Foothot Five the First

Frank's Foothot Five

The glamour and allure of the writing life!

Welcome to the first installment of a recurring feature which shall be named Frank's Foothot Five!

Today, I've ambushed -- er, enlisted the generous assistance of fantasy author Elyse Salpeter. Elyse has four novels out, and entries in several anthologies (all available from Amazon, of course). Her latest book, The Hunt for Xanadu, was just released Friday (I had an ARC, because hello, Evil Genius!). I read it, and loved it, and I recommend it!

Here's how the Foothot Five works. I ask the hapless author five questions, which the author answers as quickly as they can. Meanwhile, the bucket fills with scorpions and the counterweight mechanism slowly raises the door to the tiger den. It's all very simple, especially if you live in a mad scientist's abandoned Lair of Evil. Sure, the place is hard to heat, but it came with indoor acid pools and three old Soviet nukes!

Author Elyse Salpeter

That's Elyse above. She's written everything from YA fantasy (The World of Karov, The Ruby Amulet, Flying to the Light, The Sun and the Star) to modern-day thrillers filled with Buddhist mythology (her latest, The Hunt for Xanadu). You can visit her website www.elysesalpeter.com, follow her on Facebook, or find her Twitter feed here. She maintains a weekly blog, Musings From a Type A Mom, which is always fun to read. Now it's my turn to shut up and let the author speak.

 

So here they are, the Foothot Five! My questions in bold, replies in plain text. Enjoy!

Frank's Foothot Five

Foot-hot. Adverb, archaic. "On the spot. See also hastily."

1. Let's go back to the beginning. Can you remember the moment when you first realized 'I want to be a writer?' If so, describe the circumstances leading up to that moment. If you can't remember, make something up, because after all you're a writer.

Elyse: I always had an active imagination as a kid and loved to collect things like buttons and stickers, to shells and rocks (yes, my desk was filled). I also loved to draw, but not sweet happy faces and cute little animals. I drew families of fifty kids (and the siblings were all twins, triplets and other multiples) and drew wild pictures of cars and houses, each with fifteen plus levels to them. They had movie theaters, carnivals, zoos and cafeterias. Then I’d draw stores and have floor after floor of different kinds of products ranging from the mundane, pants and shoes, to the more arcane (floors filled with wigs seemed to be a big theme for me as a kid)

<story takes a sad turn here, get out your tissues>  So, to get back to your question: One day I was in my ninth grade honors English class and I wrote an extra credit book report that I was immensely proud of. Instead of simply regurgitating the book, I decided I wanted to conduct it like an interview and I had a news reporter interviewing the main character.

When the teacher, (a bitter old woman who will forever remain nameless and will thankfully never teach a student again), gave it back to me, she wrote a big red zero on the top and told me (loudly, in front of the class) that it was the worst piece of writing she’s ever seen. (this was a creative writing assignment, mind you) She crushed me. Right in front of her I crumpled it up, threw it on the floor and said “I give up.” I stopped writing until college. Then, one day in my freshman year, I had this idea for a book and I remember saying to myself, “Don’t let that horrible lady control your life.” So, I didn’t. I wrote the book and that’s where my writing “life” started. Getting the guts to put the words and ideas finally on paper and not worrying about what other people would think.  

 

2. What do you find to be the most maddening aspect of being a writer today? With me it's snakes, but that's my fault because my writing desk is inside the cobra exhibit.  Describe your main source of frustration. Feel free to kick it in the shins. 

Elyse: I have a few frustrations. Personally, it’s finding the time to write while managing work and a family. The second is exposure. How to find the right people to read my stories? Third is social media. What aspects of that beast do I concentrate on? There are days I spend hours on social media and I cringe when I look at my WIP’s just sitting there waiting for me to open them up and get to work finishing them.  

3. Every book is a journey. What do you hope your readers experience as they travel with your characters and visit your fictional worlds?

I hope I can let my readers forget about all the stresses they have and for a little while they can disappear into the worlds I create. Now, these are not always happy little ditties where everything is a bed of roses, but I do try to create stories that are interesting and hopefully entertaining (at least they are to me!)  

4. You've just captured a leading New York literary agent in a trip-line net. In the 30 seconds it takes the agent to retrieve their cell phone and summon a SWAT team, pitch any of your books in a single sentence compelling enough to both get a read and have the charges dropped. GO!  

Elyse: I have a brand new idea to pitch to you. The Hunt for Xanadu is about a young girl on a mission to avenge the death of her parents, murdered in their quest to find the mystical land of Xanadu. It’s steeped in Buddhism, has an international flavor and I believe it’s something we’ve not read about in the field before. (I think that was under 30 seconds, but I talk fast – hey, I am a New Yorker!)

5. Every writer has a process by which words get put together. I use foolscap and a tattoo gun. Faulkner used whiskey and a manual typewriter. How do you write? Mac or PC? Word or Scribd? Morning or night? If you have any warm-up rituals (loud music, samba dancing, llama taunting) describe those too.

Elyse: I have an HP Laptop and write in Word. A few months ago my Dell laptop’s motherboard was slowly crashing and I had the big decision to go Mac or PC. After debating, living for days in the Apple store and grilling every employee, then appealing to the internet for suggestions, then living in Microcenter, I finally chose to keep the operating system I was comfortable with. It was the best decision I made. The company I purchased the computer from saved everything on the old laptop and transferred it to the new one. Seriously, within ten minutes of having the new laptop I was already working on my WIP. Best feeling ever! 

Click here to go to Amazon!

Thanks, Elyse, for joining us on the blog today! Everyone will be happy to know she got past the tigers, avoided both acid pools, and entered the shutdown code before the nukes went off, making her an honorary member of the Evil Genius Society. Mrs. Salpeter, your monocle, sinister white cat, and miniature (evil) clone are waiting by the umbrella stand. Hope to see you again soon!

What am I Reading Now?

I am mid-way through Neil Gaiman's and Dave McKean's The Graveyard Book. 

The Graveyard Book is the story of an orphaned infant taken in by the kindly residents of a graveyard. Young Nobody, Bod for short, grows up among ghosts, learning their ways, not knowing his life among the dead (and the undead) is anything but perfectly normal.

I won't post any spoilers, but if you haven't read this classic, you need to. Zelazny couldn't have done it any better.

Writing News

Progress continues on the new Markhat book. Of course I can't say much without spoiling any surprises the book holds, but I can say I've reached and surpassed the halfway point.

Here's a very short spoiler-free excerpt:

From THE DARKER CARNIVAL:

Mama Hog climbed atop a cannon, waving her cleaver, shouting words lost to the gunfire and the shouting. I saw vague shapes in the dark behind her, and wondered if I was seeing Darla and Gertriss make a desperate last stand.

Evis charged the monsters. The rotary gun chewed through their right flank, keeping Mama and the cannons out of the line of fire. Things went down in a tangle of legs and inky dark blood.

One of the halfdead tossed me a sword. The blade glowed faintly. I caught it as Slim hefted Alfreda into the back of the wagon.

"Die well!" he bellowed, and together we charged the left flank of the nightmares.

Season's Greetings!

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Yule, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Pancha Ganapati, Hogmanay, Yalda, Boxing Day, or Hanukkah, I wish you all the very best. May peace and joy not only follow you but make smooth the ways and fill your pockets with cash during the holidays and the new year!

And hey, if you're still looking for that perfect ebook stocking stuffer, I have a few titles out!

The Even Wilder Man of Yocona Bottom

Fig 3A, The Yeti, sans britches.

Many of you will perhaps recall a prior blog entry entitled The Wild Man of Yocona Bottom, in which we recorded some unusual vocalizations originating somewhere along the Yocona River.

Subsequent scrutiny on the source audio has revealed something startling -- I believe there may have been not one but two creatures sounding the calls. One was close, and the other was further away, and harder to hear. 

But when you do hear it, it sounded like this:

Second Call Source

First you hear dogs bark, barkbarkbark. Then you hear a long loud call, woooooooo, then dogs barking.

It's that wooooooo call I missed on the first close listen to the audio.

Contrast that call with what we heard as much louder and closer, on the rest of the recording:

Closer Call Source

Two callers, of undetermined species? Could be.

In an effort to identify what sorts of critters make their home in the woods behind out house, we installed a trail camera this afternoon. We hung it on a tree in what I think is a great spot, where two heavily-traveled game trails converge on the banks of a pond surrounded on all sides by dense woods.

Late afternoon, dense growth. Perfect place to hide.

First, I hung a line of apples across the game trail. Because as everyone knows, Sasquatch loves Granny Smith apples.

That stalwart fellow in the lower left corner is Lamar, our big black lab. Lou Ann was also with us, but every time she saw the camera turn her way she turned her backside to the lens. 

Lamar is now a gentle giant with a wide lazy streak. We found him many years ago running down the middle of Lamar Avenue in Oxford, thus his name. He weighed 15 pounds. I have never seen a creature so emaciated and skeletal; the vet said he should have weighed three times that, for his age and build. As you can tell, he eats rather well, these days.

But back to the wild wood. No sooner had I hung the apples, than one fearsome forest creature appeared!

I tossed a handful of jewelry into the woods, and she took off in pursuit of it. Always come prepared, kids!

Here's the whole setup:

Apples in the trees, trap camera strapped to tree. I should be able to catch anything traveling along either of the two trails or anything heading toward the pond for a drink.

The astute viewer may realize the apples and the camera are hung at levels more suited to Hobbits than Sasquatch. Which may be true, but I didn't think to lug a ladder through all that brush, and if all I get is a picture of hairy knees that will be fine too.

I predict here and now the vast majority of the photos will be those of deer, foxes, coyotes, feral pigs, dogs, bobcats, raccoons, and of course the occasional wandering saucer man.

I'll keep you posted on what images we capture.

FRANK'S RANDOM RECORD ALBUMS

I've told this story before, but it's been a while so I'll tell it again.

I'm a classic rock guy. I grew up listening to rock -- stadium rock, prog rock, classic rock. Pink Floyd and AC/DC and The Moody Blues and The Alan Parsons Project and the Beatles and ZZ Top and a host of other bands formed my musical ecosphere. My knowledge of 80s rock was encyclopedic. I listened to music non-stop.

Something happened in the early 2000s, though. I stopped listening to new music, and instead retreated into my collections of CDs (you kids can Google compact disc).

But as much as I love my collected music, a year or so ago I got restless. I wanted new music, stuff I'd never heard before. I wanted the same joy of discovery I felt the first time I listened to Dark Side of the Moon, or Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

I wandered around in iTunes, getting a song or two here and there, finding a few gems but missing that old rock and roll magic.

Then a new record store opened up in Oxford. An old-school record store called The End of All Music, selling vinyl albums.

What sorcery is this, I wondered? Who buys vinyl anymore, and why?

I'll answer both the who and the why questions. I buy vinyl, and I buy vinyl because it's just more fun.

My turntable isn't some five-hundred dollar European laser-balanced precision machine. I'm using the same massive Sony amp I bought in 1992. My speakers are so old they get AARP letters, addressed R. Speaker and L. Speaker.

But slap a vinyl album on my rig, and sit back in a comfy chair, and I tell you it's magic all over again.

I believe a good vinyl record on a decent turntable played through a good amp and quality speakers sounds better than the same album played from a digital audio file or a CD.

Could that be a bit of self-induced delusion?

Yeah, sure it could, but wouldn't Life be sad and awful without self-induced delusion?

What I really love about a vinyl album is this -- it forces you to A) sit and B) listen.

You hear the tracks in the order the artist arranged them. You don't skip from track 2 to track 9 just because the first few nanoseconds of a song don't grab you. Unless you want to haul your aging carcass our of your comfy chair and fiddle with the tone-arm, you're going to go where the musicians lead.

And that's when the magic comes back. For me, anyway.

Now, I don't know a thing about today's music scene. Show me a wall of new albums and I probably couldn't identify more than one or two. I don't even understand the new genres.

So my method for buying a new album is this -- I grab at random.

Tonight's random pick is The XX, and their album named X. Or XX. Frankly I'm not sure, because the cover says X and the record itself says X but the liner notes state XX. So either X or XX, and my inability to decide should showcase my aforementioned ignorance of modern music.

But I never let a little thing like ignorance get in my way, so here's my review of the record X (or XX).

Liner notes. Good times.

OVERALL RATING: 8 out of 10 Blurry Bigfoot Heads 

I like this album. It's contemplative, a touch melancholy, soothing and unhurried and complex. If I had to assign a genre to it, it would be what I call Coffeehouse. It's not in-yer-bloody-face rock ala AC/DC, and it isn't what's-it-all-about-Alfie prog-rock like Pink Floyd. 

But it's really good rainy day listening music. There are a lot guitars and some synth work and some drums. The vocalists are a man and woman and they sound as if the belong together. Best of all, they're not mad at each other, and they're not whining. They're singing, and it's pretty.

This is great music for:

• Relaxing after a long day of crushing one's enemies 
• Plotting global domination, but plotting for a year or so away, so no big hurry
• Enjoying a relaxing goblet of Wobbly Wizard 3506
• Posing dramatically in the corner of the coffee house while pretending to write a sonnet on foolscap with a quill pen
• Enoying another relaxing goblet of Wobbly Wizard 3506, because man, that stuff rawks

Okay. That's my review. Let's head on over to Amazon, and see what genre and musical type this album is classified as. That way my incompetence can actually be quantified.

The XX album samples

First of all, it's The XX. Okay. Look, if you're the XX, maybe put another X on the cover. Us old people tend to be literal.

Next, the description:

"The xx exist in a time and space of their own making. In 2009 the south London trio’s debut album ‘xx’, quietly made at night over the course of two years, bled steadily into the public consciousness to become shorthand for newly refined ideas of teenage desire and anxiety. Articulated with a maturity beyond their years, its hallmarks were restraint and ambiguity."

Um. 'Newly refined ideas of teenage desire and ambiguity.' Did you catch that?

I didn't hear any of that. Frankly, I'm so old I wouldn't know a teenage desire if it walked up to me wearing a TEENAGE DESIRE placard. But still, nothing about this album suggested 'teenager' to me.

I said 'contemplative and melancholy.' The artists who created the record claim 'teenage desire.'

Man, that Wobbly Wizard is some potent stuff!

I now abandon any thoughts of being a serious music critic.

But hey, I loved the album.

LAST WORDS

The new Markhat novel is at the halfway point. Yeah, I said it, the halfway point. Which makes this effort the very fastest I've ever achieved. Is writing a novel fast fun?

You bet your Wobbly Wizard it is. Because I'm as eager to know what happens next as I hope you'll one day be.

Speaking of which, I should get back to work. Take care, peoples, and 'ware those teenage desires!

If You've Seen My Brain, Please Send it Straight Home

IN WHICH I USE NEARLY 3% OF MY BRAIN

Fig. 1: The author's renegade brain.

As the old saying goes, some days it's simply not worth the trouble to chew through the leather straps and get out of bed.

Today has been one of those days, where writing is concerned. I sat down to write this blog at precisely 2:39 PM. It is now 6:06 PM. I have completed, let's see, 38 words.

Here's my effort laid out in a timeline:

2:39 PM -- Open file. Note that empty white space must be filled with squiggly things.

2:46 PM -- Words. That's what the squiggly things are called. Glad we got that settled. 

2:47 PM -- Fingers hang dramatically above keyboard.

2:54 PM -- Fingers hang dramatically above keyboard.

2:59 PM -- Fingers hang dramatically above keyboard.

3:04 PM -- It is the fingers I use to type with, right? I know I've done this before, but for some reason everything seems foreign right now. Have a I skipped a step? Am I missing a lizard? Is there a song I'm supposed to hum?

3:09 PM -- Close file. Take in deep breathe. Hold, exhale, let the bad air out. Focus. Center myself. 

3:16 PM -- Krampus. I should write about Krampus, the Old World evil companion to jolly old St. Nick. 

3:17 PM -- Right, because there aren't already a zillion blogs out this time of year yammering away about some obscure Austrian tradition nobody outside of Austria has ever heard of. Yeah, THAT would be original.

3:19 PM -- Resolve to simply skip the blog tonight. Better no entry that a bad one.

3:20 PM -- Ha! If you skip post one you'll skip another and then another and soon your blog will join the millions of other abandoned blogs on the Island of Misfit Toys, how could you do that you complete bastard.

3:22 PM -- Is Krampus really that bad of a subject? I mean, it's creepy, there are a lot of cool pics I could post, and there's even a series of hilarious Austrian speed-metal Krampus carols people might enjoy....

3:23 PM -- Shut up about the Krampus! No more with the Krampus. 

3:24 PM -- Fine. Fine. How about you come up with something, Mr. I Know Precisely What The Readers Want to Read?

3:25 PM -- Fingers hang dramatically above keyboard.

3:32 PM -- Fingers hang dramatically above keyboard.

3:46 PM -- Fingers hang dramatically above keyboard.

3:57 PM -- Fingers hang dramatically above keyboard.

4:04 PM -- All bloody right, do the Krampus thing.

4:05 PM -- No. The moment has passed. How about the Voynich Manuscript?

4:06 PM -- You did that already, back in 2012.

4:07 PM -- Darn. Okay, I've got it, I'll post another letter from my Muse, grumpy old whatshername.

4:08 PM -- Those weren't really all that funny. 

4:09 PM -- Are you sure? I thought they were. People seemed to like them.

4:10 PM -- Trust me, they were just being nice. We need something new.

4:11 PM -- We could just play BioShock Infinite.

4:12 PM -- Shut up.

4:13 PM -- Just for half an hour. 

4:14 PM -- SHUT. UP.

5:52 PM -- What? Where'd all that time go?

5:53 PM -- You were staring. See, if we'd played BioShock, we'd have at least fired off a shotgun or two.

5:59 PM -- What if we played BioShock and recorded our session and supplied humorous commentary?

6:00 PM -- Then you'd be Conan O'Brien, and no offense, but you ain't him.

6:01 PM -- Point.

6:05 PM -- Look, I've got an idea. We make a timeline, see, and fill it out. That could be funny. 

6:06 PM -- Should have gone with Krampus.

MIDSOUTHCON NEWS

If anyone attends MidSouthCon, and if you can you should because it's a blast, it can now be revealed that I have been asked to serve as the Toastmaster for the 2015 MidSouthCon 33!

Already, I am assembling my entourage. If you're interested in joining, the following positions are still open:

• Man-At-Arms. Must be of large build and imposing nature. Primary duties include clearing a path to the meat tray in the snack room and, um, okay that's pretty much the only primary duty. Knowledge of Klingon, first aid, and room layout of the Memphis Hilton are required.
• Food Tester. Applicant must sample suspect food offerings to ensure they do not contain healthy, wholesome, or otherwise non-fried components or ingredients. The successful applicant can locate, by smell alone, a sealed bag of cheeseburgers hidden anywhere within a 500 foot radius.
• Sycophants, Yes-Men, and Yes-Women. Position requires a minimum of three skilled individuals who excel at verbal communication. See the movie 'The Fifth Element' and Ruby Rod's associates for model sycophant behavior. Ability to vary verbal inflections when saying the phrase "Yes, Frank, you are exactly right" is a MUST.
• Groupies and Hangers-On. Twelve positions. Successful hires must be able to either play a musical instrument or hum along with my personal theme music (TBD) when I enter a room. Squealing and clapping skills are also required.

All salaries are commensurate with experience, and are paid in the internal currency of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

Buy me please

AREN'T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE WRITING A BOOK?

Why yes, yes I am.

Progress on THE DARKER CARNIVAL continues. Not today, of course, but I wrote every night last week except the evening of the Christmas parade.

Here's a random couple of paragraphs, right out of the first draft:

FROM THE DARKER CARNIVAL

"Welcome to my world," he said, smiling a toothless little smile. "I am Ubel Thorkel, master of Dark's Diverse Delights. My men tell me you write for a newspaper." He nodded at the paper I clutched in my hands. "May I see it?"

I handed it to him. "I am Mortimer Bustman, city desk," I said. He didn't offer to shake hands and neither did I. "People in Rannit are curious about your carnival."

He sat, opening and holding the paper so that I could no longer see his face. 

"Are they now," he said. 

"Oh, they are indeed," I replied. "Mr. Thorkel, do you have any idea how many Rannites start each day by reading the City Daily? Our circulation is well over twenty thousand, and growing by the week. Why, a half dozen paragraphs in our Diversions section could bring in hundreds of visitors to your carnival, the first few nights alone."

He lowered the paper and stared at me.

"My men suspect you are a tax man, Mr. Dustman."

"The name is Bustman," I replied. "We both know even the Regent of Rannit can't collect taxes on a traveling carnival encamped outside the city walls. I don't work for the Regent. I'm just here to write about your carnival, Mr. Thorkel. We haven't seen a traveling show in years, and people are eager to read all about you."

The walls of the tent shut out noise as well as light. There'd been a gang of workmen hammering tent-stakes into the ground when I entered. I hadn't heard a single hammer blow since passing through the flap.

Thorkel didn't blink. I didn't like his eyes. They looked dry, as if both were glass with irises and pupils daubed on with paint.  

He spoke. "Why don't you tell me the truth, Mr. Bustman?"

"I just did."

He let the Daily fall down to his desk. "You came here to mock. To ridicule. To demean. To print lurid descriptions of my show, for the titillation and fleeting amusement of your vapid, witless readership."

"That's twenty thousand vapid, witless readers, each paying five coppers a week to be titillated and fleetingly  amused."

He smiled.

"Twenty thousand, you say?"

"Twenty-two thousand, by the end of the week."

The carnival master nodded. Amid the masks and the wigs, mirrors hung haphazardly on every wall, and the effect of his nod reflected in so many mirrors filled the tent with the illusion of movement.

"May I ask what wage you are paid, to mock and demean?"

"Five coppers a word," I said. "Six, if I manage to fit in ridicule."

He laughed. The sound was abrupt and dry and harsh. I'd heard jackals once, while my unit camped under the stars at Branach, sand dunes sparkling with hoarfrost in the night. Thorkel's laugh sounded like a jackal's cry, hungry and humorless and cruel. 

He fished in his jacket, withdrew a silver Old Kingdom coin, and tossed it to me.

I caught it.

"Make them good words, Mr. Bustman. Excellent words. Now then. Let us show your magnificent audience the varied and unforgettable wonders of Dark's Diverse Delights, mobile circus extraordinaire."

END EXCERPT

And that's it for today. I shall now relent and allow my renegade brain to do whatever it wants, i.e., alternate between napping and drooling. 

Merry Krampus!

PS -- Brain image at top is courtesy of  © Oleksiy Tsuper | Dreamstime.com

Ho Ho Hum, Or a Holiday Survival Guide for Writers and Their Caregivers

Gift Ideas for Writers

© Simon L | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Is there a writer in your life? Are you struggling to come up with that perfect Christmas gift for him or her?

If so, my condolences, because I'm a writer and I know full well what a morose bunch of budding alcoholics we writers usually are.  I'm constantly staring off into space, oblivious to the world around me until the front bumper strikes something solid and the air bags deploy.

That can't be good company.  I know from experience that the Highway Patrol is seldom thrilled.

Every year, it's the same dilemma.  What to give for Christmas?  What will make your writer's eyes light up, or at least open halfway?

As usual, I'm here to help.  My list of suggestions follows, in order of descending utility.

1) BOOZE.  HOOCH. ROTGUT.  That's right, kids, the Demon Rum himself.  Why?  Simple.

A writer's job is to plumb the depths of the human condition, or at least convince a harried editor that he or she is plumbing said depths long enough for the ink to dry on a contract.  And the first thing you'll learn when you start taking a really close look at the much-vaunted human condition is that doing so induces a sudden, powerful urge to have a drink.  Or three.  Or maybe just leave the whole bottle and start running a tab, because right after the urge to drink comes the realization that it's going to be a long bad night.

2) A THESAURUS. Because nothing works better as a coaster for the drinks mentioned above than a really thick book.  I'd counsel against actually using a thesaurus for writing, because no one wants to read sentences in which characters advance, meander, promenade, traipse, or wend one's way across the room.

3) A CAT.  Hemingway had a cat, right?  He had a cat because a cat is the only creature on Earth more vain and self-centered than the average author.  While other more social animals might feel neglected or ignored by an author, who is probably staring off into space or rummaging in the cabinets for more liquor, a cat is perfectly comfortable being ignored because it doesn't know anyone else is in the room anyway.  The cat's 'I don't care if you exist or not' attitude is perfectly suited to the author's mindset of 'What? Huh? Who?'

4) AN ELEGANT LEATHER-BOUND JOURNAL.  We all know that writers, and I mean serious professional writers with book contracts and everything, are always prepared to whip out a convincing character or a heart-wrenching plot at the drop of a dangling participle. So give your author the most expensive, ornate leather journal you can find, wait a year, drag it out from under the whiskey-stained thesaurus, and give it to the writer again.  They won't ever know, because each and every page will be as blank as it was the day you bought it.  Seriously, people.  I tried the whole notebook by the bed schtick for years, and I recorded exactly two notes in it, which read:

"Char. A sees the thing, intro. other scene w/char B, str. exc. Plot hole & 9 days."
"Why G. not cld/not E?"

Which explains why Hemingway's cat had six toes, for all I know.  But leatherbound notebooks make pretty good coasters too, and if the glasses sweat on them, you can tell people the stains are from a solo hike through Guatemala which you took to 'reconnect to my muse.'

I don't have a Number 5.  You should probably stop at Number 1, because gift-wrapping a cat is nearly impossible and writers can spot a gift wrapped thesaurus from across a crowded room anyway.

(originally published here December 2011)

The Perfect Face for Radio

Last Saturday I was a guest on the Steve Bradshaw Radio Show. If you missed the live show, the interview (minus commercials!) is now online for your listening pleasure. Click here  and then click on the play icon by by name. My accent is sure to amuse children and calm restless emus. We talked about writing after my accordion audition went horribly wrong.

A Writer's Christmas Carols

© Vlawton | Dreamstime Stock Photos

It Came Upon a Manuscript Clear

(Sung to the tune of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear)

It came upon this manuscript here

Fatal problems with the pace,

Then beta readers bending near

Did make that WTH face.

This plot is contrived, they sang with glee,

the shallow protagonist weak,

Not a theme or an ending anywhere in sight,

Best click SELECT ALL, DELETE.

God Rest Ye Merry Editors

(Sung to the tune of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen)

God rest ye merry editors,

and bless thy weary eyes,

For NaNoWriMo just ended 

Now begin your painful sighs.

The flood of just-completed books 

Shall wing to you its way,

Bringing forth sparkly vampires in love,

vampires in love, and hungry zombies every day!

We Wish You Would Format Correctly

(Sung to the tune of We Wish You a Merry Christmas)

Word's Smart Quotes, your editor notes, 

should never be used, any way.

But even though you turn them off,

they sneak back in to stay!

A global replace will always fail,

Oh Word, why hate me so?

I'm now going line by terrible line,

Smart Quotes, why won't you go?

We Three Writers of Fantasy Are

(Sung to the tune of We Three Kings)

We three writers of fantasy are,

Considering putting out a tip jar.

Sales are slowing, bills are growing,

Yes I think we need that tip jar!

Jingle Bells

(Sung in ragged gasps accompanied by the rending of clothing and the gnashing of teeth)

Jingle bells, bloodshed sells,

Why didn't I write Game of Thrones?

(Song only has these two verses, followed by long bout of inconsolable weeping).

Silent Night, No Email Tonight

(Sung to the tune of Silent Night)

Silent night, no email tonight,

Hope is lost, no sales in sight.

Agents are burning my manuscript whole,

Laughing and laughing at the gaping plot hole,

Why didn't I see it before, oh?

Why didn't I see it before?

Of the songs above, God Rest Ye Merry Editors was inspired by author PN Elrod, whose quips concerning editing are rapidly becoming legendary. 

And may I suggest that anyone who enjoyed my Markhat series should check out Elrod's Jack Fleming series? Great books, with a genuine film noir flair and some fine writing.

Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, Wherever You Are

Remember, every time you buy an e-book, and author gets to eat.

That's it for this week. Thanksgiving put a huge dent in my word count, but the new Markhat (The Darker Carnival) is at the one-third complete point. 

Let's stay safe out there, people!

Into Wildest Yocona

Pretty, right? Don't eat them.  You'll see unicorns, but then you'll die.

On numerous occasions in this blog, I've spoken about the Yocona River, which runs about a mile from where I now sit.

My steamboat in Passing the Narrows is named the Yocona. I've used the woods around here as the setting for Mama Hog's ancestral homeland of Pot Lockney. I even blogged about strange sounds I recorded along the Yocona River a few weeks ago.

Today, via the twin miracles of photography and waterproof boots, I'm going to take you on a journey through fields and forest and right down onto the sandy banks of the Yocona River itself.

While one might not simply walk into Mordor, that's precisely how we arrived at the River. Walking is the best way, at least under certain circumstances. And by certain circumstances I mean this:

That's ice. Shaded water remained frozen all day, which means the nine-foot-long water moccasins with heads the size of piglets are all snug in their winter beds, dreaming whatever it is that venomous monsters dream. 

Which isn't to say there are no perils along the way, even on nice cold days. There are. First and foremost, we have the over-eager deer hunters with their rocket-propelled grenade launchers and their cavalier disregard for property lines. Next on the list are the wild boars, which is what happened when Mother Nature saw an Abrams M1 tank and decided she could do better with tusks and hooves. 

Then we have feral hogs, which can be nasty if they have piglets around, and coyotes, which -- nah, I'm not really afraid of coyotes. I've run into them before and while I got the distinct impression they wanted to sell me something on Craigslist, I'd put their physical threat level somewhere between 'Hay, bales of' and 'cheese, slightly off.'

Even so, I armed myself with the Mantle of Sarcasm and the Breastplate of Snide Remarks, gathered my valiant companions, and off we went.

You can shave off a half-mile hike through the woods by skirting this soybean field. That line of trees in the distance? That's the halfway mark on our journey.

But let's stop here a minute. I acted as expedition leader and Bearer of the Mighty Camera. Lou Ann, self-appointed safari guide and ad hoc legal counsel, took point. Karen armed herself with a stout length of oak and listened politely while I misidentified trees and took on the air of an experienced game tracker, even though I once got lost going to the refrigerator and I'm vague on where ham comes from. 

And thus we sallied forth. 

The first 400 feet revealed my folly in not bringing along a secret stash of Snickers bars. The sun beat down, well, to be honest, like a distant 40-watt incandescent bulb. The wind bore with it a deadly chill. Um. No.

Actually, it was quite pleasant. We saw many tracks -- deer, turkey, raccoon, stegosaurus, Muppet, alien greys, wolfmen, and the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Or maybe just deer and turkey.

Lou Ann amused herself by bathing in a slew, much to Karen's dismay, as the water did not smell of hyacinths and lavender.

Lou is at my feet this very moment, and her fragrance is redolent of rotting leaves, pond-slime, and the subtle hint of something best not explored any further. I'm sure among dogs, such a thing is equivalent to Chanel No. 5.

Soon, we entered the woods.

As you can see, many of the leaves haven't fallen yet. It's beautiful, though.

I wish the photos showed the true scale of these trees. They're very large. Tree-like, I suppose. Most, er, arboreal.

And if they're not monsters, they're close together. It's slow going, because briars are the fashion accessory for forests everywhere this season!

So far, so good. We encountered no boars. Took no artillery fire from Bubba and crew. A pair of shifty-looking coyotes did try to sell me a pair of speakers from the back of a van, but I know that scam, so we kept walking.

You know how you're getting close to the river? Pick one:

A) You fall in and drown.
B) You see the first line of bamboo.

B. Always pick B. And there it is, bamboo amid the briars. Perfect for cutting a fishing pole along the way, if you must. We must not, since this is a a scientific expedition and anyway I'm looking forward to a Red Baron pizza for supper.

Here's another amusing aspect of hiking near the river. Beavers are busy, and they're everywhere, and here is what they leave behind:

So if you do find yourself falling, don't fall flat. Those things are sharp.

Keep walking, being careful with your footing (the pics don't show it, but the ground is full of exposed foot-catching roots and hidden holes left by rotting stumps), and soon you'll see the Yocona River itself.

There it is, muddy and lazy, meandering along like it has all the time in the world, and I suppose it has just that.

What you're seeing is the River from atop a twenty-foot bank. Your next task is to descend down to the water without descending down into the water, and that is a critical distinction. The river still has two pairs of Tuttle eyeglasses, and it wants a third, I just know it does.

As usual, Lou led the way, scampering down in an instant while the clumsy humans climbed and slid and leaped.

At last, we all made it. The sand bar is covered by leaves, but it's the same sand bar I fished from as a kid. I'm 50 now, so that's quite a few years ago.

I've changed. The River hasn't. Make of that what you will.

It's still a peaceful place. Of course in the summer, we'd have heard frogs and crickets and a hundred, a thousand other critters, but with ice on the ground, the river is silent.

Above you see the adventurers triumphant, nattily dressed in their Day-Glo PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ME gear. Note Karen's Stick of +5 Striking, and my Haircut of +7 Feral Pig Intimidation.

The above photo is the result of asking Lou to pose for a picture. Note her immediate charge toward the lens.

Finally got it, though! Note the head of the Loch Ness Monster emerging from the water to Karen's right.

And what good is a river if you can't swim in it? I declined, as I was wearing my good socks.

Cryptozoology is dirty work.

Did we find anything strange on our trip?

Well, there's this.

Tracks in the sand. Look, the river is home to all kinds of critters. Beavers. Coyotes. Nutria. Bobcats. Rabbits. Raccoons. You name it, and they all come here to drink, sooner or later.

So something made these marks in the sand. They can't be more than a day old because it rained hard Friday and there was loose sand in the bottom of the impressions.

My guess is a coon or a possum was digging for grubs. But I can see how other opinions might vary.

Finally it was time to head for home. Lou Ann took a last swim. Then we made the climb back up the bank and marched back into the woods.

A red-tailed hawk wheeled overhead when we emerged, probably laughing at all the trouble we were having pushing through the briars.

And that, my friends, is the photographic record of the 2013 River Expedition.

Sadly, the above image of big feet is the only such image I can offer, at least today.

WRITING NEWS

I had a pretty good week, all things considered. I didn't quite hit the magical 10K word count, but that's okay. I taught my writing class Thursday evening and I was in Memphis as a guest on the Steve Bradshaw Show, talking about my books, so that was time well spent.

I'll close with a brief excerpt from the work in progress, THE DARKER CARNIVAL. In the book, I've established that what they call a 'riding wheel' is what we call a Ferris wheel. Big wheel with seats and lights and no apparent purpose, smells of corn dogs? That clear? Everyone cool with it? Good.

The riding wheel flared to life. A man climbed it, leaping from seat to seat, finding handholds in the rusty iron frame. If he cried out, we never heard it.

Something leaped onto the wheel below him. At first I thought it a man, but when it began to climb, it used too many legs. It scuttled up the wheel effortlessly, leaped on the climbing man's back, and after a moment of awful stillness it flung his limp body to the ground and climbed down after him, moving like some monstrous eager spider.

I'll end on that note. Take care, everyone, and if you're in the US I wish you and yours a happy Thanksgiving.

Just Another Stormy Sunday

DEEP IN THE WOODS, THE TERROR WALKS....

Another monster?

Nah, that's me before coffee.

Last week's blog entry included a recording of a creature we couldn't identify. Thanks to everyone who commented and e-mailed; we're still trying to identify the call. If and when we get a definitive answer, I'll post it here.

Haven't heard the sounds again, but I'm keeping the Zoom recorder handy just in case it makes an encore appearance.

BACK ON THE AIR!

I'll be making another radio appearance, this time on THE STEVE BRADSHAW SHOW at 1:00 PM CST next Saturday (November 23). If you're in or around Memphis, you can listen by tuning in to 990 on the AM band, or you can listen to the show's live web broadcast by clicking here.

We'll be talking about books, writing, Bigfoots, Bigfoots writing books, and how hard it is for a nine-foot-tall cryptid to land an agent in today's chaotic publishing industry. Seriously, that may come up. Steve's show topics include everything from fringe science to traditional forensics, so be prepared for anything!

WRITING UPDATE

I logged an amazing (for me) 10,987 words this week.

I know there are writers who churn that out in a day or two, but I'm not one of those writers. I'm much slower. Think a sloth after downing a pawful of Benadryl and washing it down with Nyquil. I'm slow. Ten thousand words in week is a goal, sure, but it's one I rarely meet.

How did I do it, you ask? Well, here are my newly-minted tips for breaking the 10K-a-week barrier!

TIPS FOR THE SLUGGISH AUTHOR

1) When you insert the coffee IV, make sure you hit one of the big veins. And forget messing about with surgical tape to secure the needle -- duct tape is cheaper, stronger, and holds up better to all that thrashing about when you forget you have an IV line connected to the Keurig and the whole works gets tangled up when you walk.

2) Reduce your time-consuming social interactions by joining a Trappist monastery. Well, okay, the monks wouldn't have me, so I joined a more liberal organization (we're called the 'Highway Hellions,' and man does all this leather chafe). I find that the highly-structured routine of the gang is conducive to maintaining a writing schedule, and also I pay a guy nicknamed Slaughterhouse to enforce my two-hour writing session every night.

3) Keep your writing space separate from your living space. For instance, I write at a desk, and I never shave marmots or retool my vintage airplane engines at this desk. Now my keyboard is marmot-fur free, and I don't have pistons from the 1921 Curtiss-Wright rotary V12 falling in my lap. Of course you also want to make sure you actually own your writing space; take it from me, most neighbors don't have enough respect for the artistic process to let you continue renovating their upstairs bedroom.

4) Set realistic goals. I woke up every morning this week by saying aloud 'I will write 2000 words today.' This amused the deputies, but saying the words out loud made me feel accountable for carrying through, despite what my cellmates Tater and Mean Pete said.

5) If you fail to meet a goal, don't beat yourself up. Look, life happens. Cars break down. Work gets rough. That grave you dug by the interstate gets exposed during a rainstorm. There are times when you simply run out of hours in the day, not to mention moves for dismissal based on lack of evidence. Sometimes you just have to shrug it off and resolve to do better tomorrow, especially when picking out remote, easily-dug locations for, um, herb gardening.

6) Get the right tools. If you're serious about woodworking, you buy certain tools. You can't get by using the steak knives as a circular saw, or the icepick as a drill press. Writing is the same -- you need a computer, you need word processing software, you need internet access. Heck you may even need image processing programs and a web host and a good HTML editor, too. My point is this -- don't hamstring yourself by cheaping out. Get the latest version of Word. Get a machine capable of not merely running Word, but running the crap out of it. Oh, and if you're still burying things, don't get the shovel with the flat blade across the front. You want one that curves to a nice point. Otherwise you're going to be out in the woods all night.

7) Write what you know, but change the names. Too, remember that statutes of limitations vary from state to state.

8) Don't respond to negative reviews. You know who wins internet flame wars? I do, that's who. Not because I engage in internet flame wars, but because I laugh and laugh and laugh while reading them. I laugh at both sides, because no one wins, ever, and it's far easier to tank a writing career that it is to repair the damage. So don't do it. Close the page, and move on.

9) Don't stifle your inner muse. When my inner muse asks for chocolate or ice cream, I oblige. When she asks for a gallon of Absinthe and six hundred dollars of imported Russian caviar, I stall for time and hope she'll be satisfied with Harp Irish Lager and Hot Pockets. So far I owe her an estimated sixteen thousand dollars in menu items alone. Please buy a book. Muses don't mess around, during end-of-year accounting.

10) Maintain a cheerful, positive attitude. Yeah, I'm screwing with you now. Every writer I know is a fragile amalgamation of neuroses, depression, and substance-abuse issues. If you see us being cheerful and positive, that's probably the mushrooms talking, and we should be gently steered away from the car, the bank, or the liquor store.

LAST WORDS FOR THE WEEK

If I manage another 10K in the coming week, that would put my rough draft of the new Markhat book somewhere between 20% and 30% complete.

If I manage to achieve unpowered flight by flapping my arms, I would still be less surprised than if I maintain my 10K a week surge.

But we'll see.

Catch me on the radio, if you can! Until then, take care.

The Wild Man of Yocona Bottom

Fig. 1, The author before shaving

Well, I may be the world's most inept ghost hunter, but last night we captured, purely by accident, some audio that I believe will raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Let me set the scene for you. It is Saturday, November the 9th, at around nine o'clock in the evening. Karen and I spent the day doing the usual chores -- housecleaning, fence-mending, the thousand little things that any homeowner has to do sooner or later.

While I was outside, I gathered up fallen limbs and laid the makings of a fire in the chiminea on the patio. It was a cool, cloudy night. There was no wind to speak of. About eight, we pulled a couple of chairs close to the iron chiminea and lit the blaze, because yes, we are really that boring, even on a Saturday night.

We live in rural Mississippi. About a mile south of our house, across several fields and a dense, boggy stand of old growth trees, the Yocona River runs more or less east and west. 

The Yocona isn't particularly large, but it is old and winding and treacherous. The banks are sheer drop-offs thirty feet high in places. Woods line the river on both sides; navigating it in daylight is a chore, and doing so at a dead run in the dark would be suicide. 

Oh, and since the woods are composed of approximately equal parts leaves, copperhead rattlesnakes, and water moccasins as big as Nissan Sentras, you couldn't force me back there after dark with a gun and threats of forced listening to a Kesha album.

So. That's the scene. Dark south-facing patio. Impenetrable woods. The moon a mere shifting glow behind a thick haze of hurried clouds.

Now, typically, we'd be regaled by two sets of amateur vocalists. The coyotes usually start, announcing their presence just behind the first line of trees. The dogs respond, and the back-and-forth goes on until one side or the other gets bored or spots a rabbit.

But last night wasn't typical.

We heard dogs. Several of them, baying and barking, close to the river. 

And then we heard -- something. Look, I grew up right here. I've heard it all -- dogs, cows, bulls, coyotes, bobcats, even one of the last panthers in the area, 20 years ago. But what we heard last night didn't sound like any of the local critters.

So I grabbed my good ghost-hunting recorder, a Zoom H1, put it on a fence-post, and got a little over twenty minutes of what I'll just call an unidentified vocalization.

In the clip below, I've isolated a single call, added some very gentle amplification, and looped it. It's short; click and listen, if you will.

Single Call Looped

I have no idea what could make that kind of call. It sounds almost like a word. And whatever it was led the dogs on a merry chase.

Here's a longer clip, with dogs for context. You might want to crank up the volume for these:

Short Excerpt 1

The big dog you hear is Lamar, our big black lab, who added his voice to the proceedings. 

Here's another excerpt, also short:

Short Excerpt 2

And this:

Short Excerpt 3

Here's a single call, with background noise removed and amplification applied:

Amped Call

Finally, here's the entire recording, with no effects applied.

Complete Recording

The big question, of course, is what was making those sounds?

I don't have a definitive answer for that. I can say certainty what it was not. It was not a coyote. Or a cow, or a bull, or a bobcat, or a boar, or a feral pig.

I can also say I've never heard it before.

Yocona, Mississippi is not exactly a hotbed of cryptid sightings or activity. Which isn't to say people haven't seen strange things in the woods. They have. A local lawyer swears he went to sleep while hunting and awoke to find a tall hairy biped looking down at him (he fled, leaving his expensive rifle behind). Just this weekend, a local's mare stumbled home injured, both her foals gone.

Does all this suggest something unusual lurking in the woods barely a half a mile away from where I sit?

Heck if I know. I'm a fantasy author, so of course I want the world to be filled with all manner of strange creatures.

But this is the first time I've gotten a long, clear, detailed recording of something I can't readily explain.

If anyone has any ideas concerning what made those sounds, please comment! And if anyone lives near me and has heard anything similar, please say so!

MARKHAT NEWS

I realize I announced this earlier, but typing the words is so much fun I'll do it again.

The new Markhat book, THE FIVE FACES, has been accepted by Samhain! We're looking at a June release date.

I think you'll enjoy THE FIVE FACES.  I'll say this much, and no more -- in this 8th entry in the series, Markhat goes face to face with a killer who taunts his victims with drawings depicting the time, place, and manner of their murders. Once the drawing is received, no one survives, no matter the measures they take. So when Markhat's drawing arrives, he has mere hours to avoid the hand of Death itself...

The new Markhat book is also underway. The working title is THE DARKER CARNIVAL, although a line in the story itself has suggested a possible new title I'm kicking around. I only hesitate because there's a Rob Zombie song of the same name (LIVING DEAD GIRL).

What do you guys think? THE DARKER CARNIVAL or LIVING DEAD GIRL? Keep in mind all the Markhat books have 3 word titles, so it needs to be one or the other. Being a writer, I'm superstitious about altering the three word rule, because of course the first time I use two words or four words or anything but three words the sky will bleed and the walls will fall and I'll certainly be rejected, and we can't have that.

Here's a brief excerpt from THE DARKER CARNIVAL. It doesn't contain any spoilers, so throw caution to the winds and read without peeking through your fingers.

The sun was more than an hour from rising. Curfew was still in effect across Rannit, which meant anyone a peckish halfdead caught outside was fair game for breakfast, and I was standing in the street with both my shoes untied.

But I had a vampire revolver in my right pocket and a ten thousand year old banshee holding my left hand and I’d walked with the slilth not so long ago.

Boots scraped cobbles nearby. My hand found the butt of my revolver.

Buttercup giggled and pointed down the street before vanishing.

A man walked out of the night and into the dim, wobbling glow of a street-lamp.

I relaxed my grip on the revolver, but didn't pull my hand away. I could tell at once my fellow Curfew-breaker was no halfdead. He shuffled, for one thing, walking slowly while dragging a noisy burden on a wheeled contrivance behind him.

Like any breed of the rich, halfdead seldom roam the streets their own carts. Too, this man's hat was a shapeless, baggy lump, not one of Breed Street's starched, rigid offerings.

The man saw me, halted, and waved.

"Good morning to you, friend," he said. He pitched his voice carefully, so that it just reached my ears, but wouldn't carry much further. "Might I inquire as to whether you live hereabouts?"

I wasn't sure he could see a head-shake, so I took a half dozen steps ahead and spoke.

"Nope," I replied. "I'm just a man out for a stroll."

He nodded, smiling. "Well, count your lucky stars, man out for a stroll. They call me Shango. Shango the storm-sniffer. I've walked all night, following a stink. And it leads right to yonder door."

He pointed out a door. My door. Of course it would be my door.

I sighed.

"I'm guessing you sell lightning rods."

He shot up and stood straight. "Indeed I do," he said. "But not just lightning rods. No, friend. I sell the kind of lightning rods even the rich cannot often buy."

"Good for you," I said. I started walking, hoping he didn't notice my damned traitor shoes weren't tied. "Now if you don't mind I always take my breakfast with the Regent."

He laughed, but he kept the sound low. "Won't you at least have a look, Mr. Markhat? Won't you at least have a look?"

I produced my pistol and let him see it.

"I didn't tell you my name."

"But I told you mine," he said. If the thick black bulk of my vampire-built revolver gave him pause, his dirty face didn't show it. "Shango. I smell storms. I can't hold back the winds, friend, but I can turn the lightning." He nodded back at his cart, a leaning, man-high bulk covered by a sooty tarp that waited in the shadows, hunched as if ready to pounce. "No man should lack protection from the fickle wrath of Heaven."

"I've got all the protection I need."

"No," he said. His eyes, which I still hadn't seen beneath the bushy ridge of his brow, glittered just for an instant as the moon briefly peeked out from the clouds. "I tell you plain, Mr. Markhat, that you do not."

"Get out of my way."

"I'm not what's in your way, friend," he said. Then he stepped aside, sniffing at the air. "I'll be working these parts for a while, I will. Ask for Shango, should you change your mind. Ask for Shango."

I put my gun back in my jacket pocket.

About the time the squeak of his cart's wheels bit into the silence, Buttercup took my hand again.

“Let’s go get some breakfast,” I said, and with Buttercup skipping beside me I walked all the way to Cambrit, without a lightning rod of any kind to guard me from the fickle wrath of Heaven.

Never read a Markhat book? Well, here's a link, if you care to get started:

ALL OF FRANK'S BOOKS
     
Speaking of books, I should get back to work.

If I get any more strange recordings, I'll share them here too!

Update: The New Markhat Book, THE FIVE FACES, slated for June 2014 release!

I know it isn't Sunday, but I have news, and again it's good.

The new Markhat book, THE FIVE FACES, will be released next June. It was originally scheduled for a September release, but the good people at Samhain bumped the release up by a full three months.

I'm already at work on the 9th book in the series, which I'm calling THE DARKER CARNIVAL.

Mug and Meralda? No, I haven't forgotten them. Their next adventure, ALL THE TURNS OF LIGHT, is also underway.

Which means I'd better get back to work!

Just wanted to keep you folks in the loop.

Good News, For a Change: New Markhat Book is Accepted!

Fireworks, for the new Markhat book THE FIVE FACES has been accepted!

That shriek you heard today was me, upon reading an email from my lovely editor at Samhain. The new Markhat book, THE FIVE FACES, has been accepted.

Edits and second edits and yet more more edits (i.e., work) will soon begin, but now it's time to emulate Snoopy and do the Jubilant Dance of Selling a Novel.

This will mark the 8th entry in the Markhat titles. What started as a novella  in the long-since defunct print magazine Adventures of Sword and Sorcery is now a full-blown series, complete with supporting characters, an overall story arc, a chronology that gives me fits, and the opportunity to write as many Markhat books as I can until A) I die or B) the publisher says 'no.'

I dug out my tattered copy of the Adventures of Sword and Sorcery featuring the original Markhat story, The Mister Trophy. There's a man and a Troll on the cover, although it's not an actual scene from the story, and anyway my Troll knees are jointed backwards from ours.

But it was a big deal, seeing my name on a cover. And there was interior artwork!

Which pretty much demonstrates that in Markhat's world, Trolls trump vamps every time.

The art was by George Barr, and he's probably most famous for his work illustrating Dungeons and Dragons manuals. But his art has also graced a multitude of books covers and prints, so scoring a George Barr illustration was a real honor.

That story also saw the first sighting of a Markhat witticism. In the story, a Troll shows up looking for Markhat, and naturally the Troll finds him in a bar.

The Troll proceeds to describe his long, arduous journy from Troll country and through the devastated Kingdom of Man and finally to Rannit and Markhat. Because that's how my Trolls talk -- a Troll would never come out and say 'I am here on urgent business.' Instead, the Troll would describe the many obstacles he faced just getting there to tell his story.

Markhat knows just enough about Troll culture to understand this. And he knows to respond in kind. After all, the Troll weighs a ton and half and stands ten feet tall and could pull the bar down to the ground without any real exertion.

But Markhat is Markhat, and he can't resist the urge to tweak even a Troll's nose, so his reply to the Troll's retelling of his journey is this:

Which the magazine editor, Randy Dannenfelser, saw fit to stick in a page-block. Because he thought it was funny.

I mention this because Randy taught me an important lesson here, and the lesson is this:

If you can make a harried, hard-bitten editor laugh at a line of dialog, you can get paid for it.

And of course it goes farther than that. The Markhat series deals with some heavy themes -- loss. Guilt. Rage. Betrayal. Death. Addiction. Aging.

But Markhat keeps the wise-cracks coming, even when facing down Troll five times his size. Why does he do that?

Because Markhat sees all the bad, and it weighs on him, every moment, every day. But he's not quite ready to give in to the emptiness. So when he gets the opportunity, he looks the implacable, unbeatable world square in the eye and he tells it what it can do with its dreadful algebras and inescapable losses.

I think that's why the humor works. Because he's mocking awful things, and they deserve to be mocked, right up until the end.

So now that THE FIVE FACES is sold, I can reveal the working title of the Markhat work-in-progress. Drumroll, please:

THE DARKER CARNIVAL

Yep. This time Markhat visits a traveling carnival in search of a runaway daughter. And if you think the traveling carnival is merely a rag-tag collection of happy misfits plying their trade from town to town for the innocent amusement of their visitors, well, you haven't read much Markhat.

If you haven't read much Markhat, please click here to get started.

This has been a rough few weeks. Getting good news felt so refreshing, I will close today with this:

A CAVALCADE OF COVERS

And now, coming soon, THE FIVE FACES!

Please feel free to join me in a heartfelt WOOHOO!

Our Stupid Bodies, Redux

It's been a bad week.

I sat in front of this bloody monitor for hours today, trying to be funny, to be informative, to be sarcastic or caustic or anything but angry or maudlin. But the empty spot on the floor where Thor ought to be isn't going away, and the only words I'm inclined to write are words best left unpublished.

So, tonight we're going to do a rerun. Here's my (in)famous blog on wellness and general good health. Enjoy. I'll be back soon with new material.

(From 05/2013)

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 / meat-based Rube Goldberg contraption controversy.

An injury to my back last week 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:

Might as well pick out a plot....

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. Too, 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 to endure 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.

The human brain.

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.

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 display in a single sitting, you can at least maintain a healthy weight. This ensures your last words can be smug ones.

A healthy heart is a bloated misshapen heart!

4) THE CARDIOPULMONARY SYSTEM. Your heart and lungs comprise your cardiopulmonary system. The hearts 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.

Fig. 3, the anterior brachiostatic excretory array. Eww.

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.

We really, REALLY mean it this year.

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.

You've got to really *feel* the burn.

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.

Grab your ankles, sailor.

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.

The spiders tell me to dance!

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.

BIG NEWS

BIG NEWS

BIG NEWS

Aside from a brief mention by Robert Stack in a 1988 episode of Unsolved Mysteries, I don't get a lot of media attention. Writers usually don't, since we spend most of our time scowling at monitors or staring off into space until our tires skid off the pavement.

Nevertheless, the University of Mississippi Department of Media and Documentary Projects just released a short (18 minutes and change) film which chronicles my writing and my brief stint as a costumed crime-fighter. Most of the costumed crime-fighter bits were removed, because the FCC also had concerns about me appearing in Spandex after mass suicides among the first test audience, but the writing parts are pretty cool. You get to see my underground lair, my ferocious pack of mutant wolverines, and of course sharks with frickin' lasers in their heads.

The film is free, there are no logins or signons, and popcorn is provided by the ghost of Orville Redenbacher himself. Sure, it's ghost popcorn, but give it a try!

So settle back into your chair, click the link below, and prepare to mock my outrageous Southern accent.

I Have To Write

I'd like to offer a big thanks to Media and Documentary Projects, and of course to the film's creator, director, editor, and all-around architect, Karen Tuttle.

That's it for this week, folks. Take care of yourselves, eat a few vegetables, and remember not to age.

All the Paths of Shadow

Things That Go Bump, 2013: Issue #4

Ghosts, schmosts.

Too good to speak into my microphone, huh? Too busy flapping about dilapidated old houses to appear in front of my camera, is that it? Waiting for a guest shot on Ghost Hunters and don't have time to waste on some amateur, that's the way of things?

Well, fine. Stick to your condemned rental properties and your knock-off Ouija Boards. I suspect most of you are as banal and tedious in death as you were in life anyway, judging from the lack of sparkle in the EVP recordings I've heard.

So let's leave the world of hauntings behind for a moment, and talk time travel instead.

Yes. Time travel. The stuff of science fiction and bad television show plot devices. Am I about to trot out a list of incidents which are intended to prove the existence of time travelers in our midst?

Yes. No. Maybe. Look, just keep reading, and see what you think.

THE WATCH OUT OF TIME

In 2009, archaeologists accompanied by a pair of Chinese journalists excavated a tomb in Shangsi they dated to the Ming Dynasty (15-16th century). The tomb was undisturbed, and the contents had remained sealed for some 400 years.

Among the objects unearthed inside the tomb was the one shown below.

That's right. It's a watch-ring, the hands stopped at 10:06. On the back of the tiny watch-ring the word SWISS is engraved.

So. We have a timepiece which couldn't be much more than a century old (the first recorded watch-ring was not manufactured until after 1780) found inside a tomb which has been sealed for some 400 years.

That's what Fortean enthusiasts call 'really weird, dude.'

How did the watch get there? Who left it? Is the whole thing a hoax?

The answers are, respectively, I don't know, don't know that either, and who knows.

The only thing that could make this story better is the discovery of a drawing of a blue London police call box on the tomb walls. Sadly, that didn't happen.

But the watch did. That's weird enough for me.

RUSSIANS SCREWING AROUND

There's a lot of gold mining in and around the Ural Mountains in Russia.

And it's not just gold (and empty vodka bottles) the miners are bringing up.

This is just a sample of the machined, metallic artifacts that have been discovered in places that date 100,000 years old, or more.

My knowledge of history is admittedly vague in spots, but I am relatively sure the design and manufacture of metal springs, screws, and threaded rods was not much in evidence a hundred thousand years ago.

But there are the products of such a technology.

Such discoveries are not limited to the Urals. There are stories of similar findings right here in the US, and pretty much everywhere else people poke around deep underground.

AND NOW: JOHN TITOR, TIME TRAVELER EXTRAORDINAIRE 

You either recognize the name John Titor, or you don't.

If you don't, you're in for a treat, because his story is in my opinion the most fascinating thing to come out of the Internet since Epic Rap Battles of History opened their webpage (check out Skrillex versus Mozart, if you need a laugh, and who doesn't).

John Titor emerged on an obscure internet bulletin board called Time Travel Institute on November 2, 2000. He didn't call himself 'John Titor' yet, but posted under the handle TimeTravel_0. At first, TimeTravel_0 posted brief declarations about the nature of time travel, and the specifics of time travel machine design.

In January of 2001, the same poster began posting on another board, the Art Bell BBS forums. It was then he chose a posting name (the site required one), and 'John Titor' emerged.

Titor claimed to be a time traveler from 2036, sent back to 1975 on a mission to snatch a vintage IBM 5100 computer. Titor claimed he made an unscheduled (and unsanctioned) stop in 2000 to collect some family photos, meet with family members, and try to warn people about the emerging threats of 'Mad Cow' disease and the American Civil War, which he predicted would begin in 2004 over a heavily-disputed Presidential election (ring any bells?). He also claimed that the Russians would nuke the US and much of Europe in 2015, after the civil war reached its peak and political destabilization and the presence of so many nukes made them so paranoid they panicked and pushed the button.

According to Titor, World War III ended with nearly all of the major cities in the US left desolate, much of Europe a wasteland, and the rest of the world limping along aided by the remaining pockets of industry and technology. The Russians, he claimed, were obliterated, because the Chinese took exception be being nuked and responded in kind.

Titor's story was riveting. Partly because he was so matter-of-fact, and so detailed.

His time travel mechanics were equally fascinating. According to Titor, his history was not necessarily ours, because simply by being present in our timeline, he caused it to branch off from what he recalled as history.

He could return to his own timeline, but only by hauling his 500 pound time machine across country to his original point of emergence (he claimed to have traveled to Florida to find his family) and then traveling back to 1975 and re-entering his own timeline from there.

Yeah, it got complicated, but -- PICTURES!

Here are a few of the images Titor shared with the internet back in 2000 and 2001.

He claimed this was scanned from the machine's operating manual. The device, he claimed, was a C204 Gravitational Distortion unit, built by General Electric.

And here is an alleged photo of the device, which Titor installed in the back seat of a 1987 4-wheel drive SUV.

Titor simply stopped posting in late March of 2001. He never reappeared.

He left behind a veritable mountain of images and posts, though, and though the original forum may be long gone, the Internet lives forever. If you're interested -- and I hope you are -- please check out Wikipedia for a just-the-facts-ma'am outline of events and this Strange Dimensions site for details.

Do I believe John Titor's story about a violent future and time-traveling sports cars?

No. Not really. But I do believe the Titor postings represent some of the most compelling story-telling ever seen on the net.What the Titor poster did was exactly what we writers try to do, every time -- suspend disbelief long enough to spin a tale of danger and heroism before closing with the words THE END.

Titor never wrote those words. He left us to believe he fired up his time machine and headed back to 2036, because while it might be a poisoned, desolate wasteland, it was also home, and that's where people go when all is said and done.

That's the kind of ending I can believe in.

THE END

If any time travelers are out there chuckling as you read this, I invite you to drop by and pay me a visit. I won't pester you for photographs or ask about the future or even beg to see a lost of Best Sellers in Fantasy for the next twenty years.

I'll just listen quietly to any stories you have to tell and brew you up a good cup of coffee. Maybe we'll listen to some music, played from vinyl, and make small talk about dogs and cars and sea monsters.

My door is always open. Stop by, and have a cuppa.

Things That Go Bump, 2013: Issue #3

IN WHICH THE GHOSTS FALL SILENT

No ghosts here, just fog. Fog I can sneak up on. Ghosts, not so much.

It's true, I'm afraid.

I'm the world's worst ghost hunter.

I've absolutely nothing even mildly suggestive to report this week. No suspicious EVPs. No blurry spots on photographs. Not a single frame of what might, from a certain distance and viewed from a certain angle and after a certain number of powerful gin & tonics, looks like a face in an ITC session snapshot.

Nothing.

I should probably be hired to cleanse haunted houses. All I'd need to do is visit with my meters and microphones, and the house would be forever more free of ghostly goings-on, because I am apparently a natural-born ghost repellent.

Nothing to see here, move along...

For anyone curious about what an actual ITC session looks like, I've provided a short (about 2 minutes) clip of a session below. Warning -- if you're prone to seizures or already have a headache, do NOT view this clip full-screen. The strobing effect is pretty nasty, especially toward the end. I've been through the thing frame by frame, and didn't see a single image worthy of singling out.

ITC Video Session sample clip

Since I got nothing this week, let me direct you toward a brief video I shot last year at the gravesite of William Faulkner. It's not an EVP, but it might qualify as an instance of ITC, since a device called an 'iOvilus' was involved. You don't even need the actual device -- you can get an app for your Android or iPhone that turns it into an Ovilus unit.

Now, I'm not a huge proponent of this device. Basically it's a speech synthesizer coupled to a few thousand common English words and the phone's EMF sensor. It's going to spit out a word every now and then, because that's what it's built to do. That shouldn't come as a surprise, because there's nothing inherently supernatural about it.

What is surprising can be the choice of random words, and the timing. I must admit this sent chills down my spine, but watch for yourself:

Faulkner Says My Name

Coincidence? Yeah, I think so.  Still neat though.

Here'a another cemetery EVP from last year. I still can't make out what the voice is saying. I've looped it, so maybe you can.

http://franktuttle.com/podcast1/cowsee.mp3

This last 2012 EVP is much clearer. It seems to be saying 'go ahead.'

http://franktuttle.com/podcast1/goahead.mp3

I recorded a couple of long half-hour sessions with my new germanium microphone, and after applying nearly 30 dB of amplification (which is an insane amp level) I got nothing but this:

heartbeat

Which was easily explained away when I realized I'd left the ALA (automatic level adjustment) switch set to on. Turning it to 'off' made the 'heartbeat' vanish. What I was hearing was simply a by-product of the mic's electronics.

Let's hope the ghosts were merely taking it easy this week in preparation for the big Halloween blowout, which is right around the corner. I'll be trying again to come up with something strange and unexplained for next week's blog, so wish me luck!

A FEW MORE SPOOKS AND SPRITES YOU MAY NOT HAVE READ ABOUT

SPRING-HEELED JACK

The latter part of the 19th century saw the emergence of the first recognized serial killer (Jack the Ripper) and a much less sinister but no less interesting supernatural character, who came to be called Spring Heeled Jack.

I'm FABULOUS!

Jack was described as a tall, menacing figure who often wore a large helmet and skin-tight white clothing, rather like a steam-punk Evel Knievel. Jack's apparently supernatural ability to leap and run earned him the Spring Heeled monicker, after witnesses reported the man easily making leaps of 20 feet high or more. Prevailing wisdom at the time attributed Jack's amazing jumping ability to springs concealed in the soles of his boots. I suppose bones were a lot more tolerant of both sheer and compressive  impact forces in 1838.

The first detailed published report of an assault by the creature appeared in the February 22nd edition of the 1838 London Times. A young woman named Jane Alsop was attacked and nearly abducted by Jack, until her struggles and cries were heard by her family. According to witnesses, Jack ‘vomited forth a quantity of blue and white flames from his mouth’ and ‘tore at her neck and arms with his claws’ before escaping over nearby fields.

Such was the ensuing panic that the Lord Mayor formed a vigilance committee aimed at capturing the fleet-footed creature.

Arrests were made, but only copy-cats were apprehended. Jack's exploits continued until an attack on Lucy Scales, during which Jack was reported to breathe blue fire at the terrified woman.

After that, Jack and his habitual fire-breathing vanished. The case was never solved, and the identity and nature of Spring Heeled Jack was never established.

I once breathed out a great quantity of blue and white flame after sampling a particularly enthusiastic plate of chicken vindaloo, but I'm ruling myself out as a suspect because my days of leaping 20-foot-high walls are over.

So what was Jack? A figment of a newspaper reporter's fevered imagination? The product of mass hysteria? A drunken nobleman obliging the terms of an ill-advised bet?

We'll never know. But I do want that cape from the newspaper drawing above. Spring-heeled Jack, away!

THE DEVIL'S FOOTPRINTS

On the heels, so to speak, of Spring Heeled Jack was the so-called Devil's Footprints incident of February 9, 1855 in and about Devon, England.

Diagram from the Times which accompanied the story of the Devonshire Devil

In the space of a single night, witnesses reported the appearance of 100 miles of strange footprints. Resembling those of a shoed horse, but clearly left by a bipedal walker, the prints ran in a straight line over the snow. Whatever left them didn't bother walking around houses or barns or sheds -- it simply walked right up the walls, across the roofs, down the walls again before continuing on its merry and quite possibly infernal way.

Such perambulations naturally perplexed and perhaps even bedeviled the residents of Devon, who attributed the source of the trail to everything from escaped kangaroos (I take it few of them had ever actually seen a kangaroo) to Spring Heeled Jack himself.

The story was carried by the Times and the Illustrated London News. There was considerable speculation concerning the nature of the tracks, but not a definitive explanation.

I'm going with robotic kangaroos.

That's it for this week! See you next Sunday. Until then, don't go in the basement....

Things That Go Bump 2013, Issue #2

Welcome back, gentle readers, for another edition of Things That Go Bump.

For tonight's entry, I visited three local cemeteries in an attempt to record another EVP voice.

I used my Zoom H1 recorder, along with a couple of new toys -- a magnetic pickup mic and my germanium microphone, all shown below.

EVP SESSION: OXFORD CEMETERY

I began my tour of cemeteries with a visit to Oxford's largest, which is also the final resting place of William Faulkner. I parked my truck at the caretaker's shop and made my way to the nearest shade.

Graveyards don't look particularly sinister in daylight, do they? I realize I'd get much more dramatic photos if I did this at night. Of course, I'd also probably get to have fascinating conversations with the local police.

And out in the county, I might also meet up with tweakers and vandals. I'd rather avoid the company of both.

Three old above-ground vaults. I noticed the top was shattered on one.

Yep. Broken, and the contents exposed...

What, you were expecting skulls and femurs? Sorry to disappoint.

Here's the complete EVP session, if anyone cares to listen to 15 minutes of my babbling.

I caught two odd sounds. The first is a single short bell-like noise, which I didn't hear during the recording. It occurs about a minute and a half in, and it sounds like this:

BELL EVP

Right after I say '...have anything to say,' you'll hear it. I then looped it to repeat 6 times, and amplified the heck out of the 7th iteration.

Interesting, at least to me.

My second possible EVP occurred during the failure of my Ramsey Tri-Field meter batteries. They were fresh, but after about nine minutes of use they failed.

I was about to hook up my new magnetic mic when I looked down and saw the Ramsey was lit to full deflection, indicating a powerful magnetic field. But the K2 wasn't lit. I then realized the Ramsey was simply going nuts because its batteries were dead (that's how it acts when they go poof).

Listen to the clip. You'll hear a voice say OH really loud, before I say the same thing.

OH EVP

This would be a great clip if it wasn't already debunked. Karen listened to it and said 'that's you, no doubt about it.' And she should know, so I guess I said 'oh' twice without realizing it.

That's why you should never go ghost-hunting alone, kids. If I'd had a partner, or at least a video camera, I'd have realized that was me without getting all excited, thinking I'd caught a Class A. Bummer.

The magnetic mic caught nothing but silence during its two-minute test.

You can hear all that below, in the full Oxford EVP session:

OXFORD EVP

EVP SESSION: TULA CEMETERY

My next stop was a small graveyard just outside Tula, Mississippi. I've visited here before and caught a couple of interesting sounds.

Tula is very quiet. The wind had died down a bit, which my mic appreciated.

I tried the magnetic and the germanium mics, but caught mainly silence. The germanium mic did record some bursts of static and clicks, but I couldn't make anything out of the noise.

That's it, on the grave above.

Here's the complete Tula session, including the mag and germanium portions. I didn't hear anything out of the ordinary.

TULA EVP

EVP SESSION: MIDWAY CEMETERY

My final stop was the tiny, remote graveyard called Midway.

I have a number of family members buried there. Here is one W.D. Gardner, for example, a great-grandsomething who was quite dapper, for his day:

I wandered among the headstones, talking and hoping for a faint reply.

If I got any answers to my questions, I couldn't hear them. The complete session is below. Maybe you can hear something I can't!

MIDWAY EVP

And that wraps things up for my Saturday ghost hunt. One possible ringing bell, one case of mistaken identity.

Oh, and editing video ITC sessions?

At this point, the ghosts of Edison and Tesla would have to promise to show up to get me to wade through another eighty gazillion frames of random splotches of color.

I'll do more EVP work for next week's entry.

OTHER GHOST STORIES FOR YOU TO ENJOY

I'd like to present you with a few photos and stories of paranormal incidents you may not have heard of before. These are obscure, but I think they're fascinating!

AN UNFINISHED RACE

Maybe you've heard the story of James Worson, who many paranormal sites and researchers will claim vanished into thin air during a drunken footrace in September of 1873.

If you haven't heard the story, I'll retell it briefly here. James Worson and two pals, Hammerson Burns and Barnham Wise, entered into an ale-fueled bet one night, after Worson boasted he could run all the way from Leamington to Coventry without stopping.

With Burns and Wise following along in a horse-drawn carriage, Worson set out, laughing and joking. According to the legend, he was about 3 miles into his twnety mile run when he stumbled, screamed, and fell.

Fell, but never struck the ground. He vanished, quite literally, into thin air.

So what happened? Did an inter-dimensional portal open long enough to gobble up the hapless Worson? Was he spirited away by, um, spirits?

I'm going to vote for 'none of the above,' because what many so-called paranormal sites and researchers fail to mention is that these events were first recounted in a short story by Ambrose Bierce.

I totally rock this 'stache.

The story is entitled, perhaps not surprisingly, 'An Unfinished Race.' It was published in 1873. There are people who still assert Bierce was merely reporting actual events. I refer these people to the latest issue of Weekly World News, which features Bat-Boy on holiday with Nessie in Atlantis.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that author Ambrose Bierce himself vanished without a trace in 1913, though Mexican bandits are a far more likely culprit than wandering interdimensional portals.


GEF, THE TALKING MONGOOSE

I've read a lot of strange stories over the years. Most of them share many of the same characters and events -- shadows in the night, ghostly voices, tragedy, misty shapes at the windows.

The story of Gef, who may or may not have been a talking mongoose who appeared on the tiny Isle of Man in the 1930s, features none of these things. Instead, you have a smallish furry animal which at first bedevils and then befriends the inhabitants of a lonely farmhouse.

Only one person claimed to have ever gotten a good look at Gef. Several heard him describe himself thusly:

“I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you’d faint, you’d be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt!”

Legendary ghost hunter Harry Price himself was involved in the investigation. Some aspects of Gef's activities are classic poltergeist antics, while others are strange. Very, very strange.

Look, go read the story for yourself. Do I believe it's true?

Probably not. but it's so far removed from the usual gamut of ghosts and goblins I thought it worthy of inclusion this October.


THE SOLWAY FIRTH SPACEMAN

Taken in 1964, the famous 'spaceman' photo:

The photo was taken by Jim Templeton. The subject is his daughter, Elizabeth. Mr. Templeton took 3 photos of Elizabeth while on an outing at Burgh Marsh and saw nothing amiss until his film was developed (1964, remember?).

The middle photo contained the image of the 'spaceman.'

Kodak examined the negatives, and claimed they hadn't been tampered with.

Mr. Templeton claimed he was visited by Men in Black about the photo.

Skeptics claim the 'spaceman' is nothing but Templeton's wife, seen from behind.

I don't see that, but who knows?

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Did I mention I am in a movie?

Well. I am.

Click here for details. The movie goes live Halloween, with a sneak preview at the Powerhouse here in Oxford on October 30!

Well, that's it for tonight. I admit I'm tired and more than a little frustrated -- I cannot wheedle, beg, coerce, or threaten Corel Video Studio Six to cough up an MP4 movie of last week's ITC sessions in any kind of usable format. Oh, I can see the video well enough while I'm editing -- but when I convert it to a playable video file from the Corel native editing format, I get nothing but a green screen with audio. I spent a good five hours trying to figure out why, and I simply have no idea.

Maybe I'll the clips ready for next week. Wish me luck!

Things That Go Bump, 2013: Issue #1

Welcome to another edition of Things That Go Bump!

Every year in October I celebrate all things spooky and macabre with a series of supernaturally-themed blog entries, in which I poke Things Man Was Not Meant to Know with sticks and generally make light of the dark.

Tonight, I'll post a few interesting images from a video ITC session I conducted last night. I'll also ruminate on the nature of the universe, and slip in a few quick adds for my books, because it's one thing to ponder the underlying quantum construction of reality and it's quite another to pay bills.

Let's start by sashaying right where angels fear to tread, and see if we can catch a glimpse of the Great Beyond using common household items and a bit of computer magic!

SATURDAY NIGHT ITC SESSION

ITC. The letters stand for 'Instrumental Trans Communication,' which generally involves putting a video camera in front of a TV and recording the images formed when the camera's output is connected to the TV's input, resulting in a video feedback loop.

The Scole Group claims they captured the image above using the standard camera-and-TV method. The man's face is clearly visible, and my first thought upon seeing the image was how much it resembled a cut-out of a photo affixed to the TV screen for a frame or two. Because I'm a suspicious lad by nature, you know.

But the people involved with the Scole Group were reputable, respectable people who seem to be above the clandestine use of scissors and rubber cement. So, thought I, why not try and recreate some of their results?

My ITC setup.

I did this before, back in July, and got a few odd examples of video noise. Nothing like the face above.

A frame-by-frame analysis (which is still incomplete) of last night's video left me with a few images I'll share below.

First of all, my very own face amid the static!

Look center, then left, then down a bit. See the patch of green amid the white and the blue?

Let me blow that up for you.

Weird, huh? I see a rather stern man's face, neck, and shoulders. As well as his eyes, nose, and unsmiling mouth.

I shall call him Mr. Pareidolia, after the tendency of our brains to find faces in random patterns.

But it does look like a man. Not as much like the Scole Group's image, sure, but it's closer than anything I expected to catch.

Next up is a figure we'll call the Dark Angel, because that sounds spooky, and it kept popping up in the video:

Look at the image just above. If you've seen the movie The Ring, then you'll understand why I half-expected the figure to climb out of the TV. Too, can you pick out a vague face shape to the right of the dark figure?

There were lots of other images too. The one below went to blues and greens, like a watercolor done by a particularly inept painter:

So far I haven't found any other faces. But the process of going frame-by-frame is excruciatingly slow, and I do have books to write.

Books such as:

Brown River Queen

I did warn you I'd be hawking books.

I got nothing on the audio as far as anomalous voices go. I was planning to visit a couple of cemeteries today to try out my new germanium microphone in the wild, but the weather had other ideas. 

STORY FODDER: COSMOLOGY GLITCHES

A school of thought concerning the nature of the universe claims that we may all be simply bits of a gargantuan simulation, created by beings for purposes unknown and by means so far advanced beyond us we lack the capacity to understand them.

This isn't kook fringe science. There are even efforts underway to search for evidence that our universe is in fact a vast Sim.  

Which started me thinking. These physicists are looking for the cosmological equivalent of 'glitches' in the Matrix. 

I've seen much the same phenomena, on a much smaller scale, when it occurs as what PC gamers call glitches.

Most of the time, glitches are the hilarious but unforeseen effect of some obscure part of the game's code. It's not a program failure, as such -- no, it's doing precisely what it was designed to do, but with results the game's creators never anticipated.

Funny Glitches Video

Stay with me for a moment. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that our universe and more importantly me are merely the product of a cosmos-wide simulation.

Then let's assume that nothing, no matter how advanced, is this large without a few teensy-weensy flaws here and there.

Glitches, if you will.

My assertion is that Fortean phenomena are our universe's version of video game glitches.

Let that sink in. 

Never heard of Fortean phenomena? There have been, for example, numerous well-documented instances of frogs raining down from clear blue skies. Of spark plugs found encased in million-year-old quartz. Of objects appearing in places and times they should not, could not be found.

Most Fortean phenomena are simply ignored, because science has given us a clear, consistent model for how the world works and no one wants to jettison all that and start over because it rained live frogs in Paraguay.  It's easier to simply assert such things never happen, because doing otherwise gives you that queasy, unsettling sensation that maybe we don't have things figured out quite so neatly after all.

So maybe it does rain frogs, at times. Maybe people do simply vanish into thin air, at times. Maybe voices do ring out from empty air, now and then. 

Maybe those glitches in the universe.

You heard it here first.

LOCAL GHOSTS, SERVED FRESH DAILY

As the IRS and many of you know, I live just outside Oxford, Mississippi, home of the University of Mississippi, a number of fine eating establishments, and of course a history of hauntings.

In honor of October, and as a lazy way to snag some ghost stories for this very blog, I have created a Facebook page called HAUNTED OXFORD. I hope people will use the page to share their own spooky tales of the supernatural, and maybe give me some spots to visit.  

So, locals, please head on over to Haunted Oxford and share with us your ghost stories!

Okay, that's it for tonight. Take care, all, and remember -- those scratches and knocks in the night might be just branches in the wind. Or they might be....

....something else....

A Night in the Lonesome October

SOMETHING IN THE AIR

First of all, welcome to autumn!

Fall is my favorite season. I like everything about it -- the scrunch-scrunch of fallen leaves, the chill in the air, the fat harvest moons, the cessation of lawn mowing.

And of course with fall comes Halloween, which is also my favorite holiday. Christmas comes with too much emotional baggage. Thanksgiving is just an excuse to eat turkey. New Year's Eve is what happens to young people while we're at home snoring.

No, give me October and Halloween. Spooks and haunts and scary movies. Costume parties. Kids out engaging in mild forms of delinquency. Pumpkin carving and pumpkin pie.

Oh yeah, bring on October!

There's a book I like to read every October, because it sets the perfect mood. Sadly, you can't get it for your Kindle, but it's worth chasing down in hardback.

A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazny, with illustrations by the late great Gahan Wilson.

The illustrations are, of course, amazing. Heck, the whole book is amazing. There aren't many authors aside from Ray Bradbury who can capture the essence of a season so well you can feel the chill coming off the pages, but Zelazny does it here.

I got my copy many years ago from the Science Fiction Book Club. There are still some copies about, but they aren't exactly cheap -- click here for Amazon's list of available editions. There's also an audiobook version for less than 25 bucks, and that might be the best way to experience the book (although without Gahan's illustrations).

Anyway, that's my pick for a great October read. 31 chapters for 31 days. It's like carving your brain into the shape of a grinning jack o'lantern!

LISTEN LIVE!

Tomorrow (Monday the 23rd) I'll be appearing as a guest on Steve Bradshaw's Refocus Memphis radio program. If you're in or near Memphis, you can listen in on AM 990. Or you can click this link to listen and watch via the studio's webcam, at 4:30 CST tomorrow!

LINK TO AM 990 RADIO SHOW 

Host Steve Bradshaw is an entrepreneur and the author of Bluff City Butcher and The Skies Roared. We'll be talking about whatever idiotic thing pops into my head, and believe me folks, nobody does idiotic like I do when I'm nervous.

To make things even more interesting, right after confirming my Monday appearance on the show, I got sick. Sick with a chest cold that rendered my voice perfect for use as a horror-movie villain. Think Darth Vader with a mouthful of warm butter and a freshly-stapled tongue.

I'm much better today. Hopefully no trace of the rasp or rattles will be left by tomorrow.

So tune in and join me, if you can!

That's all for tonight. Expect the usual ghostly October material to start next week, as I once again take to the road in search of EVPs and photographic anomalies!

Until then, stay safe, and....

Click me for a surprise!

Boo!

The Five Deadly Questions

The Magic Rock. Batteries not included.

As soon as people find out I'm a writer, they look up from the police booking photo monitor and start asking the kind of questions that led to my charges for simple assault and destruction of ornamental waterfowl in the first place.

I used to tell people I had a magic rock that provided me insights into the mystical world of publishing, because they didn't seem to believe me when I said the secret to getting published is to A) write and submit, and B) keep doing A. I suppose it's human nature to wish for a short-cut past all the drudgery, even if that means believing in magic rocks. Which, by the way, used to sell for 20 bucks a throw.

I still get questions, all the time. Most are genuine questions asked by intelligent people with a keen interest in the subject. Nobody, not even me, minds those kind of sincere questions.

Today, though,  I'm talking about the other sort of queries. The spiteful questions, usually asked by people who are actually intent on issuing a veiled insult. Maybe they once fancied themselves writers, but quit. Maybe they don't like my genre. Maybe they're just nasty by nature, and they enjoy the odd bit of passive-aggressive insult. For some reason, I've gotten several of these lately, so I thought I'd collect them all here, while I wait on the bail bondsman to show up.

FIVE QUESTIONS NEVER TO ASK A WRITER

Q: How much do you spend publishing your books?

A: I'll demonstrate by smashing this elegant plaster reproduction of a goose over your pointy head. Seriously. Publishers pay writers, not the other way around. If money goes anywhere but to the author, then you're doing it wrong. I'm not doing it wrong.

Q: If your book is any good, why don't you send your book to Hollywood and have it made into a movie?
A: Gosh, yes, why don't I? Because that how movies get made, isn't it, you just shove a book in a bloody envelope and mail it off to Warner Brothers and three weeks later a new Harry Potter movie hits the theaters! Why didn't I think of that before thank you so very much now let me apply this cement flamingo directly to your forehead.

Q: I've got a great idea for a book but I'm way too busy to write it why don't I let you write it instead and we can split the profits?
A: That's so generous of you, Mister I Don't Know Fiction From Formica! I was just standing here wishing I could spend the next six months sweating blood over some idiot's half-baked mumblings, let's get started right after I introduce you to my little friend Mr. Heavy Iron Owl Reproduction!

Q: Writing is easy, aren't you just making things up and typing?
A: Having a concussion looks easy, aren't you just lying on the floor and twitching?

Q: My cousin's old room-mate's fiancee's plumber's mechanic told me that getting published is all about who you know, so who do you know?
A: Yeah, that's how the industry works, because rural north Mississippi is a freaking hotbed of literary powerhouse figures who secretly control New York publishing houses from inside Cooter's Creekside Bait-N-BBQ. You deduced my secret, Sherlock. Have a whack of golden eagle statuary and a swift kick in the groin as a reward.

Thanks. I feel better now. Let's post bail.

MARKHAT NEWS

The new book is under consideration. Will post special blog entry when there is news!

NEW MERALDA AND MUG NEWS

Made some progress this week. Hope to continue the momentum and get this book banged out as soon as possible. If there are any wealthy philanthropists reading this while looking for a worthy cause, please consider sponsoring me so I can write full-time without having to crawl out here exhausted and try to write like a man who isn't chewing raw coffee grounds just to stay awake. Thanks.

RANDOM PHOTOGRAPH NEWS

The author astride his mighty Honda Rebel. Photo courtesy Karen Tuttle

Went bike riding for a bit this afternoon. To take this photo, I had to set the timer on my camera, throw it ahead of me, and then catch it as it fell after taking the pic. What the photo doesn't show is the shark-tank I was jumping over at the time, or the hoops of flaming napalm I flew through during my landing.

Wow, it turns out making stuff up and then typing it down isn't so hard after all.

VARIOUS SAILORS

Arrrr.

VIDEO BLOG OF THE WEEK

Hey, you can uncover your eyes, it's not me in the video. I promised not to do that again without posting a warning.

Instead, have a look at this week's blog by Elyse Salpeter, a fellow (former) Cool Well Press author who has a great blog and some cool books. She did a video blog this week I think you'll enjoy, check it out!

Publishing is Like Growing Pumpkins


FRIENDS DOING WELL

Another friend of mine, the inimitable Fanny Valentine Darling (which is one of the coolest names ever), just landed a spot in WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME 2, an anthology of short stories featuring works by the likes of Mercedes Lackey and Jillian Boehme. Fanny's story is entitled The Last Perfect Heart, and it alone is worth the price of admission.

That wraps things up for me, this week. Time to get back to work!

Frank Turtle, Otter at Large: Fun With Google Voice Search

I'm a fan of all things Google.

Google is my go-to search engine. I use Chrome as my default browser. I want a Chromebook so bad I'm nearly ready to start mugging little old ladies in parking lots. I have a Chrome account, which lets me add apps from the Chrome store (most are free) and run them from any machine I happen to be using at the moment.

So, when I decided to play with Google's new voice search feature, I expected great things.

After all, this is Google. I've heard about their voice search software -- it's said to be even more conversational than Apple's Siri. Ask Google for the population of Chicago, for instance, and it will tell you. Then ask 'Who is the mayor?' and Google will tell you that too -- it assumes that you mean the mayor of Chicago, since that's what you asked immediately before asking 'Who is the mayor?'

That's pretty impressive. Even Siri can't do that.

So I pointed my browser at Google, clicked the little microphone icon, and spoke clearly into my very nice (studio quality) Blue microphone.

I like to start testing some newfangled technical thingamabob by confirming what everyone already knows, i.e., that I am a self-aggrandizing hog for attention. So I started out by searching on my own name, followed by the word author.

Google quickly interpreted my backwoods accent as asking for a search for 'Frank turtle otter.'

Ha ha, quoth I. I cleared my throat and tried again.

Frank huddle bother?

Frank hurt a bottle?

Frank turned art tour?

By now, I began to suspect one of two events was taking place. Either my Mississippi accent is simply alien to Google's voice recognition software, or --

GOOGLE IS PART OF A VAST GLOBAL CONSPIRACY DESIGNED TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM BUYING MY BOOKS.

Think about it. If Frank Tuttle can't be searched on Google, then people can't find my books. If people can't find my books, people can't buy my books, which is why I'm lurking in dark parking lots hoping to nab a stray coin purse so I can buy a Chromebook that won't search on my name anyway.

Crime truly doesn't pay.

Not one to let a technical glitch go undocumented, I decided to run a few Google voice searches on my name and capture screen shots for your reading pleasure.

I quickly realized that clicking the mic icon to initiate the search and stabbing madly at the screen capture key and holding the mic at the same time required two more tentacles than I'm allowed to display here on Earth. Instead, I put my camera on a tripod in front of the screen and captured the results of my attempts to do a voice search on my name, because yes, my life really is just that boring.

The dismal results are below.

Google never had a problem with my first name. Frank is fine, sayeth Google. But Tuttle?

Forget it...

Okay, we got author! And tunnel is close to Tuttle, but alas, as they say, no cigar (or, according to Google, 'nose boxcar').

Well, I never! Even Siri is never so forward.

Now Google is just being mean.

By now, I was convinced my accent was to blame. Surely the average Google user, who of course speaks in a flat American Midwestern dialect devoid of any unique pronunciations or inflections, can easily find my webpage or works?

I grabbed the first person I saw, which, um, let's just say grabbing a stranger wasn't my best decision. After a brief explanation to the court, it occurred to me that Google should best be able to understand another computer generated voice, because after all the same methods are used to synthesize speech as they are to interpret speech, are they not?

I have two computers. Both have sound systems.

And thus, my Computer to Computer Voice Search Test Rig was born. See below.

The speaking PC used a free Chrome Text-to Speech app called Chrome Speak from Dante.

It's really simple. You enter the text to be spoken and click speak.

My listening PC has a good soundcard and an excellent, studio-quality microphone. So I aimed the speaking PC's speakers at my listening PC's Blue Snowball mic. I clicked the mic icon on Google Search. Then I clicked speak on Chrome Speak. The text I entered was Frank Tuttle, author.

And how did Google hear this?

I won't bore you with more screen-shots of Frank title upper or the ever-popular Frank timer otters. Although I do like the mental picture conjured up by 'timer otters,' who I see as bespectacled otters in suits inspecting pocket-watches through monocles. 

Not a single test returned a proper search for Frank Tuttle or Frank Tuttle author.

But Peter Piper can pick a peck of pickled peppers, oh yes he did!

Google, Google, why doth thou despise me?

I own an iPhone, and Siri has never had any trouble understanding me. I just did a quick voice search for Frank Tuttle, author, and Siri instantly came back with my webpage, this blog, Amazon reviews, etc.

If you've got a machine with a mic, please try Google voice search in your own name, and let me know if it works!

OTHER NEWS WHICH I ASSUME WILL BE QUICKLY SUPPRESSED BY THE GOOGLE ANTI-TUTTLE CONSPIRACY

All the Paths of Shadow will be free in Kindle format for a few more hours! It reached #127 on Amazon, which is pretty cool. If anyone out there is interested, hitting #127 overall meant I gave away nearly 3000 books in the last 48 hours. Emphasis on 'gave away,' because I don't get royalties on freebies.

The trade-off, of course, is that you might pick up a goodly number of new fans, who will go on to buy your other titles.

Hey, it's a business, and it's a tough one at that.

MORE HI-TECH GIMMICKRY USED BY WRITERS

Marvel upon my latest writing aid! Yes, I've got computers, word processors, spreadsheets, etc. But what I really needed was an old-fashioned corkboard I could pin notes to, like this:

I've got all the scenes for the book in a Word file.

But as a day-to-day workspace to quickly add (and just as quickly remove) scribbled notes and reminders, this corkboard works pretty well. Too, it serves a second purpose, that of providing frequent mild head injuries because, like Google Voice, I sometimes have trouble recognizing things in my environment.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Not final final, just the last ones for tonight. Unless you know something I don't. And if you do, I don't want to know.

I'm just starting the second of ten scenes in the new Meralda and Mug book. Which makes me around 12% complete, he said, yanking random numbers out of the air.

You know, I haven't tried Google voice search for "Meralda and Mug." Let's see what I get!

Google voice search folks?

You've still got some work to do!

BioShock Infinite, and Other Necessities

Oops. Guess I should have warned some of you I'd be opening with a close-up of a spider. Sorry about that!

This is Emily, the big yellow spider who took up residence in our flowerbed. She keeps a tidy web and never plays her stereo too loud. Okay, sure, she dines by liquifying the internal organs of her prey and sucking out the resulting goo, but don't we all have one neighbor like that?

Here's another view of Emily, because I think she's pretty.

I took these images with my trusty Fuji Finepix, which I held about 4 inches from Emily before snapping the picture and then running away screaming like a leetle gurl. 

I'd never heard a spider snicker before.

WRITING NEWS

Markhat's fate, like that of Schrodinger's Cat, awaits the collapse of the quantum probability waveform. In one world, the new Markhat book sells and I indulge in jubilant celebration. In another, the publisher says no, and I bury myself in wet leaves and sulk until late November.

Never idle, though, I am hard at work on the new Meralda and Mug book, which is the sequel to All the Paths of Shadow.

I'm taking a slightly different approach to the writing of this book. I've often decried the use of outlines, because as soon as I outline a book I begin to lose interest in it, because I already know what happens and I have the attention span of a crack-crazed crow.

But this book needs structure. I can't just wing it and expect this one to work -- so I've stumbled upon a compromise.

This new book will consist of ten scenes. Not chapters -- a scene can easily encompass two or more chapters. No, a scene is a distinct piece of the story arc, designed to move the tale from here to there while accomplishing this, that, and the other thing along the way.

The great thing about working with scenes is that each scene can be summed up in a few sentences of very broad narrative brushstrokes. I don't go into much detail in the scene descriptions. It's very much a bare-bones affair, just hitting the high points and hinting at the rest.

The advantage to this method, at least for me, is that I don't get bored with it.

Here's an example (I'm not using any real ones from the book because I don't want to spoil any surprises).

SCENE 1:
Here: Tirlin
There: Halfway across the Great Sea

Meralda promises Mug she will not be aboard the airship Intrepid when it sets out for Hang across the vast Great Sea. Two months later, she is indeed aboard the Intrepid, a fuming Mug at her side. The Intrepid leaves the Realms behind, only to be beset by mishaps that look like sabotage. The crippled airship encounters a storm and falls, out of control, toward the storm-wracked sea far below.

This: Meralda resolves to resign her position as Mage as soon as the voyage is done, convinced she will never be allowed to complete any of what she considers her real work while matters of Court intrude.
That: Meralda's relationship with Donchen is strained, as he is not part of the voyage.
The Other Thing: Separated from the Royal Laboratory and its contents, show Meralda improvising with what few magical items she has on the Intrepid.

The loose structure lets me fill in the details as I write, which by the way is the only way I can write.

Why ten scenes? Why not twelve, or eight, or twenty-two?

Okay, you've got me there. And it might wind up being nine scenes, or eleven. Ten is just a nice round number, probably influenced by the books I've loved.

Did I mention I make all this stuff up as I go along?

Well, I do. If anyone out there has other ideas I would love to hear them.

CLICK ME: Blatant Plug O' The Day.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

I feel compelled to share this with you, my treasured readers (both of you guys, c'mere, here's a hug).

You know how a good book draws you in, makes you a part of its world, tricks you into cheering for the good guys and getting mad at the villains?

That's a unique experience. Up until now I'd probably have put music and movies and a very few TV shows in the same category of emotional experience sources, and my list pretty much stopped there.

But now I've found a game that plays just like a good book reads. Hard to believe?

Believe it.

I give you <drumroll please> Bioshock Infinite.

Set in a 1912 that never happened, the game puts you in the role of Booker DeWitt, a disgraced Pinkerton detective with a gambling problem, a tortured conscience, and a deft hand with a shotgun. As Booker, you are told your debts will be erased once you do a job for your nameless employers.

You are given a box containing a pistol and a photograph. The serious and unforgiving nature of your employers in punctuated by the dead man seated before you, who bears a sign reading DO NOT DISAPPOINT US around his bloody neck.

You are then whisked away to Columbia, a city held aloft my massive dirigibles.

Yes. A flying city, in 1912. Columbia, you see, was built for the World's Fair, as an example of American scientific and industrial prowess. And Columbia is a wonder -- buildings move, docking at certain places at certain times. Neighborhoods are connected by skylines, which look like the fever-dream of a roller-coaster designer brought to life up in the clouds. Airships great and small sail past, fans glittering in the high-altitude sun.

Even so, Columbia looks and feels like small-town America circa 1920. The kids wear knee-britches and chase rolling steel hoops. Brass bands tootle and hoot from red, white, and blue bandstands. You can buy popcorn and cotton candy from street-cart vendors while carnival barkers exhort you to sample their wares.

Despite all the wholesome Americana, Columbia is rotten to its technologically-advanced heart. The place is now run by a bearded religious fanatic who preaches a mixture of hellfire-and-brimstone rabid nationalism that rings eerily familiar today. It's as if Michele Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh sat down with Glenn Beck to design the ideal culture while slugging back Mason jars filled with whisky, mescaline, and LSD. Columbia split ties with the US soon after going airborne, and its whereabouts have been a mystery -- until you find yourself wandering its tidy brick streets.

I'll stop providing details now. But I will say this -- every other game I've played, no matter how much fun they were, were basically mere exercises in blowing off steam. I never really cared about my character in Oblivion, for instance. I just enjoyed sneaking up behind bad guys and putting arrows between their shoulder blades, because obviously I have a myriad of unresolved personal issues.

But BioShock Infinite is different. Like a good book, it punches you in the gut now and then. That's a first, at least for me, in the genre.

It shocked me.

Then it troubled me.

Now I'm angry, and ready to pour undiluted 100% pure weapons-grade murder over Columbia's smiling citizenry if that's what it takes to protect the object of my job.

I have no idea what I'm going to do next, but it appears I'll be disappointing the kind of people who don't endure disappointment in calmly-measured stride. But that's fine, because if Booker DeWitt is anything, he's a guy accustomed to dealing with disappointment, quite possibly with a shotgun blast.

The visuals are stunning. I've spent as much time as I could between gunfights just wandering around, soaking up the sights. And my companion's AI is pretty impressive. She doesn't just stand there, waiting for me to do something. No, she's off poking into things or wandering off or even wandering into view of the Columbia police, which adds a level of realism to the game I haven't seen before.

Is BioShock Infinite expensive? Yes. The retail version is around fifty bucks. I got my copy from Steam for $39.99. But be warned -- the Steam download is nearly 20 GB in size. Yes, twenty gigabytes, that's not a typo. And check the system requirements carefully too. This isn't going to run on a tablet or an old machine.

But man, is it worth the trouble.

If nothing else, watch this...

BioShock Infinite Trailer

Oh, and the song in the trailer? I looked it up -- it's  'Beast,' by Nico Vega. And yeah, I've got it now...

LAST WORDS

My home-made X-ray machine is coming along nicely! My hair should grow back any day now...

Frank's Handy Guide to Building Your Own PC

Fig 1., the author's new machine. The blue fans are for verbs, the green ones for nouns.

If you're like me -- and let's hold a moment of silence and hope you're not -- you need a new computer every few years because your old machine is beginning to spew cooling fans and bits of germanium every time you turn it on.

My former machine, which could run the letters A through C in Word 1877 and add two digit numbers twice every year.

So, if it's time for a new machine, you've got a few decisions to make.

1) Laptop, desktop, or tablet?

2) PC, Linux, or Mac?

Let's tackle Question 1 above first. 

For me, a laptop was out of the question, because I need a monitor the size of a movie screen just to see lower-case letters now. Too, I've never met a laptop keyboard that didn't feel cramped and flimsy. My typing style involves a lot of pounding, and detached solid metal gaming keyboards are the only ones that hold up. 

But what about portability, Frank? What if you want to write away from home?

I tried the whole write-at-the-coffee-shop bit a while back. Hated it, too. For one thing, coffee shops won't lock the doors no matter how politely I ask, and people kept getting in and ordering coffee. Worse, these people hang around after ordering, talking and reading and breathing. 

I hate that. Too, my trademark black hipster author beret keep falling down over my eyes and making me miss the tiny laptop keyboard. 

Finally, I've got everything I need right here -- large dogs, privacy, peace and quiet. No one wanders in and orders a double-stuffed mocha latte horseradish shellac hibiscus Concorde or whatever it is they drink these days, and if they did, Thor the behaviorally-challenged German Shepherd will be happy to show them the door.

So no laptop for me. 

A tablet? Look, those are nifty for watching the Youtubes or Facing the Mybooks, but I've got work to do.

So, that's settled -- for me, it's a desktop, aka The Grandpa Box, with a solid-steel mil-spec keyboard and all the trimmings.

Question 2 evokes the eternal struggle between the People of the PC and the Masses of the Mac, while one bearded guy in hiking boots looks up from his Linux box and waves.

Look, I'm sure Mac machines are fine pieces of equipment. They're even cute with their spartan little keyboards and their clever hidden components and their animal-themed OS designations.

At this point in our discussion, you need to reach beneath you, and feel around under your seat for bags of money.

If you're one of my writer pals and you're reading this, don't bother, because while we might not have much else in common a distinct lack of cash-sacks is certainly a deficiency we share.  

Macs aren't cheap. Take the current Mac Pro desktop. It runs a cool $2499, and comes with a quad-core Intel processor, 6 gigs of RAM, and a 5770 video card with 1 GB of DDR5 RAM. 

Maybe those specs don't mean much to you. If that's true, allow me to look upon them and yawn in polite boredom.

My old machine boasts better specs.  6 gig of RAM? Puh-please. A 5770 video card? 2010 is on the phone, and it wants its hardware back.

$600 would be a bit steep for such a rig. $2499 is just nuts.

Another factor, at least for me, is the upgrade/replacement aspect. 

If a part goes bad in my new PC, no big deal. I open the case, remove the bad component, pop in a new one, and I'm back up and running.

I can upgrade, if and when I want. Since I chose a roomy case and a hefty power supply, I can just swap out the other parts for years to come, and still have a decent computer without a major expense. 

Apple doesn't exactly encourage you to open their machines, much less start poking around and sticking new motherboards in. 

So, for me, the choice is clear -- I'm going with a PC build, at least until I can afford to drive to the Apple store in my Mercedes with a quick stop at Oscar de la Renta's New York shop for a new black beret.

Why not Linux?

Linux is a free operating system that involves entering a lot of things like ./grep -r -al/wtf/dammitdammitdammit  and hoping that somehow makes BioShock Infinite start up. Linux machines are largely impervious to viruses and malware, mainly because there are only six of them running in the entire world outside of server farms and businesses and why bother. 

Now comes the time when you need to decide whether to buy or build.

I used to buy. I bought Dells, and was pretty happy with them, at first. But then I wanted to add memory. I had a fan go out. Finding memory or replacing a fan suddenly wasn't quite the trivial task it should have been, because in order to cut costs Dell uses proprietary components which are often hard to find, and expensive when you do. Buying a new PC instead of maintaining the old one quickly becomes the most attractive prospect.

Finally, I took the plunge and built my own machine out of parts I chose and assembled myself, and I've never looked back.

Oh, and did I mention how much money you can save my building your own machine?

Well, you certainly can.

My new build has a 6 core processor and 8 gig of RAM (soon to be 16) and a video card that, if plunged into a flood of red-hot magma, would produce a puff of vapor more powerful that any ten 5770 video cards. And it cost less than half of that ludicrous $2499 Apple wants.

That still out of your budget?

I could put together a modest writer's work machine (hardware only, Windows 7 is another hundred bucks) for a little more than $300. It wouldn't run the latest games on the highest settings or store the entire contents of the Library of Congress, but it would run the crap out of Word 2010 and get you on the net and let you Face the Mybook and anger the crunchy candy birds while you're supposed to be writing.

Curious about how all this is done?

It's not as complicated as it sounds.

You need eight (maybe nine) components to build your own PC. Here they are:

1) A case, to hold everything together and provide ventilation.

2) A motherboard, which houses the CPU, the memory, and other vital components.

3) The CPU. The brain of the machine. You can opt for any of the CPUs made by Intel, which are excellent but relatively expensive, or you can chose a CPU made by AMD, which are still bloody good and a lot cheaper than Intel. Those are your choices.

4) RAM memory. RAM is what the CPU uses for fast operations. You want at least 8 GB (gigabytes). You could get by with 4. 6 is just silly. 8 is great, 16 is mahvellous, dahling.

5) A hard drive (HD) or a newer, faster solid-state device called an SSD. This is where your programs and files are stored. Hard drives are cheap and fairly fast. Get at least 500 GB. SSDs are super-fast but uber-expensive. I haven't bought one yet. Send me money, and I'll try one.

6) An optical drive. Yeah, I know, who uses CDs anymore. You might only use it once, to install the OS (operating system). But you'll need it, so get one, and since they can be had for $20 or less why not?

7) The OS (Operating System). Windows or Linux. If you read that and thought 'Linux? What's that?' forget it and shell out the hundred bucks for Windows 7, the 64-bit version. 

8) The power supply. Unlike Macs, which apparently run on unicorn giggles and the innocent 8-bit dreams of children, your PC will need power. Power supplies are rated in watts. A bare-bones strictly-business PC would be just fine, probably, with 350 watts. Start adding video cards and fancy motherboards and multi-core performance processors, and you'd better start looking at the 550 to 650 watt range. Two big video cards? Better get a kilowatt. Oh, and bring your wallet.

9) A video card. Look, you might not need this. Most motherboards come with onboard video features. AMD's new chips come with onboard video processors; they're called APUs. I wanted a video card because I have this fantasy that someday I might be able to start and actually finish a PC game (which I've never done). I don't need the card to run Word, but I like knowing it's there. But it is an extra expense, so weigh your needs carefully.

The list above assumes you have a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse handy. If not, you can get them too, but I won't be including them in my discussions.

I buy all my components from two places. They are:

Tiger Direct

Newegg

Both are excellent, trustworthy online merchants I've used for years. They've both got great selections, fast shipping, and prompt customer service.

They're also good places to learn about what really goes into a computer. I learned just about everything by looking at what they call 'barebones' systems. With a barebone system, they've selected components which are compatible with each other, they tell you what performance to expect, and there are videos which show you what each part does and how to put it all together.

I've never ordered a barebones machine myself, but I did learn the basics of what works when paired with what, and what goes into a basic machine as opposed to a fancy gaming rig.

Just remember the following tips as you proceed:

1) Some motherboards like Intel chips. Some like AMD. None like both. So you'll have to choose either Intel or AMD, and stick with it. Intel chips are faster. AMD chips are cheaper. How deep are your pockets, Sunshine?
2) That $20 power supply? Yes, it's cheap. And yes, it will BLOW UP IN YOUR FACE the instant you take it out of the box. Forget it. I use Cooler Master power supplies because I once saw a Cooler Master PS take a direct lightning hit and then climb out of the case and PUNCH THE CLOUD. 

3) You can get a decent case for $40 bucks, $30 if it's on sale. I like Cooler Master cases. Don't go any cheaper. You'll regret it if you do.

4) For motherboards, stick with ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, or MSI. I stick with ASUS, myself, and have never had one fail.

5) For RAM, I suggest Corsair, Kingston, G.SKILL, or Crucial. You get some really cheap no-name stuff, but I have to assume it's made from the toenails of unidentified corpses and bundles of Fukushima asbestos. 

6) Worried about what CPU chip will fit in which motherboard, and what memory will work with both? Not a problem. Go to pcpartpicker.com and build your system there -- if you choose the wrong parts, you'll be told what won't work, and why, all for free!

7) No, do NOT choose Windows 8. Just. No. Windows 7, 64 bit, so you can pile on the RAM (the 32-bit version can't access much RAM).

8) Both Newegg and Tiger Direct have 'Memory Finders' which match RAM to your motherboard. Use that, and you can't go wrong!

9) Stop looking at Windows 8! Honestly.

There is a vital rule of thumb to consider when choosing between AMD and Intel CPU chips, and that rule is this -- whatever you choose, you have chosen poorly.

That's because there are Intel fanboys who will hurl acrimonious bile you way if you go AMD, and AMD fanboys who will do the same if you select Intel.  Both camps have benchmark test figures to back up their claims.

I suggest you ignore both camps entirely and buy whatever you can afford. Without a bench crammed with test gear, you are never going to see any real-world difference between comparable Intel or AMD products. I can hear furious fanboys rushing my way now.

Here's a link to a great video series that shows you, step by step, how to build a PC. Yeah, it was made in 2011, but while the hardware has changed the build procedures have not. You can find much more recent how-to videos out there -- just Google your MyFace toward 'DIY PC build video' and start watching.

PC BUILD VIDEO SERIES

Here are the parts I used in my new build.

Here are the specs:

CPU: AMD A-6300 six core CPU, ASUS MA597 LE motherboard, 8 GB Kingston HyperX 1600 MHz RAM, 500 GB WD Black hard drive, Cooler Master case, Cooler Master HyperX CPU cooler, Cooler Master 650 watt Bronze power supply, ASUS optical drive, Rosewill wifi interface card, Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS, and an XFX Radeon 7850 Core Edition video card with 2GB of DDR5 memory. There are also 3 Cooler Master 120 mm lighted case fans, because if I'm ever wandering around inside the case I'll be happy I installed some lighting.

It worked the first time I powered it up. Total build time was probably five hours, including Win 7 installation.

Anyway, if you're interested in building your own, check out the links I posted above, and have fun!

WRITING NEWS

I have very little to report. THE FIVE FACES is still under consideration by the publisher. Work on the new Mug and Meralda didn't see much progress this last week because we were on vacation.

But tomorrow it's back to the usual routine, so I should have a decent word count to report next week.

So get out there and build something!

 

Glowing Plastic Werewolf Heads

Fig. 7A: The author, before coffee.

The image above may explain a few things.

That photograph was taken a half-hour ago. Yes, it's a werewolf head. Of the glowing plastic variety. 

I bring your attention to it because it is an artifact from my childhood. I thought Wolfie was gone forever, buried deep in a landfill somewhere, quietly decomposing. But he must have found a good hiding place instead, because I found him just this morning after my father unearthed him from whatever remote corner of the house he's been haunting since I was nine. 

Woflie had a body once. A tall, furry, raggedly-dressed body, arms upraised, talons gleaming with plasticine menace. Sadly, the life of a plastic werewolf is fraught with danger, especially when BB guns and cousins become involved. But Wolfie's head survived, and he spent many a night glowing faintly on my bed, keeping the other monsters at bay.

He still glows, as you can see. I think he was even pleased to see me again, after all these years. 

He now perches atop my PC case, where he can once again emit a pale yellow-green glow and make sure the zombies don't sneak up behind me.

Welcome home, Wolfie. It's good to have you back.

IN WHICH I OBTAIN MILLIONS OF US DOLLARS IN A SAFE AND 100% RISK FREE BUSINESS TRANSACTION WHICH IS PERFECTLY SAFE AND LEGAL, YES SIR, SAFE AND LEGAL.

In last week's blog, I posted a couple of emails from a scammer calling himself Wang. Dear old Wang promised me a sizable hunk of some sweet, sweet Chinese cash, if only I would agree to help him out.

Well, being an agreeable fellow, I emailed Wang back and explained that I would be more than happy to collect a few million dollars for a good cause. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I let Wang in on my own little secret -- I confessed to him I am in reality the crime-fighting super-hero known as THE NIGHTCRAWLER.

Now, such a revelation might have sent many business associates running for the hills. But not Wang! Oh no. Friend Wang is made of sterner stuff. Even after my Nightcrawler email, he's not only willing but eager to do business with me, as witnessed by his reply to my Nightcrawler email, which I'll post below:

Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 17:27:05 +0800 [08/16/2013 05:27:05 AM EDT]

From: Xingwu. Wang <xingwu.wang@yahoo.cn>Add xingwu.wang@yahoo.cn to my Address Book China

To: franktuttle@franktuttle.comAdd franktuttle@franktuttle.com to my Address Book

Subject: YOUR DETAILS INFORMATION NEED

Dearest Friend and Partner, 

It has indeed been a great honour and privilege having you as a friend and business associate and I have decided to take you as a very close and prospective partner in this venture with hopes that we would meet someday and shake hands together. I want you to be fully assured that you are dealing with a man of absolute integrity and honesty and want to sincerely assure you that you would never have any cost of regrets doing business with my person. I want you to trust me like a brother which I have taking you to be.  I want you to be sincerely assured that you have met the right and appropriate person to do business with and also assure you that this transaction is 100% legitimate which you will not be exposed to any form of risk for partnering with me in securing this noble effort.

BLAH BLAH BLAH Another page of scammer-speak deleted it's all crap anyway.

Will you still help? If you are willing to help,   I will need the following information’s from you as soon as possible.  

Full names:

Contact address:

 Country:

Telephone/fax number(s).

A copy of any form of valid identification / international passport or id/, driver’s License sent by email as an attachment.  

As I will know who I am dealing with we need to build trust, As soon as you provide this information I will process with the legal document and the shipment of our package with the money inside to you 

Note the Diplomat will contact you.

Furthermore, I would like you to introduce me to lucrative domestic investments in your location and I will welcome proficient advice on terms and procedures of investments, okay?  Be rest assured that all facilities for the successful transfer of the fund have been carefully arranged provided that you maintain secrecy follow my advice and instruction on transfer of money as I may do same when time for our investments come. Thank you once again and I look forward to a good business relationship with you which would be of much benefit to both parties. 

Looking forward to your urgent response

Best Regards to you and your family,

Wang Xingwu

Okay, so Wang wants my name, contact info, a scan of an ID card, all the usual nonsense.

Well, I've come this far, and I do need forty million dollars to pay off my bookie after a series of bad tips on the hamster races, so here goes. I sent all the following information and documents to Wang:

NAME: Frank F. Frank

ADDRESS: 419 Batmannish Groin Drive

                   Gotham City, GC 909423

COUNTRY: USA

TELEPHONE: (redacted -- it's a legal brothel in Nevada, have fun with that Wang)

And for my 'identification,' here's what I sent:

Like my new beard, and my piercing Russian stare? And bonus points to anyone who can name the motto on the Gotham City seal.  

I predict Wang will indeed respond, despite the ridiculous nature of my credentials.

Once he does, I'll post that here too. 

WRITING NEWS

The new Markhat novel is still under consideration.

The new Mug and Meralda is still underway. My word count this week stands at last week's total, give or take a couple hundred words, because I deleted nearly as many as I wrote. 

That happens sometimes. I don't consider it time wasted, because I did explore a path I simply decided not to take. 

The book proceeds, though!

GHOSTLY GOINGS-ON

Hope to do more EVP work with my fancy new germanium microphone this week. If I do, I'll post the results here on the blog, as always.

FINAL WORDS

Wolfie bids you all a good night, and pleasant dreams...