of us just has a longer walk home than others. Now if you was to wake up where everybody is talking some foreign tongue and eatin' strange critters, wouldn't you appreciate somebody takin' a little while to let you know what's what and how to go about things? I won't have no discourtesy about outlanders in my earshot. If I hears it again, somebody's hair is gonna commence to fallin' out. With a quickness."

Mama on violence:

"Ain't never a good reason for bloodshed. Ain't a good reason for whirlwinds or house-fires, neither, but they happens. The world don't make sense sometimes, which is why I carries a good sharp cleaver. If there's going to be bloodshed, I aims to be the last one standing, and no mistake."

MORE COVERS

I'm still playing with cover graphics. Here are a few of the new works-in-progress:

covertest1.jpg

And a variation, with a close up instead of a full-figure pose.

new2.jpg

 

I've also been experimenting with some post-production work. 

You don't see many digital models used on book covers. There's the problem of the 'uncanny valley,' which means figures that are nearly, but not perfectly lifelike can make the viewer feel uncomfortable. The uncanny valley effect rendered the big-budget CGI film 'The Polar Express' a flop despite boasting Tom Hanks as the lead.

The characters were good, especially for the technology of the time. But they landed squarely in that unfortunate space between 'obvious computer generated human' and 'this looks real.' 

We don't mind cartoons, or painted scenes, because we know instantly they're not attempts to accurately depict reality. 

That's why hiring artists to paint or otherwise illustrate book covers hasn't been supplanted (yet) by computer-generated scenes. Viewers will forgive, and better still love, a painted scene. They might recoil from a CGI rendering even if, from a technical viewpoint, the CGI is more accurate. 

So here is a crude first pass at turning my CGI rendered scenes into paintings. It needs a lot more work, obviously, but I think the process shows promise. Do you agree?

Mermagicpaint.jpg

Map of the Realms

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books were my first look at another world.

I was a kid. I remember opening the The Fellowship of the Ring and finding a map of Middle Earth right before the story started. I knew I'd found something special the moment I saw that glorious map.

Here was a new world, all drawn out and labeled. The names were strange, but evocative -- the Misty Mountains. The Shire. Mordor. Mirkwood. The artist had drawn in forests and swamps, roads and ruins. Every tiny detail added mystery to Middle Earth. That map demanded the world be explored. I can still remember thinking 'these places must be real.'

I spent a few moments pouring over the names, the art, the lived-in feel of Middle Earth. Then I dove into the book, eager to find out just what sort of world lay ahead.

Funny how a map of a place that never existed could wind up guiding so much of my life. I learned to love reading. I read -- a lot -- and eventually decided to create my own fictional worlds.

And many years later, here I am, still thumbing through books in hopes of finding a new map to an undiscovered world.

For a guy who loves maps of fictional worlds, I've done a poor job of including them in my own books. None of the Markhat novels feature a map of Rannit, or the ruins of the devastated Kingdom. Mug and Meralda's Realms have also gone sadly without cartography -- until now.

Sure, I posted my own crude map of the Realms a month or two ago. It wasn't a pretty map because I'm a lousy artist. 

Fortunately, there are talented artists who can draw maps, and today I'm pleased to show you a map of the Realms created by Jessica Khoury, owner of Lizard Ink Maps. 

Without further delay, the official map of the Realms!

Realms blog1.jpg

That, my friends, is a bona fide map. It will be included in the new book, which I promise will be out soon. Honest. 

Sea monsters, cogs and gears, mountains and trees and marshes. I love this map, and I hope you enjoyed seeing it too.

I'm also sketching out a map of Rannit's narrow, twisting streets. That's tough going because I mention a lot of places in the books, and sometimes pinning down locations is an exercise in jumping from title to title to see how what route Markhat took going from his office on Cambrit Street to get to One-eyed Eddie's, for instance, or the crematoriums. But I'll get it all figured out and one day a map of Rannit will be born.

If you ever need a map drawn of your fantasy setting, give Jessica at Lizard Ink a yell. As you can see, she does beautiful work.

Publishing Kerfuffle Update

Last week I mentioned that a trademark troll was sending out cease and desist letters and getting books yanked from Amazon based on their dubious trademarking of a single English word. This week, I'm happy to report that the RWA (Romance Writers of America) had a small talk with Amazon. As a result, all the books previously yanked were restored, and no other titles will be pulled because they contain the trademark troll's special word. 

The trademark itself is under scrutiny, and it appears that it will be revoked. 

Bullet dodged -- again.

More Renders

I upgraded the ancient video card in my PC, and after a few tense hours convincing the hardware and some exceptionally cranky drivers to shake hands and play nice, I can now generate renders in one-fifth of the time my old card required, or better. Simple single-figure scenes that took 40 minutes if I was lucky now take 5. Bigger scenes with backgrounds and props are done within a half-hour. I can also bake corn dogs along the video card's exhaust port, which is nice.

Here's a new image of Meralda, in a new setting. Is this setting a hint to the contents of the next book? You bet it is!

Merengineroom1B.jpg

 

And here are a couple of random test images as well.

Merblog1resized.jpg

The background isn't done in the following image, but I do like the tools.

Merlab1scanner.jpg

Book Mock of the Week

Finally, a re-imagined magazine cover.

case closed.jpg

Time to get back to editing Every Wind of Change. One last obligatory book plug -- if you haven't tried The Markhat Files series yet, here's a link to the first title. 

THREE MEAN STREETS

FT-These-Mean-Streets_200x300.jpg

Mug and Meralda, Together At Last

It’s been a weird week in publishing.

A writer – I won’t mention her name – decided to trademark a common English word. Worse, she sent a flurry of Cease and Desist letters to authors who dared use this common word in their book titles.

That’s the short version. People laughed, at first. I didn’t, because I know how Amazon works. Even though the idea of trademarking a commonplace word and then demanding that no one else use it is silly, Amazon will yank books at the first hint of legal entanglement, no matter how specious the claim of the legality.

The trademark troll insists she’s doing nothing wrong. She claims authors using ‘her’ word can simply change their titles and covers (in a day, she claims) and avoid legal issues, including lawsuits filed by her.

It’s not that easy, of course. You can’t just change a book cover title with a few clicks. I’m sure she-who-will-not-be-named knows this. But she also knows she’s got indie authors over a barrel. No author wants to lose their book, their reviews, or their rankings. No one wants to spend months convincing Amazon they were the victim of a shady trademark scam. But that’s what will very likely happen if Miss Trademark Troll raises a stink with Amazon.

Fortunately, cracks have already started to show in her scheme. She trademarked not just the word, but also the word depicted in a specific font. As the wrath of the romance author community was roused, someone identified the font, tracked down the owner of the company which owns the font, and discovered the owner specifically prohibits anyone registering a trademark using one of their fonts. And no, this author wasn’t given special permission.

Oops. Strike one. Don’t mess with romance authors, for they are many in number, skilled in the ways of the net, and not afraid of your litigious ass.

Next, the Cease and Desist notices didn’t come from an actual law firm, but from the author herself. That’s suspicious too. If you actually have high-powered lawyers, why are you doing their work? Lawyers are usually none too happy when their clients start throwing legalese around, especially phrases such as ‘my lawyer assures me I will win if I sue, so do as I say, or else.’

Still, I know of at least one author who changed her title and her cover.

I get why she did that. The whole ‘I own common English adjective X’ argument is stupid, and I predict it won’t hold up under even the most casual legal scrutiny. But dealing with Amazon once they remove your book is nothing short of a nightmare. I don’t blame her for changing the title. Honestly, I might have done the same, knowing I could change it back in a few weeks after the dust settled.

Does anyone remember patent trolls? They were always in the news, in the late 90s. The scam worked like this – patent troll patents some ludicrous aspect of a device or system. Let’s say the trolls managed to patent an L shaped piece of metal with a hole at each end for bolts. Simple – so simple a variation on the dingus appears in nearly every machine everywhere.

Then the trolls claimed anybody using anything remotely similar to their patented L shaped gizmo was infringing on them. The trolls were usually careful – they wouldn’t go after Boeing, for instance, or IBM, because they had lawyers and deep pockets. Instead, the trolls went after smaller companies, knowing they’d likely toss money at them just to make them go away.

Makes me think patent trolls returned to their damp caves and evolved. Now they are trademark trolls and are taking aim at small-time authors. While no one has been shaken down for money – yet – one could argue it’s a strongarm tactic designed to go after the authors our troll sees as competition.

If this act of trademarking a common word is not confronted and reversed, there’s nothing to stop me, for instance, from trademarking the word ‘dark’ as it is used in fantasy novel titles.

After all, I used the word dark in a title in my fantasy series. According to Trademark Troll's argument, readers get confused when they see another title with the word dark in it.

If anyone out there has ever bought a book thinking it was mine because it had ‘dark’ in the title, let me know. I know you haven’t, because you’re not dumb. We’re readers. We know how titles work.

This entire kerfuffle was born of a dim-witted argument and a mean-spirited legal dodge. The RWA (Romance Writers of America) is now involved, which means actual lawyers are on the case. I figure the whole mess will be resolved quickly, and common words will go back to being used freely, as they ought to be.

But what a way to nuke your own standing in the writing community…

Mug and Meralda Images

I mentioned last week I’d been working on a digital model of Mug. While I don’t have all 29 eyes modeled yet, I do have enough to post a couple of images I hope you’ll enjoy. So, for the first time ever, I present Meralda and Mug.

Building Mug is a time-consuming affair. You can't just pop out and buy a houseplant with 29 mobile eyes who rides around in a birdcage. But I'm pleased with the first draft, and with further refinement I think he'll make his way onto a cover soon.

In the meantime, I see leaves and vines in my sleep. Please, email or tell me what you think in the comments!

Mer&Mug1.jpg
Mer&Mug2.jpg
Mug1.jpg

These are rough images, with short render times. Once I get subjects, poses, and lighting all perfected, I'll do a photorealistic render that will probably take 10 to 15 hours. 

Finally, a couple of re-imagined book covers, just for a chuckle or two.

nancycredit.jpg
nancyvodka.jpg
talestimeshare.jpg

More Meralda

Editing on the new Mug and Meralda book isn't *quite* finished. But I am working hard on it.

I've got some new Meralda images and a few book-mocks to tide you over. 

But first, a few more thoughts on book covers. 

I'm getting better at posing digital models. If I decide to go that route, I can customize the scene. 

Many of the fantasy or steampunk covers I've looked at featured women wielding guns or weapons of some sort. Which is fine -- without conflict, there's no drama, and that makes for a poor book and an even worse book cover.

But even after getting a steampunk gun in Meralda's hand, I realized I really didn't like the image at all. That's not her. She doesn't blast her way through problems. Too, I think we've all seen enough guns lately. 

So right now I'm trying to get a tool in her hand instead. The image isn't ready for public consumption yet -- her fingers go right into the gizmo -- but when it's in better shape I'll share it.

I've also got an idea for a Mug render. If I can get him on the cover, I will. Not many book covers feature a flying houseplant with multiple eye-stalks.

 Here's the first of the new images. Arms up! Hands in fists!

blogmer2.jpg

Here's another, looking slightly exasperated. 

blogmer3.jpg

Here's a change of clothes.

blogmer7jpg.jpg

And below, she's holding a sword, just to prove she can in fact hold objects.

mersword2.png

Finally, here's an obviously happy Meralda driving her walking engine. Note correct presence of comfy armchair pilot's seat.

blogmer10.png

BOOK MOCKS OF THE WEEK

I found another vintage 'man's magazine' cover and improved it a bit, just for you.

MAELBLOOD2.png

And another...

tinygun2.jpg

Now for a few old-school horror magazines...

weirdchiro2.jpg
dental.jpg

Hope you enjoyed the images! Have a great week.

 

Every Wind of Change -- A Cover Sneak Peek

Editing on the new Mug and Meralda book, Every Wind of Change, is ongoing. I do hope to get the book out soon (as in weeks not months).

Covers are also being designed. Which leads me to a question -- is there an inherent preference among readers for photographic images of cover models versus digitally-created models?

There are advantages to using digital people as cover models. You can choose your model's hair color, body shape, and facial features, for instance. You can pose them as you wish, dress them in costumes appropriate for the setting, even recreate a scene from the book, if you have the time, the skills, and the computer hardware capable of rendering the image.

You can do all that with a live model too, but the costs will be astronomical.

Most indie book covers are composed of stock photography images which are retouched and layered. You can buy a perfectly legal stock images for around 20 bucks each, and that grants you the rights to use the images in your cover. 

Of course the problem is finding a model who resembles your character and is clothed in the appropriate garments. Getting the right pose is also a challenge. Be prepared to scroll through hundreds if not thousands of images to find something remotely close to the look you want.

I want Meralda on the cover. She needs to have an air of confidence about her. She needs to be dressed in Edwardian or Victorian styled clothing, although they need not be period-accurate since the setting is neither on Earth nor in that period.

She does NOT need to be wearing a miniskirt and seven-inch heels. Or a tube top. 

That immediately eliminates thousands of stock photo images.

The same problem resides in finding clothing for digital models. Even the steampunk outfits tend to be far too revealing for my characters. I mean come on -- female airship pirates in thigh-high heeled boots and skirts so short they might as well be belts? I was 14 once too, but sheesh. You'd freeze to death at higher altitudes in that outfit.  

And don't even get me started on most fantasy female armor. "Hey, this woman needs protective battle gear. So let's leave her legs and midriff exposed. Put some form-fitting steel around her breasts, but use as little metal as possible, and make sure there's plenty of exposed cleavage. Yeah. We've left all her vital organs vulnerable, and made sure she can't run or dodge. Time to battle the forces of evil!"

Meralda would never wear such a stupid outfit. 

But, with time and effort, you can find clothes, either digital or live, that will more or less suit your needs.

Poses are another matter. My digital Meralda can be posed into any position -- but not quickly or easily.

Digital people in the system I've used (DAZ 3D) have an internal skeleton. You pose them by moving through the drop-down menu of bones. Each bone is adjusted individually, in sequence (chest to shoulder to upper arm to elbow to forearm to hand to fingers, etc.). Getting someone to sit in a chair properly might take hours, unless you buy a chair-sitting pose. And even then you'll need to tweak that. And buy the chair.

With live models, you're limited to what you can find. Most of the poses tend to be generic, because the demand for 'model running forward while brandishing a fantasy lightning gun' is low. 

All that aside, there's the matter of image quality and detail. Photos of live models look realistic because they depict a real person. Images of digital models can approach photorealism, but only if your source models contain the complexity and your hardware can handle the intensive process of rendering so much light data.

I'm writing this on a powerful machine. Lots of fast RAM. An eight-core processor. A dedicated video card. But since it isn't an Nvidea video card, images I create in DAZ take hours and hours to render. For example, the image below:

Meralda in the Sun resized.jpg

I think this took around six hours. That's not six hours to complete from start to finish -- that's six hours from the time I finished the posing, the background, and the lighting, decided the low-resolution image was worth rendering, and hit the RENDER button.

I wasn't even running on high settings. I have no idea how long a high-resolution image would have taken.

I like the finished image. So, just as a test, I extracted Meralda from that picture, and used her as the model in a test cover image.

I'm hesitant to actually use the digital model, though. I know authors who tried that, and received lots of negative feedback. 

So let me ask you, right here. I'm going to post two images -- one a mock-up of a cover with a photo model, and the other a mock-up of a cover with a digital model. I'd appreciate any comments you might have.

Here's the photo model:

variant2Cresized.jpg

And below is the digital model:

digital5resized.jpg

 

Which cover concept do you prefer? Would seeing the digital Meralda make you less likely to buy the book?

Keep in mind neither of these images is truly finished. I'm just testing a theory here. Any input would be appreciated.

MORE ON COVERS

I spend far too much time scrolling through cover images on Amazon and elsewhere. Say what you will about gatekeepers and the evils of Big Publishing, but with a few notable exceptions, they usually produce decent covers.

I won't post any examples of the awful covers I've found. But they tend to share a few common offenses:

  • Inclusion of dubious 'reader awards' and breathless claims to best-seller status.
  • Too much text.
  • Wild variety in fonts. 
  • Inadvertently hilarious scene depictions.
  • Unreadable text.

Here's one I threw together, using my own title, as an example of what NEVER to do (the image is from an old pulp magazine cover, long since passed into the public domain).

turtles6.jpg

Airborne snapping turtles are never a good idea. 

Here's another old pulp I 'improved,' included just for fun.

ghostmuppet.jpg

And another, because as I stated previously, I'm editing and editing is work so why not play with my graphics program?

REALMAN3resized.jpg

Many years ago, my grandmother opened a cabinet and a flying squirrel leaped out and landed in the bowl of mashed potatoes on the dinner table. The flying squirrel neither maimed nor ripped anyone, although it did lick its little paws appreciatively while it dined. 

Hope you enjoyed the revised pulp covers. If you have a moment, please leave a comment about digital versus photographic Meralda in the comments, or email me at franktuttle at franktuttle dot com. 

Time to get back to work. Have a good week, everyone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tax Tips For Writers

dreamstime_xs_14925628.jpg

Certain signs signal various significant turnings of the year. Birds fly south. Or is it east? Maybe north? Frankly I don't spend much time outdoors with a compass charting the movements of indecisive waterfowl.

But even a dedicated indoorsman such as myself can observe the anguished human faces on the street, and hear the plaintive cries of agony borne on the night wind (and no, I don't know from which direction the bloody wind is blowing, let's leave that to the meteorologists, shall we?).

Even I can see the chalk outlines left by those poor unfortunates who at last cried 'No more, enough!' before shuffling off their mortal coils by way of extreme over-tanning or actually eating a gas station pickled egg.

Even I know what dread event these signs portend -- tax time.

That's right, gentle readers, if you are a citizen of the US, it's that time of year when Uncle Sam takes you fondly by your ankles and shakes you until every last cent you've seen in the last year falls out of your pockets, because let's face it, war ain't cheap.

Now, if you've made any money off your writing in the last year, I'm here to help. Because if there's anything the US government holds dear, it's the idea that every American is free to earn a profit by the sweat of her brow and the set of his jaw. Equally sacred to the American governing psyche is the idea that they've got dibs on the first and biggest slice of that sweet free enterprise pie.

The first thing writers need to know about filing their writing income is this -- FILE IT. That story you sold to Ominous Bathroom Squeaks and Eldritch Attic Squeals Monthly for 15 bucks? That pair of flash-fiction entries you pawned off on Public Transit Funnies, a Bus Station Free Magazine for a coupon granting you $2.00 off any foot-long club at Subway?

Maybe you're thinking 'Hey, why bother reporting that, nobody knows about those!'

How wrong you are, Grasshopper.

They know. Maybe it's the Carnivore communication surveillance system. Maybe the IRS has an Obscure Small Press Reporting Division. Maybe that mean-eyed old lady down the street is on the phone with the IRS every day, after she goes through your mail and steams open all the envelopes -- it doesn't matter how, but believe me, they know.

So, the first thing?

Report it.

Now if you've made any serious coin you've been sent a 1099-MISC from the publisher(s). You should keep up with these things. I used to put them in a folder and then lose the folder and then move to Mississippi and assume a new identity as Frank Tuttle when I realized I'd lost them all, but then I got married and she keeps important papers in a brilliant thing called a drawer. I'll bet you have some of these drawers  in your place too. Open them up and put stuff in them, it's an amazing time-saver compared to identity theft.

At the end of the year, you take all these 1099 forms, wipe the tears from your face, and enter them in the boxes according to the helpful prompts on the TurboTax software. When the crying diminishes to a bearable level, proceed.

Next, let's consider deductions. The word deductions comes from the Latin dede, which means 'not for,' and uction, which means 'you.' In tax parlance, deductions are money amounts which everyone but you can subtract from the taxes they owe.

For instance, I write on a PC. I built this PC myself, from components I purchased separately, for the sole purpose of writing.  Now, if I were anyone else, I could deduct the total cost of the machine from my taxes owed, since it's a business expense -- but since I am demonstrably me, this deduction does not apply, and, notes TurboTax, 'ha ha ha.'

See how that works? It truly simplifies filing.

Let's look at some other deductions which you, as a writer, cannot claim:

  •  Home Office Deductions. Oh, you have an office, in which you write? Well, let's have a look. It can't be attached to your house. It can't house a TV or other casual entertainment device. It can't possibly, under any circumstances, be even remotely suited for any purpose other than writing, and it can't be very good at that. So you have a detached office which contains nothing but a chair, a desk, and a PC running nothing but Word? But it has a roof?  'Ha ha ha,' intones TurboTax. 'Trying to pull a fast one, are you? DENIED.'
  • Office Expense Deductions.  You're a writer, and even the IRS grudgingly concedes that the act of writing might in some way involve putting down words on some medium, be it electronic or paper. Okay, this looks promising. You bought a printer to print out manuscripts. You pay for internet service because 1950 was 68 years ago. These seem to be legitimate deductions, so let's investigate further BUZZ HA HA HA NOT SO FAST, TAXPAYER! Those deductions are only valid in years  where acceptable total solar eclipses occur in northern Peru (see Schedule 117863-E, 'Solar Interruptions, South American Totality Table 167-75E, lines 46 through 78), and guess what pal, this ain't it.
  • Other Deductions. Mitt Romney has a 376 page embossed-leather-bound acid-free paper book with gold-gilt edges filled with 'Other Deductions.' Are you Mitt Romney? Didn't think so. Move along.

Sadly, that about covers it. You've toiled over every word, you've poured over ever sentence, you've labored long into that good night trying to illuminate a single tiny facet of the flawed jewel that is the human condition.

Or, in other words, you've earned slightly less than minimum wage. 

Bon appetite, my friends!

And for the love of all that is holy, don't miss the filing deadline. 

Top image credits: https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-angry-man-pulling-hair-image14925628#res5678350

Return to Middle-Earth

During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, author J.R.R. Tolkien was wounded. He spent his convalescence writing a book set in the Middle-Earth we'd come to know so well. 

This book, The Fall of Gondolin, remained unpublished. We all know that Tolkien went on to write The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Fall of Gondolin manuscript was later edited by Tolkien's son Christopher, and this August, HarperCollins is finally releasing the The Fall of Gondolin, complete with lavish illustrations and high expectations. 

I'll read it, of course, because it's a chance to return to Middle-Earth one last time. Despite the opportunity to farm out the LOTR universe and literally roll in the piles of cash dumped daily upon them, the Tolkien estate has kept the literary border of Middle-Earth closed tight. Honestly I don't blame them.

Imagine, if you will, a timeline in which the Tolkien estate allowed other writers to work in Middle-Earth, or that the setting had passed into the public domain. I'm sure some good books would have emerged, but I'm equally sure we'd see titles such as Love-Slave to Gollum, Book 34 and Legolas in LA: Hot Elf In the City.

orc4.jpg

Who knows what well-established authors might have chosen to add their own entries to the stories of Middle-Earth? 

What if Raymond Chandler, for instance, tried his hand?

The Return of the King's Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

It was morning, mid Winterfilth, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain, called ulo by the Elves of Quenya, in the clearness of the Misty Mountains. I was wearing my mithril mail-suit, my Elven leaf brooch, and my Elven cloak, which is by turn green in sunlight or grey in twilight or dusk-silver in the night. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I gave no care to whom might know it. I was everything a son of Gondor should aspire to be. I was calling on Thorin Oakenshield.  

thelma3b.jpg

 

As I Lay Dying In Mordor by William Faulkner

Darl, Son of Deowin Ironfist

Jewel, called the North Star in the tongue of the Sindarin, and I come up from the field, following the Hobbit-path in single file. Although I am five ranga ahead of him, anyone watching us from the Shire can see Jewel's frayed and broken Dwarf helm a full head above my own.

The path runs straight as a plumb-line of Gondor, worn smooth by hairy Halfling feet and baked brick-hard by the Afterlithe sun, between the green rows of laid-by pipe-weed, to the inn in the center of the field, where it turns and circles the inn at four soft right angles and goes on across the field again, worn so by sturdy Hobbit feet in fading precision.


Fear and Loathing in Mirkwood by Hunter S. Thompson

We were somewhere around the Barrow-downs when Bombadil's 'special' lembas began to take hold.

 

Battlefield Isengard by L. Ron Hubbard

“Man,” said Terl, “is an endangered species.” Terl paused long enough to complete the script for the worst movie of the 20th century. "You'll be sued for even bringing this up." Insert 300 pages of relentless gibberish here. 

 

A Clockwork Palantir by Anthony Burgess

There was me, that is Alex, son of Borothyn, of the House of Eldar, and my three Orcs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being half goblin and not a bright goblin, and we sat in the Prancing Pony at Bree making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark Ringwraith chill in the air though not with ulo as the Elves call rain.

So maybe it's for the best Middle-Earth has remained under the control of the Tolkien estate.

Speaking of books -- I could use a small favor. I lost nearly all of my Amazon reviews after Samhain Publishing went out of business. The re-issues of the Markhat books are back out there, but lacking reviews. If you read Hold the Dark, for instance, and you liked it, please consider taking a moment and leaving a review on Amazon. Mama Hog will thank you personally, and also dispel any haints, willer-wisps, celler-goblins, or night spooks that might be plaguing your household.

See you next week!

 

 

 

Mangling the Manuscript, With A Side Order Of Scary Things

In last week's blog, I revealed a little about how I created a cover for the Mama Hog short, Knob Hill Haunt. I also promised to explain how Knob Hill Haunt made the transition from Word document to Kindle ebook.

I've used a lot of methods over the years to turn manuscripts into ebooks. In theory, you can just save your Word document as a .doc, or a .docx, or a filtered Web page. This format will then be magically converted into a perfectly formatted Kindle book by Amazon's conversion process.

Note the disclaimer 'in theory.' In theory, I can skip lunch and not devolve into a ravenous maniac. In theory, I can eat healthy and lose weight. 

I think you begin to see the disdain with which I view the phrase 'in theory.'

In practice, you can follow Amazon's guidelines to the letter, and about half the time you'll wind up with an ebook that contains random changes in justifications, weird characters sprinkled throughout the book, and inexplicable shifts in justification and even fonts. 

You don't want that. Readers don't want it. They paid money for a book, not an exercise in 'close enough.' 

Keep in mind the process I'm about to describe is only the mechanical process. I won't be talking about editing, but if you're new to all this please don't mistake this intentional omission for a suggestion that you throw all your stuff out there unedited. That's not what I'm implying. 

Here's how to determine if you need an editor, in one handy step:

Ask yourself "Do I need an editor?" Then look yourself right in your eyes and say, in a loud firm voice, "Yes."

Easy. Now the next question is probably "How can I afford to pay for an editor?" and my answer is a muttered rant about masks and liquor stores or shady cryptocurrency scams, but that's a topic for another day. 

So assume your editing is done before you proceed with any of this.

You have your manuscript. It's perfect. It's a work of literary art. But it's a Word document, not an ebook. What's the next step?

You can:

  • Upload as Amazon suggests, and fix the oddities one by one using the upload, preview, and fix method.
  • Hire someone to format your manuscript.
  • Use free software such as Calibre to create a .mobi file and upload that.
  • Use what I used this time around, which is a paid conversion service called Pressbooks.

Pressbooks, at pressbooks.com, lets you upload your word docs to your areas on their site. You don't upload the whole book at once -- you organize it by section. For instance, you put the title page material in the title page part. Chapters go in the Main Body. It creates a table of contents for you. Back matter goes in back matter, and so forth.

That part of the process is a bit of a pain, yes. But it also allows you to move things around easily. And you can select from dozens of premade styles and apply them to the whole thing with a single click.

I rather enjoyed being able to play with styles so easily. When you think you have things ready, you just export the ebook in whatever formats you wish -- mobi, epub, pdf, etc. Then you can load the ebook on various devices and make sure everything works before you release anything into the wild.

How much does this cost?

You can create a free account and do everything, including the exports. There's only one catch -- every exported ebook contains a one-page 'watermark' which consists of an ad for Pressbooks. You can generate an export that doesn't contain the watermark for 19.99 USD per title. 

That's a bargain, at least to me. 

Here's what the Pressbooks dashboard looks like:

pb1.jpg

 

Yes, that's the draft of the new Mug and Meralda book shown. I used Pressbooks to convert the manuscript into Kindle format for my helpful beta readers. 

But you can edit in the dashboard, too. Just click on a chapter or part, and there you are. Make changes, save, and done.

There is a small learning curve, mainly because there are so many options. But getting the hang of it is easy and fast.

There are other ways to do this, of course. I mentioned a few above. I like Pressbooks, especially for fast conversions of short works, so for me, it's a good tool to have.

If you are on the lookout for an editor or a conversion service, I recommend Holly at EvilEyeEditing. She edited the last several Markhat books, and has real-world publishing industry chops. 

THINGS GOING BUMP

One of my favorite pastimes is surfing YouTube for paranormal videos.

Most are hilarious fakes. Even those are fun to watch, though, so I keep searching them out. 

I'll post a link to an example below. In this short segment, several so-called paranormal video clips are shown.

11 Mysterious Videos That Cannot Be Explained

Go watch it, if you want, and then come back. I know the title claims the videos cannot be explained. I disagree. Here's what I know about the incidents referenced by the video host:

The first video, about the sad disappearance of the kid on holiday, is real. He did in fact vanish without a trace, and the footage from the airport is genuine. There's nothing paranormal about the video, although the poor kid was obviously scared and in trouble of some sort. I wonder if his head injury was worse than the doctors thought. I hope one day his family finds out what happened.

The second video, which shows an unnamed shopper in the throes of apparent possession, is a wonderful example of how strings and a few close friends can make a fairly convincing scary video. It's well-acted, I'll give them that. Nice how the 'random' security camera just happened to be aimed at the center of the action. Quite the coincidence.

The next segment, about the hotel ghost and room 209, looks authentic. It should, because it won an award for best short horror film in a tiny obscure film contest several years ago, if I remember correctly. Almost certain this one was made for entertainment.

Then we have the infamous 'Men In Black' captured on hotel security cameras. After a witness spotted a UFO hovering over the hotel, presumably in an attempt to cheap out on paying for hotel parking, the MIBs showed up, went to the front desk, and demanded to speak to the witness. That's the story, anyway. Maybe it's just me, but if the aliens had the means to identify the witness and and the motive to silence him, why couldn't they also determine his room number? Just pay the parking fees, guys. And buy some coats that fit. 

The next video is the most disturbing of the lot. Elisa Lamb did die, drowned in a hotel water storage tank. The bizarre video of her in the elevator is real. The official verdict was accidental death. That's one heck of an accident, since the rooftop tank in which she was found had to be unlocked with a key, and the only access to the tank entry was by ladder, which wasn't present. Stranger still, the hotel has a long history of sinister occurrences. I doubt we'll ever know what happened to this poor young woman.

In the sixth video, we see an unusual traffic accident in China. A traffic camera is trained on an intersection, and everything looks normal until two vans are suddenly lifted into the air and tossed about by 'invisible' forces. 

The video is real, and it's a good lesson in how low-resolution cameras can show just enough of the truth to fool us. What happened was this -- a steel cable lay across the road. The cameras can't show it because it's too thin. When something off-camera yanks the cable suddenly taut, the vans are lifted a few feet and bounced around. It looks supernatural, but it's just a freak accident.

I'm certain the same phenomena makes the next video, the so-called 'teleporting man,' look more mysterious than it is. A car dashcam captures a semi-truck swerving suddenly. A pedestrian appears, narrowly avoiding being run over by the truck. All I see here is an example of why frame rates matter if you're filming high-speed vehicles.

Next, we are treated to a brief glimpse of a face in the window of a burned-out house. The segment is called 'The Del Rey Witch.' I think it should have been called 'The Homeless Guy In The Burned-Out House.' The bit about the newspaper article on the ground is what some experts would call 'silly.'

"The Girl In the Red Dress" is spooky. We see an alley, a parked van, and a little girl who is wearing a red dress, which suits her overall translucence. Somebody is pretty handy with their video editing skills. Filters are a lot of fun when you can select any transparency you desire.

"The Hospital Ghost." Dark figure passes behind hospital doors. Nurse and camera person rush into room. A table mysteriously moves in a way THAT NO MERE HUMAN COULD REPRODUCE WITH EIGHT FEET OF STRING. Room is empty. People run. Nice spooky little segment, but I'm getting bored with strings.

The last video, called 'City in the Clouds,' is footage from a Chinese news report. In it we see -- well, a city in the sky, or at least the basic outlines of tall buildings amid the clouds.

This was seen by thousands of people, so it's not a fake video. The offered explanations range from secret NASA holographic projection tests to magical portals to another world. 

I'm going to go with 'This is what happens when the air is so polluted it can act as a crude lens' and wait for the next round of videos.

If you've seen a video you'd like to share, post a link in the comments!

 

 

 

 

Freebie Sunday, and the Anatomy of a Book Cover

hanutblog.jpg

I hope you enjoyed last week's Mama Hog story. I realize it was a little long to be comfortably read on the blog, so I turned it into a Kindle ebook, changed the title, and put a cover on it.

I also made it free for the next four days. So, if you want a copy for your Kindle, just click here and grab a copy, no charge. 

If you don't read on a Kindle, email me, and I'll send you a free copy in whatever format you prefer (PDF, Nook, or generic epub). 

If you feel led to point your friends at this blog, I won't object to that at all, either, wink wink nudge nudge.

ABOUT THE COVER

No cover artist is credited in the ebook because I am the cover creator. If anyone is curious, I thought I'd divulge the steps behind the creation of the Knob Hill Haunt cover, because I do think it turned out pretty well.

I made this cover for a couple of reasons. First, this is a short story, not a book, and I couldn't see investing a couple of hundred dollars in it. Knob Hill Haunt is a title I entered into the Kindle Unlimited program, which means I can run free promos every 90 days, and Kindle users can also get it as one of their free reads anytime they have an open free-read slot.

My other titles aren't in the KU program. One of the restrictions is that a KU book can ONLY be sold on Amazon, and I'm not ready to accept that restriction for my other titles. 

But, as a free introduction to Markhat and Darla's world, I decided to enter Knob Hill into the program, in the hope of picking up some new readers. 

I  made sure there were links to my other books at the end of Knob Hill Haunt. Yes, that is a shameless marketing ploy. Look, writers have to eat too. 

But, if someone enjoyed Mama Hog's story, they might want to read the other books too. So I see it as a win-win. 

All that aside, here's how I made the cover.

First, I searched for a suitable cover image. There are many stock image sites -- Shutterstock, iStockphoto, and Dreamstime, for instance. I tend to use Dreamstime; most of the opening images on this blog came from Dreamstime unless they were images or photos I created.

Here's the unaltered stock photo from Dreamstime:

dreamstime_xs_76944122 (1).jpg

I bought a large image (3000 by 2030 pixels) because Amazon wants cover images that are at least 2000 pixels on one side. It cost me 11 credits, which is around 11 dollars.

I chose this image because it's spooky, it's pretty, and it fits a scene from the book. It's licensed for use on book covers. Also, the model is posed to the right side of the image, which left me room for text.

There are a couple of basic rules for book cover design. I'm sure there are. I don't know them, but here are the few things I do know:

  • Never lay text over a face. Seriously. 
  • Apply the 'rule of thirds' whenever possible.
  • Western readers move their eyes across a cover from left to right and along a diagonal from the upper left corner to the lower right. Yes, centered elements are also fine -- but if you can't center things, remember the left-to-right bit.
  • The cover should still retain legible text when shrunk down to thumbnail size, which means it must be readable when it's only about 100 pixels tall.
  • Ugly covers wind up on display at lousybookcovers.com. You don't want that.

I don't have Photoshop, which costs a billion dollars a copy. It doesn't, but it might as well. Too, Photoshop must be learned, and given my current age and lifestyle preferences I don't have that kind of time left.

I use Corel PaintShop Pro X9. It costs about 79 bucks, and while there is a learning curve it obviously isn't too steep because I run it just fine. 

I put the image of the nice dead lady holding a candle on one layer.

I applied text on another layer. But let me back up a bit, and talk about text. Specifically, about fonts.

The fonts on your machine are free, and there are quite a few of them. But they're also bland and familiar, and nothing screams self-made cover like a title written out in Courier New.

Like images, fonts aren't usually just free for the taking. People work hard to create them, so you should pay just as much attention to the rights granted on fonts as you do to those of images.

Free font sites abound. I looked around until I found one that both fit the theme of my cover and was free to use, even as part of a commercial project. 

I downloaded the font and installed it, and that gave PaintShop access to it.

I tried about a dozen fonts. All but two were rejected because they looked fine on the big image, but were illegible when reduced to a thumbnail. People aren't going to click on a book when the title can't be read, and I don't blame them one bit.

I put the title in the upper-left third of the book. I put my byline down at the bottom right. This way, the reader's eye moves like this: title, ghost lady, byline. The arrangement quickly lets potential buyers glean all they want to know from a book cover. It's about a haunting of some sort. The protag is probably female. A guy named Tuttle wrote it. All in a single glance.

I set the text color as white and then made the text layer partially transparent, so the blue in the image layer bled through just a bit. This made the letters look as though they were a part of the overall image, and not just stuck on top as an afterthought.

I applied some subtle shadows (light source from upper left of cover, which cast shadows down toward the right) behind the text, and then added a very slight distortion effect (wind, left to right) to add a hint of blur to the edges of the text. 

Effects such as those only apply to the layer you've selected, so the lady wasn't blurred or windblown at all. It's rude to blow winds at ghosts. They enough to deal with. 

Once I was satisfied, I merged the layers. Then I resized the large image to conform to Amazon's cover image standards. 

That's all it took. I spent between six and eight hours, I think, on this cover. Most of that time was spent finding the main image, and then the right font. 

This was a very simple cover. It involved no custom artwork -- by that, I mean no artist sat down and drew or painted a character from scratch.  I used a single stock image and some text. The Markhat covers, which were created by ADsmith Marketing, involve multiple images and layers and Photoshop and, probably, quantum mechanics, which is why I left those covers to the professionals.

A truly custom cover, one that doesn't use stock images, is going to cost. A thousand crisp new dollars will probably buy you one. Artists don't work cheap, nor should they. One day I'd love to commission a genuine painting of Darla and Markhat, or Meralda and Mug and Donchen. If anyone out there is sitting on a bag of cash they find repulsive, send it my way, and I'll get started on that.

Next week, I'll explain how I turned the manuscript into an ebook. 

Until then, take care!

Cover image credits: ID 76944122 © Olga Osadchaya | Dreamstime.com

 

 

The Swindled Jenny: A Mama Hog story

dreamstime_xs_76944122.jpg

I'm giving the blog over to Mama Hog tonight. She's got a story to tell, and we both hope you enjoy it.

 

The Swindled Jenny

By Mama Hog

Now that Markhat has done took to writing down his troubles, I reckon on doing the same thing.

My name is Mrs. Hog. Folks hereabout calls me Mama Hog, prob’ly because I’ve spent the last hundred years wipin’ their behinds and making a big fuss over their skint knees and busted hearts. I has the Sight, and the knowin’ of the old ways, and what these city folks has all but forgot is still fresh as yesterday in this here mind of mine.

That’s what they pays me for. Clear sight, clear thinking, some of that old timey magic they scoffs at one minute and begs for the next. Ain’t no excuse for the messes these city folk get their selfs into.

Ain’t no excuse at all. But I’m a Hog. I has the Sight. It’s their business, I reckon, to stumble, an’ it’s mine to set them right.

It was just after sunup when a woman came knocking at my door. Now, I sets regular hours, and ain’t nobody in Rannit what don’t know that, but every now and then somebody comes to call before my biscuits is done or after I’m took to bed, hopin’ to pay me a visit without being seen and whispered about.

I adds an extra charge to their fee, cause that wastes biscuits or sleep and I ain’t usually got a surplus of neither.

I opened my door and she rushed in without an invite or a ‘How do ye do.’ That cost her extra too.

“Mrs. Hog,” she said, after she hid herself in the corner. “You are Mrs. Hog? The Mrs. Hog they call Mama?”

I shut my door.

“As fer as I know,” I said, all polite-like. “Do ye want a biscuit?”

She drawed up like I’d poked her with a snake. Now, she was a tall woman tryin’ to hide under a fussy black hat and half a dozen fine-made veils, so when she drawed up and looked down that long nose at me it was just plain comical.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked, all haughty-like.

“You. That ain’t your hat, cause it don’t fit.” I was right, cause it had dropped down nearly over her eyes. “And neither is that top-coat. I reckon you borrowed all that get-up from a maid or a cook, one what’s a stone heavier and near a foot taller. So you done made a spectacle of yerself, and prob’ly set the servants to talkin’, and if you was tryin’ to visit in secret you done made a right fine mess of that, yer highness.”

Now, when well-to-do folks gets their noses thumped, they usually get to puffin’ and blowin’.

And I figured she’d march right back out my door, which was just fine with me because I makes a damned good biscuit and I was of a mind to have my breakfast.

But she made the most angel-awful gobblin’ noise and started bawlin, right there. Bawlin’ and shakin’ like a young-un, one what’s been holding in a cry for a long, long time.

Well, even city folks don’t usually make a show of cryin’ in a stranger’s kitchen if there ain’t something powerful wrong. So I got her in a chair and got that hat off her fool head and talked all soothing-like to her till she settled down.

“My name is Jenny Wilkins,” she said, after a mess of dabbin’ at her eyes with a fancy linen handkerchief. “Of the Barrows Wilkinses.”

I nodded like I knowed all about a Barrows Wilkins. I knowed that if I asked for the particulars, I’d get a half hour of who begat who and what they done during the War and I knowed it weren’t likely any of that would pertain to the matter at hand.

‘Fore she caught enough breath to talk, I’d done figured on her problem. I didn’t need no Sight to tell me what I needed to know about Miss Jenny.

She was young, though she prob’ly didn’t consider herself young. Twenty and five, I reckoned, born midsummer, an only child. She was tall and skinny and pale, but she liked to mess about in her fancy flower-garden, cause her fingernails was all short and there was a callous where she worked the sheers.

She had big green eyes what was pretty when they wasn’t red from bawlin’, and good white teeth, and if the woman ever smiled her long narrow face would be a sight for the menfolk. Her hair was a mess, but if she dragged a comb through it she’d be a right stunning woman, and no mistake.

I knowed right off she was smart, too. My Sight showed lots of book-learning, fancy teachers, could read Kingdom and Old Kingdom and Church. I warmed up a mite at that. I likes smart folks, rich or poor, and I reckon rich folks can’t help bein’ born on silk sheets no more than a poor man on burlap.

“You got man trouble,” I said. Her eyes showed me I’d spoke the truth. She started to talk, but I raised up my hand and called up my Sight.

“It ain’t love,” I said, cause I knowed then it weren’t. “Oh, you liked him good enough, maybe even more than liked. But that ain’t why you’re here.”

She nodded.

“He stole from you.”

Damned if she didn’t commence bawlin’ again.  I reckon all that ruckus woke Buttercup, cause she just appeared right there beside the woman and started huggin’ on her.

Now, Buttercup is what Markhat calls a banshee. But you hear me, my Buttercup ain’t nothing like the banshees of the old stories, what was frightful old crones who took to flyin’ about screaming and doin’ a fair amount of murder of a night.

Buttercup looks to be a child, and a wisp of a child at that. She’s got hair the color of ripe corn-silk and skin that don’t tan and green eyes it don’t pay to look at too long, cause they seems to get bigger the longer you looks at them. But there ain’t a mean bone in her body and that scream of hers is powerful, but it ain’t never hurt nobody, leastways not nobody what didn’t need a good hurtin’.

But havin a slip of a girl just appear out of thin air and lay hands on her was a might too much for Miss Jenny, cause she went from bawlin’ to screamin’ and that hurt Buttercup’s feelings, I reckon, cause she just took one of her banshee hop-skips and vanished like a magician’s white rabbit.

Calming Miss Jenny down took a while and nearly a whole pot of my special soothing tea. But I finally got her settled down, and even laughin’ a bit, and when Buttercup heard that and came back in I introduced them proper and me and Miss Jenny finally got down to business.

“He said his name was Oswalt Lichter,” she said. Buttercup had took to sittin’ in her lap, all snuggled up peaceful-like.  “I met him at an art show, last October.”

“I reckon he was all smiles and sweets,” I said.

She nodded, and stroked at Buttercup’s wild hair. “I’m not an idiot, Mrs. Hog. I’ve been approached by men before. Men who pretended an interest in me when what they wanted was the family money.”

“I takes it your daddy is passed, then.”

She nodded. “I am the sole heir. My brothers both died in the War.”

I felt genuinely sorry for her, then. That there War left a lot of lonesome women behind in big old houses that was too dark and too quiet.

“So when Oswalt – when Mr. Lichter started showing an interest, I was naturally wary.”

“Naturally.”

She shook her head and couldn’t look me in the eye. “But he was so patient. So unassuming. Weeks would pass, and he wouldn’t visit, wouldn’t send word.”

“So you took to sending word to him.” I said it as gentle as I could, because there weren’t no need to make her start bawlin’ again.

“I did. I was so sure he wasn’t like the others. He was…nice.”

“No, girl, he was just a better grade of bastard.”

She swallowed hard. “He had his own money. Lots of it, it seemed. Carriages. Fine meals, in the best clubs. He bought me jewelry. He was renovating an old house on the Hill. He had friends I knew. I was so sure.”

“I reckon he was squattin’ in a house somebody else was payin’ for, and borrowin’ the rest as fast as he could spend it,” I said.

She nodded, still not lookin’ me in the eyes.

“The money – it wasn’t even his idea,” she said. “I swear to you it wasn’t. I almost had to force it upon him.  It was a joint investment, in a series of silver mines out west.” She looked up at me then, and them green eyes was fierce with anger. “I didn’t invest heavily, at first. He wouldn’t let me. But we made money, Mrs. Hog. Lots of it. I doubled the family fortune, in a few months’ time. I was rich. The money was in my bank. In my name. We were so happy.”

She started tearing up. Buttercup stirred and put her arms around the woman’s neck and started hummin’ some old song I ain’t never heard. Maybe it was them foreign words, or maybe it was her voice, but she calmed Miss Jenny right down.

“So when the mines themselves came up for sale…”

I shook my head. “You had to talk him into buyin’ ‘em, didn’t you? After you threw in half, I reckon. Which just happened to be everything you had.”

She hugged Buttercup tight and just sat there and shook.

I didn’t need to make her tell the rest. My Sight showed me all of it, plain as day.

She’d given that man every last cent, and he’d smiled and kissed her and damned if he hadn’t walked away with the whole works in Old Kingdom gold coin, without a look back or a shred of human mercy.

I reckon he’d took something else too, and that’s when I got mad.

“Well, Miss Jenny Wilkins of the Barrow Wilkinses, that’s a hard thing what’s been done to you, and no mistake. But you done the right thing, payin’ Mama Hog a visit, because I tells ye right here and right now we’re going to get you your money back. Now, I know that ain’t all he took, but know this – Mr. Oswalt Lichter, or whatever he calls hisself these days, is goin’ to pay, and pay hard, for what he done, and he ain’t ever going to do it again.”

“Can you do that, Mrs. Hog? Really do that?”

“Can and will, Miss Jenny. Can and will.”

“I can’t pay you.”

“Ye can pay when we’s done,” I said. “Ten gold crowns, and ten crowns only. Now there’s one thing you needs to know, Miss. I aims to show this here rotten bastard the same mercy what he showed you. I ain’t to be moved toward kindness, when this starts. I won’t be asked to flinch, when the time comes to strike. You got to know that. You got to agree to it. Or you got to walk out that door and never come back. Is that clear?”

Give Miss Jenny Wilkins credit. She didn’t blink or play at dumb.

“Clear. No mercy. No flinching. Make him pay, Miss Hog. Make him pay.”

“Call me Mama,” I said. “Now then. Let’s eat us a biscuit. We got things to talk about.”

* * *

By the time Miss Jenny took her leave, it was noon, and Rannit was a stompin’ and a yellin’ all around me.

I don’t take to the streets much these days, cause my bunions pain me something awful after a long day of walking. But I’d made promises, and a Hog keeps her promises, bunions or no.

A hundred years, I been keeping promises. Some promises was kept to rich folks, whose names would surprise you. So I took to payin’ a few old friends visits, and remindin’ them of what I done, of debts owed me and never claimed.

Well, I claimed a few that day. I reckon the Hog name carries considerable weight with folks, because they was as eager to talk as they was as eager to send me on my way. And I reckon Mr. Oswalt Lichter hadn’t left many friends behind, because as soon as I took to callin’ his name they practically lined up to tell me all they knowed and then some.

Oh, he was playing an old old game, he was. Borrow from this one. Pay that one. Keep the money movin’, keep the lies coming. Hell, half of them didn’t know they’d been swindled yet, and Angels alive, the way their eyes bugged when they took notice of the fact!

I kept Miss Jenny’s name clear of it. But I made it hot for Mr. Lichter, I did. He’d have no place to rest, come sundown, if he was fool enough to still be in Rannit proper.

Not that I figured he was. He’d took his leave of Miss Jenny four days past, and I knowed he was slick enough to scoot before she could set the Watch on him. But something Miss Jenny had said stuck with me, and my Sight showed me where a greedy man might be likely to make a mistake.

What my Sight showed me, my talkin’ proved out. He had an eye for fancy paintings, and he’d been buying them up the whole time he was in Rannit. A dozen or so, I figured. And while he was smart enough to take hisself right quick out of Rannit, he’d have to have all them paintings crated up and shipped.

And if they was crated up and shipped, they’d have to be goin’ somewhere, and I aimed to follow.

So, like I said, I settled some old debts, with them what I’d helped before. Even the rich can be generous, and whether it’s out of plain old decent gratitude or a fervent wish to get shed of the past don’t make me no difference at all.

By suppertime, I knowed where them fancy-ass paintings had been stored.

By dark, I knowed the name of the man hired to crate them up.

By Curfew, I knowed what barge they was loaded on, and where they was headed, and what name he was using while he lived on Miss Jenny’s money.

By bedtime, I was soaking my feet in a tub of hot salt water, and Buttercup was playing dolls, and Mr. Oswalt Lichter who was calling himself Nabin Hodges was having one of the last good nights of sleep he was ever likely to get, in this life leastways.

* * *

“So we’s going to a place called Knob Hill,” I said.

Miss Jenny looked a might more pleasant in her green day dress and with a head of proper-combed hair.

“We?”

“Oh yes. Me and you.” I poured her more tea while Buttercup showed her her dolls, presenting them one by one with little nonsense words what I reckoned was their names. “I can’t do this without you,” I said, lyin’ some, but for the good. “Don’t you reckon you’ll sleep better, knowin’ you had a hand in seeing justice done?”

She watched Buttercup and thought it over.

“I don’t have any money for traveling,” she said, after a time.

“Well, I reckon I can pay for us both, till we gets your money back. It won’t be no fancy travelin’, mind ye. A poor woman’s coin only goes so far.”

Give the woman credit, she might have been waited on hand and foot all her days but she wasn’t lacking for backbone.

“I can work to pay my way.”

“That’s the spirit! But here, we won’t need much. I got it all figured out. A day on a stage, maybe half a day on whatever wagon we can hitch, a night in the woods. You ain’t scared of sleeping outdoors, are ye?”

“Father used to take me fishing, down the Brown. I’ll manage.”

“Good for you, Miss Jenny,” I said, and I meant it. “We’ll have you put back to rights in no time.”

Now, I knowed that getting back her money was going to be a mite easier than healing her other hurt. But you gots to start somewhere, I always say, and I had a mind to start with the coin.

* * *

Getting to Knob Hill was the business of two days. Miss Jenny swatted at skeeters the whole time, but never once voiced a complaint.

Finding the man calling hisself  Nabin Hodges wasn’t no harder than finding Knob Hill itself. There ain’t much to Knob Hill save a wide spot in the road, an inn what needs a new roof, a stagecoach stop, and a saloon what must have been fancy in its day but is about to fall over with the next big puff of wind.

A side road goes off into the pines, and winds up a big old hill, and at the top of that hill sits a Old Kingdom house, or what’s left of one. And since that’s the fanciest thing around, I knowed it was where that thievin’ rat had gone to ground, even before I started asking the innkeeper.

Lichter, now Nabin, had rolled into town a year past claimin’ to be the great-great grandson of the man what built that house before the War. Now, he wasn’t foolin’ nobody, cause that there Hoosten family got crossed with a wand-waver and was kilt one and all before Lichter was born, but he had coin and nobody cared about that old heap of stones. When he started rebuilding they took his pay and kept their mouths shut, as country folk is want to do.

Nabin had left a few months ago, claiming he had business out west. Now he was back, and all fired up about setting his house to rights, according to the gossips in the saloon.

I got me and Miss Jenny a room at the inn, and while she made a big show of not griping at sleeping on a straw bed I snuck off down that long stretch of road so I could get out of them woods before dark. There ain’t no Curfew in Knob End, and there ain’t no halfdead, but I reckon them woods was full of bears at least and I didn’t have time for no diversions.

That there fat innkeeper, name of Toad, was a blessing, and no mistake. He’d told me all about Nabin trying to hire a cooking woman, and how nobody with any sense would set foot in that house for fear of haints or curses. So when I marched up to the doors, which was standing wide open with brick masons and carpenters tromping in and out, I knowed just what to say.

“My name is Toker,” I said, to the first man I seen who looked like he might have a lick of sense. “I come to cook.”

I reckon them was magic words to a man who, from the look of the pot boiling in the yard, had been eating nothing but unsalted beans and moldy hard-tack for who knows how long.

“Boss man is up the stairs,” he said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder at the staircase in the shadows of the house. “I can round up the boys if you got bags or what-not.”

“I travels light,” I said. I stepped into the cool of the house, glad for the shade. “You say he’s up them stairs?”

“Second floor. Hanging painted pictures.” He lowered his voice to whisper. “He’s awful particular about them painted pictures. Gets riled up if you don’t make a big fuss over ‘em.”

“Thank ye kindly,” I said. “Be an extra biscuit in it for you, come suppertime.”

I took to the stairs. There was room for three of me and a pair of field ponies. They made houses big, before the War.

When I got to the second story, I followed the sound of careful hammering, and come face-to-face with the man what stole from Miss Jenny.

He heard me comin’, so he planted his back to the wall. He had a hammer in his right hand and a smile on his face, and I reckon he would keep his smile the whole time he was bashing my head with that hammer, if’n I give him reason to believe I was there to take some vengeance.

But he wasn’t the only one what knows how to smile and make it look real.

“My name is Mrs. Toker, of the Pot Lockney Tokers,” I said, making a little curtsey. “I hears you are in the market for a woman what knows how to cook.”

He pretended to relax, but he kept his ears pricked, listening for feet on the stair. When he didn’t hear any, he let out his breath and looked down his nose at me.

“I’m not at all sure where you heard such a thing, Mrs. Toker,” he said, his voice as smooth as lard-slicked glass. “We have quite a competent cook.”

I made like I was a mite let down. “Well, I reckon I was told a tale,” I said. Then I let my poor old ignorant country eyes wander up to the line of fancy paintings he’d hung on two of the walls.

“Cor,” I said, bringing my hand up to cover my uncouth rural mouth. “If them ain’t the most marvelous things I have ever laid eyes on.”

And damned if that wasn’t all it took.

He spent a solid hour describing each and every one of them paintings to me. Every artist, every theme, every what he called technique – he knowed all about them, and he was aiming to talk about it, and for a little while the man was almost human, ‘cause you could tell he loved what he took to calling ‘his art.’

I asked a few questions, oohed and ahhed some, and before he knowed it I was hired as cook and give run of the kitchen.

Now, back in the day, that was some kind of fancy kitchen. It had three wood-fired cook-stoves and two big old roasting-pit fire-places and a cold well and a root cellar big enough to live in.

But the stoves was rusted through, and one of the fire-places had most of the chimney collapsed in a heap in the pit, the cold well spring had run dry, and bats had took over the root cellar.

But one stove worked, and there was pots and pans what had been put up dry, and a wagon-load of beans and salted meat and flour and meal sat outside. So by dark I had a meal cooked, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the sight of twenty menfolk eatin’ like wolves and praising my name the whole time, even if it wasn’t my name, strictly speaking.

Fancy-pants took his meal alone, up in his room, and he didn’t have nothing more than grunts for me when he was filling his plate. I reckon he didn’t want to be seen conversating with the help, and I snickered a bit.

Now you show a mob of able-bodied men-folk a stack of dirty dishes and I swears you can clear the room of ‘em faster than you could with a bear or a bucket of snakes. So I found myself alone after supper, and that was just fine by me, because after washing off the dishes in a sink of green copper I had the run of the first floor all to myself.

The working men was all sleeping in the shed that kept the mortar and the lumber out of the rain. I kenned from the talk at supper they was afraid of the house, which struck me as pure foolishness, because that shed didn’t have no walls and they was a lot more likely to come across bears as they was haunts. But there ain’t no reasoning with superstition.

I picked out a dusty room for myself and made sure it had a door connecting it to a room for Miss Jenny. I locked her hall door from the inside, even though from the dust I could tell nobody had been in or out of the room in years.

Then I spent an hour or two laying in some hexes, here and there, just to start the fun.

When the Moon set, so did I, because they’d be wanting an early breakfast, and I’d be expected to have it ready.

I heard the first moaning as I laid my head down on my pallet. It was a pitiful thing to hear, and no mistake, all plaintive and sad. I was wondering if I hadn’t spelled the hex too soft when I heard a door slam upstairs, and then I drifted off to sleep knowing Mr. Nabin’s comeuppance had begun.

* * *

Them workmen ate like they’d hadn’t seen a bit of ham or a decent biscuit since Yule. I had to damn near fight to save a plate for the box-man, as they called him, and then I had to keep his plate on the stove to keep his breakfast from getting cold.

By the time he came creeping down the stairs, breakfast was best called lunch but I didn’t point the fact out.

Nabin or Lichter was bleary-eyed and grumpy by any name, leastways until he got coffee and ham in his gullet.

“Sleep poorly, did you, Mr. Nabin?” I asked, all sunshine and wide country smiles. “I hope it wasn’t your supper that disagreed with you!”

He grunted, which might have meant yes or no or I prefer badger-meat to ham.

“Well, I shouldn’t wonder, a man of your education and standing must have a mind full of matters,” I said. “Would you like a fresh pot of coffee?”

He allowed as how he would, and I took to bustling around, chirping like a magpie about this or that as words presented themselves.

“You took a room here in the house, didn’t you,” he said at last, more to stop my descriptions of my grandchildren that anything else, I’ll wager.

“Why yes I did,” I said, all concerned-like. “Was I overstepping? I took one close to the kitchen, thinking you’d want me close to my duties…”

He cut me off with a wave. “No, that’s fine, perfectly fine. But. But, I heard noises last night. You weren’t singing, were you?”

“Singing? Me? Heavens no, sir, my late husband, rest his soul, he always said I had no voice for the singin’. I washed up and went to sleep, sir, and that’s the truth of the Angels. Maybe them work-men was singing around the fire?”

“Yes,” he said, frowning. “Yes. That must be it.”

“No, my second son’s youngest, the one they call Dooley, now he can sing, oh yes sir, voice of an Angel…”

I prattled on, though I was soon prattling to an empty room.

I got myself to work right then. Lunch and supper would be salt ham stew, so I filled up the two biggest stewers I could find and set them to boiling. Then I started me another couple of pots to brewin’, but it weren’t no stew.

The wagon-load of victuals from town showed up right before lunch. There weren’t no trick to getting Miss Jenny snuck into the house, what with all the rush and confusion. I put her in her room and she set about getting ready for the night’s business with a grim set to her jaw. I reckon being under the same roof as the man what done what he done to her wasn’t setting well, but she allowed as she would stick with the plan without taking no side-trips into the realms of stabbing nor bludgeoning.

See, I knowed every last copper of Miss Jenny’s money was hid somewhere in or near that old house. I also knowed he wasn’t likely to just tell me where it was, even if I stuck his feet in a fire. No, we’d have to get him to show us where the money was hid, and that wasn’t going to be no easy chore since any man capable of spinning such artful webs of lies wouldn’t have much trouble seeing a lie himself.

So I tended my stew, and stirred my special pots, and Miss Jenny stayed hid and quiet till the sun was down and the hoot-owls were a hooting and the wolves was howling not much more than a stone’s throw away.

Then I made Mr. Fancy Britches a pot of most unusual tea and I ain’t ashamed to say I looked him in the eye and watched him drink it, and that’s when the fun really got started.

* * *

Midnight. There wasn’t a clock in that house to strike it out but I knows midnight well, and when I felt the hour stroll past I knocked on Miss Jenny’s door.

Damned I didn’t step back myself when she opened it.

She’d fixed herself up right, oh yes she had. Pale as Death. Dark circles under them big green eyes. Black lips. A few veins darked too, like she was a day or two past burying.

The dark bruise across her neck showed up real good against the pale. And her gown, oh it was a sight – all flowing and white and ethereal, just like what a ghost ought to be wearin’, when they is going out of an evening.

She was barefoot, and she knew how to walk without making a sound. She spun for me, and my heart nearly broke, seein’ the pain in such a creature’s big old eyes.

“Will this do?” she asked, in a whisper.

I allowed as to how it would.  Then I told her where to walk, told her to make sure she was always listening for my knocks. Two knocks meant run for the room and bolt the door. One knock meant keep bein’ the ghost.

First things first. I gave her a candle and a match, and told her to sneak to the end of the walkway, light the candle, and stroll all ghost-like up the door. That would put her in sight of the shed and the working men. It would mean she’d have to walk in the dark, but she set her jaw and took the matches and ran for it, and if she ran across any bears I reckoned they was in for a bad night.

I seen her first, holding that flickering candle, gliding up that ragged old walk, lookin’ for all the world like a haint, and no mistake.

Miss Jenny walked. She was halfway to the doors there hadn’t been no stir from the shed.  I was fretful, when she let out a pitiful long moan.

That done it. Men took to talkin’, then to shouting, and by the time Miss Jenny blew out her candle at the front doors they was all shoutin’ and cussin’ and saddling up horses and half a dozen of ‘em had took up lanterns and was running for the road, bears be damned.

I no sooner got Miss Jenny hid than I heard the ruckus at the door. I throwed on my nightgown and got there just as Mister Nabin took to cussin’ at the three working men standing inside.

“You’ll be paid when the job is finished, and not before that!”

“We are leaving. Right now. You’re gonna pay us the wages we’re owed, or there’s gonna be trouble.”

The man speaking put his claw hammer right up in Nabin’s face.

“Damn you.” Nabin took a step back. “Cheating a man in the middle of the night.”

I held my breath. I was hoping he’d have to dip into his secret stash right then and there, but he stomped off to a lockbox on a desk and snatched up a handful of silver and threw it in the other man’s face.

“Pick it up yourselves,” said Nabin. “Superstitious bumpkins.”

“We seen what we seen,” said the man, who didn’t stop as his fellows crab-crawled on the plank floor for the scattered coins. “A haint just took up in this house, mister, and we ain’t having no part in it.”

“You’re drunk. All drunk.”

“We ain’t. She was as dead as Tinker’s ox, mister, and she didn’t come here by accident.” He spat on the rich man’s floor. “Ain’t nobody ever believed that story about you being the lost son of the Hoosten family. I don’t know what you done before you come here, but it’s caught up to you, and we ain’t getting in the middle of it.”

I could have hugged that man’s neck right there.

His friends got the last of the money, and they hoofed it out of there, leaving the doors wide open.

I shut them, kicking them once as though having trouble getting the latch to catch.

“I suppose you want your wages too,” said Nabin.

“You firing me?” I let myself tear up. “I gots nowhere to go, Mister Nabin. A poor old woman in the middle of the night, ye won’t turn me out, will ye?”

He sat hisself down and put his face in his hands. “Go or stay. I don’t care.”

“What scared them men so?” I asked. “A spirit? Spirits from a bottle, I’ll wager.”

“Some nonsense about seeing a ghost,” he replied. “It took me weeks to find those men. Now I’ll need to find a new crew.”

Miss Jenny let out another moan. Nabin jumped up, his eyes wild, his hands shaking.

“You’ll find more men,” I said, as though I hadn’t heard. “Better ones, I’m sure.”

His eyes darted around the room, finally fixed on me, his pupils as tiny as pin-pricks. I reckon my special tea was adding to Miss Jenny’s moan a mite.

“Did you hear that?”

“I ain’t heard nothing,” I said. “You ain’t likely to sleep for a while. Can I brew you up another hot cup of tea? You might take it up in the picture room, to calm your nerves and all. Can’t hire no men tonight, and that’s a fact.”

He stood there breathin’ hard for a minute, before he slumped and nodded. “That’s a good idea, Mrs. Toker. I shall be in the gallery.”

I bowed like a good little kitchen woman and he took to the stairs and as the last of the workmen’s donkeys brayed at the edge of the woods road I set about heating my master a nice soothing cup of tea.

Nabin, lookin’ plain feverish and talking faster than he knew, set off for town right after sunup. He was aimin’ to hire more workmen, but I knowed after word of Miss Jenny’s midnight walk got around, all the gold in Rannit wouldn’t be enough to hire the town drunk.

Not a single one of the workmen stayed, so Miss Jenny and I had our run of the place. We took to lookin’ for her gold, hopin’ it might be hid somewhere easy, but no such luck. He’d hid it and hid it good.

Miss Jenny was broken-hearted, but it was still a good heart. She’d caught sight of her former beau through a cracked door, and she’d seen the wildness about him, and she was hurt by it.

I had to remind her of what she’d vowed. And what that man would soon do to another woman, if we didn’t put a stop to him, once and for all. She saw the truth of that, ugly as it was, and we kept lookin’.

We heard his horse before he got in sight. Miss Jenny hid herself after I told her to get ready with her ghost make-up.

Well, Nabin was three sheets to the wind, and he got his boot tangled in a stirrup and fell off  trying to dismount, and I thought we’d have a ghost on our hands for sure. But he cussed and rolled and got loose, stinking of the whiskey he’d spilled in his fall.

I hadn’t counted on him gettin’ lit in town. The fruit of the vine and the mushrooms in his special tea can be a mite unpredictable when they meets up in the gullet. But there weren’t no help for it, so I helped him up and set him in a chair.

He rambled on for a while, mad as the Devils that all his coin couldn’t hire daylight at noon. Mad at the town, mad at the house, mad at everyone and everything, I reckon. He drunk the rest of that bottle and went out cold about suppertime, and I left him there snorin’ and mutterin.’

Then I went through that room and all the others, making sure fireplace pokers and old swords on the wall and anything big and heavy enough to be used as a club wound up at the bottom of the old well.

I was throwin’ another load of maces down there when I seen a familiar little shape scamper across the rooftops, its wild blonde hair shinin’ in the late sun.

I cussed some. I was hopin’ Markhat and his lady-love would keep Buttercup occupied and in Rannit, but you can’t count on people to do as they ought when you needs it most. I called her name and she waved at me and one minute she was on the roof and the next she was behind me, goosin’ me in the fundament.

I turned and snatched her up and give her a hug. Ain’t no point in being mad at the creature, she’s been a child for so long I reckon it’s just her nature now.

And maybe having her run around in plain sight wasn’t such a bad event, I decided. Wasn’t no way Nabin could hurt her, and though I loves her like my own I know she can be a fearsome sight, glowin’ and a floatin’ like she’s prone to do.

So I took her by the hand and led her indoors and just turned her loose. She squealed and run off, lookin’ for mischief, and I reckoned she’d find it, soon enough.

Hadn’t an hour passed when Nabin came roarin’ out of the sitting room, his hands made into fists.

“Did you see her?” he said. “She ran into this room!”

I spied Buttercup right then, grinnin’ at me from behind them thick dusty curtains.

“Who?” I asked. “Mister Nabin, as Angels is my witness, ain’t nobody come into this room, save you.”

Right at that moment, I heard bare feet step behind me, walking past the open hallway entrance at my back.

Nabin’s eyes went big as plates. He flung up his hand, pointing and trying to talk.

I turned, caught sight of Miss Jenny, who was slowly walking past, white as Death.

“Who?” I asked, again. “Ain’t nobody there.” I walked to the hallway, stuck my head in it, pretended to look around. “Not a soul.”

Miss Jenny scampered off and darted into a room.

Nabin joined me. “She was there,” he said. Sweat dripped off the man’s chin. “I tell you I saw her!”

Then he whirled and swung. But you got to be awful fast to catch Buttercup when she sets her mind on the pinching game, and he wasn’t near fast enough.

“Mister Nabin, you ought to sit down,” I says, taking his arm. “You are over-wrought.”

“Something just touched me!”

“I reckon you was touched by a bottle of innkeeper Toad’s summer brew,” I said. “Now sit, before you work yourself into a fit.”

I got him planted in a chair. He took to talking about how he’d heard moaning all night, how he’d seen shadows moving, heard voices in his empty room.

He’d had two pots of mushroom tea and a bottle of rotgut. I was surprised he wasn’t having fist-fights with Angels and hearing his boots sing hymns. But I listened and wiped his face with a cool rag and had him talking nearly sensible when Miss Jenny glided through the room.

He went white. White as a sheet, they say, but I’d never seen it till then. He tried to talk but couldn’t and tried to stand but I kept him down and by the time Miss Jenny was gone I could feel his heart racing through his wrist and I knowed I had him hooked, and hooked good.

“Tell me you saw her,” he said. His voice was full of downright begging. “Tell me you saw her!”

I shook my head no. “I reckon what you’re seein’ is meant only for you.”

About that time, Buttercup drifted through. She was a couple of feet off the floor and glowin’ like a full moon and Nabin took one look at her and fainted dead away.

“Shoo, child,” I said. She giggled and flew right through a wall.

I sat up with Nabin all night, holding his fool hand and listening to him mutter. Watching him shake and sweat through nightmares.  Now, fifty years ago I might have felt pity, but this is a hard world, and he’d done harm. Like my granny used to say, setting things right ain’t no sweet slice of pie for the one serving it.

By the time the sun come up, Nabin was ready, and I reckoned so was I.

* * *

Two cups of coffee is all it took for the lies to start spilling out.

Give the man credit, he was good at spinning lies. He told a wild tale of a cheating, conniving wife, how she’d bilked him out of half his hard-earned fortune and then run off with the banker he’d trusted as a friend. Oh, he painted hisself as the victim, he did.

But he couldn’t fathom how the shade of his evil but still-living wife had come to haunt him here. She was alive when he left, he swore.

All helpful-like, I opined as to how she was certainly still alive, and he was just a sensitive artful man burdened by a world of cares, and how he could prove his haunt was just bad whiskey and nerves by confirming she wasn’t dead. I allowed as to how I had some small knowledge of such things, and since I was telling him what he wanted to hear anyway, he saw what he thought was the truth.

He was still middling sick from his bought with John Barleycorn, and I needed some herbs and spices from town anyway, so I obliged him when he asked me to go to town and hire a lad to travel to Rannit and quietly inquire about the well-being of a Miss Jenny Wilkins of the Barrows Wilkinses.

He looked relieved, after that. Got some color back in his cheeks. He took to sitting in that room what he called a gallery, smoking a big cigar, and when I left for town he looked his old self again.

Buttercup waved to me from the roof. I set off for town, snapping the reins, calculating how long it would take before Mr. Nabin started hearing moans and seeing women floating through his empty house.

I hired me a lad, told him to come direct to the house, paid him enough to make sure he did. I had me a beer while my wagon was loaded with bags of beans and flour and me and old innkeeper Toad had us a laugh about rich folks and their peculiar ways.

Then I headed back to the house, eager to see what state Nabin was in.

Damn, they had done a job on the man. He was holed up in a back room, screamin’ at the top of his lungs, swearin’ all manner of haints and spectres was roaming his halls. I reckon a man what lives by cheating and lying has a powerful burden of guilt stored up, even if he don’t know he’s adding to the heap, lie by lie.

Buttercup helped by adding her moans to Miss Jenny’s and there ain’t no sound more scare-ful than a genuine banshee’s moan. When she giggled at the end that just made it worse.

I kept denying I heard anything, kept being the voice of reason he clung to. We settled down into an easy routine. I made meals and set the table. Mr. Nabin drank hisself drunk and stumbled about shouting. Miss Jenny and Buttercup walked to and fro, Miss Jenny never making a sound, Buttercup moaning like a chorus of the damned, day and night.

Three days we done that. At noon on the fourth day, my lad came knocking at the door, right on time, and I made sure he handed Mr. Nabin the letter himself.

“Did you see her?” asked Nabin. The boy didn’t answer, but he did hold out his hand. Nabin slapped a silver coin in it and cussed.

“You’d best read what is wrote, Mister,” he said. “I’m getting away from here.”

And he did, showing us his heels as he ran for Knob Hill.

Nabin unfolded the paper and read silently. I watched his face, watched the color drain out of it, watched his shoulders slump and his hands start shaking.

I knowed what the letter said, since I’d writ the thing myself. I knowed it told how Miss Jenny hanged herself in her home, how she left a note saying she swore to take her vengeance on the man what wronged her. I’d even added a part about her being with child, since Buttercup had took to haunting with such a talent.

He crumpled the paper and let if fall.

“Well what did it say?” I asked. “She’s alive and well, ain’t she?”

He swallowed hard. I could see the lies churning in his head.

“No. She’s dead. Murdered by the man who helped steal my family fortune. She swore vengeance on us both, before she died. I tell you, I’ve seen her shade, right here, in this house.”

I pushed him back in a chair.

“If that’s so, Mr. Nabin, then there’s things we can do. You’ve been awful good to me. You took me in when I had nowhere to go, and if you hadn’t put a roof over my head I reckon the bears would have et me by now. So let me help you, sir. I’ve got the knowin’ of a few things. That’s why won’t nobody hereabouts hire me. My mother was a weird woman, and my granny, five times removed. That makes me a weird woman, and I reckon you could use the ways of a weird right about now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I can’t see nor hear this haint, but I can damned sure put paid to it,” I said. “I didn’t want to say nothing until I was sure. But if what you’re telling me is true, I reckon you’re haunted, and some.”

Question a liar about his lies, and you’ll hook him every time.

“It’s the truth, of course it’s the truth,” he said. “How? How can you possibly help me?”

“She followed you,” I said. “That ain’t easy, especially for a haint. Has she ever been here before?”

“Never.”

“Well, she had to use something, then. Something solid. Something special, what meant a lot to her. Them paintings, mayhap.”

“She never cared for those.” I seen him bristle up, watched him decide what it was poor dead Miss Jenny had come for.

“Money was the only thing she ever loved.”

I nodded, treading careful. “Might be,” I said. “But it would have to be coin she touched.” I looked toward the cash box on the stand. “Might it be that?”

I knowed it wasn’t. But his eyes were wary, even if he didn’t know why.

“No,” he said, licking his lips. “No.”

“I need a single coin,” I said. “Just one. Then there’s a thing I have to do. You’ll need to help. After we’re done, you won’t be troubled by her shade, and that’s a fact.”

“Just a single coin?”

“Just so,” I said. “You can have it back, when it’s over.”

On his best day, he would have laughed in my face. But Mr. Nabin was a long march from his best day, and about then Buttercup took to moaning, and he nodded and rose.

“Make up a fresh pot of coffee,” he said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

I curtsied and headed for the kitchen. I waited till I heard the doors shut, then I counted to ten and started peeping out windows.

He fetched a shovel and I watched him knock over the workmen’s outhouse and I laughed some when he started digging in the honey-hole, cause that’s where I would have hid it myself, and now I wouldn’t need to bother.

* * *

We waited for midnight again.

Now, there is a ritual for calling up and banishing vengeful spirits. But it ain’t nothing to be played with, so I just made one up. If you lights a few candles and burns some sage in a copper bowl most folks is perfectly satisfied that they’ve seen themselves some magic done, and Mr. Nabin wasn’t no different.

It helped that Buttercup appeared in the corner, glowin’ like a just-snuffed candle wick. Nabin wanted to stand up, but I held tight to his hands and told him if he broke our circle I couldn’t help him none.

When Miss Jenny walked in, he damned near bolted, circle or no.

She looked the part. Paler and deader than she had before. A trail of something thin and black ran down from her ears and the corners of her mouth. The dead possum she’d dropped on the other side of the door set off the mood like a treat.

Nabin leaned over and vomited.

“I calls you what troubles this here man,” I said, good and loud.

Nabin wiped his mouth. “She’s here,” he said. “Both here.”

“I conjure you to speak, spirit,” I said. “Make plain your grievance, or forever be silent and unseen.”

Miss Jenny raised her hand and pointed at Nabin.

“He slew me,” she said, and damned if she didn’t raise the hairs on my neck. “He wronged me, stole from me, left me in despair.”

“Is she speaking?” I asked, playing like I couldn't hear.

He nodded. “Lies,” he said. “All lies.”

“I will not rest while he lives on my fortune,” said Miss Jenny, still accusing him with her pointing finger. “I will never rest.”

“Damn you,” he said, his grip on my hand hurtful. “Damn you, I never laid a hand on you!”

Miss Jenny shrieked. She’d been listening to Buttercup and she laid it on long and loud, and then Buttercup chimed in, and Nabin started screaming too.

“Hear me dread spirit!” I yelled, over and over until I was hoarse. When they finally stopped all the bellowing I spoke. “You have no place here, among the living. Say it after me, Mr. Nabin. You got to speak the words.”

He managed to croak them out.

“I heard your words. I deny them. I give you the object of your desire, and adjure you to take it, and return to the land of the dead. Say it.”

He spoke, stumbling but getting the words out at last.

“Now put the coin in the pot, like I showed ye.”

He let go of my hands. This was the most dangerous part, him being so close to Miss Jenny, but he took the gold crown and dropped it in the ashes of the sage and put his hands down flat on the table.

“Now spit on it,” I said, and he did.

“Get thee gone, foul spirit,” I said. “You have spoken. You have been offered your due. Get thee hence, and trouble us no more. By the Angel Markhat, I conjure you. Begone, begone, and begone.”

I dropped a pinch of flash powder on the coin. The room lit up, and if I hadn’t closed my eyes before the powder lit off I’d have been as blind as Nabin for a spell.

When he could see again, Miss Jenny and Buttercup were gone. The coin was still there, and so was the stink, but it was fading fast, and he could tell.

“Is she gone?”

“Gone and at rest. You won’t be troubled again, Mr. Nabin. You has the word of a Toker on that.”

He sat there, staring and silent, for the better part of an hour. I reckon Miss Jenny played dolls with Buttercup, cause there wasn’t a moan, wasn’t a knock, wasn’t a sound to hint at ghosts in the walls.

Finally, he took up the gold coin, wiped it on his jacket, and pushed it across the table toward me.

I let my eyes light up. “Mr. Nabin, I don’t know what to say!”

He didn’t answer. He did get a bottle out of a cabinet and take to the stairs with it. I heard him kick off his boots and heard the bed creak when he laid down on it and I waited for the whiskey and the terror to take their toll.

Then I fetched Mr. Nabin’s shovel, and me and Miss Jenny did ourselves some digging while Buttercup glowed a bit so’s we could see. We was gone by first light, on the horses my lad hid in the woods. We had us a time dragging all them paintings with us, but Miss Jenny insisted, and I reckon she had cause.

Old Toad had them paintings crated up and shipped back to Rannit. We had some hard ridin’, Miss Jenny and I, but we got back in town in just two days, safe and sound if a bit bug-bit.

Markhat, he made a big fuss when I told him what I’d done. He said what’s to stop Nabin or whatever his name is from coming after Miss Jenny? What’s to keep him from showing up at her door some night with a knife and an intent to do some murder?

Well, I tells him, two things. First of all, Miss Jenny has hired herself a bunch of body-guards. Good men, honest War vets, with watchful eyes and keen sharp swords.

Then there is the letters I sent to a certain mob of rich folks. Letters about a man calling himself Nabin, who just took up in a big house overlooking Knob Hill. Letters about him bragging and showing off paintings and being free with coin. Coin he stole from them.

It’s a matter of chance, I reckon, whether the bears in the woods or the hard men the rich folks send will get to Nabin first, or whether he’ll make it to the river and spend his last handful of coppers on barge-passage south.

I likes to think, some days, that Nabin did just that, and that he found honest work somewhere, and that he had repented of his evil ways and even feels bad about what all he’s done.

But you and me both knows it’s a damned sight more likely some bear spent the winter chewin’ his bones, or that a rich man’s hireling silenced his lies with a sword and a stab.

Either way, it ain’t no concern of mine. Men makes their own fates, day by day, step by step, word by word. Comes a time when there ain’t no turning back, and I reckon Nabin was long past that, when I brewed him that first cup of mushroom tea.

I takes meals with Miss Jenny, once a month. She looks good. She found her smile again, after a time. She even give me one of them fancy paintings. I don’t much like it, to tell the truth, but it hides a crack in my wall and reminds me that clinging to things you don’t have no real need for brings your ghosts a-runnin’.

The end, and whatnot.

 

(top image © Olga Osadchaya | Dreamstime.com

 

Ticket to Anywhere

dreamstime_xs_76244022.jpg

I live in the US. Which means that lately, I spend a lot of time thinking about how best to get out of the US, quickly, if things get much worse.

Just for fun, let's say you had the chance to escape into any of the worlds of fantasy or science fiction literature.

Where would you go? 

I still haven't decided. But I am going to list my top picks, along with the pros and cons of each as a choice.

 

1) Middle Earth. 

PROS: 

  • Beautiful, unspoiled wilderness areas.
  • Elves. 
  • Second Breakfast.

CONS:

  • Orcs.
  • Lack of WiFi.
  • No mention of toilet paper or bidets in LOTR.

 

2) The Star Wars universe.

PROS:

  • Easy space travel.
  • Diverse, thriving multispecies society.
  • Wookies.

CONS:

  • Might get stuck in one of those awful prequels.
  • None of the planets serve coffee.
  • Would go insane trying to explain to everyone why there can't be battle noises in space because there is no sound in a vacuum.

 

3) The Star Trek Universe.

PROS:

  • Won't starve in a socialist utopia.
  • Cool ships.
  • Could pester Vulcans.

CONS:

  • Timelines keep getting reset.
  • Chances of a holodeck mishap are nearly 100%.
  • No toilets on the starships. Seriously. I guess they just hold it. 

 

4) The Ghostbusters universe.

PROS:

  • Ghosts.
  • Weird science.
  • New York.

CONS:

  • Fanboys have issues with women.
  • The EPA.
  • I'd be a minor character, and that seldom ends well.

 

5) Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

PROS:

  • Ankh-Morpork! More fun than Middle Earth or the Federation. 
  • Unseen University. Might land a job with the Librarian. Ook.
  • The Times needs good reporters.

CONS:

  • Ankh-Morpork is more fun that Middle Earth or the Federation, but it's still Ankh-Morpork, which means there's an excellent chance of meeting Death around every corner.
  • Might accidentally swallow a portion of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler's infamous sausages.
  • Magic tends to backfire, and dragons routinely explode. 

 

Where would you prefer to go? Narnia? Oz? 

Leave a comment, and maybe we'll find a wardrobe or one of those mysterious travel agencies...

Title image ID 76244022 © Franciscah | Dreamstime.com

 

Earth By Night

I build weird things.

Some of these weird things have no function, other than decoration. 

But some have a function -- albeit a weird one.

Take this so-called 'Tesla' radio, for instance. 

tesla1.jpg

It's a fairly simple device. At its heart is a diode. It's a crude AM radio, one whose simple design means that the strongest signal will wander in and be heard until another stronger signal pops up. It works best at night, when the old AM bands are most active. 

Right after I built this unit, I just turned it on and let it run for hours at a time. I recorded some of these sessions, and the results are -- well, creepy. 

I can almost imagine alien astronauts pulling into orbit around Earth and tuning in themselves. The following short recording is a sample of what they might hear, if they selected an AM band.

The recording has an eerie quality. If you've ever been on a nighttime cross-country drive, with nothing but the car radio for company, you know what I mean. Stations fade in and fade out. You'll get spine-chilling 'Children of the Corn' radio preachers railing about Hell and damnation one minute, old pop music the next. 

It's easy to believe you're slipping between dimensions on a long dark road in the middle of nowhere.

If so, here's the perfect soundtrack.

Earth By Night - click to listen!

No wonder the saucer men just shake their heads and take off for less sinister destinations....