Things That Go Bump #4

Bill O'Neil

George Meek

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Meet Bill O'Neil and George Meek.

These gentlemen are one of two things. They are either visionaries and pioneers, or a pair of grinning scamps who pulled off one of the most complicated pranks in paranormal research history.

Together, they built and operated an enormous machine they called the Spiricom, which was said to allow clear, utterly unambiguous communication with at least one deceased gentleman known as 'Doc Mueller.'

You can hear the tapes. See the diagrams. But before we get into all that, a bit of background.

The year is 1979. Disco is on its last pair of wide-bottomed trousers. The acronym 'EVP' is barely known to anyone outside of hard-core paranormal researchers. I am sporting a truly unfortunate Beatles bowl-cut. 

Meanwhile, down in his basement, Bill O'Neil is using the so-called 'Spiricom' to speak to the dead.

Of course, he's not the only person to have made this claim. But he is one of the few who made high-quality recordings of his conversations. His methods were also wildly diverged from the usual Ouija-board and seance-room approaches usually taken. 

No, the Spiricom was a nuts-and-bolts machine. 

In a nutshell, here's how O'Neil and Meek claimed the Spiricom worked:

1) They built a tone generator. This tone generator combined 13 distinct audio tones, each lying within the vocal range of the average human male (from about 300 to 3400 Hz). Nothing special here, except in 1979 you couldn't simply fire up a computer to do this without building a specialized device.

2) They hooked the tone generator to a low-powered radio transmitter. Their transmitter spewed out the audio tone on a radio frequency of around 30 MHz. Is there anything magical or special about 30 MHz? Nope. 

3) They built a receiver, which received their 30 MHz tonal transmissions.  They set up a mic and a recorder and recorded the sounds from the receiver as well as the operator's voice.

Pretty simple, really. You've got a transmitter spewing out a steady tone, which is a combination of all the tones used by human males (why not include women? Sign of the times, I suppose). 

And then you've got a receiver picking up these tones, and a recorder taking it all down. 

According to Meeks and O'Neil, something happened between steps 2 and 3. For communication to have occurred, a group of entities based somewhere else would have to have received this tone transmission, modulated the steady tone into a rather robotic-sounding voice, and then transmitted this modulated version of the signal back to O'Neil's receiver. 

Keep in mind nothing O'Neil said was actually transmitted. The Spiricom receiver sent out nothing but the tone. So for the ghosts to know what O'Neil was saying, they had to be there in the room listening to him. 

Yeah. So you've got spirits who A) know somehow when the Spiricom transmitter is active, and B) can also be present in the same room to hear what the operator is saying. 

But forget that for a moment. Let us hypothesize that there are ghosts on the Other Side who know quite a bit about electronic engineering. That's not so far-fetched, really. 

Here's where things get weird.

If you believe Mr. O'Neil and Mr. Meeks, after a few months of working with the Spiricom device, voices began to emerge from the tone. Clear voices. Distinct voices. 

Voices that engaged in perfectly intelligent conversations with O'Neil.

Here's an example. The robotic voice is purported to be that of 'Doc Mueller,' a dead engineer who is speaking to O'Neil from the Other Side. There's nothing spooky or scary here -- forget the context for a minute, and it's just two old friends tinkering around in their garage.

The 'Doc' is helping to refine the transmission, which is why he repeats 'Mary had a little lamb.' 

This (and the other recordings of O'Neil) is the the only piece of sustained conversational EVP I've ever heard. If it is real -- and that's a big if -- it has profound implications for science, philosophy, everything.

I mean listen to the clip above. They're talking carrots and cabbages. Gardening. The weather.

This isn't pareidolia.   It isn't RF crosstalk. It may be faked, but it bloody well isn't an accident of noise.

There are quite a few recordings you can listen to.

Click http://www.worlditc.org/k_06_spiricom.htm  for links.

By now, you may be wondering why, if the Spiricom device worked so well, that you've (probably) never heard of it.

Good question. O'Neil and Meek didn't hide the plans. In fact, they encouraged others to build their own machine and replicate their results.

A few people did so.

All they got, I'm afraid, was a steady tone from the receiver. No Doc Mueller.  No friendly ghosts with a bent for electrical engineering.

Which leaves us to consider fraud.

I understand scams and how they work. When conducted on any scale, fraud is designed to relieve fools from their money.

If Spiricom was indeed a fraud, it was spectacular only in its ineptitude. Neither O'Neil nor Meek got rich selling schematics. They didn't do the talk-show circuit. They both died quietly, in relative obscurity, and the without the solace of heaps of cash.

Believers will assert that O'Neil made the Spiricom work because he was, unknown even to himself, a gifted medium, who probably could have achieved the same results with a few candles and a darkened room.

Me?

Heck if I know.  I just build things. I do find it amusing to think that, if the story is true, the first thing a living engineer and a dead engineer do upon establishing contact across the Veil is to immediately start fiddling with the electronics. They didn't talk philosophy or discuss the true nature of uber-reality. 

No, they started improving the quality of the audio signal.

Is that plausible? Believable?

Again, I don't know.

But what I do know is that technology has marched on since the Days of Disco.

Tone generators? No circuits needed. Just fire up some cheap (or even free) audio software and build your own Spiricom tone. Save it as an audio file. Whew, that took a whole three minutes.

The transmitter?

Almost as easy. 

You can grab a nifty FM transmitter from Ramsey Electronics for around 40 bucks. Yeah, you'll need to build it, but that's easily done in an afternoon. As far as having a receiver and a recorder handy, well, that's child's play.

I'll have my own Ramsey transmitter soon. 

But there's no need to wait to run a few very simple tests. You can make a crude but operable RF transmitter with two 49 cent transistors, a capacitor, and a few other small parts in about ten minutes. I have several receivers handy.

And so I give you, gentle readers, my own Saturday afternoon version of a Spiricom device, shown below!

Yes, I know my workbench needs to be re-surfaced. It's a workbench. Small explosions are not unheard of.

But there it is -- a vastly oversimplified AM oscillator.

Does it work?

Yes, in that is spews out a tone (around 1000 Hz) on a radio frequency that spreads across the entire AM transmission band. Good thing I don't have close neighbors, even though the effective range is only a few yards. 

And here is one of my two receivers, which you may recognize as the Tesla crystal radio I built back in 2014.

All the aspects of the original Spiricom device are here. I generate a tone. I blast it out into space as a radio signal. I then receive the tone and record both the tone and my voice. 

Easy-peasy.

Have a listen!

The recording above was made using my crude transmitter (that's the circuit on the console) and my crystal radio (the thing with the weird antennas). 

I recorded fifteen minutes of audio with this. Regrettably, Doc Mueller was a no-show.

Yes, there were a lot of faint voices in the background (and some not so faint blasts too). But those are merely stray radio broadcasts. What I was listening for were voices composed of the tone itself.

I got none. Which is hardly a surprise; Meeks and O'Neil didn't get anything at first either.

I decided to try a commercial receiver, something with a far more selective tuner than the one on the Tesla crystal radio. So I fired up my trusty  Realistic TM-102 AM/FM receiver (right out of 1983) and set it to a quiet spot low in the AM band for another session. Here's a sample of that.

Again, nothing but tone.

You'll hear more here about the Spiricom in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, I invite you to research the subject further, including comments by the detractors. 

Last week I mentioned Mama Hog might be reading Poe's THE RAVEN in this week's blog.

I really should think these things through before I start shooting my mouth off. Yes, such a thing is possible. But to make it sound good is going to take a lot of time, and frankly that's time better spent finishing the new book.

Instead, I leave you with a truly excellent rendition of THE RAVEN, read by none other than Christopher Lee. I invite you to turn down the lights and turn up the volume, because this is probably the best version of THE RAVEN available anywhere.

Then follow up by enjoying The Alan Parson Project's equally haunting musical rendition, from their debut album TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION.

Night night, folks....

Things That Go Bump #3

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Welcome to this, my third installment of the Things That Go Bump series!

For today's blog, I visited two cemeteries. I took my camera, my Zoom H1, and the new Velleman Super Ear.

I paid a visit to Oxford's own literary superstar, novelist William Faulkner. His grave is pictured above; note my mics on his markers, and the airline bottle of Jack Daniels left as a gift by one of his many admirers. 

Sulking perhaps at the small volume of whiskey contained in the bottle, The Faulkners were silent during this session.

But they were the only residents being quiet. During my ten minute stay there, I recorded a dozen snippets of voices, screams, yells, thuds, bangs, howls, and, quite possibly, an entire operatic performance of 'Fiddler on the Roof.'

Hey, I don't write private eye fiction without having learned a thing or two. I rendered myself in film noir black and white. pushed my fedora down at a jaunty angle, and I walked the mean streets of Oxford until I discovered the source of these hellish vocalizations.

A bunch of kids were beating the ever-loving crap out of each other with those flexible foam pool noodle things not a block from the gravesite.

So I've tossed out the entire Faulkner EVP session. A choir of poltergeists could have covered Led Zepplin's second album two feet from my microphones, and they'd still have been drowned out by little Sally's furious pummeling of that awful Randall kid from two houses down.

But fear not, gentle readers, because I have something amazing to offer despite this.

My next visit, to the Civil War cemetery on the University of Mississippi campus, was anything but mundane.

The University of Mississippi Civil War Cemetery

Tucked away on the edge of campus, the Confederate Soldiers Cemetery occupies a small hill and is bordered by a waist-high brick wall.

You can read the official description on the marker.

What the marker doesn't mention is a bit of campus lore the campus had no doubt rather forget.

According to the story, the University decided to spruce up the graveyard sometime back in the 1950s. A truck was dispatched, and workers were instructed to carefully load the grave markers onto the truck, so that they could be taken away to be cleaned.

A nice gesture. The work was completed. The freshly cleaned markers were loaded back onto the truck, and the truck returned to the cemetery, and it was only then that the awful truth became apparent.

No map or plan of the location of the graves had been prepared. There was no way to tell which markers went where.

I can only assume that the single mass marker which now stands at the top of the lonely hill was quickly erected, probably in the dead of night. 

Nevertheless, I entered the graveyard, armed with my recorders and cameras.

I was there for approximately 17 minutes.

During my stay, I captured two strange audio instances, and one photographic one.

Let's begin with the photo.

I take a lot of photos during an EVP session. Hundreds of them. It's a digital camera, why not? And most of the images -- the vast majority of them -- are just pictures. Nothing unusual at all about them.

But take a look at the image below.

Dead center is an odd purple aberration that didn't show before or after. 

Lens flare? Not so sure. If there was anything brightly reflective in the foreground, I'd attribute the haze to that. But there isn't.

Aside from the central marker itself, that is. I don't see anything bright on it. And doesn't the general outline of the blur suggest an oblong figure in front of the camera? Man-shaped, sort of, in a gauzy, insubstantial, Hollywood spectre sort of way?

I'm not calling this a ghost. I'm not calling it anything. It's just odd. 

I mentioned two pieces of audio.

At about 16 minutes and 45 seconds into the main session, as captured by the Zoom, I thought I had a voice.

I really did. I'm walking, you see. I say 'I'm halfway to the gate,' as I exhort anyone who wishes to speak to do so, before I leave. A few seconds pass. I reach the gate, and say 'All right.'

My Zoom seemed to capture a single word in that brief silence.

In preparing it for presentation to the blog, I removed some of the noise. I isolated the sound. Amplified it. Looped it.

Thankfully, I also identified it.

No ghost here.

I have new sneakers, you see. Sketchers. They have these annoying little suction cups on the soles. When I walk on a tile floor, I sound like an octopus engaged in frenzied tap dancing.

But of course the cemetery is simply mowed ground. My shoes were silent on that -- until I stepped on one of the half-hidden flagstones that make up the path from the gate to the central marker.

SQUNK.

And that's the sound I captured. I won't post it.

But what I will post is nothing short of amazing.

The Ghost On the Wall

At about 5 minutes and 30 seconds, my Velleman was resting on the wall that surrounds the cemetery. So was my Zoom.

So was I.

Let me preface this by saying I was absolutely alone. No one was in sight. I heard nothing at the time of the recording. No car was driving past. No kids were engaged in gleeful assault with battery.

I was alone.

Or was I?

As I rested in the shade, I remarked that the cemetery was 'very peaceful.' There is a silence. I then comment that the cemetery is probably the only speck of real estate safe from development, because of the bodies.

I even took this picture.

What the Velleman captured in the space of my comments came as quite a shock to me.

I looped the voice for clarity. What it says seems obvious to me. But you be the judge.

You don't even need headphones for this one.

Again, let me make it plain that I was alone. No women were present. No one was.

So what did I capture?

Was it wind noise, combined with pareidolia? I don't think so. The character of the voice doesn't sound like anything else in the entire recording.

A stray voice?

If so, why didn't the Zoom capture it? I checked the same time, listened to the space between the same comments. 

Look at the picture. They're maybe nine inches apart. One caught a female voice. The other caught nothing.

And why didn't I hear it, if it was merely a voice?

Explanations? I have none. Voices don't simply emerge from thin air, except when they do. 

I suspect -- and I'm only thinking out loud here, folks -- that so-called EVPs originate from very small spaces located close to the recording microphone. I mean small. Microscopic, even.

I can think of no other set of circumstances that would explain why two recorders in close proximity might result in a recording by one device and failure to record by the other. 

This point-source supposition might also explain why I never hear the sounds my devices capture.

It doesn't explain the nature of the sounds, of course, but there wasn't enough booze in Faulkner's bottle to even begin to tackle that question.

So did I manage to record some invisible entity saying the words 'a ghost?'

I don't know. I have the recording. That's really all I can state for sure -- that my device captured these sounds.

I hate to leave you with more questions that answers, but for now, I have no choice.

A Gift For You

Finally, gentle readers, I leave you with a spooky gift, suitable for hanging on your walls.

I enjoy art. I have a twisted sense of humor. 

Some of the things hanging on my walls are not quite what they seem, at first glance.

This diploma is an example. Ever wanted to be a certified Evil Overlord, with the papers to prove it? 

Well, download the form above and fill in your name and your desired degree. Hang it on your office wall. See how long it takes anyone to notice.

Yeah, I made this. All the Latin translates to 'Evil is Better,' 'No Mercy,'  and 'No Fear.' My degree is in Applied Hostile Geometries. The images are pulled from public domain woodcuts.

If you want me to add your name and degree in fancy text, email me and let me know. Looks pretty good, even in a cheap Walmart frame. Show those fancy-pants ingrates at work what a REAL degree looks like!

Things to Come

Next week, I add wind screens to the Velleman, and plan a daring twilight EVP expedition!

So stay tuned, and stay safe!

NOTE:

Links to the full Civil War EVP sessions are below, in case you are eager to torture your ears with my accent and running commentary.

Things that Go Bump #2

Broken bowl, Tula MS cemetery.

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In this second October installment of my Things That Go Bump series,  we're going to focus on EVPs.

EVP is an acronym for Electronic Voice Phenomena. I'm sure you're familiar with EVPs -- every ghost hunting show and quite a few movies feature them now, usually billed as 'voices of the dead.'

I'm not suggesting such a thing. I have no idea what agency is behind the voices. In fact, when I first heard of EVPs several years ago, I laughed at the whole concept.

I laughed so much, in fact, I got a mic of my own, and I took it to a graveyard, and I walked around talking and listening. My intention was to fail to record anything, and then mock the very notion of EVPs on my blog.

But things didn't happen as I planned. I actually caught an EVP my first time out. I've recorded a number of them since. 

So while I don't claim to know by what means these voices wind up on recordings, I do know the phenomena is real.

And, oddly enough, it happens to me most often in cemeteries. I can set up my mics in the backyard or the warehouse or anywhere else, and get nothing.

But head into a boneyard, and out come the voices.

Which brings us to today.

Yesterday, October the 10th, I ventured back to the tiny cemetery in equally tiny Tula, Mississippi. Is this cemetery haunted? 

Nope. Haven't heard a single story.

Did I go in the dead of night?

Not just 'no' but heck no. I don't avoid rural graveyards after dark out of some fear of ghosts. I doubt they'd hurt you, even if they do exist.

But copperhead rattlesnakes certainly do, and will. Ditto for wild hogs and drunk teenagers and I can think of no better way to get off to a bad start with local law enforcement than for someone to call the sheriff on me in a cemetery in the middle of the night.

So I do day investigations. And yesterday's was certainly fruitful.

In addition to my trusty Zoom H1 field microphone, I employed a device I built that same Saturday morning. It's a Velleman Super Ear mic, which provides about 50 times the normal amplification and a stereo pickup.

After the EVPs, I'll go into the Super Ear build, but let's get right to the spooky stuff.

Manning -- or, I suppose, woman-ing -- the Velleman was Karen, accompanied by Executive Investigator dog Max. 

They headed back into the old, overgrown part of the cemetery, while I took the Zoom and went in the opposite direction, to eliminate crosstalk. 

About nine minutes in to the session, Karen thinks she hears a faint voice or voices. She's heard this before there, a sort of chant, and she comments upon it.

The mic picks up nothing then. But soon after that, it captured what sounds like a single word. I can't make it out. Maybe you can. The EVP is below, in the form of a YouTube video.

Here's the same word, with noise reduction in place.

That's a single word. Strange, but not really spooky.

What follows is probably the spookiest EVP we've ever recorded. It's nothing but whispering. This was about 4 and a half minutes into the full session.  She's just walking with Max, hasn't said anything in a few moments, when out of nowhere came this:

The next clip is from about 10 minutes and 30 seconds in. Karen hears something odd, and says 'Not sure of the recorder picked that up, but it was a very weird sound.' 30 seconds later, this was captured. A single word, maybe 'what?'

Finally, we have this. You may need headphones for this one, it's extremely faint. Around the 14 minute mark, Karen notes many of the graves lack markers, and comments that 'gone but not forgotten' sadly doesn't apply to those poor souls. About 5 seconds after she speaks, there is a faint murmuring -- but again, you may need headphones for this one.

Now let's switch to the things the Zoom H1 caught. It won't take long, because there are only two. 

The first is a single word. I laid the mic down on a sandstone marker, stepped back, and asked if anyone had anything to say. I then snapped the following picture.

It's a child's grave, from around 1850. I heard nothing, and after a moment I moved on.

But here's what the mic captured:

What word is that?

No idea. I can only say I didn't hear it while I was standing there.

Finally, I give you this. It too is faint, and headphones are recommended. I took a photo of another child's grave, commented that the poor little guy only lived a year, and walked away. This is what the mic caught (again, very faint).

With phones, it sounds as if someone near the recording device recently dined at Taco Bell. I can assure you the source of the mysterious raspberry was not me, and I don't think it was Max, either. 

What were these sounds? Why were they captured on recording devices, but not heard by the persons operating the devices? Why (in my experience at least) are they only captured in cemeteries?

Heck if I know. 

The Velleman Super Ear

Second only to screwing around on Facebook, building gadgets is my favored way to avoid real work (i.e., writing). So I build a lot of things, and most of today's EVPs were captured by my newest DIY gadget, the Velleman Super Ear mic.

The astute observer may notice the tell-tales signs of duct tape and Velcro. Why?

Because I'm a fantasy author whose name, when spoken, is almost always followed by the word 'Who?' 

So you do the best you can with what you have.

The heart of the Super Ear is a simple mic-and-amp circuit, available anywhere for less than ten bucks. It comes unassembled, so you'll have to do your own soldering and cutting.

What you get is a stereo mic with a built-in IC amplifier. The gain is set to about 50, which makes it extremely sensitive. The output jack can feed a pair of headphones or, in my case, a simple digital recorder.

Let's start with the kit, which looks like this:

You will need a soldering iron, and you'll need to know how to use it. The parts are tiny and the circuit board to which they must be soldered contains delicate copper tracings that are easy to short out.

I have a big magnifying glass on a flexible arm over my work bench. Otherwise I couldn't see anything.

So you follow the instructions, put resistors and capacitors and potentiometers and all the rest as indicated. 

Then you solder and trim the ends. 

After an hour or so of work, you have this!

It needed a case of some sort. I didn't have a box to fit, but I did have an old cordless soldering iron, duct tape, a broken camera mini-tripod, and some Velcro. I opted to use my Olympus digital audio recorder as the output, and viola, the Super Ear was born!

That's the device that recorded most of the EVPs above. Ten bucks, some batteries, a few junk odds and ends.

Mad science can be fun!

Writing News

Good news, folks! The new Markhat book is all but done. I mean 95%, and it's a good one, too.

I'll probably be posting IT IS FINISHED in next Sunday's blog.

I hope you enjoyed this foray into the unknown! 

See you next week!

Things That Go Bump #1

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It's October, my favorite month.  Because October is the only month that culminates in Halloween. And Halloween is the only holiday that celebrates the spooky, the scary, and the mysterious!

In keeping with the spirit of the season, with each blog entry this month we'll dig up a little cemetery soil to expose something buried in the shallow grave of rationality. 

What better place to start digging, than beneath the headstone marked 'ghosts?'

Ghost stories are told within nearly all human cultures, and have been told throughout all the history we've been able to cobble together. Some ghosts are vengeful, some are sad, some are able to see the future, or dabble in the affairs of the living. 

According to the stories, that is. Science has yet to recognize anything even remotely resembling proof that dead people go on as bodiless spirits.

But, for the purpose of discussion, let's say ghosts exist. It's October. Take the plunge. Ghosts are real. Fine. 

What the heck are they?

You'll get a lot of replies to this question. Ghosts are spirits, of course. Beings composed of pure energy. Ghosts are the embodiment of our immortal souls. Ghosts are ectoplasmic remnants of our consciousness. 

Today I'd like to suggest a different, lesser known theory for  the actual mechanism behind most so-called 'hauntings.' 

What if the ghosts are, in fact, us?

More specifically, what if ghosts are the actualized, mobile results of our own imaginations?

I speaking about tulpas. A tulpa is said to be an entity created by the act of willful concentration and meditation of one or more people. If the people are determined and devoted to the process, believers (and this is an ancient belief) claim a tulpa can do all the things we attribute to ghosts, and more.

Case in point: the so-called Philip Experiments, conducted by a group of Canadian psychical researchers in the 1970s.

You can read about the sessions here or here. Or I'll summarize things for you. A group of researchers decided they would create a ghost. They named him Philip and gave him a detailed but entirely fictional history. They drew sketches of his likeness.

They got together and talked about Philip and thought about Philip and generally focused on Philip, even though everyone in the group was quite well aware there was not, nor had there ever been, any such person.

That's important. Because they weren't trying to contact the spirit of a deceased person. 

Instead, the experiment was designed to test a theory that stated the expectation of psychic phenomena -- in this case, ghostly appearances -- was enough to actually trigger the phenomena. 

Once Philip was well-known to the group, they began to engage in the methods employed by spiritualists and mediums of the last century. They sat in darkened rooms and urged 'Philip' to come forth. 

If you believe the group and witnesses to the occurrences, Philip soon began to appear, even though he was imaginary.

The group reported knocks and movements and all the usual phenomena associated with seance-style apparitions.

There's even a video of a Philip session, captured by a Canadian TV show. The video shows table-tipping -- but you can see it for yourself, I've pasted it below. LATE NOTE: The video is replay-restricted, which means you'll get a message saying WATCH THIS VIDEO ON YOUTUBE. Click on that. It will take you straight to YouTube. Watch the video, then come back here! Sorry for the inconvenience.

The video is either proof of the power of simple imagination, or a run-of-the-mill table tipping hoax.

Look, making a table tip via trickery is easy. Making it float isn't much more difficult. We've all seen stage magicians do far more impressive feats, and no one is suggesting anything paranormal was involved. 

But what if 'Philip' was the actual agency behind the movement in that video?

Well, that means the physical world is subject to the influence of directed mental effort. 

It might also mean that many of what we call 'ghosts' and 'hauntings' are nothing more than mental residue, set free to wander.

Is that really so far-fetched?  Take any location with a reputation for being haunted. People talk about what they've seen and heard. They speculate. They spend a lot of time wondering if they are alone. They jump at shadows and they tell their friends and pretty soon the whole place is awash in the very same kind of spooky energy used to raise up Philip, the imaginary ghost.

Which would make Philip a tulpa. And if my assertion is true, it would mean we are surrounded by tulpas, who make stairs creak and pop out of doorways and push glasses off of counters because that's just what we expect them to do.

Do I believe this?

Yes. No. Maybe. But it's fun to think about. 

There is a downside to this school of thought, though. Let's say you are afraid of monsters in your closet, or under the bed. 

If that's true, every time you think about them, they get a little closer to solidifying. A tiny step nearer to the door that opens into our reality.

But I'm sure that's all nonsense. 

Sleep tight, my fiends.

What was that noise?

All Things New, Again

Welcome to the new (and vastly improved) franktuttle.com website!

This will be my first blog entry on the new site. I hope you will find the letters e,f, and k to be 70% crisper, each verb to pack 15 bushels more impact, and every simile to provoke mass outbreaks of cheers and huzzahs. 

First of all, I'd like to thank the good people at ADSmith for designing the site. I think they did a fantastic job, and I recommend their website design services to my writing sisters and brothers. 

Those of you familiar with my old site, which I designed and coded and maintained, already know the world is filled with lizards whose design skills exceed my own.  One day I decided it was time to put on my big boy britches and get a real website, so here it is! 

Please take a moment to poke around. My email address hasn't changed -- it's still franktuttle (at) franktuttle.com, so drop me a line if you have any comments!

In other news, the new Markhat is coming along. If I had one more good week of solid writing, I could actually type THE END at the bottom of the manuscript, so please keep your fingers crossed for me.

So welcome, to the new page, the new blog, and very soon, a new book! Thanks for sticking around. I know you could be reading anything or anyone else, and I truly appreciate your time.

One last thing before I get back to work -- if you haven't read The Girl With All the Gifts, you should. I'm not going to say a word about it -- avoiding spoilers are tricky with this one -- but it's an amazing ride. Yeah, it's expensive at 9.99 for Kindle, but it's worth every dime.

Markhat is giving me that look, so I'm closing now. Take care all! Enjoy the new site.

Dreams and What They Mean

For some reason, my various media feeds have been full of dream interpretation spam this last week. I'm sure you've seen the same thing, each with a title such as 'Ten Dreams and What They Mean,' or something similar.

I never bought into the one-size-fits-all concept when it comes to interpreting dreams. I don't think the landscape of any two brains matches closely enough to let someone say 'if you dream about X, then it means Y.'

That said, I do think writers have their very own subset of nightmares. In keeping with the internet tradition of making lists, here's my list:

Dreams Writers Have

1) The I'm Being Chased by That Unfinished 92-Page Novel Manuscript I Abandoned Years Ago Dream

2) The I'm Falling on the Amazon Sales Ranking Lists Dream

3) The I'm Naked at a Book Signing and People Actually Showed Up Dream

4) The I Just Submitted a Book Manuscript in Comic Sans Font Dream

5) The My Cover Art Was Done Entirely in Microsoft Paint Dream

6) The All My Reviews Compare My Book To 'Battlefield Earth' Dream

And, since we're talking about writers here, all the dreams listed can be interpreted thusly -- "I recently returned from the liquor store."

News From Behind Keyboard Ridge

I'm still chugging my way through Way Out West, the new Markhat book. I'm finally making good progress, after yet another deep delete and change of plot. 

I think it's going to be a great book, so just bear with me! I'm lying as fast as I can....

In the meantime, why not give The Darker Carnival a try, if you haven't already? 

Summer of Nope

Dive in, the water is fine!

I'm not a big fan of public swimming pools.  Oh, I can swim, but the thought of immersing myself in the same fluid that extends to the nether regions of the crowd that regularly graces the pages of People of Walmart has no appeal to me.

Do I not like people?

I like most of them just fine, as long as they A) keep their distance or B) live in an alternate universe. Preferably B.  

But I've digressed.  Swimming pools, as I said, are not for me.  I can say much the same about the outdoors in general.  I find that my preferred environment is cooled to 72 degrees, dimly lit, and features menus and wait staff.  I mean, why bother evolving into a sentient creature in a technological civilization if you don't spend every waking moment getting as far away from that hunting and gathering nonsense as is possible?

I'm sure my primitive ancestors spent their whole lives mucking around in dangerous bodies of water.  I'm also sure they hated it, right up until the time the crocodiles ate them or the deadly snakes bit them.  So I feel I owe it to the ghosts of the elders to keep myself well-fed, comfortable, and well away from bodies of water, including swimming pools.

Too, there are customs dictating what is and is not appropriate clothing for a dip in the pool. If you're a trim 20 year old, by all means put on a bikini.

But if you are, hmm, let's see, me, do you really want to subject the water-going public to the sight of your bare torso?

Fig. 2, an artist's rendition of the Author sans shirt.

Face it, pools are bacterial stew-pots.  People bring in babies.  People bring in themselves.  Have you looked at people lately? Gross. Unless there's enough chlorine in the water to bleach my swim trunks a sudden stark white, forget it.

But pools can harbor worse things that the contents of a baby diaper.  Case in point -- this public pool in Boston held a dead human body for at least two full days.

That's right.  A woman drowned in the pool, and despite the presence of lifeguards and numerous other swimmers her bloating corpse just floated there for forty-eight gruesome, awful hours.

It's not that no one noticed.  At least one kid made a report to the laughably termed 'lifeguards,' who ignored both the report and the green limp woman floating face down in the deep end since yesterday.

I have to wonder -- just what constitutes an emergency in that particular pool?

Drowning obviously isn't it.  Dead bodies clouding up the water with the by-products of decay?  Nah, no biggie.

Splashing, though -- I bet splashing gets you a whistle, and two splashing incidents rates a ban.

The story gets even funnier, aside of course from the 'corpse' part.  The pool was visited by inspectors once during the dead woman's marathon motionless float.  

The inspectors did note a 'cloudiness' in the water.  But, since they apparently never made it past the Scotland Yard entrance exams, no one connected the cloudiness with the gas-filled cadaver making slow turns in the corner.

So yeah.  Let's all rush to the nearest public pool and exchange body fluids with strangers.  It's what summer is all about!

New Webpage in the Works!

Fig. 1. Observe the happiness clean-cut businessmen derive from seeing strings of numbers on the World Wide Web.

Here in the whiz-bang ultra-sonic space-age a-go-go World of the Future, authors must have webpages. See the guy in the image above? He has a webpage. His cat has a webpage. So, as an author, I must needs have a webpage, too.

Why?

Look, I don't bloody know. Marketing. Presence. Author brand. Because all the other authors have one. Take your pick. The reasons are irrelevant -- unless you are Harper Lee and you wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird" before going into literary seclusion forty years ago, writers need a webpage.

I'm not anti-webpage. I enjoy these weekly blog entries. I like knowing there's a place on the web curious readers can find out who I am what I've written. I love connecting with readers, because you guys and gals are a fascinating bunch.

Once upon a time, building a webpage of one's own was even relatively simple. You needed to know fewer than 50 HTML commands. You could build the whole page using nothing but Notepad, the HTML commands, and a web connection. It really was that easy.

You can still do that, by the way. That's how my webpages were created and maintained for many years. They served their purpose, and did so effectively if not with an abundance of flash.

But as the Web has gotten more sophisticated, so have readers and internet folk. Expectations have risen. 

Sadly, my own technical skills have not. I know basic HTML, which is the language used to build webpages. Give me an hour, and I can make you a functional web page -- but it won't be very pretty.

Give me ten hours, or a hundred, and it STILL won't be very pretty. I lack any talent for graphic design. For proof of that, look no further than my own webpage, www.franktuttle.com.

Go ahead, have a look, if you want. 

See what I mean? All the necessary features are there. Links. Book lists. Bio and contact information, so when Paramount Pictures wants to shove piles of cash at me in exchange for movie rights they won't have any trouble finding me.

But yeesh -- I keep getting phone calls from 2002, which wants its webpage code back.

I think it was last year, maybe the year before, when I realized my hand-coding skills just weren't up to snuff any longer. So I bought a program that allowed me to build my website without resorting to line-by-line hand coding. The program allowed me to select a template, select the color schemes and layouts, and just add my graphics and text.

I thought I'd be able to create a modern, professional website using the program, which by the way did everything it claimed it would.

Instead, I learned a valuable lesson. 

I should leave graphic design and art to artists, and stick to tapping out words.

With this in mind, I set out to find a webpage design firm or individual who could build me a decent webpage. Bring me into 2015, so to speak. I've got a few books out. They're doing well.

Time to put on some big boy pants, I decided, and tweak my public image a bit.

A few minutes perusing price lists on website design firm pages drove home the grim realization that webpage construction isn't cheap. Most of the packages started around $1500 and rose quickly into the rarefied stratosphere. I checked my website design budget coffer (i.e., looked under the couch cushions for change), and, after a few hours of abject weeping, I resumed my search for affordable webpage design.

Well, I got lucky. I found a firm that didn't laugh at my budget, and was eager to build a page. 

No, the new page isn't done yet. But the process is underway, and soon you'll see a shiny, sleek new webpage with my name on it.

I'll keep you all posted on the progress. 

In the meantime, though, I need a new photo for the obligatory author bio page. I've selected a few random snapshots of me, taken as go about my daily routines. I'm sharing them below. One may wind up on the new page.

Does this beard make my butt look fat?

Practicing my puppet hands.

Just out for a ride on my horse, I'm totally NOT invading Ukraine.

The Good, the Bad, or the Ugly?

On my way to Waterloo, astride my war-horse Mr. Binky.

 I think I may go with the first image, because say what you will about my mug, I've got million-dollar gams.

The new page will be along in a few weeks. Until then, I'm plugging along on the new Markhat, so stay tuned!

Behind the Scenes: Mr. Mug

Image by Laura Wright LaRoche, LLPix Photography

Yes, that's Mug, co-star of the Paths of Shadow books, seated in front of Goboy's Glass.

If I put up a poll asking you guys which character from any of my books is your favorite, I'd bet money Mug would win, probably by a sizable margin.

Mug, for those of you not familiar with All the Paths of Shadow and All the Turns of Light, is Mage Meralda's sarcastic sidekick. Mug was unintentionally enchanted to life by Meralda when she was a toddler, and he's grown up beside her, been her constant companion and partner in numerous adventures.

I originally wrote Mug as a cat named Mr. Muggins. About halfway through that first draft, I realized I loved the way Mr. Muggins talked -- even in that incarnation, he was a smart-mouthed cynic -- but a cat? Really? Cats don't have the vocal apparatus to talk.

So naturally, I made Mug an enchanted houseplant.

Whoah there, I know you're thinking 'but plants can't even meow, much less speak.' That's true -- but Mug has the ability to vibrate his leaves and mimic and sounds he hears. He can imitate anyone's voice. Play entire musical pieces, using different leaves for different instruments. He can even detect sounds better than a cat, because he can hear by sensing minute air disturbances with his many leaves, from all directions at once.

Yes, he is sessile. Mug can't move on his own, and had to be carried everywhere in a bird-cage in the first book. But of course by the second book, Mug can fly his own birdcage, after Meralda installed a pair of tiny flying coils to the base of it.

So now Mug is a flying, wise-cracking, magical houseplant with 29 eyes.

And as much as I love cats, well, Mug is more fun this way.

Last week I revealed my Rules for Writing Darla. Today, you get to see my rules for Mug!

• Mug understands magic, and shares much of Meralda's intellect and mathematical talent -- but since Mug is magic, he can't do magic. For Mug to perform even a small magical act would be to risk his own stability; he might literally unravel, right there on the spot. 
• Mug understands a lot more about human nature than he leads people (even Meralda) to believe. 
• Mug's pathological fear of aphids and beetles is surpassed by his fear that one day Meralda will simply not need him anymore.
• Mug has what we would call a photographic memory. He can recall with complete accuracy everything he has seen or heard. 
• Mug is friends with half a dozen of the more dangerous items stored in the Royal Thaumaturgical Laboratory. Even Meralda is unaware of this -- were she threatened in Tirlin, Mug wouldn't hesitate to suggest to these items that they go after any threat to her. Mug keeps this a secret, naturally. 

The main rule is a simple one -- Mug is Meralda's closest friend. They may argue, they may drive each other to the point of exasperation, but there's a powerful bond between them.

I think that may be why the Paths books are as popular as they are. People enjoy seeing that kind of relationship. Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Frodo and Sam. Can you imagine one without the other?

I can't. Furthermore, I don't want to. 

If you have no idea who or what I've been talking about, I've put the links to the books below. All the Paths of Shadow is the first book; All the Turns of Light is the second. The third and fourth books are still in the works.

Click here for All The Paths of Shadow on Amazon!

Click here for All the Turns of Light!

Finally, I leave you with something neat to watch today.

What if World War I was fought not against each other, but against an invading force of Martians?

There's a brilliant piece of film out there called The Great Martian War that presents such an event as a History Channel documentary. Using footage from WW I and some brilliant CGI, the creators managed to make everything look absolutely real.

Here's an excerpt, showcasing some of the footage, with music overlaid that is NOT part of the documentary.

THE GREAT MARTIAN WAR

You can get the whole 2 hour special -- well, blast it, I spent a good 20 minutes looking for a video-on-demand link or the DVD and found neither. I do know it was originally released by the BBC under the title "The Great Martian War 1913-1917." If any of you can find it, I'd love a link!

Behind the Scenes: Darla

© Halfbottle | Dreamstime.com

I don't abandon a book midway through very often, but when I do, most of the time it's because I don't care enough about the characters to bother seeing whether they get out of their mess in the end or not.

Which is a harsh thing to say. Someone out there presumably sweated blood to bring that book to life. But, if the people in the story inspire nothing more than 'meh, I'd rather be watching a Law & Order re-run,' the book is dead in the water.

Sure, it can have a clever plot, a detailed setting, intricate thematic elements. But if I don't care about the people (or the robots, or the ghosts, or whomever the book is about), it's a waste of time, at least to me. I'm looking at you, Atlas Shrugged. Didn't care after the first six pages, didn't care when it was assigned reading, don't care now, and won't care later. Classic work of literature, my ass.

I try not to write books people will put down. Look, I know my strengths and weakness as a writer. I'm damned good at writing dialog. I'm middling good at pacing and scene construction. I'm lousy at creating villains. Which doesn't mean I populate my books with poorly-penned bad guys. It just means it takes me forever to get them right.

But it's my characters I'm proudest of. They're people I enjoy spending time with.

Today, I'm going to take you backstage, and reveal a few secrets concerning Darla, Markhat's partner in everything from crime to boatsmanship.

My Markhat Files series, in case you're not familiar, focuses on a fantasy-world private eye named Markhat. The series is 8 books long now, and while Markhat started off as a bachelor, his life took a turn in Hold the Dark.

Markhat did something tough-guy private eyes seldom do -- he fell hard in love. Darla was the quick-witted accountant working at a high-end whorehouse called The Velvet. She and Markhat hit it off immediately, and things quickly progressed to the wine and roses stage.

Generally, when you see an established series character get all goo-goo eyed over someone we've never seen before, the love interest gets killed along about Chapter Ten, and the rest of the book, and perhaps the series, focuses on the protagonist's boundless rage and broken heart.

Ha. Sure, plenty of lesser authors go that hackneyed route. Amateurs. But not me, I'm better than that.

What's that? I did? Are you sure?

Oh. Right. Here's part of the behind the scenes bit I mentioned earlier -- see, in the first draft of Hold the Dark, Darla is murdered by the blood cult as an act of petty vengeance against Markhat. Which sends him on a bloody rampage, fueled by magic, that puts a permanent blot of darkness on his soul, one I planned to spend the rest of the series exploring. Darla was going to stick around, yes, but only as a wandering phantom that Markhat could never get close to, never touch.

Yeah. I did that thing. I was young and stupid.

Happily, though, the editors at Samhain raised certain arguments against Darla's murder. Even more happily, I took their advice to heart, re-wrote the book, and quickly realized that Darla and Markhat together were a far more powerful combination than a morose Markhat haunted by poor Darla's silent ghost.

The series is still chugging happily along, and Darla is Markhat's wife, and together they're hysterical.

Think Nick and Nora Charles. If you don't know the old movies, look them up. Now, Nora and Darla are alike only in a few aspects. But the dynamic is there -- the banter, the easy trust, the subtle but unbreakable bond they all share.

Darla quickly demonstrated a bloody-minded practicality that Markhat sometimes lacks. She's proven to be every bit and devious and as dangerous as anyone in the series.

And she's a lot of fun to write.

Even so, I have a few rules concerning her. I have them for all the series characters, but today, here are the Rules for Writing Darla.

Darla's Rules:
1) Darla does not get kidnapped, forcing a rescue.
2) Darla has her own money, her own schemes, and her own ways and means.
3) Darla is always armed. She might be tinkering with the houseboat's steam engine, or lounging on the deck, but she has a revolver and a knife somewhere on her person.
4) Darla is not a springboard or a foil or a catalyst.
5) Darla may or may not be a witch.
6) Darla loves clothes. Because she realizes deliberate fashion choices are a means to create one's social persona. Also, complicated gowns are excellent at concealing small firearms and handy edged weapons.
7) Darla was born dirt poor. She came up hard and she's seen awful things and she is determined to never see them again.
8) Anyone or anything that threatens Markhat, Darla's home, Buttercup, or even Cornbread will simply be shot until it falls down dead. Darla won't hesitate. Won't issue a warning. Won't threaten. She will simply act, with the cool deliberation of a threatened cobra.

The new Markhat book, Way Out West, puts Darla and Markhat on a long train ride out into the new frontier. Could there be a murder on the train? Could there be a killer on the loose, stalking his prey from car to car?

Could be. I'm not saying.

So what does does Darla look like?

She's tall and skinny. Willowy, I suppose is the term. Brown eyes. Black hair, cut in a Roaring Twenties flapper's bowl cut. She tends to dress in dark colors, and she always wear a hat and long sleeves on the deck of Dasher, because the sun makes her freckles show up.

I was thrilled when Darla made her first book cover. Here's how the artists have seen her:

That's from the cover from Brown River Queen.

Below is the cover from The Darker Carnival, showing Darla preparing to show a bunch of nasties precisely what befalls anyone daft enough to disrupt her dinner plans:

And how do I see Darla?

Given that my artistic skills are frequently exceeded by chimpanzees, cantaloupes, and asphalt, creating character images on my own is a waste of time. I tried it once, using Poser 10 and the kind assistance of a friend -- but even then, the project was an abject, hopeless failure.

By the way, I have a perfectly good copy of Poser 10. Barely used, well cussed at. If anyone wants it, hit me with an email and it's yours, free. I know when I'm licked. Art just isn't in my wheelhouse.

But The Markhat Files series has fans, and they have talents, and I have email. Sometimes all these things combine, and I wind up getting images like the ones I'm about to share. So meet Darla, as interpreted by a reader who prefers to be identified only as CatapultHA.

I think CatapultHA captured Darla perfectly, and I am deeply grateful that he or she has graciously allowed me to share these. Wouldn't it be great if CatapultHA sent some images of Makhat too, hint hint? Maybe if enough people praise these images and ask, we'll get more (that's also a hint).

So, without further adieu, here is Darla, courtesy of artist CatapultHA.

The gown even looks like it stepped right out of one of the books.

So does the next one. I can see Darla wearing this. Probably has a dagger in the hat. I won't speculate as to the hiding place of the revolver.

I started to put my own best Poser image here, but ugh. I'll spare you that. I envy people with this kind of talent.

Finally, here's Darla all dressed up for a formal dance aboard the Brown River Queen. I figure the red stoal weighs in at about a .44 calibre.

Now that, ladies and gents, is ART. Many thanks for allowing me to share it.

See you all next week!

A Hot Day for Skeletons

Meh.

Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's my steady diet of Cheez Whiz and bacon-wrapped bacon slathered in bacon and topped off with garnishes of bacon-injected bacon.

But I just don't have any energy today. Some primal instinct suggests that I shelter somewhere dark and cool until the saber-tooth tigers move on, and frankly that seems like perfectly reasonable advice.

So, here's a blast from the past. It's the day I learned to the validity of cynicism. Enjoy!

SKELETONS ARE A BOY'S BEST FRIEND

Direct your gaze onto the advertisement below. Try to see it through the eyes of a bookish six year old who loves all things strange and eerie.

Oh yeah. This is the stuff dreams are made of...

Life-sized monsters. Seven feet tall. SEVEN FEET TALL. That's tall, people. With glowing eyes! Reaching hands! Imagine the terror, indeed.

For a dollar.

Did I absolutely have to have a seven-foot-tall glowing skeleton of my very own?

Why yes. Yes I did.

So I shoved a buck thirty-five into an envelope and checked 'Boney the Skeleton' and the clock on my frantic little life came to an abrupt and screeching halt the instant that envelope hit the bottom of the mailbox.

I'd never wanted anything so bad in all my life. I went to sleep dreaming of the fun Boney and I would have! We'd stroll around town, scaring Hell out of everyone. We'd sit out on the porch and wave to horrified passers-by. We'd be the terrible talk of my tame little town, and if any kid came around with some lame Frankenstein's monster we'd knock his block off.

That is what I dreamed. Such thoughts consumed my every waking moment. And oh, did the moments drag. The ad didn't include the traditional admonition to allow six to eight weeks for delivery. How many hours did I spend, pondering the significance of that mysterious omission? Did the fine creators of Boney the Skeleton rush their sinister creations to the happy owners in a matter of mere days, instead? Was there, even now, a dark, unmarked truck speeding through the night toward Oxford, an eager Boney at the wheel?

Hours dragged. Days crept. Weeks crawled.

Moment by agonizing moment, I waited for my skeleton friend's arrival, forsaking all lesser concerns.

One Week. Two weeks. Three weeks, four. I lost my appetite. Lost interest in all things unrelated to the subtle click of clever bones.

Five weeks. Six weeks. Seven weeks, more. My eyes developed dark circles beneath the lids. I walked with a slump. Dragged my feet. How long, I wondered, so often the very words left paths in my brain. How long must I endure this never-ending sojourn through darkness?

Then, on rainy Tuesday afternoon in September, my mother met me at the door, smiling the smile of a relieved but patient parent.

I knew. I knew without words that Boney had arrived!

He was home, home at last, all seven glorious glowing feet of him! All 206 intricately connected phalanges and metacarpals and femurs and mandibles!

I was alone no more.

I was....complete.

I raced into the kitchen, sure Boney would be seated at the table, waiting to give me a cold but friendly embrace.

Instead, atop the tiny Formica eating table, sat an envelope.

An envelope. Thick, yes, and larger than the usual bills that came to us.

But only an envelope. No more for more than a single toe-bone. If that.

Mom must have recognized my confusion.

"It's from the right place," she said. "Open it! You've waited so long."

My mind raced. All right, I thought, though I'm sure I didn't use those words. Boney's delivery has been delayed. Or maybe they send a letter ahead before the actual skeleton arrives. Yes, I decided, as I tore into the paper. That must be it. It's a warning, so people won't be frightened.

Mom moved to my side.

So she was right there, for that awful moment when I removed the contents of the envelope, watched them unfold in my hand, and realized that Boney, my magnificent life-sized seven-foot-tall skeleton friend, Boney of the glowing eyes and the reaching hands, was nothing more than a cheap piece of plastic with a crude rendering of a skeleton painted upon it.

I do remember quite clearly thinking this:

Life-sized. They said it was life-sized. That means sized like life, with height and width and thickness.

They lied. The lying liars lied.

I dropped Boney on the kitchen floor and started bawling.

The weight of every moment of the long agonizing wait fell over me like a tidal wave. I had to say goodbye to my skeleton pal Boney forever, because there really wasn't any magic at all in the world, not even for a dollar plus thirty-five cents shipping, not even from storied New York.

Mom is gone now. Boney, who I kept, flaked away into bits of dust decades ago. I turned quickly past all the ads in my comic books, because after that I knew darned well Sea Monkeys didn't wear festive outfits and build little cities in your fish-bowl, and X-Ray Specs were just cheap plastic frames with concentric circles drawn on the lenses. No. Those were merely more lies. The world is what you see, nothing more. Jobs and bills and tired Dads and worried Moms and pets that sometimes never came home.

And all that came rushing back when I lifted that old comic book out of a stack of cast-offs and saw that ad again.

I still miss ya, Boney my skeleton pal.  Maybe one day.

Maybe.

This is life before the Internet, kids. Count your blessings.

The Obligatory Fourth of July Fireworks Photos

Fig. 1, BANG.

I love fireworks. They're loud, dangerous, and utterly pointless.

Fireworks are the perfect monkey toy. Which means every July 4 you'll find me at Oxford's fireworks show.

This year was no different. I took my tripod and my Finepix, and while most of the images I shot are, to be blunt, crap, I got a few I'll share here.

Photographing fireworks is easy -- if you have a few thousand dollars of camera gear. If, like me, you sport a Walmart tripod and a camera that's nice but not incredibly fast, then fireworks photography is more a matter of luck than skill. If I have the shutter open at the precise moment a charge explodes, I'll get a good pic. If the luminance of the firework is bright enough to be detailed but not bright enough to wash out the image, then I'll get a good pic.

That's not what happens most of the time. Of the 300 or so pictures I took, most of them looked like the one below -- close, but no cigar.

A fraction of a second later, and this might have been a stunning image. Same with the one below.

But this why you just have to keep clicking away. You'll get lucky, sooner or later, and catch shots like the one below.

Or this.

So last night I took around 300 pictures, and have 3 or 4 to show for it.

But that's how it goes.

I'm glad writing isn't that way. Although sometimes I do wonder -- if I was offered a deal in which I was guaranteed 4 pages of timeless, perfect prose for every 300 pages I wrote, would I take the deal?

After some reflection, I probably would.

And then I'd sit down and type really really fast.

The books won during the contest will go out this week! Thanks everyone for playing.

And remember, folks -- blowing stuff up for little or no apparent reason is a pretty good way to summarize the entire 20th century and what we've seen of the 21st. Let's all hope one day we can give up all the explosives except the fireworks.

Now that would be something to celebrate.

The Bunny Man, And Other Wild Tales

THE BUNNY MAN

You may not see the Bunny Man above, but he sees you...

I am fortunate to enjoy the friendship of many talented people.

Eve Edelson, for instance, makes movies. Good ones; I encourage you to check out her Vimeo page, and take in The Fare, especially.

Eve's current project is a delightfully macabre short entitled The Bunny Man. Click on the title will take you to the trailer.

I've seen the whole film, which is even now making its way around film festivals, and while I won't give anything away, I will say it's a great little movie. If you see it listed at a film festival, see it! Perfectly safe for viewers of all ages and levels of horror-tolerance.

Is it about a Bunny Man? Well, yes. Which may sound like a contrived cryptid, but isn't -- the source of the mythology seems to originate from Virginia in the 1970s. And while you might initially laugh at the idea of a man-sized rabbit threatening anyone, this one carried an axe.

Eve, you picked a fantastic cast, a talented crew, and together you told a thoroughly entertaining story! I doff my hat to you, one and all.

I'm glad to see people making films without the influence of the big studios. Yes, the studios have the endless FX budgets and the infrastructure to churn out amazing visuals, but frankly they aren't doing anything new these days, and there are only so many iterations of Batman I can sit through without nodding off in my 20-dollar theatre seat.

I'd rather see something new and surprising. So, to you all you valiant indy film-makers out there, keep 'em coming!

AND THE WINNER IS....

Last week I ran a contest. The rules were pretty simple; caption the picture below, and if your caption is judged to be the best, get a free signed book. 

Well, I loved all the submissions so much EVERYBODY GETS A FREE SIGNED BOOK. So, Critter42, April, and Maria, shoot me a snail-mail addy (to franktuttle at franktuttle dot com, replace the at and the dot, you know how it goes), and your copy of THE DARKER CARNIVAL, which will bear my illegible scrawl, will be sent to you forthwith!

One lucky winner gets *two* books, but you'll have to wait by the mailbox to see who that might be...

Signed Book Giveaway!

Want a signed print copy of the new Markhat adventure, The Darker Carnival?

Sure you do.

But as the loud guys on TV say, but wait, there's more!

I'll send you not one but TWO signed copies, if you'll agree to give the second copy away free to a friend who hasn't read the series.

Sound good? You get a free signed book, maybe I pick up a new fan. Everybody is grinning. 

And just how do you get this book, you ask?

That's easy. Look at the picture below, which is an original artwork depicting Markhat created by a fan, Raevyn Tws aka Eric Ralphs. 

Markhat is obviously saying something -- but what?

Caption the image! Post your caption in the comments section. Best entry of the week gets the books, with the winner announced next Sunday. 

Judging will be conducted by myself and my team of literary canines, who will indicate their preferences via tail-wags and emissions of noxious gasses. 

Pick an actual quote from any of the books, if you want. Or make something up. Inside jokes are welcome. It's all up to you!

So warm up your keyboards, and get those entries in the comments section to this blog. You've got a week!

Good luck, and have fun!

Heed the Stars!

The fickle stars have spoken!

Read below to learn your fate, if you dare.  Looks like the stars have been watching way too much CSI yet again...

ARIES (March 21-April 20)

Don't act so shocked at all your media attention.  Multiple amputations are seldom associated with petting zoo mishaps.

TAURUS (April 21 - May 20)

Your feeling that you are being watched is tragically validated in later weeks as dental records confirm your jawbone's identity.

GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)

Suddenly, your attorney's insanity defense strategy is dealt a fatal blow.  On the bright side, you've lost eight pounds during the trial!

CANCER (June 21 - July 22)

This is a good time to study the habits and behaviors of the Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake, which is being forced from its natural habitat and into your sock drawer.  

LEO (July 23 - August 22)

As you soon learn, what is called 'bullet-proof' glass is actually better labeled 'bullet-RESISTANT' glass. 

VIRGO (August 23 - September 23)

Even the FBI can't quite determine how a highly toxic pufferfish wound up alive and intact in your small intestine.

LIBRA (September 24 - October 23)

Focus on the positive!  None of your friends will ever wind up with an obituary featured in its entirety on 'News of the Weird.'

SCORPIO (October 24 - November 21)

Some say every knock at your door might be that of Opportunity.  As the police will later state, however, sometimes it's just a lunatic with a wrecking bar and the strong conviction that you are Satan, Lord of the Underworld. 

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 - December 21)

You have to laugh every time you hear someone say 'That which does not kill you makes you stronger.'  And man does it hurt to laugh with all those new stitches.  

CAPRICORN (December 22 - January 19)

Turns out you were wrong to so easily dismiss the stories of anal probes performed during alien abductions.

AQUARIUS (January 20 - February 19)

You will eventually receive proper scholarly recognition for your unfortunate involvement in proving that piranhas have indeed migrated well into North American waterways.

PISCES (February 20 - March 20)

They will never quite piece together your final few moments, leaving your recorded comments about 'the knuckles, the horrible knuckles' an enduring mystery in the field of paranormal research.

SPECIAL NOTE TO SUZANNE IN MEMPHIS:

Not until 2018, when a cold case unit orders the exhumation of your remains.

Have a nice week!

Things That Go Bump, Special Summer Edition -- An EVP and an Anomalous Photo!

Fig. 1, The Red Chair of Summer

Greetings, faithful readers! I've got a lot to cover today, but before I get all spooky on you, I offer you one of my favorite photos, one I call The Red Chair. Because I'm in literal phase. Took the pic yesterday afternoon.

Is the chair haunted or cursed? Does sitting on it allow one to summon creatures of darkness?

No, but it is a good place in which to enjoy one's favorite beverage.

But on to the spooks!

Tula Cemetery

Yesterday I decided to take my mic and my camera out for a quick tour of Lafayette County's finer boneyards. My first stop was the old Tula Cemetery, located just outside the sprawling metropolis of Tula, Mississippi, famous for, well, anyway, it's Tula.

I tromped about. Invited comments. Made small polite talk with people who aren't there. 

My camera had a battery that showed 2/3rds when I arrived. Immediately upon entering the cemetery, it dropped from that to the small red 'you are SO out of luck, mister' icon every photographer loathes.

But being the fellow of foresight I am, I had a fresh battery in my pocket. So I popped it in, only to find it was depleted.

I put the first battery back in, and it went back to 2/3rds.

Odd. I took some pictures and pressed on.

Tula is an old place, although it is still in use. I tend to stick with the more remote, older areas.

A hand-made resting place, probably dating from the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged the place in the early 19th century.

I remained there for a little over ten minutes, recording audio the whole time. I didn't catch anything even remotely like an EVP voice. If you'd like to listen to the session in all its raw unedited glory, knock yourself out -- the link is below. The bugs and birds were so loud I doubt I'd have heard a whole chorus of ghosts performing AC/DC covers while phantom Stukas dropped ghost bombs about me.

LINK TO TULA EVP SESSION

I took a lot of pictures, and this is where things get all mystical-ated and occultified.

One of the pics I snapped is below. Give it a look, and see if you spot anything odd.

Look along the back row of markers, just left of center. I took this image with my 16 megapixel Fuji, so I can blow it up easily. Look below.

Yeah. Now, a lot of people would already be tossing around words such as 'apparition' and 'ghost.' Me, I'm more likely to suggest pareidolia, which is the tendency of out brains to see faces where there isn't really a face at all.

Here's the same cropped portion of the image, rendered in black and white for clarity:

I took this image yesterday, at around 2:00 PM in the afternoon. I'm going to return to Tula today, at the same time, with the same camera. I'm going to stand in the same spot and take the same photo, and then I'm going to approach the marker and take a series of images and we'll just see what the marker really has to say.

I'm betting here and now this is a trick of reflection and shadow. But we will soon see!

Keep reading, I returned to the cemetery at 2:00 PM CST today and located the grave marker. The results are posted at the end of this entry.

St. Peter's Cemetery

I left Tula and headed for Oxford, and the much larger St. Peter's cemetery.

I trudged up the big hill, approaching from the rear, because I'm a master strategist and I hoped to catch the guard ghosts looking the wrong way.

The first oddity I noticed as a trail camera strapped to a tree. I wonder if they've been having issues with vandalism.

I counted four trail cams there, all hung within about 50 feet of each other, all aimed a nondescript patch of ground. Which can of course mean only one thing.

ZOMBIES. Oxford has a zombie problem, and the authorities are keeping it quiet, because if there's one thing Oxonians won't tolerate it's anything that might affect property values. 

Most men would have fled, but I set my manly jaw and held fast. I know how to handle Oxford zombies. You don't have to shoot them in the head -- you just mention the new parking meters around the Square and saunter safely away as the zombie spits and fumes and rants about the injustice of having to feed a meter to eat at Boure.

Now, I didn't get any odd photos at St. Peters. But I had my trusty Zoom H1, and I was recording the whole time. And I might have just gotten something.

The whole unedited session is link below. At around the 8 minutes and 30 seconds mark, as I'm leaving, I catch what sounds a lot like a high shrill 'Hey.' 

LINK TO FULL SESSION

In the link below, I make a remark abut my battery being nearly dead, and at the ten second mark there's a very faint 'hey.'

LINK TO HEY

I isolated and looped the 'hey' so you can hear it much better. Click below to listen.

LOOPED HEY

Now, what did I capture?

I'm pretty careful to tag any voices I hear with my ears during a session. I didn't hear this voice. One might argue that it was windy, and I was walking, and one might well have a valid point.  Maybe someone yelled hey in the distance and the wind carried it and my mic picked up what my ears missed.

Could have happened.

Or maybe I got another EVP at St. Peter's. It wouldn't be my first at that location.

Can I say with any sort of conviction that I caught a stray but mundane shout, or an example of a disembodied voice?

Not really. You'll have to decide that for yourself.

But it's images like the one in Tula and voices like the 'hey' that keep me tramping around tombstones. 

2:00 PM Tula Image Update: The Mystery Revealed

I returned to Tula at the same time, so the lighting conditions would be almost identical to the conditions of yesterday. 

Let's have another look at the odd image in discussion.

This was the first image. 

Here's a cropped blow-up of the oddity.

Looks like a face and a white-clad torso, doesn't it, There's even a hint of an ethereal glow about it.

The black and white version:

Yep, that's a ghost.

Or is it?

Look at the pics I took today, just a little while ago. Here's the first image, in which I recreated the original photo.

And there it is again, still looking spooky. I circled it for you.

Filled with noble bravery, I advanced upon the grim spectre, heedless of my personal safety.

The phantom remained. By now my eyes were telling me I was seeing a perfectly natural phenomena, a simple patch of color on a very old headstone. And I was right, there's absolutely nothing supernatural here. The next photos will prove that.

The 'ghost' was a trick of pareidela. The shroud was nothing more than a light patch on the headstone. The face was the same, given further definition by a raised decorative wreath of flowers.

Meet poor little Martha Franklin, who was only ten when she died in 1864. Rest well, Martha.

But she did help teach me a valuable lesson in not jumping to conclusions.

Because what appears to be this:

Is, all too often, simply a trick of light and shadow.

I ran another EVP session while I took the second set of photos today. I'm analyzing it now.

On that note, Ill leave you today with a bit of the Bard.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

Sorry, Charlie, I Won't Play

The Interwebz are all atwitter over the latest idiotic fad, in which a pair of pencils are used to summon a Mexican demon named Charlie.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I believe this may represent a true watershed moment in human history, in that 'the Charlie game' marks the place in time at which humanity as a whole became dumb enough to believe just about anything.

Honestly. First, Charlie isn't even a Spanish name. Second, pencils are bits of wood surrounded a core of graphite. As occult devices go, they're -- well, they're bloody pencils.

All around the world, dim-wits are placing one pencil at a right angle across the other pencil, and scaring themselves silly when any or all of the purely mundane forces acting on the top pencil cause it to move.

A slight motion on the table-top or floor. A nearly imperceptible breeze. The shock wave of an IQ dropping a hundred points nearby -- any of these things can and will make the pencil move.

This whole thing is especially galling to be as a fantasy author because I agonize over my magical systems so the magic in the books will make sense, but a near-panic has erupted over a pair of pencils and a story so dumb I suspect Congress had a hand in crafting it.

As the Charlie game spread via social media, so too came the warnings from paranormal groups about playing it.

I'd like to add my own warning to this chorus.

If you play the Charlie game, you will look like a knee-biting mouth-breathing knuckle-walking idiot. 

Here is a list of other ways you can't contact non-corporeal entities in your spare time, at home:

1) Scrying via a tub of mayonnaise. Won't work no matter how many black candles you light.

2) Using restaurant menus as Ouija Boards. "Look, he's telling us to get Moo Shu Pork!"

3) Consulting a Medium, based on their shirt size. 'Medium' used to denote clothing size is not the equivalent to the 'medium' applied to psychics, which explains why the guy at Auto Zone acts so confused when he's asked if any dead people are nearby.

4) Don't combine a traditional seance with aerobic exercise. Unless you do so in yoga pants, and in that case, send me the video so I can check it for orbs.

5) Don't hold a lighted candle before a mirror and chant the entire text of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga three times very fast, because that bit with Tom Bombadil cracks you up every time and you have to start all over.

That's my rant for this week. Next week we'll explore methods for summoning Lovecraft's Old Ones using nothing but Cool Whip, a small wooden dowel, and the collected works of Barbara Cartland!

Strange Night Air

I thought'd present you with something different this afternoon.

Once upon a time, I made what's called a 'Tesla Radio' because I thought it would be cool to listen in on thunderstorms with it. I have yet to capture a recording of an actual thunderstorm on the rig, mainly because I hide under the couch with my dogs when it thunders, but I did take the radio outside late last night and record a brief snippet of eerie random AM radio broadcasts.

There's really nothing to this device. A capacitor, a germanium diode, some wires. The complete schematics are featured in my original Tesla radio blog published on 06-08-2014, linked here.

I did add an audio amplifier (the box on the left in the photo is a pre-amp, and the box on the right is a simple 1 watt amp, nothing fancy about either of them) so I could listen in real time, rather than recording straight to my Zoom field recorder.

Why did I build this thing at all?

Because late one night, many years ago, hard-luck genius Nikola Tesla built one similar to it, and sat up all hours wondering what the heck he was hearing. He describes booming unintelligible voices. He was convinced, it seems, that he was witness to actual communication in some strange tongue by parties unknown.

Now, keep in mind Tesla's world early 20th century was unlike ours. There were no radio stations, no TV stations. No cop on the corner with radar. No weather radars, no Wifi, no commercial RF noise of any kind.

So what was he hearing?

Beats me. If I had to guess, I'd say it was a combination of noise generated by his own laboratory devices and a distant thunderstorm.

And what do I hear when I fire up my home-made device?

Well, listen for yourself.

If you've ever driven cross-country and searched for radio stations you'll be familiar with the sounds. It's the wash of faint voices between the stronger signals. Voices all speaking at once, drowned under the crackle and hiss, most of their words lost in the frenzy of noise.

A few words escape, now and then. Sin is perhaps the most popular, with hellfire and damnation close behind. I'm not sure when the preacher from Stephen King's "Children of the Corn" bought up all the failing AM radio stations across the world, but it sure sounds like he has.

Anyway, late last night I took my rig out on the patio, leaned my mic by the speaker, and had a listen.

It's a short recording. Around a minute in we get dueling nutcase preachers who sound like they're yelling at each other. The British gentleman speaking in the clipped tones of high society is at least calm. Ghostly bits of music wander through, disembodied songs in search of a stage.

I can recall driving alone, late in the night, fiddling with the radio while these same faint voices whispered and shouted and raged. It's an eerie feeling, being suspended in the open space between Here and There, with nothing but angry ghosts for company.

Ever felt that? Felt that you'd driven right past the walls of the waking world, and into some vast flat nightmare?

If so, can you remember the feeling of urgent relief you experienced when you saw lights at last? Even the lights of a run-down gas station blazed like cathedral windows, because electric light meant you'd left the ghosts behind at last.

Enjoy, if you dare. And remember -- the ghosts are always out there haunting the empty in-betweens, even when we're not listening. Because that's what ghosts do...


Click here to join the ghosts! Late night Tesla radio...

Scrivener or Word?

Tim Gatewood, Notary Public par excellence and a tireless supporter of all things science fiction and fantasy, posted an interesting question to me on Facebook yesterday.

Here's what Tim asked:

"Have you used Scrivener? If so, would you recommend it? What are the good and the bad features?

Is there a way to index the finished product (the book) in it?

If you don't use Scrivener for your writing, what program do you use? What are the good and bad features of it?

Do you use a free-standing indexing program?"

It's a good set of questions. I myself asked me of some writer friends not long ago, and I even downloaded and tried the 30-day free trial of Scrivener.

Before I offer my own experience, I suppose I should clarify a few things.

First of all, what the heck is Scrivener?

Scrivener is a word processor. In that it is performing the same functions as Word or Word Perfect or Open Office or any of the other text wrangling software packages out there. We writers pound away at our keyboards and Word or Scrivener or what-have-you patiently takes the words and wraps them in a format and spits out a perfectly formatted document which the writer then regards with deep disgust before starting all over.

Scrivener, in my opinion, takes things a step further than that. It was designed not as a generic document processor, but as a tool for novelists and authors.

Let me explain why I think that.

Scrivener lets you base your organization around chapters, not pages. Which may seem like a trivial feature at first, but most of the writers I know organize their books and outlines around chapters, not pages. There are characters and story arcs that takes place across chapters. By basing the package on that structure, Scrivener scored a major point with me.

Why? Because it builds an outline for you as you go. At the start of each new chapter, you enter a brief summary of the events and turning points that comprise the chapter. Then you dive in and start writing. Oh, you can also stick images and notes and clippings of any sort related to that chapter on a corkboard, as reminders or reference materials that you no longer have to scramble and hunt for.

Want to make a major change, and rearrange the events in the book?

No problem. Just use a simple control interface to move your chapters around. The notes and corkboards and internal outlines all adjust themselves automatically.

Can Scrivener's biggest competitor, Microsoft Word, do any of that?

Nope. Not that I know of, anyway. Word does let you start out by choosing from a bewildering and vast array of pre-formatted templates. You can write a novel or draft a will or print up flyers for a yard sale or an amateur performance of 'Othello.' But you aren't going to effortlessly build your novel around chapters.

Word can save documents in many formats -- as web pages, as pdf files, and raw text, you name it.

Scrivener can too, and it can even save your final product as a Word file.

Seems like from what I've said I'd be using Scrivener, right?

I'm not. And I don't see myself switching, for one reason -- for all its brilliant design, Scrivener's ability to create workable Word files is far from perfect.

The publishing industry is built on Word. Like it or not, that's a reality.

Here's how it works. I write a book and send the Word document off to my publisher. If the book is bought, my editor takes the Word doc and we begin the back-and-forth editing process. She makes comments using a Word feature. She makes changes that are highlighted for me to see and approve or reject using a Word feature. Then the FLE (first line editor) gets it and the process repeats until everyone is happy.

That's the process.

And none of it works with the so-called 'Word' file produced by Scrivener.

Now, there is an elaborate procedure to 'fix' the Scrivener files using various converters and so forth. I don't know the details, because I'm not going to go there. In my experience, what worked as a kludge fix just last February very well might not work this June, and I don't have time to fiddle with software in hopes of producing something that might or might not work.

Yes, there are some authors who use Scrivener, despite this. I can assure you they are authors who exceed my stature in the industry much like Godzilla towers over Bambi. Steven King could submit his books printed out in old dot-matrix on the backs of grocery store receipts.

But the rest of us had jolly well better submit nice clean usable Word files.

And I don't blame the editors, either. It's not part of anyone's job to fiddle with files until the basic functions are viable. Even trying makes me go a little grayer with each effort. No thanks.

So that's why, despite my appreciation for Scrivener, I buy up the latest version of Word as soon as it's available.

I do wish Microsoft would whip up a Word release aimed at writers.

Then I reflect upon how much we writers tend to make, and I get back to work.

But Frank, you say, in triumph. What if I plan to self-publish? Doesn't Scrivener have the ability to produce a very clean Kindle/Nook/Kobo ready e-book format?

I hear that it does. If you plan on self-publishing, Scrivener is probably a good choice.

But for now, for me, it's not an option.

Still curious? Here's the link for Scrivener...

SCRIVENER

Building Mister Mug, Part 1: The Creeping Eye!

In last week's blog, I (perhaps foolishly) said I'd build an animated Mug, the enchanted houseplant from my Paths of Shadow series. Mug sports 29 eyes, each independently mobile and affixed to a moving stalk.

That's what I get for drinking shoe polish. Building a full-scale, completely functional Harrier jump-jet in my garage might actually be easier. But a project is a project, so I set about tackling the moving stalks that support each of Mug's eyes.

At first glance, the basic mobile eye-stalk doesn't seem all that difficult to build. I took a length of flexible plastic tubing (fuel line, I believe, available from any hardware store for about 30 cents a foot). That formed my flexible spine.

Here's a photo of the parts before assembly:

To move the spine, I needed something analogous to muscles. 30-pound monofilament line seemed to be a good fit for that. I added vertebrae to the spine by drilling four holes, equally spaced abut the outer perimeter, to ten hard nylon washers with a central hole that just happened to fit over my flexible-tubing spine.

A series of spacers cut from a slightly larger diameter fuel line kept the nylon washer vertebra apart.

Next, I wove the monofilament line through the holes in the nylon washers and tied off each at the 'eye' end.

It became obvious at this point that the thing wasn't going to work. When I pulled on any of the lines, the washers managed to rotate on the tubing so that whatever line I was pulling became the bottom. I had to fix each washer in place on the spine, preventing any rotation, so I drilled through each washer with a 1/16 inch bit and fixed it in place with a pin made out of straight steel wire.

That solved the rotation issue, and I could see that the 'stalk' responded well to being manipulated using the four control cables.

Next I added the eye -- a ping-pong ball hastily decorated with pupil and iris. That done, I mounted the whole works to a sturdy base, and tied each free end of the control cables to an improvised puppeteer's cross.

Well, Frank, did it work?

See for yourself. I posted a short video of the eye in operation, along with a few comments.

With all that in mind, what does the future hold for the Mug model?

Changes, obviously. I'm not giving up, just changing course a bit. Note to Self: Limit the number of organs and appendages of future characters to single digits, please. Or lay off the shoe polish, sheesh, you don't see Muppets with more than two eyes, do you? No? Think there might be a reason for that, chief?

Other News

Work continues on the new Mug and Meralda book, Every Wind of Change. I will drop this single hint -- Mug has his own weekly newspaper column in the Tirlin Times. His column is entitled 'Mr. Mug's Musings,' and I include them between chapters, much as I did the excerpts from his private journal in All the Turns of Light. They've been lots of fun to write.

I'm not forgetting Markhat and Darla, either! Speaking of which, they'd appreciate a quick review on Amazon, if you read the latest book and enjoyed it. A helpful link is below.

The Darker Carnival at Amazon! <Doffs battered newsboy hat and shuffles nervously> Just a quick review, eh, Guv? Nothing to fancy, a few stars, a kind word 'er two, thankee very much Guv!

And with that bit of shameless begging, I drop the mic, grab my eye-stalk, and exit stage left...