The Writing Olympics!

As everyone on the planet knows, the Summer Olympics are underway.

I didn't see the opening ceremonies. From what I've managed to piece together from assorted tweets and bits of Facebook postings, the Olympics opened with Doctor Who and Mary Poppins joining forces to defeat James Bond. Or the Queen. Frankly I'm a bit fuzzy on that bit, although I do think the same little old lady who stared Hitler down back in the day could probably shove Mary Poppins' umbrella in an entirely undignified spot.

You may have surmised that the Olympics hold little interest for me. And you'd be right, because at the risk of posting heresy, it all boils down to people running, people chasing balls, or people running while chasing balls. They don't have cheerleaders. I can't even pretend interest in any sporting event that lacks cheerleaders.

No, if the Olympic committee wants my viewership -- and let's face facts, they lie awake at night hatching plots to get it -- they'll have to include events that appeal to me, Frank the writer.

And that will have the happy benefit of attracting my surly circle of fellow writers, many of whom last saw the outdoors (or even an image of the outdoors) the last time they changed houses.

So here is my list of suggested Olympic Events for Writers. Olympic Committee Members may direct their checks and adoration to my email address.

OLYMPIC EVENTS FOR WRITERS

1) The Fifty-Yard Coffee and Sandwich Run -- Look, if we had time to prepare real food we'd be cookbook authors. But we've got people to kill, worlds to ravage, forgotten subplots to tie up. Check bread for mold, smear one slice with peanut butter (if any), smear the other with whatever we can scrape out of the jam jar, nuke seven-hour old coffee, balance the cup, saucer, and sandwich in one hand while running through a darkened room toward the dim glow of a flat panel display. That's our life. So make it an event -- with a timer, horns, and of course a couple of dogs running underfoot. Oh, and make the coffee an unstable, explosive fluid. We've got ratings to worry about.

2)  The Just A Quick Email Check Relay -- This one will be a hit. Put two computer workstations one hundred yards apart. One station is set up for word processing, no net, nothing else. The other station, one hundred yards distant, is equipped to check Twitter, Facebook, email, Fark, Cracked, and various other sites. Authletes (that's my word for 'author athletes', and I get $1500 PER WORD, Olympic Committee) must compose a brilliant paragraph of prose, race to the social media station, and return within an allotted and ever-shrinking time. Naturally a few authletes will die trying to beat the buzzer after a marathon session of defending their paragraphs from critics on Twitter, but hey, this is the big time.

3) Query Letter Hide N Seek -- Fiendishly simple, yet endlessly entertaining. A fit young runner is handed a blank sheet of paper in the middle of a circle of authors. When the pistol sounds, the runner chooses any author at random and dashes toward him or her. If the runner manages to touch the author with the blank paper, that author MUST sit down and, in one pass, create the perfect query letter, or be lampooned mercilessly by a panel of New York literary agents.

4) Rejection Selection -- A modern-day reboot of a gory Roman favorite. Authors are placed into the arena. Each author may defend themselves only with the printed copy of their current work in progress. From the stands high above, editors and first readers take aim with finely-honed harpoons, while Strunk & White's timeless classic 'The Elements of Style' is read aloud over loudspeakers. The last author standing is awarded a gift basket filled with moist towelettes and a complementary copy of the current 'Writer's Market.'

5) The Dangling Participle of Death -- Authors and their grammar skills are put to the ultimate test within this maze of boobytraps and deadly machines.  At every turn, authors must use state-of-the-art graphic displays to correctly diagram complex sentences. Once the sentence is diagrammed, a door opens -- but is it the door to freedom, or death? Was that a gerund? Was that a dependent clause? Do you feel lucky, punk?
Correct answers lead the way to the next sentence. Incorrect answers result in amusing but gruesome spectacles. Don't you wish you'd paid more attention to Mrs. Fitzgiggens now, Mister All Knowing Author?

Add some of those events, and I'll watch. Otherwise, I'll stick to reruns of South Park.

Data Stream Lost

What is the significance of the image above?

None. Sometimes a wooden skull superimposed against the sky is simply a wooden skull superimposed against the sky.

Hey, I never promised I'd start making sense.


It's been a busy week for me. Taught my last Summer Writing Course on Thursday evening. The Library has plans to start an adult writing course in January of 2013, so if you're in the Oxford area and you have an interest in listening to me babble for an hour and a half once a week for a month or two, hit me with an email and I'll keep you posted on dates and other specifics.

Since the new Markhat novel Brown River Queen sold a couple of weeks ago, I've started on the new Meralda and Mug novel, All the Turns of Light.  I'll keep posting here about my progress or lack thereof. I would welcome emails of encouragement, especially if they arrive as credible threats to my physical well being. I'm having a hard time writing these days, folks. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's my own innate slothful nature, combined with a complete and utter lack of any discernable work ethic.

Sure, I sit at the keyboard and pound away. Like I've done all afternoon, just now.

I deleted it. Every word. It was awful, and no amount of editing was going to fix it.

They say every writer has a million bad words inside they have to write down before the good ones start emerging. I thought I'd gotten rid of the bad ones already.

Guess not. You learn something new every day, which as far as I'm concerned is a compelling reason to stay in bed with the covers pulled over your head.

That's my pal Thor. We call him Thorazine sometimes because he's nuts. But in a good way. Like any German Shepherd dog, he's attentive and protective and always, always eager to please. He's at my feet right now, half-asleep, ready to get up and play should I do anything but type.

Thor's a rescue dog. All of our dogs are. He was a year old when we got him, and it took him about 15 minutes to fall utterly and completely in love with Karen and I. His former person gave him up because he stopped being a puppy. News flash, idiot former owner. That's what dogs do. Stop being puppies.

I hope Thor doesn't remember Former Idiot Owner. I bet he does. But he seems very happy here, and this is his home, forever.

Thor is the second GSD (German Shepherd Dog) I've had the pleasure of knowing. Maggie, bless her soul, was the first. She was twice Thor's size, and he's no dwarf. Honestly, Maggie was the size of a small horse. I'm not exaggerating. She frightened people from considerable distances, even though she was a gentle, kind giant.

And she loved me. As, perhaps, only a GSD can. Once upon a time -- I won't go into the details -- I found myself face to face with an angered redneck, of the gap-toothed and tattooed variety. The guy was puffed up and ready to fight.

Until Maggie, who never had a moment of formal training, squeezed her massive frame through a partially-opened pickup truck window and joined me, at my side.

Redneck lad went from furious to calm and submissive in a heartbeat.

Maggie never growled. She never bared her teeth. She never breathed hard. She sat, right by my side, but we all knew that if Redneck started trouble Maggie would be the one to end it.

I walked away unscathed. Maggie obeyed my 'girl, truck' command like she'd been trained by the Mossad.

Maggie is buried, along with seven others, here on the property. She died of sudden acute kidney failure. 

I think of her daily. As I do of the others. They were all amazing animals, all our friends. All rescues, all strays, all judged worthless by the wide, wide world.

Which just shows what the wide world knows.

You may have seen this pic before. It's a steampunk gun. Okay, truth time -- it's a Nerf gun I modified so that it appears to be a steampunk gun.

I like making things. It's relaxing. Throw some Pink Floyd on the stereo, grab the super glue, dump a bin of spare parts on the workbench, and get busy. It's therapy, people, for minds that don't respond well to any other kind of therapy.

It's a bit like the gun Markhat now carries. You know, the gun Evis and his pals created in the catacombs beneath Avalante. First they created gunpowder, which allowed them to create cannons. Then some bright tech thought 'You know what? Scaled down, a man could carry one of these!'

And thus the handcannon was born. Markhat first carried one in The Broken Bell. Haven't read it?

Then get thee here and grab a copy! Look, it's got magic. Gunplay. A film noir detective. Intrigue. Adventure. Love. Hate. Hope. Despair. 

It's five bucks. 

Give The Broken Bell a try!

That's my bike.

She's a Honda Rebel. 250 cc, so we're not talking hog here. She'll do an easy 85, though, so she's no scooter.

Karen has a similar bike a Suzuki GZ250. Both get around 68 MPG. We ride them to work when the weather is nice, and kick around in the country on the weekends. 

I'd never ridden a motorcycle before buying the Honda. I laid her down the very first day, when I learned the hard way that making a turn into gravel at speed is a good way to test your protective motorcycle gear. I walked away without a scratch; the Rebel has a tiny ding in her gas tank, and since I've learned to ride a bike.

The first thing a motorcycle teaches you is speed. More precisely, the significance thereof. 

You're in a car. You're doing 65. You're bored, you're listening to the radio, you're thinking about work and a thousand other things.

Get on a bike. Do 65.

Oh, boys and girls. You suddenly understand, down to your bones, that this speed can and will kill you.

There's no illusion of safety. There's no deceiving simulation of your comfy couch in your living room.

The wind is screaming past your helmet. It's grabbing at your jacket. It's pelting you with bugs and debris, the tiniest of which sting like bullets.

The bike is roaring and shaking. Every miniscule bump in the road causes you to jump and lurch. The seat slams your butt with every rise, every dip.

The cars you barely glance at, when you're one of them, are each driven by Death himself. Because -- and this is true, gentle readers -- NONE OF THEM SEE YOU. 

They don't. I don't know why. I see motorcyclists, when I am driving my car. I recognize them as vehicles, and act accordingly.

And if you do too, I salute you.

But most don't. They go right on texting, go right on changing their radio stations while they pull out four meters in front of you, or merge right into your lane.

Just to survive, motorcycle drivers have to be twice as good as car drivers. Three times as good. Four times faster.  

That's why you'll see bike drivers waving at each other, when we meet on the road. 

We share a common fear -- that of the old lady in the Cutlass Supreme, who will turn in front of us and tell the Highway Patrol she never saw that awful motorcycle, it just came out of nowhere.

Here's me at my last book signing.

Hold the Dark is old news. I've written and sold and published two more books since then (The Banshee's Walk and The Broken Bell). But I like that photo, since it proves I still have hair.

And now, for an audio segment!

Click here for a new segment of Out on the Patio!

Hope you enjoyed the audio segment. I promise that's the last installment of 'Big Dogs Howling.' 

My friend Elsye Salpeter, author of Flying to the Light, just sold the sequel to Cool Well Press. So congratulations, Elyse! Well done!

See you next week!

And the beat goes on . . .

Some afternoons you write.

Some afternoons you take old barn lumber and make wearable skull masks, complete with display stand.

No wonder people worry about my mental state.

Normally, when I build things, I spend a lot of time making scale drawings and building it in my head to make sure all the pieces will fit before I make any cuts.I measure and mark all my lumber carefully, and check everything twice before the first sawdust flies. On this piece, I just went nuts with a jigsaw. No measurements, no straightedges, no squares. I just laughed maniacally and cut.

Surprisingly, the pieces fit together. You can't see them in these photos, but I even made my own square-head nails.

Total construction time: less than three hours, including the stand. Cost: zero dollars.

I'm not done with it yet. The wood needs some aging. And a bit if subtle finishing, to get the look I'm after.

What does one do with a life-sized but anatomically inaccurate rendition of a human skull, you ask?

Wearing it to work is out. Ditto for trips to Kroger or the bookstore.

So I'll probably put this up on eBay in a week or two as 'folk art.' If it doesn't sell there, my truck needs a dash ornament, and just by adding a stiff spring I can have the world's largest folk art skull bobblehead!

If nothing else, it served to let me build something, no matter how ridiculous, which I need to do from time to time.

Maybe now I can get back to writing!

Markhat News!

And so a great hush fell over the land. Everywhere, creatures fell silent and still. Squirrels halted in mid-scamper. Wolves paused in their howling. Woodchucks stopped doing whatever it is that woodchucks do.

For there it was. The email that would determine the fate of the Markhat series, in the inbox that held the email that would determine the fate of the Markhat series (repetition emphasizes content).

The woodchucks grew restless, eager to resume their tireless efforts at establishing a stable fusion reaction (they're a lot smarter than they look, people). The wolves gave me the stink eye, fearful that Sarah Palin might be sighting in on them from a Stealth helicopter. The squirrels complained bitterly, because re-establishing a sustained scamper isn't nearly as easy as it looks.

So I opened the email, and . . .

. . . and . . .

BROWN RIVER QUEEN, the new Markhat novel, has been accepted!


Yes, that's right, the 7th Markhat title will be making its way to a bookstore near you soon.  This is another full-blown novel, not a novella or a collection of short stories. The old gang is back, with a new face or two as well.

At the moment, it looks like we're heading for a March 2013 release date. I will of course keep you posted here.

Thanks for all the support! Now let's all go hug an Ogre in celebration!

Belfast: Both Barrels

According to the latest news out of the sewage-encrusted wasteland that is Northern Ireland, the Belfast City Council put dog Lennox down after holding him hostage for two years of sham court hearings and clumsy lies.

Here's a quote from the official TheLennoxCampaign page --

Official Statement From Lennox's Family:

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all again for your messages of support. We are sorry to say at the present time Belfast city council seem to be intent on killing our boy. Despite previous assurances otherwise, we have been denied the opportunity to say goodbye. We have also been told that we cannot collect his body and bring Len home. We have been informed however that we will receive "some" ashes in the mail.


Keep in mind that poor Lennox was a service dog to a special needs little girl. Keep in mind the Belfast City Council (spelled 'Baby-stomping Nazi bastards') dragged this whole wretched mess out for two years, while they kept Lennox in a despicable little wire cage surrounded by his own feces (and yes, there are photos).


In the end, the Belfast City Council wouldn't even let the Barnes family say goodbye. 


I suppose the Belfast City Council's offhand promise to mail 'some' of Lennox's ashes to his grieving family counts as rare fine charity in merry old Belfast. I imagine each member of the Belfast City Council (I want to make sure Google remembers what the Council is destined to be most famous for, thus the repetition of the words Belfast City Council) was teary-eyed and filled with pride when they magnanimously offered to mail the innocent dog's remains to the grieving little girl.


I suspect they'll send the envelope postage due.


Send it postage due, and then levy charges against the Barnes family for 'storing illegal dog-breed ashes' or something equally inane.  This is, after all, the Belfast City Council we're talking about. 


Because that's the kind of cruel, sadistic, unfeeling, vindictive, unreasoning, cold-hearted, psychopathic, puppy-murdering, bloodthirsty, evil-minded, rotten, despicable, worthless, cowardly, vicious execrable foul vile depraved repugnant malodorous inhumane barbarous stinking hateful reprobate maleficent bags of crap that make up the Belfast City Council.

I'm not even doing them justice in the paragraph above. They snatched some kid's dog after showing up at the wrong address, they decided Lennox was a pit bull when his Belfast-issued license and a DNA test clearly showed he was a perfectly legal 7 year old bulldog/lab mix, and then they kept the poor dog in a cage until they murdered him, two years later, with an offhand note saying 'Nope, no goodbyes, we'll mail you some ashes, are we good now?'


How do you even convey the depth of such blatantly cruel behavior?


I suspect that Lennox either died in his deplorable confinement or was put down months ago. I suspect the Belfast City Council was afraid to reveal this, after the media firestorm surrounding Lennox became apparent to even their dim, ratlike little minds.


Internationally-renowned dog trainer Victoria Stilwell recently traveled to Belfast with an offer to take Lennox away to the US at no expense whatsoever to the Belfast City Council.


The Belfast City Council refused to even speak with Victoria Stilwell. Consider that for a moment -- fat-headed career politicians refused to cavort in front of cameras. With a celebrity. Does anyone else find that strange?


I suspect they refused for two reasons -- first, not one of the Belfast City Council members is capable of completing a sentence without lapsing into a violent alcoholic rage. And second, because they knew Lennox was already gone. Lennox's ill-treatment was apparent in the few photographs leaked from his pathetic quarters. I believe Lennox died through abuse and/or neglect, and that's why the Belfast City Council refused to meet with Miss Stilwell or let the Barnes family say goodbye. 


They'd already killed the dog.


Which makes them liars as well as heartless villains.


It's too late to help Lennox. Unless the legacy of his horrific mistreatment at the hands of the Belfast City Council, the ignoramus judges, and the truly incompetent 'dog experts' that made up the whole wretched tale causes some change in the dark heart of Belfast, Lennox will have died (badly) for nothing.


So, by all means, put Belfast at the top of your holiday destination list! Belfast, famous for its exports of boils and goiters, where the authorities are so friendly they'll quite possibly mail you the remains of your pets a couple of years after they murder them. 


Belfast, city of delights, if by delights you mean bloodthirsty dog wardens and a City Council bent on casual slaughter of all dogs, whether they are a prohibited breed or not. 


Belfast, where pride trumps reason, where compassion is something that happens elsewhere, where they'll mail you the ashes of the one you loved.


Belfast City Council, you people are rotten to the core.

Dragons, Books, and Something New!

Life is change. Or change is life. Or is it time is money?  Stitches in time save goats?

I can never keep all that eldritch wisdom straight.

Regardless of my lackluster grasp of homilies, I'm going to do two new things in today's blog.

First, I'm going to talk about someone else's book for a change. Hey, stop all that clapping and cheering, I can hear you, you know.

Next, I'm going to introduce a segment I call 'Out on the Patio.' This will be an audio segment, recorded out on my patio, in which I blabber on about whatever inane subject strikes my fancy. There will be a link below.

Why am I doing this?

Mainly because I wanted to give you guys a change of pace. You come here week after week and read my rants and raves, and if I keep doing the same old same old I'll wind up boring you.  That's the main reason.

Also, I went to great lengths to purchase this nifty chrome-plated Blue Snowball professional microphone, and aside from a few ill-fated sessions of singing along with musical legend Billy Idol the Snowball hasn't gotten any use. My plan was to start a podcast. I still plan to do that, but I have to first get over this stage fright, and the 'Out on the Patio' segments seem like a good way to do this.

Finally, you'll all get the chance to marvel at my thick Mississippi accent. Mock away. But I'd really appreciate it if, when you're done laughing, you'd zap me an email and let me know how the sound quality was.  Too soft? Too loud? Muffled? Distorted? Made your dogs bark and your ears bleed?

Let me know!

First, let's talk about a book I just finished, Dragons of Wendal by Maria Schneider.

Before starting Maria's book, I plowed through several zombie novels and a couple of 'extreme' horror anthologies. To say I was aghast at the poor quality of these books would be a vast understatement. Formatting problems? All over the place. Grammar errors? Right, left, and rife. Bad storytelling? Oh yeah.

Dragons of Wendal was, if you'll forgive the analogy, a breath of fresh air. Spot-on perfect formatting. Impeccable grammar. Engaging characters, skillfully drawn, in a story that was by turns funny, frightening, and even (gasp) romantic.

Zoe, the heroine, is smart and plucky and accomplished. Her world is filled with magic and peril, but it is not just another Standard High Fantasy knock-off complete with red-faced blustery innkeeps and wise old whiskery mages. I loved Zoe's world. It lived and breathed, and visiting it was great fun.

I don't do spoilers, so I'd better shut up. Look, if you like my stuff, or Pratchett, or classic high fantasy with a modern twist, grab Dragons of Wendal. It's only $2.99 at Amazon for the Kindle; there's also a paperback version there for just a few bucks more.

And now for my audio debut!

Out on the Patio

You guys are my guinea pigs -- er, valued pre-release focus group. Let me know what you think by emailing me franktuttle@franktuttle.com!

Thanks. And stay cool out there!

Even Legumes Get the Blues

Maybe it's the heat.

And it's heat we have, in spades. The outside temperature Friday reached four hundred and eleventy hundred billion degrees, in the shade, beneath a bag of ice, wearing a suit made of ice cream.

And that was before things really heated up in the afternoon.

Even the snakes aren't biting. Instead, they squint and promise to hide under your pillow sometime in November. Even the omnipresent Jehovah's Witnesses have curtailed their soul-saving operations, figuring, I suppose, that this weather is so close to Hell as to make them functionally indistinguishable.

Whatever the reason, I just can't get my aging aftermarket brain in gear lately. I sit down to write. My brain stares at the screen for a moment and then wanders away, leaving my fingers to tap out sentences such as "The gyro hast regretted a frigid assemblage of melodious corn, forsooth."

That's not exactly going to wow the editors at Cool Well Press.

So what, you and I both ask, is your problem, Frank?

Heck if I know. I'm eating. I'm sleeping. I'm getting plenty of exercise, if by 'plenty' you mean 'as little as humanly possible,' and if by exercise you mean 'not exercise.' But that's fine, because I HATE exercise. I'm not even keen on being corporeal. It was fun for the first fifteen or twenty years, but you get arthritis and let's see you wax rhapsodic about it.

Maybe it's the slow book sales this summer. I see a sales rank dip down below 200,000 on Amazon, and suddenly just vegging out in front of the TV while 'America's Got Talent' proves America has little if any talent seems like a perfectly valid use of my rapidly dwindling supply of time.

Too, we must not discount prevailing public opinion, which may be summed up as 'Frank is inherently lazy.' There is considerable evidence to bolster this assertion. In fact, if the evidence for the existence of Bigfoot was half as pervasive, we'd all be waving to him as we met him on the street, three or four times each day.

I've tried positive affirmations, but I can't help but snicker at the things even while I repeat them to myself. YOU CAN BE ANYTHING! SEE THE FUTURE YOU WANT AND IT WILL BE THE FUTURE YOU EXPERIENCE!

Really? I want to be a 1999 Chevy Camaro.

I don't see any tires. I have lungs and not a small-block V6.

Bah. So much for that.

I know the only way out of the doldrums is through them. I have to keep typing, even if sentences such as "Gimlet races only brace the luckless vapors of solitude" are the only ones I produce.

I'm just tired. Maybe the weather will break. Maybe I'll find my center. Maybe the peach tree out back will start sprouting money.

The corpulent echoes of upright men sashay past, flags at half-mast, hats bespoke, ornery knees clicking...

Fifty Shades of Mug

I am writing in the wrong genre.

The buzz these days is all about the book Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm told Fifty Shades sells eleven billion copies per second on Amazon alone, and total sales of the book by all markets combined exceed the number of sentient beings in the populated universe by a factor so large mathematicians have been known to explode just trying to describe it.

This is in direct contrast to my own titles, which sell at a rate we will charitably describe as 'slightly slower.'

I took to a mountaintop recently to ponder, among other things, the reasons and causes for this inequitable disparity in sales. Okay, it wasn't a mountaintop, but sitting on that extra couch cushion does give me a commanding view of the foyer.There I sat, in a position of deep thought, through two entire episodes of Lizard Lick Towing.


And then it came to me.

My books feature very little of the content that made the author of Fifty Shades so rich they are now picking out a new sun because our current one is simply 'too yellow.'

Look through all my books. Spankings? Nope. Salacious romps in luxurious Wall Street offices? Um, no.

Even Markhat, who is a wise-cracking world-weary private eye, never gets any naughtier than a kiss now and then. Or, if he does, there's no way he's going to talk about it.

So maybe I need to move with the times. Maybe Markhat's next adventure should be entitled Steamy Rannit Nights, or Naughty Mama Hog. I have to stick with the three-word title motif -- you had noticed that, right? Well, it's a thing. All Markhat titles have three words. If there's a reason for that, it escapes me.

Of course, I'll also need to rename the new Mug and Meralda book. It was going to be called All the Turns of Light, but now I'm trying to decide between Pants in the Wind or Mug's Curious Encounter With a Rather Un-inhibited Philodendron Named Honey LaLove. 


Why not jump straight aboard the gravy train, though, and go with Fifty Shades of Mug?

I might even release a new version of All the Paths of Shadow - -see below!

And here's a Markhat title, renewed for the adult market!

Yes, the sky's the limit now!

Or you could just buy one of my plain old un-sexy books, linked below:

Frank's Amazon titles!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to research dirigibles...

That's Belfast! (A Save Lennox Post)

First, a bit of background.

Two years ago, in Belfast, a big black dog named Lennox was seized for the crime of being big and black.

Lennox never bit anyone. Never chased anyone. Never had a complaint spoken against him. He had a proper license. He had a good home. The Dog Wardens (that's apparently what Belfastians call the otherwise unemployable and the feeble-minded) were only at Lennox's home because they went to the wrong address. But because the Belfast Dog Wardens deemed him big and black, they also decided, using all six of their brain cells, that Lennox was a Pit Bull, a breed prohibited in Belfast.

What followed was a travesty. Photographs surfaced showing poor Lennox cowering in a tiny cage, surrounded by piles of his own feces. The official response by the Belfast City Council to these photos was a shrug and a puzzled 'Wait, what's wrong with fecal matter at one's feet?'

Two years passed. Various judges heard the claims of good behavior and non-Pit-Bullness. One of the Dog Wardens even perjured herself by claiming she was terrified of Lennox, despite a number of photos which showed the woman sitting calmly with Lennox, petting Lennox, even letting Lennox give her big sloppy dog-kisses.

A series of increasingly-corpulent Belfastian judges listened to all the evidence and wobbled their ponderous chins like Jabba the Hut sucking down a fifty-gallon drum of jello before blurting 'Off with his head!'

They even brought in a so-called 'dog expert,' who, after a brief interval of pointing at crows and insisting they were Welsh Corgies, claimed Lennox was not a Pit Bull, but was a settee, and could be dangerous, maybe, I see a lamp, what's a Pit Bull anyway?

You can read my previous comments on the matter here.

Today, though, marked the end for poor Lennox. The final judge, who I will not grace with even a name because I don't believe in adding Google points to bottom-feeding slime-worms, decreed that Lennox be put down at once.

His family won't even be allowed to say goodbye.

That's Belfast.

You've got your grossly incompetent, profoundly moronic Dog Wardens, who equate big and black with deadly slavering killing machine. You've got your City Council, who spend two years refusing against all evidence that the Wardens might have made a mistake. And you've got the absolute worst judges this side of the Fifth Galactic Arm, because they heard the evidence but clearly didn't understand enough of the big words to see what an idiotic case the Wardens and the Council brought against poor Lennox.

That's Belfast. Stupidity powered by arrogance compounded by incompetence.

Two years, they kept this poor friendly dog in a tiny metal cage. Two years, they put his family through Hell.

That's Belfast.

By now, I imagine poor Lennox is gone. And I imagine that the Belfast City Council and the Dog Wardens and the pudding-headed judges are all relieved that the whole business is history.

Except it isn't. You backwater, inbred Belfastian buffoons are about to learn, the hard way, what sort of impact negative press on the Web has on blighted little slums such as the one you call home.  There are those of us out here, well beyond the heaps of garbage that line your borders, who won't let people forget who and what you are.

So by all means, let's talk about Belfast. Let's talk about their tiny little cages, their ignorant and cruel civil servants, and the nasty air of casual cruelty that hangs over the whole wretched place like some persistent, noxious fog.

Because that's Belfast.

Rest easy, Lennox. None of this was your fault. No.

That too belongs to Belfast.


PS--
Please copy and paste this blog, or at least the URL, to the Lord Mayor of Belfast, email addy below:

lordmayorsoffice@belfastcity.gov.uk

Please be advised that the customary title for the Lord Mayor of Belfast is 'Peaches.' Or 'Twitface,' if you're feeling nobby.

Something Custard This Way Comes

One bit of writing advice I always give is this -- once you've submitted a piece, forget about it and start something new.

This advice doesn't play particularly well when I offer it to the checker at the grocery store, but other writers see the value in it. There is nothing to be gained from obsessive worry over a title that is now on an editor's desk. You can't hurry the process. You can't affect the outcome. All you can do is chew your fingernails down to your elbows and waste a lot of time.

So I started my new book the very day I sent out the old one.

But today, some eleven days after the submission, I find myself doing the very thing I so often warn others against. No, not licking outboard motors, but obsessing over a submission.

Now, eleven days in this business is nothing. Eleven weeks isn't even considered a long wait. I once waited eleven months for a yes or a no on a short story (it wound up being a yes). So getting impatient after eleven days is somewhat akin to starting your car in Dallas, driving a block, and wondering if you're in Alaska yet.

Thus, in order to purge the evils spirits of doubt and dismay which bedevil me, below are the most likely fates my manuscript has already suffered:

1) My submission is being passed from editor to editor as each bursts into great raucous gales of laughter and screams of 'Is he SERIOUS?'

2) The publishing house has decided to pass on the book, and they're taking out a full-page public rejection space in the New York Times just to make absolutely sure I get the point.

3) They ran out of synonyms for NO.

4) They've hired the entire clown cast of Ringling Brothers Circus to pile into a tiny car and drive to my house and throw 919 pies in my face, each accompanied by a cheerful shouted "We regret that your submission does not suit our current needs" followed by a nose honk, a squirt of lapel-flower seltzer,  and another thrown pie.

5) See #4 above, but with musical accompaniment by the Blue Man Group.

These are the things that fill a writer's unkempt head. I'll dream of clown cars, I swear I will.

It's All Good Fun Until 20 or 30 Kinfolk Get Gut Shot

Like 17 million of my closest friends, I've been watching the History Channel's 'Hatfields & McCoys' mini-series.

The first episode, which opens during the American Civil War, raised the bar on casual, almost recreational murder. The second episode teetered on the verge of self-parody, as pretty much everyone turned on everyone in a hog-fueled free-for-all of unkempt facial hair and petty yet brutal violence.

I'm not sure what's in store for us tonight. I can only assume that some point an entire basket of warm and fuzzy puppies will be brutalized to the accompaniment of period-authentic fiddle music.

I'm not slamming the script or the production values. I'm not slamming the production values because they're unimpeachable. The actors all look like they've spent the last five years doing heavy manual labor in the same clothes they're wearing. The beards are lush and properly grizzled, even those on the women, the chickens, the trees, everything. The weapons and use thereof are correctly portrayed. I'm pretty sure I even smelled pig manure in a couple of scenes.

The script can't really be attacked because the producers did their research, and as far as I know their portrayal of all parties involved is accurate.

What's my problem, then?

The Hatfields and the McCoys all have one thing in common -- they're awful, awful people. All of them. Men and women, boys and girls, spoons and forks. There's not a hero in the bunch. Even the old granny women are lurking in their rockers, Bowie knives at the ready, just dying to draw some Hatfield or McCoy blood.

I did get a chuckle when I realized every barn-dance scene resulted in at least one disgusting, pointless murder. Not because I find disgusting pointless murder humorous, but I've always been suspicious of barn dances because putting that many hillbillies and that much high-octane corn whiskey in the same vicinity simply cannot end well.  Which makes 'Hatfields & McCoys' the natural antithesis of 'Hee-Haw.'

Will I watch the final episode tonight? Probably, because A) I have weak impulse control and B) if the whole thing culminates in a Tarantino-esque orgy of death and blood at a barn dance I'll have joke fodder for weeks.

Yes. I'll watch it and I'll shave immediately afterward and I'll go to bed stone cold sober, and if a barn dance breaks out anywhere near me I'll wrap myself in the Internet and turn up the volume on some Industrial Darkwave to drown out the sound of fiddles and musket fire.

Things to Do in Denver When Your Novel Has Been Submitted

Markhat fans, rejoice, for the new book is off to the good people at Samhain Publishing.

Which means I (and you, yes, both of you) get to wait for the verdict. Will Brown River Queen be accepted, and soon take its place as Book 7 of the Markhat series? Or will Brown River Queen be judged lacking, and consigned to the 'Thanks-but-no-thanks' pile?

In fact, did the email with the book attachments ever get there at all? Sure, I sent the email. That is, I think I did. But what if the attachments have already been corrupted? What if my outgoing email server ate the whole thing? What if I just think I sent it, when in reality there's an editor out there who just received a Word file containing nothing but the letters E, I, and M?

I kid, of course. And no, I did NOT just check my Sent Mail folder. I am far more evolved than that, and in any case, you can't see me.

So, while I await word on Markhat's new adventure, I'm already underway with the sequel to All the Paths of Shadow.  And with any luck I'll get my podcast up and running soon too.

Of course, that's along with replacing the clutch in my motorcycle and putting new brake pads on Karen's Suzuki and keeping the jungle from overtaking the house and fighting crime in the dead of night. Although frankly I may have to cut back on the crime-fighting bit -- I'm spending a fortune on capes and pain relievers, and I keep falling asleep at the wheel of the Tutmobile.

It's a never-ending whirlwind of excitement, is the writer's life.

I'd like to thank my brave and heroic beta reader Kellie Bagne, who has the eyes of an eagle and spectacular grasp of grammar. She found eight pages of typos and problem areas in the rough draft. I found one, mainly because the hood of my crime-fighting costume keeps falling down over my eyes.

So wish me luck! I'll keep you all posted as quickly as word comes in. Also wish me luck with the new book!

Thanks!

Breaking the Law

One of the rare delights of being a fantasy author is taking a good hard look at the immutable laws of physics and, after careful and studied consideration, thumbing one's nose at them.

With the exception of the Wistril stories, I'm not one to have a wizard wave a staff and lay waste to whole landscapes. No, I prefer for my magic to make some sort of sense -- after all, the kinetic energy required to lay the aforementioned waste had to come from somewhere, right? If not, well, there goes Conflict, right out the window, because if my wizard can flatten armies with a wave and a word, what problems does he really have?

I tried to base the magic in All the Paths of Shadow on a feature of our world with which I am familiar. Electricity. Electrical current. The 'holdstones' Meralda uses are magical batteries. In her universe, magic flows like electricity, using many of the same conductors, in fact. That's why she's always winding copper wires around things.

And it's also why she can't mutter a few mystical words and send enemies flying. Yes, she can build marvelous devices, but they have limits. She has to be smarter than the bad guys.

Since I just finished the new Markhat book, and I'm letting a talented and fearless Beta reader have a look, I've dived right into my next book, which will be the sequel to All the Paths of Shadow.


Entitled All The Turns of Light, this new book will chronicle the further adventures of Meralda and Mug, as they take to the skies in a truly massive airship I am now designing.

I'll post drawings when I draw some I'm not ashamed of.  But that's not what I'm here to crow about.

Here's the deal. I need my airship, the HMS Intrepid, to be capable of a non-stop one-way voyage of some twenty-five thousand miles.

As you might imagine, that presents a few engineering problems, even if the story takes place in a world where magic works.

Now, airships aren't anything new to Meralda's world. I mention them frequently in the first book. It's even stated they've been flying passengers and cargo about for fifty years. They use 'lifting gas' which is obviously hydrogen, and they move using 'fans,' which are obviously propellers. I didn't go much deeper than that because we never boarded one in All the Paths of Shadow.


But the airships were always on my mind. I established that Meralda was familiar with steam engines. Heck,  she invented the electric motor on her world, along with electric lights. So we have access to steam engines and electricity. Still, what drove the airships, I wondered?

The Realms don't have petroleum. I considered and rejected alcohol based combustion engines as too inefficient. Steam engines are also out -- heating that much water to those pressures requires lots and lots of onboard fuel, and when your choices are wood or coal, you're in trouble.

I was leaning toward electric motors running on straight-up batteries when a better idea popped into my head.

And here it is!

The Intrepid's fans are powered by steam engines. But instead of boilers and heaps of coal, they're using what we would call quantum entanglement, which works like this:

Cast a hollow steel block with very thick walls, an inlet, and a steam escape valve. Call it Boiler A.

Using magic, pair this with an second block, which is identical in design and dimensions. We'll call this Boiler B.

The magical pairing is an expensive and meticulous undertaking, and it's why the Steam Guild is so wealthy.

Now, the fun part. Fill Engine B with water and heat it, burning coal or wood or the angry emails I'll get from environmentalists about burning coal. In our universe, Boiler B would boil, while boiler A sat there and looked confused.

But in Meralda's world of magic, if you build a fire under Boiler B, it's Boiler A that actually heats up.


So yes, something must be burned to generate the heat. And yes, there are losses involved in the transference from B to A.

But the airship Intrepid can take to the skies without having to haul a few hundred tons of coal around. And I feel like this 'works,' because I'm only cheating a little bit.

It's entirely possible that only a hardcore geek could get excited about applying the Law of Similarity to a fictional airship engine. But I'm a geek and proud, baby!

So be on the lookout for a new Markhat novel and a new Meralda and Mug! And by the way, if you haven't read All the Paths of Shadow yet, it's only $3.99 at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Okay, back to work for me!

The Zen of Editing

If you've been wondering what Frank is doing these days and you guessed 'a brief stay in the Lafayette County Detention Facility,' well, you'd be wrong.

I've been editing. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I finished the first draft of the new Markhat novel, BROWN RIVER QUEEN.

Sure, there was wild celebration. About eight minutes of it. Because finishing a first draft gets writing the first draft out of the way, true, but it also ushers in the next phase of the process, which is the edit and re-write stage. Or, as I call it, the 'Flaying off my own skin with a rusty butter knife' stage.

First drafts are, for me anyway, limping, misshapen things. Let's say I forget the name of a street I mentioned 34 pages ago. I don't stop and go back and look -- I just type ****, which is my code for 'Go back and look this up, doofus.'

Same for the names of minor characters. The wine steward from Chapter 4? ****.  The date, if I've lost track of it? ****.

All those **** entries have to be cleaned up. Spell-check has to run.  I do my own searches on the words I habitually screw up -- discrete and discreet, I'm looking at you two. I also run searches on the characters I tend to transpose.

Then comes the re-read. Here I'm looking for repetition. Bad alliteration. Dialog tags that repeat or don't fit or are missing altogether. Plot holes. Subplots I may have started and then dropped. Notes I wrote to myself and stuck in the manuscript and forgot about. The last thing you want to do is leave an editor scratching her head over entries such as 'Make RT kr.ull w/o 9 of the thing.' You don't want to bring undue attention to the fact that you're making this stuff up as you go.

So yeah. It gets messy.

All this before I ever consider sending the manuscript out. In fact, I like to do all this more than once, because it's so easy to miss things. I know what I meant to write, and my traitorous lazy brain sees those words, and not the ones my fingers actually typed.

This time around, though, I've added a new practice to my usual round or re-reads and edits. For the frist time, I'm having my PC read the whole book, from start to end, aloud to me, while I turn away from the screen and jot down notes by hand on a notepad.

Word 2010 has a built-in speech function. I wish I had Word 2010. Word 2010 runs about one hundred and twenty bucks. Instead, I have Word 2007, which is 2010's mute sire. So I found a free text-to-speech program on CNET called Hal Text-to-Speech Reader, and I'm using that.

I pull up the actual Word file and copy an entire chapter. Then I paste that into Hal and grab my notepad. It's slow, even after setting the read rate to just below AUCTIONEER INSANE, but wow is it effective.

I've already read through the whole thing twice, and was feeling pretty good about the state of the manuscript-- until Hal started reading to me, in her robotic flat voice. Mistakes that sailed right past my eyes leaped out screaming in my ears.

Here are a few examples, taken straight my my notepad:

twenty of more (should have been twenty or more)
isn't hat right (should have been isn't that right)
is a good as (should have been is as good as)
to and from (should have been to and fro)

Those are hard to catch, when they're hiding in several hundred pages of text. But my ears caught them with no trouble at all.

I am weary of the robotic voice and the complete lack of inflection, though. And the often hilarious pronunciation of words and names I made up myself.

But it's still a good system.

The edits on BROWN RIVER QUEEN are going quickly, all things considered.

In other news, if you wanted to grab a copy of my YA fantasy book ALL THE PATHS OF SHADOW but  also wanted to wait for the price to fall, you're in luck! You can get the e-book from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble or the publisher for only $3.99, which is six bucks off the former price.

Here are some links, so click away!

All the Paths of Shadow at Amazon for your Kindle

All the Paths of Shadow at Barnes & Noble for your Nook

All the Paths of Shadow at Cool Well Press in any format

Chalk Up Another One

It is done.

I speak of the new Markhat book, BROWN RIVER QUEEN. I just added the words THE END to the first draft.

Another novel. Seventy-odd thousand of what I believe to be the right words. Written at a time of my life when frankly I'm surprised I was able to write at all.

I love this book. Maybe I've hit my stride at last. Maybe I've gotten to know the characters and Markhat's world so well I'm finally able to show it with clarity to you, the reader.

Maybe I just got lucky.

Whatever the case, I love this book. It's got thrills and chills and surprises. Long-time Markhat fans, who've been along for the whole ride, are going to learn some new things, and understand some familiar faces a lot better.

Now keep in mind I've haven't sold BROWN RIVER QUEEN yet. In this business, there are no sure things. But a part of me is absolutely certain this new book will be accepted, because yeah, it's that good.

I spent yesterday re-reading big chunks of it, getting ready to write the epic dust-up at the end. I'll be honest with you -- more than once, I read a portion, and was honestly amazed that those words came from my rather addled and dysfunctional brain. Seriously, folks, it's a mess in here. Did I really write that?

Now the real work begins. A first draft is just the beginning. There will  be re-readings. There will be re-writes. A couple of people out there are going to be heartily sick of BROWN RIVER QUEEN before anything hits an editor's desk.

And, assuming the book sells, then will come more of the same. Re-reads. Re-writes. Line edits. Did I have the sun rise on page 134 and again on page 136, even though only six hours had passed? Was Markhat wearing a black hat on 98, and a grey one on 101? Did I spell grey gray or grey? Did I use stair or stairs consistently throughout?

But I'll do all that work, and I'll do it gladly, because that is the only way to put out a book worth its price.

I may never get rich at this game.

BROWN RIVER QUEEN may never sell a million copies. May never be made into a big-budget movie.

But by gum, it will be a good book. And people will read it, and say to themselves at the end "That was a darned good book."

And that's the highest praise I can conceive.

The End.

Twitter Versus Word

I've noticed an odd inverse relationship between my fiction writing output and my social media involvement.

When I'm really churning out fiction, my Tweets and blogs and FB updates dwindle to nothing, or nearly so. And when I'm writing at a crawl -- paragraphs a day, and not many of those -- I'm racking up tweets and FB posts and blog entries by the dozen.

Right now I'm on a writing roll, cranking out the last of the new Markhat novel in good solid bursts. I don't think I've been on Twitter since the middle of last week. I know I haven't blogged since last Sunday.

When I considered this just now, my first thought was 'Well, I was busy, with the real work.'

But was I?

I mean sure, I was busy. Busy writing, which is good, because if I don't get some new books out pretty quick people will forget who I am and I'll be starting from proverbial Square One when I do have a new title to sell.

But could it be I'm also harming myself as an author by neglecting the various social media?

I'm a bit envious of mid to late 20th century authors, who never had to ponder such questions. They wrote books. Maybe they did a few bookstore signings, and if they were lucky a few newspaper interviews.

Earnest Hemingway never had to look at a clock and decide whether to hit Twitter for an hour before supper or just keep on working on the new chapter.

No, I'm not comparing myself to Hemingway. For one thing, I don't have any cats. I also don't see any shotguns in my future. But my time to write is limited by unavoidable circumstance -- do I limit it even further just trying to maintain scant visibility in a sea of new titles and authors?

It's not that I don't enjoy hanging out on Twitter, understand. I do. I could do it all day, much in the same way I could play 'Skyrim' all day. But my internal auditor frowns at such pursuits because, he notes, "I'm not that young to begin with and I'm certainly not getting any younger."

So I feel guilty if I don't write. That's a good thing, one it's taken me years to construct.

Now I feel guilty, or at least a ghostly facsimile thereof, If I'm not blogging and tweeting. I'm not so sure as to the efficacy of this feeling. For all I know, it's my perpetually lazy subconscious trying to trick me into getting on Twitter and out of work. Because that's just the kind of sneaky crap my innermost self would love to pull.

So I've compromised. I'm blogging. Whining, really, but that counts.

BROWN RIVER QUEEN is very nearly done.  We're down to the climatic final scene, where everything comes to a rather violent head.  I think fans will find that Markhat outsmarts all his foes deftly this time around, with very little help from any supernatural allies.

See? Just writing the above, I had an idea concerning the final dust-up. It's just a tiny detail, but it will add something genuinely creepy to the business at hand. I'm off to add it.

See you all later!

BROWN RIVER QUEEN Update

The new Markhat novel is nearing completion!

How near?

I just finished an outline for the last three scenes. True, I don't normally do outlines, but there are a lot of things happening fast and the order and flow is crucial. I have to make sure Event A happens to Person B while Person C suffers Fate D as Band F plays Song H. And so on. One slip-up here means a lot of editing later, so I've got a timeline I'll be following from here on out.

I don't like putting a number or a date on these things, but we're looking at another 10K words or so. Even a writer as glacially slow as myself will be able to whip that out in a matter of a week or two.

So, for all you Markhat fans who've been waiting patiently to see what happens next, your wait is nearly over!

I will of course keep you posted, here and on Twitter (I'm @Frank_Tuttle there) and on Facebook (Frank Tuttle).

The climax to this one is a lot of fun. If by 'lot of fun' you include a few severed heads, the walking dead, and Mama Hog doing things with her cleaver that you won't see on The Food Network. But I think fans of the series will really enjoy this latest outing.

If you're not already a fan of the series, might I suggest trying it? Here are the Markhat books, in the order I suggest you read them in, with handy links.

Dead Man's Rain

The Mister Trophy

The Cadaver Client

Hold the Dark

The Banshee's Walk

The Broken Bell

If print books are what you want, Amazon has those too -- The Markhat Files contains all three of the first Markhat adventures (Dead Man's Rain, The Mister Trophy, and The Cadaver Client).  Hold the Dark and The Banshee's Walk are also available in print, and The Broken Bell hits print this September.

If epic YA fantasy with hints of steampunk and humor is more your taste, check out the first entry in my new YA series, All the Paths of Shadow.

I keep a better list of all my books here.

Okay, back to work for me!

Friday Roundup

This has been one heck of a busy week.

Fletcher, our shall we say mature dog who was recently diagnosed with canine diabetes, is now on a new form of insulin. The old insulin simply stopped being very effective, and after a valiant attempt to find a dosage that worked, our vet suggested we try another type of insulin altogether.

Let me pause to give a shout-out to Dr. Ware Sullivan, of Oxford, Mississippi. He cares what happens to Fletcher. He and his staff don't just do their jobs, and stop there. No. They're genuinely and sincerely committed to treating their patients with everything they've got, and if Mr. Fletcher could say thanks out loud, he would. But I can, so I do. Thank you.

There is no canine-derived insulin. We're using human insulin to treat Mr. Fletcher, which makes the possibility of rejection by his doggy physiology a good possibility. It's common in these cases to switch insulins at least once, and that's what we're doing.

Fletcher endures the blood tests and vet visits and the days spent away from home with an easy, good-natured grace. I don't know how, but I believe he knows we're all working hard to help him, and he appreciates it and shows his appreciation by being a trooper.  Is it obvious my wife and I love dogs? Well, we do.

And there's been the usual hectic business of life. Today culminated in a long drive in a small pickup with no air conditioning, one large dog, a pizza, motorcycle gear, two backpacks, and two adult humans. But it was fun. We even made it there and back with the pizza intact.

Best of all, I've gotten some writing done! I'm really pleased with Brown River Queen, and I hope fans will be, too. Markhat's world gets deeper and older and more interesting every time I write about it, and I think that's a good sign.  I'm thinking I'll be sticking THE END on this one in the matter of a couple of weeks, at most.

Of course, I'll still need to edit it and then submit it. I wish I could say my fame had reached such lofty heights that a sale was not just certain but inevitable, but that isn't exactly he truth. Heck, it isn't even in the same building with the truth.

But it's a good book. I think it will sell.

I'm also writing a short how-to book, which I intend to use as a text when I teach a summer fiction writing course to a group of talented teenagers this June. That's been fun too. I'm going to give it away for free on my website during the course, so if you're at all interested, stay tuned. I'll provide links shortly.

And of course there's the upcoming podcast.  I've decided to name it BRACE FOR IMPACT. Because that sounds evocative and adventurous, and honestly, what could be more adventurous than a 48 year old fantasy author sitting behind a microphone and blathering for 20 minutes?

So I've been busy. Busy in a good way.

It's Friday night, and it's nearly eight o-clock, and that means only two things -- SUPERNATURAL, and FRINGE. Yeah, I dig the Winchesters. And Agent Dunham. Hey, even writers need to relax, right?

See you folks soon!

Live From the Dark Side of the Moon

I've also been fascinated by radio.

And gadgets. Radio and gadgets. And loudspeakers.

So that's radio, gadgets, and loudspeakers. Along with other things. But, for the sake of brevity, we'll stop there.

There's always been something inherently magical in the idea that a hairy man can sit in a tiny room somewhere and speak into a metallic contrivance and have his voice heard, if not all around the world, for hundreds of miles away. I can remember, as a kid and even as a young adult, listening to a lot of late-night radio. I spent most of the 80s working the graveyard shift, and in those ancient days of yore it was the radio, not the net, that kept us supplied with music and entertainment throughout the night.

And the DJs were the masters of the air. Rock 103 in Memphis was the closest genuine rock radio around, and many a night we busted a proverbial gut listening to the decidedly offbeat musings of the DJs. Ah, youth.

But this is the space-age a go-go 21st century, baby, and radio is something old folks talk about (see above). No, this is the Age of the Net. No more fiddling with antenna or tuners. Well, okay, some of us still do that, but we do it quietly, and in the privacy of our homes. At night. Wearing masks.

But I digress.

I still believe there's something unique about hearing another human voice. Too, to be perfectly honest, I've been told that podcasting (the new equivalent of a radio show) is a good way to promote one's books.

I have books. I like money.

It seems a natural fit.

And so, I have decided to embark upon a journey of creation. In addition to this blog, I will also soon begin publishing a twice-a-month audio-only podcast. Why audio only, you ask?

Have you seen me lately? Sure, back in the day, I was always being mistaken for George Clooney, so much so, in fact, that I actually starred in the sequel to 'Ocean's Eleven.' But time has not been kind, so it's an audio only podcast.

Now, when I decide to undertake a task, I do it right. I research the topic. I analyze other works in the field. I hurl abuse upon street mimes. Granted, that doesn't really help the process, but I hate those guys.

Researching and preparing for a podcast has been great fun because, as I mentioned, I love gadgets. Especially audio gadgets. I've got a bunch of loudspeakers that I designed and built, and they sound great, if I may say so.  And when my research immediately indicated that I'd need to get a decent microphone, I was ecstatic.

Sure, I could get by with a twenty-dollar WalMart special. It would allow me to record my voice.

And it would also sound like, to be blunt, crap. As do the microphones built into pretty much any piece of consumer electronics (and yes, that includes Macs, sorry).

That led to a bit of a problem, since I lost most of my fortune in the Great Dirigible Crash of 1911.  Happily, my research turned up a pro-grade mic I could actually afford.

I give you the Blue Snowball microphone!

It lists for a hundred bucks, which is a steal for the quality and specs. I got mine from Tiger Direct for a mere $69 plus shipping.

My Snowball arrived today, and here she is, in all her chrome-plated metal glory!

Yeah, I know, but I'm my own photographer too.

Now, was the Blue worth the money? Let's just see.

Click on the thingy below to hear an audio sample of my voice recorded by the mic in my Dell netbook. I'll wait right here.

Frank speaking into the built-in microphone.

It's intelligible speech. It does sound distant, and lacks any kind of tonal character.

But now try listening to the Blue, and hear the difference...

Frank on the Blue Snowball

Now that is a microphone.

I did notice a slight pop when I pronounced the P (say that really fast ten times), so I rummaged through my junk drawer and came up with a pop filter, shown below.

Yes, it's a piece of scrap felt sandwiched between the metal grille elements of an old air filter, supported by a length of flexible aluminum wire, a hose clamp, and a heavy metal thing from who knows where. But it works, as you can hear below:

Pop Filter Test

See all the fun I've had? I got to play with a gadget, build something, record audio clips, move them from netbook to PC using the Cloud, and mess around with Audacity, the free sound editing software I'll be using.

Oh, and yes, I actually wrote, too. Brown River Queen is coming to a close, people! And it's been one heck of a ride. 

I'll leave you with one last image. I found this while clearing up free space on my website -- it's a genuine, unretouched screen shot from June of 2009. It doesn't need any explanation -- just look at the names and the rank numbers.

That was a very good day.

Top of the world, Ma!

Get you some!

Tax Tips for Writers, 156th Edition, With Illustrations Throughout

Certain eldritch signs portend various significant turnings of the year. Birds fly south. Or maybe north. Frankly I don't spend much time outdoors with a compass charting the movements of waterfowl.

But even a dedicated indoorsman such as myself can observe the anguished 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 a full-on single-sitting read of Snooki's 'A Shore Thing.'

And even I know what these grim 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 his brow and the set of his jaw. Equally sacred to the American governing psyche is the ideal that they get a 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 three bucks and a coupon for $2.00 off any foot-long club at Subway?

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

And how wrong you are, Grasshopper.

They know. Maybe it's the Carnivore communication surveillance system. Maybe the CIA 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 them 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 involves 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 73 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 more than minimum wage. 

Bon appetite, my friends!

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