Best Opening Lines

NOTE: To read this entry in the large print edition click HERE.

“It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.” 

― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

That is, and will probably always be, my favorite opening to a book. Raymond Chandler started writing late in life, but when he did hit the ground, he hit it running.

The Big Sleep's opening lines do it all. They put you, the reader, in a specific time and place, and they introduce not only the protagonist, but his unique voice. The book is a wonder, and if you haven't read it, you should. Even if you're not a fan of detective fiction -- the writing is just that good.

Douglas Adams wrote one of my other favorite opening lines.

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." -- from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Finally, Jim Butcher, from Blood Rites:

"The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault."

Of course these are just three examples from a fields of possible millions.

What are your favorite opening lines? I thought it might be fun to swap a few in the comments section. Heck, we might all discover a few new great books that way. 

One last thing -- I'm going to be a guest on PAIRANORMAL this Friday night, at 10 PM EST (9 PM CST for my local friends). PAIRANORMAL is an internet radio talk show focusing on all things weird, paranormal, or just plain out there. Who will play the role of the skeptic? Who will assume the mantle wide-eyed true believer? Click LISTEN LIVE on the TMV Cafe webpage at 9 PM CST Friday night and find out!

You can also hop in the chat room and comment live while the show airs. Stop by and say hello!

One Keyboard to Rule Them All

(To read this is the large print edition, click here.)

I never took a typing class. Never bothered trying to emulate people who knew how to type, either. But I've worked in IT, and thus with keyboards, since 1982, and I've also been writing that entire time.

So bereft of training or common sense, I've developed my own two-fingered typing style that has been variously described along a spectrum ranging from 'violent'  to 'dude, what the Hell is wrong with you?'

Which means I go through keyboards. A lot of keyboards. 

This wanton destruction of innocent keyboards isn't born of malice, or done with intent. The keyboards I learned on were 1970s and 80s era commercial mainframe computing units. They were solid steel affairs with sturdy mechanical keys and you had to hit them like you meant it. They were durable, too. We ran three shifts, every day, which meant those keyboards were in use nearly all the time. I can't ever remember replacing one of those metal monsters, either. You could probably drag them out of whatever landfill they now occupy, knock all the grated cheese off, and start banging away again like thirty years haven't passed.

A lot has changed since then. I'd bet my lunch money that the keyboard in front of most of you reading this is a plastic affair that would fly apart at the first solid whack over an ogre's pointed head. 

Those flimsy new ones are the keyboards I beat  to death on a regular basis. Even when I moved up to the more expensive gaming keyboards, I didn't solve my problem. Yes, the gaming sets tended to last longer, but their fate was ultimately the same as the rest -- a key would stop working. Then another. Then it was time to pony up for a new one, because you really can't finish a novel without using 'a' or 'e' at some point.

This time, though, I decided to go all out and see if I can't finally put a halt to this endless parade of hapless tortured hardware. I did some research, and learned a few things that might be of interest to any of my heavy-handed writer brothers and sisters out there. 

My criteria for finding a new keyboard were simple. I wanted the following:

* A metal chassis. No more plastic.

* Real mechanical keys. No membrane keys. 

* Lighting. I enjoy writing with the lights down, and while I don't look at the keys once my Two Fingers Of Hammering find their places, lighting is handy when you need it.

You may be wondering what makes mechanical keys different from the usual membrane keys found on most keyboards. 

For a full rundown on the difference, check out this article at the ever-helpful Tom's Guide  site. Then come back here. We'll wait.

The short version is this -- membrane keyboards are cheaper because you're just squishing a plastic wafer down with every stroke. Yeah, it works well enough for most, but if you're spending serious time typing, you really ought to consider treating yourself to a mechanical keyboard.

Mechanical keys have springs and plungers and other assorted bits of machinery. So you get a lot of 'feel' with each keystroke. The keys actually plunge down under your fingers, offer resistance, and pop back up. There's genuine tactile feedback, and none of that mashing on a pancake feeling I always got from membrane keyboards.

So I poked around, searching only for mechanical keyboards. I found plenty. Yes, they're pricier than their membrane counterparts, but I'd buy a single expensive keyboard every several years than a cheaper one every six months.

I wound up getting a Corsair K70 gaming keyboard. It's a beauty, too -- the base is aircraft-grade aluminum, with laser-cut keys and red LED backlighting. The space bar is textured. It's a corded model, not a wireless, and the USB cord is a heavy braided one, with a pair of USB connectors at the far end. It comes with extra keys and a textured detachable wrist rest.

It's heavy, weighing in at almost 3 pounds. 

Since 'unboxing' seems to be a thing now on social media, here's the unboxing of the K70.

I'm thrilled with this keyboard. It's every bit as sturdy as the old IBM mainframe units we banged away at back in the day. I'll be shocked if I have to replace it anytime soon.

Do mechanical keys make that much difference? Listen for yourself. Below, I recorded the sounds of a membrane keyboard being used.

MEMBRANE KEYS BEING STRUCK

Now, click below to hear what the mechanical K70 keys sound like. 

MECHANICAL KEYS BEING STRUCK

I hope you can tell how much 'clickier' these are. The feel is also entirely different -- the keys have travel, and resistance. Typing on this keyboard is a joy.

The mechanical keyboard is louder than the membrane. A lot louder. I imagine I'd drive any roommates nuts with this thing, but writing, like other unsavory pursuits, is best done alone.

(Top image: © Elnur | Dreamstime.com - Young Employee With Keyboard Isolated On White Photo)

Way Out West

Attractive young people break out into spontaneous, unstaged celebrations upon hearing about the new Markhat book.   

Editor's Note: To read this entry in a large print Easy on the Eyes edition, click here.

WAY OUT WEST, the new Markhat book, has been accepted by Samhain Publishing, and will see release in early 2017 (there's a small chance that date may change to an earlier one). 

 Which means the Markhat Files series is now ten titles strong. Eleven, if you count the print-only compilation of the three novellas (The Markhat Files). 

Either way, it's a milestone. 

I've spent a lot of time with Markhat and Darla and the gang over the last several years. I've watched the characters and their world change. 

WAY OUT WEST will present the biggest changes to the series thus far. I've already revealed that the book is set on a steam locomotive, but that's all I'm saying right now.

I'd like to say thanks to everyone who's kept the Markhat series alive by buying the books. Ultimately, there is no better way to support any art than by buying it. Markhat would have died long ago had you people not clicked BUY, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

So what's next, now that WAY OUT WEST has found a home?

I plan to finish two novels this year. The new Mug and Meralda, of course, which has a working title of EVERY WIND OF CHANGE. And I've already started a new Markhat, entitled THE DEVIL'S HORN. 

Which sounds ambitious until you realize that just by churning out a thousand words a day, one can finish a rough draft of a full novel in about 80 days. Of course there's still a lot of work to be done even when the draft is complete, but even if you need three months of editing and honing, it's still entirely possible to write a book in six months.

The trick, of course, is to write a good book in six months.  

As I chug along with the Markhat books, I do keep wondering when I'll jump the shark. More importantly, I wonder if I'll realize what I've done before an editor has to spell out my failure in brutal, gruesome detail. 

Of course there have been authors who managed to write tens on books in a particular series without a fatal misstep. Rex Stout did it with -- what? 70 titles? -- in his brilliant Nero Wolfe series. Roger Zelazny's Amber books never hit rock bottom. I did get a bit bogged down at one point with Glen Cook's Black Company series, but he recovered in the next book and the end was one of those rare times when you can't even stand up for a while after reading the last page of the final book. 

So I have hope. And I'll keep turning books out. That little voice that whispers, the one that seeks to sow the seeds of doubt, that's one voice you've got to ignore.

So it's back to work for me. Take care, all, see you next week!

The Devil's Horn

                       ID 29432337 © Salvador Ceja | Dreamstime.com

Note: To view this in an easy to read large print edition, click HERE.

The new Markhat book is underway. The working title is THE DEVIL'S HORN, and the image above may or may not contain clues as to the book's content. 

I'm never entirely sure where books come from. The Markhat series was born in an instant as I listened to a Billy Idol album. DEAD MAN'S RAIN was inspired by a thunderstorm and a dark old house. THE DARKER CARNIVAL was born during a break-room discussion of writer Harry Crews and his time spent with a traveling carnival. 

THE DEVIL'S HORN sprang to life in an instant, in the shower, as I reached for the soap.

Hardly the stuff of literary legend. You never heard Hemingway say 'I applied shaving cream.  THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA popped fully formed into my head.'

But that's how it happened for me. 

I have to believe the book has been brewing subconsciously for a while now. There's too much detail, too many intricate moving parts, for it to have taken shape so quickly. I'm not that smart. 

I think it's going to be a great book. Markhat's world is changing.  The changes are drastic, and coming fast, and I suppose that aspect of the book may be driven by what I see going on in our tired old world. 

I just wish I had as much control over events in the here and now as I do on paper.

But would that be a good thing? Sure, some might say so. Just like I'm sure you'd do, given some mystical power, I'd try to eliminate hunger. Wipe out poverty. Put an end to war. Ignorance. Want.

Even so, for every person that lauded these things, I've come to realize there'd be a more or less equal number who would decry such efforts, or the means taken to accomplish them. 

Interesting how halos or horns are entirely a matter of perspective, when the focus is shifted from the wearer to the world. 

I should shut up now. The book is begun, but hardly complete. 

That's the news I have for this week. I'll close with a book cover and a link, because I've grown fond of what we call 'food.'

The author, upon realizing he has been binge-drinking turtle juice.

The book is HOLD THE DARK. This is a pivotal book in the series, because it is here Markhat meets Darla. It's also one of my favorites.

Here's the link I promised -- HOLD THE DARK.

Words For Your Ears

                                   Pic by Photodeti | Dreamstime.com

To read this entry in Large Print, click here!

I've always wanted to see one of my titles in audiobook format.

I've even tried recording a couple of my short stories myself. Unfortunately, my Mississippi accent is both thick and omnipresent, and I simply can't do convincing character voices. If I can find either of the audio files, I'll prove both points by linking to them at the end of this entry.

But my friend and fellow author Maria Schneider doesn't suffer from my limitations, so she's made four highly entertaining audio versions of her works free for the listening on her blog, Bear Mountain Books. 

Here.s the link. I suggest you start with the first one, Bingo. It's less than 15 minutes long, and it's a hilarious variation on the old Faustian deal-with-the-Devil trope.  I felt pretty sorry for the Horned One by the end.

BEAR MOUNTAIN BOOKS, THE AUDIO VERSIONS

You'll love them all, though. Take a listen!

THE KNOCKING MAN

My Story THE KNOCKING MAN was included in an anthology back in 2011. The anthology was entitled  SHADOW STREET and while I don't think the book is still in print, you can listen to me read it aloud by clicking the YouTube link below. I'm not sure why you'd want to listen to me read it aloud. Maybe you have neighbors you don't like -- in that case, crank this one up, and go grocery shopping. They'll probably have moved by the time you get back.

THE KNOCKING MAN

It's a heartwarming tale of the walking dead, and a young man finding refuge and purpose in a dangerous world. It's a safe listen -- this isn't a zombie story at all. Well, okay, there are corpses that get up and run errands, but nobody gets eaten. Anyway, have a listen.

Have a good week, everyone, see you next Sunday!

Frank's Guide to Writing A Book

The author, who has far better ankles than any of you suspected.

NOTE: To read this in the large print edition, click here!

Here's a brief sample of the ads that usually confront me on Facebook and elsewhere online:

* THE EASY WAY to PUBLISH your first BEST-SELLER!

* 10 SURE-FIRE ways to SELL YOUR BOOK!

* JOIN the REVOLUTION! Click here to SELF PUBLISH your BREAKTHROUGH NOVEL!

Just out of curiosity, I've clicked on a few of these banner ads. They're all designed to take you down the same familiar road -- pay us to do what you can do yourself for free, and we'll bleed you dry while continuing to make the same empty promises.

There isn't any ten-step program to send your book rocketing up the Amazon sales rank list. And the people who've claimed to know 'the secret' to such success usually wind up being outed as the ones who dumped thousands of dollars into schemes that hid their purchases of bogus reader reviews.

So what does make one book a best seller while at the same time a hundred equally worthy books languish in the frigid depths of sales rankings?

Sunspots. Hemlines. Paper clip sales, the ratio of European dog nose widths to the NASDAQ, the relative temperature difference of Mrs. Potter's last cup of tea to that radiator  in the apartment two doors down. 

In other words, it's all whim and caprice, and you'll go absolutely nuts trying to quantify the factors that determine sales.

What you can do is write another book. That's the best use of any author's time and effort. 

Sadly, it's also the most work.

I'm here to help, though, by making public my own half-assed -- er, sure-fire -- methods for starting, continuing, and finishing your book!

STEP 1: Assign each finger a name and a function. For index, my left index finger is Larry, and Larry is responsible for finding the + key. You get that, Larry? You have ONE JOB. I don't want excuses. Just a + sign now and then.

STEP 2: Read 'Finnegan's Wake.' That's a real book. Ask yourself what on Earth makes you think you can pull that off? Now go sit in the corner and feel inadequate for a month or so, you poser.

STEP 3: Fire up Microsoft Word. Type your title, centered, all caps, about a third of the way down the page. Be overwhelmed by what a silly title that is. Delete it. Close the file. Delete the file. Uninstall Word. Format your hard drive. Go for a long walk. Weep, letting the rain hide your tears. If it isn't raining find a lawn sprinkler. 

STEP 4: Return to the keyboard, refreshed, revived, and moderately drunk. Forget the validation code for Word. Mess around on Facebook for an hour or so. Go to bed.

STEP 5: After numerous false starts, give the thing a title, and get that all-important first page down. You've got about that much time and space to engage a reader. You'd better hit the ground running, with a potent mix of action and intrigue. You don't have time for infodumps. If the reader doesn't ask herself 'What is going to happen next?' you're screwed. 

STEP 6: Keep writing that all-important first page, substituting second for first, third for first, etc., until you've finished 250 or three hundred all-important pages.

STEP 7: Edit. Re-write. When it's as good as you can reasonably make it, either publish the thing yourself or shop it around with publishers. Don't pay anyone calling themselves a publisher for anything, ever. Don't agonize over sales, either. It will sell or it won't, and waving feathers and fish-bones over the ranking page isn't likely to do any good.

STEP 8: Start all over. You can start with Step 5 the second time around. 

Frank's Guide to 2016

To read this entry in large print Easy on the Eyes edition, click here!

As the new year looms (see also lurks, lies in wait, prepares an ambush), I thought many of you might be comforted if you know what to expect from 2016, and what preparations to take.

So I'm going to reveal, right here, right now, the major events 2016 has in store for us. By doing so I risk damaging the timeline, but even the Time Police just shrug and roll their eyes -- frankly, this timeline is already so hosed additional damage will be hard to even spot.

What kind of year will 2016 be? Hmm. If 2016 were a person, they'd be the sort of person who displays a well-honed expertise at clubbing, and I'm not referring to the kind of club that features lively music and overpriced drinks.

So pull on your Wasteland Rampage stomping boots, slam a fresh magazine of zombie-killing rounds into your marauder rifle, and let's have a quick look at 2016, the Year That Will Be!

1) NASA confirms the existence of life on Mars. At first, the Martians are said to be subsurface microbes, existing a few meters below the surface, shielded by Martian soil from the sleet of hard radiation and nourished by the remnants of a long-dead sea. When the first 900-foot-tall Martian squid rises from the dirt and declares the presence of our rovers an act of war,  President Trump responds with an orbital bombardment of Europa, sixth moon of Jupiter. The Martian squids exchange puzzled glances, mutter something derogatory about primates, and vanish once more beneath the sand.

2) Daytime highs of 125 degrees Fahrenheit (that's 8 hectares Celsius) become commonplace. This is especially concerning because that 125 degrees is the temperature of the oceans. Reporting daytime air temps is outlawed by the Real Good Science Act of June 2016.

3) Tank dealerships begin to outnumber car dealerships in 21 US states.  Tank battles on public roads now commonplace.  

4) Spectacular daytime UFO crash on busy Dallas highway can't be suppressed by government, provides undeniable proof of alien visitations. The surviving aliens speak to reporters, reveal that Earth is in fact an ancient colony world, abandoned by the Galactic Empire because 'you guys turned out to be such butt-heads.'

5) Vladimir Putin invades Norway, claims the failed attempt to annex the mountainous nation was 'hunting accident only, was out riding horse with 22 armored divisions and Russian Air Force and everybody panic.' Victorious Norwegians celebrate by devising yet another way to pickle fish organs.

6) Melting ice caps reveal massive technological artifacts that predate humanity. The South Pole Structure, as it comes to be known, contains a vast 'control room' centered around a single red button. This button is surrounded by glyphs, markings, and pictograms which clearly warn against pushing the button. Bet you can guess what happens next.

7) Airlines attempt to maximize profits by introducing 'plank seating,' in which travelers are stacked atop each other  in neat piles. The traveling public can opt out of this arrangement by purchasing a first class ticket, which mandates a maximum of two passengers per seat. 

8) Gasoline drops to 68 cents per gallon, and who needed national parks anyway, amiright?

9) Ford Motor Company introduces the Road Rager, an armor-plated SUV marketed as 'the fun tank alternative!' With superior speed and agility, the Road Rager claims to offer good survivability in everyday traffic, a luxurious array of interior amenities, and two forward-mounted armor-piercing 90mm anti-tank guns in a variety of modern designer colors. 

10) Linguists note with alarm the rapid emergence of an all-emoji language among teenagers and the under 25 demographic. "Smiley-face clouds radish stick stick fire melon dog wagging dog wagging," said a proponent for the new language, adding "Butt butt nose lightning."

That's all I can safely reveal. I suggest you stock up on canned beans, start buying rice by the 50 pound bag, and of course now is an excellent time to start camouflaging the entrance to your survival bunker -- you DO HAVE a survival bunker, don't you?

A Very Markhat Christmas

To view this entry in an easy-on-the-eyes large print edition, click here!

If you've read my Markhat Files series, you've seen several references to a midwinter holiday called Yule. The books are also filled with references to angels and devils, heavens and hell. A couple of Rannit's five main churches have also been the settings for scenes, including one very rushed wedding.

One thing I've never done, though, is lay out the theology behind the references. 

I despise infodumps. Maybe you never heard the term before -- if that's true, here's an example of an infodump set in our world:

"As you know, Bill, Hitler's Germany and the other Axis powers lost World War II, which was effectively ended with the use of atomic weapons against the Japanese Empire."

"That's true, Steve."

Which is dumb. People rarely explicitly describe events or concepts which are common knowledge to them.  That's why Markhat and Darla will never sit around and discuss the religious and historical significance of the Yule log they burn every Yule.

But I'm under no such constraints here in the blog, so here for the first time is a thumbnail sketch of the religious landscape of Rannit, and indeed all the remnants of the Old Kingdom in the Markhat books.

BASIC RELIGIOUS COSMOLOGY PROMOTED BY THE CHURCHES:

Creation was completed by God. Three planes came into existence -- Heaven, God's Realm. Hell, the realm of the Infernal. And the World, balanced between Heaven and Hell, peopled by humanity, Trolls, the Fae, and various other mortal creatures. Shortly after the three realms came into existence, Heaven and Hell went to war. God and the Devil slew each other, leaving both Heaven and Hell in ruin. The remaining angels gathered their forces above the middle world, following God's final order to  protect humanity. The devils amassed beneath it, ordered to destroy mankind. Magic is used by both sides to either empower or corrupt humans.

Five mighty Angels took charge of the angelic survivors. These five angels formed the Five Great Churches, which hold doctrines that differ in certain details and traditions. Each of these Five Angels has a devilish counterpart, whose names are never spoken. 

YULE, THE MODERN PRACTICE THEREOF:

While the five churches don't agree on much, they do share certain holidays. Yule is the foremost among them. By Markhat's time, Yule is very much a commercial and secular holiday, observed mostly by the exchange of gifts, parties, and of course the ceremonial burning of a Yule log, which has evolved into a ceremony all its own.

Celebrants, who may be friends or family or both, gather around a fireplace after the Yule eve meal is enjoyed. Everyone places a scrap of paper or a small flammable 'gift' around the log. Yule songs are sung, a sweet dark Yule wine is drunk, and as the sun sets the fire is lit.

Gifts are exchanged after the log catches fire. More songs are sung. More wine is drunk. Children are encouraged to search the room for presents hidden by the 'Angel Ernmost,' who is said to watch from the flames and reward good children with the best gifts.

Tradition dictates that all present must remain present until the log burns out. Children, and anyone who gets sleepy while the log burns, this must light a watchlight (a small white candle) before falling asleep to ward off bad luck for the next year.

In essence, Yule is very much like our Christmas, only without the tree. Children love it. Adults love food and wine. 

So that's what's behind all the mentions of Yule and angels and devils in the books. It's why you'll never see anyone, at least not a human, pray to a god -- their creation mythology, like so many actual human myths, saw the creator perish as part of the act of creation. Priests believe they intercede on behalf of the faithful to the patron angel of their church -- often for a fee, Markhat is quick to point out with a derisive snort. Seems Angels are always short on cash.

Since Markhat and Darla now reside on a houseboat named Dasher, they'll have to improvise. The boilers belowdecks provide their heat, but you can't burn a proper Yule log in either of them. Instead, the Yule log will be burned in a clay fire-pit on Dasher's deck. It will be a smallish log, but a Yule log nonetheless. A small tent will be erected over the firepit to shield it from rain or snow. 

Dasher's wheelhouse is lined by  windows, now trimmed with holly and hung with sticks of red and white peppermint candy. All with gather, as the log is lit. Then Markhat, Darla, Evis, Gertriss, Mama Hog, and of course Slim and Cornbread will watch the log burn from the warmth within Dasher's wheelhouse. Wine will be drunk. Mama Hog and Slim will make horrific noises under the guise of singing Yule songs. Mama will chastise Markhat for feeding Cornbread right from the table. Gifts will be exchanged , but it won't matter what the gifts are, or how much any of them cost.

No, they'll treasure the giver, not the gift. The people in the Markhat books have had a rough time of it, book after book. They've seen loss and hardship, faced danger and death. They've all lost people. 

So when they gather this Yule, it's not the log or the presents they celebrate. 

It's each other.

I hope you too find yourself surrounded by the people who matter.

Markhat and Darla, Evis and Gertriss, Mama Hog and Slim and Stitches and all the rest -- they raise a glass to you, and wish you well. 

Happy Yule, to one and all!

What to Buy a Writer for Christmas. Or Look, There's a Liquor Store

To view this entry in an easy-on-the-eyes large print edition, click here!

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.

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 your 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.

I'm kidding, of course. For instance, I'm listing my Christmas Wish List below. If anyone would like to buy me a gift, each item comes with a handy link!

1) A book about airplanes and airports, reasonably priced at only $19,000.

Jane's Airports and Handling Agents! 

I remember wincing inwardly when I paid nearly 30 bucks for a Harry Potter hardcover. This book is 19 grand and that doesn't include shipping. But it is a hardcover, and word on the street is that Chapter 4 contained scenes of sensual baggage handling so explicit and provocative Jane herself was reluctant to include them in the final edit. 

I'll wait for the movie.

2)  A simple analog wristwatch, $55,000.

The Rolex Cosmograph. I generally opt for finer timepieces -- Timex is a well-established brand, after all -- but this watch did catch my eye. I assume the maker, Rolex, is an upstart Chinese brand, but all the lads at my club will enjoy a hearty chuckle when I sport such a plebian bit of flash. 

Shipping is free, and it comes with a 2-year warranty. Quite the bargain, really.

3) Learn to speak Mongolian, for only $10,000!

Learn Mongolian! Because if you don't, the grumpy lady on the box will come around and beat you with a platter of genuine Mongolian khorkhog. For only ten thousand dollars, you get a cardboard box and a single CD-ROM that will fit in your Mac or your iPod shuffle, as soon as you travel back to 2003 and find your iPod shuffle. Hurry, there's only 1 copy left!

4) A toy robot. This one is a little pricey, at $999,999,999.99. Batteries are also not included, but frankly you can afford a couple of double-A cells if you've got a billion dollars to throw around on anime robots. 

The billion dollar robot is named Sakura, which is Japanese for 'I still can't believe Amazon let me list this.' According to the ad copy, Sakura can sing up to five songs, and she also 'records your secrets,' which means she probably blackmails you later. 

Heck, get two, so they can at least sing in harmony.

Christmas Songs for Writers

Note: To read this entry in a large-print Easy on the Eyes edition, click here.

If you're like me (and for all our sakes, let's hope you're not) you tend to replace the lyrics of songs you hear once too often with fresh new words, usually while you grit your teeth.

Face it, the one class of song you'll hear repeated endlessly for the next few weeks is that of the Christmas song. 

Here are the words I hear, when the inevitable tunes sound out. Enjoy....

IT CRASHED UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR

It crashed upon a midnight clear, 
my brand new Toshiba hard drive, 
it took with it a manuscript, 
not a single  sentence survived. 
A backup failure, a bad CD, a corrupted Word file in my cloud, 
30 novel pages just disappeared, 
scared the dogs with cussing so loud.

WE THREE THEMES

We three threads of story arc are
screwing up Chapter Seven and that scene in the bar.
Plot holes we widen, contradictions create,
Oh, why did he take us this far?

GOD REST YE MINOR CHARACTERS

God rest ye minor characters,
whose names we can't recall,
You bring us drinks and sell us things,
advance plots in matters small.

In Chapter Four you said 'hello,'
while passing in the street,
In Chapter Six you lay quite dead
knocked down in quick defeat.

But be at peace, dear what's-your-name
You did not die in vain,
I'll be right back to end this verse,
as soon as I recall your name.

OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS

Over the river and through the woods,
this chapter knows not where to go.
My protag ignores the way my outline did say
While my word count continues to grow.

Over the river and through the woods,
Oh, this whole book doth blow.
Editors shriek and beta readers look bleak
As over the same ground we go.

Frank's Guide to Sports

Note: To read this entry in a large-print Easy on the Eyes edition, click here.

As many of you know, I'm a huge sports fan.

Wait. It seems I misspelled several words in the sentence above, which should have read 'I'm huge, because I am inordinately fond of cheesecake. Sports, though? Why?'

I live in a college town. Which means the place erupts in a frenzy of football madness each autumn. Game days are a non-stop traffic jam. Crowds roar. Fortunes are made or lost. Angry words are exchanged both online and in person. Fights break out when irate LSU fans learn they can't take their wife-goats into the nice restaurants on the Square.

We stock up on groceries and stay home until the last arrest is made and the last camper pulls out for whatever they call home.

I've never really understood the allure of sporting events. To me, sports is all that noisy bit that takes place behind the cheerleaders, which is the only aspect of any sport that makes any sense to me. And you sports that don't have cheerleaders? 

What's your problem, soccer?

Here's the summation of every sport I've ever seen:

A ball is chased, kicked, thrown, batted, rolled, dribbled, struck, or otherwise set in motion. This motion appears to anger one group and delight another. Whistles are blown. Can I go now?

But Frank, someone says. What about the athleticism? What about competition? What about the spirit of friendly rivalry?

"What?" I reply. "Sorry, didn't hear you, was watching the cheerleaders. Is this one of the sports at which hot dogs are served?"

Maybe you're like me, and don't have much to contribute to the inevitable (and interminable) conversations about sports. As always, I'm here to help, with another Frank's Handy Guide. 

Frank's Handy Guide to the Life-Lessons Illustrated by Various Sports!

1) NFL football. Provides extensive insight into that aspect of the legal system which deals with domestic violence, homicide, and animal abuse. 

2) Pro baseball.  An invaluable primer to the fine arts of baccy-spittin' and poorly-concealed steroid use. Also perhaps the last holdout of socially acceptable venues in which males may adjust their privates in public and on camera.

3) NBA basketball. Ready to riot? Win or lose, spill out of that stadium and overturn a few Kias, sports fans, because, um, friendly rivalry? Also a great place for tall people to find work since the invention of the ladder destroyed the top-shelf shopper assistance industry.

4) Soccer. I'm sort of at a loss on this one. Is it really a sport? I suppose so, since there's a ball and a lot of vigorous running. People routinely get trampled to death at soccer matches. At first, I was sure these poor unfortunates were trampled while attempting to flee from the soul-crushing boredom of a soccer game, but I'm told this is not the case. I'm sure there's a life lesson in all that somewhere, but for the moment I'm going to stick with 'Soccer teaches us to avoid soccer games.' As far as I know, nobody was ever trampled to death by a horde of crazed badminton fans.

5) Tennis. Tennis might not even belong on this list. I have a sneaking suspicion tennis is nothing more than a clever way to get young women to dress like cheerleaders and whack away at balls just so men can watch intently and not have to pretend they're concentrating on athleticism. 

6) Hockey, Curling, Shot-Putting, Wrestling, Boxing, etc. There's only so much you can do regarding outdoor activities if you're stranded on some Godforsaken ice-floe of a continent. Shout out numbers at random, call them scores, and pretend two of your toes didn't just fall off, eh?

MEET RAHMAN TOWHIDUR, SCAMMER THIRD CLASS!

Facebook is many things to many people. To your grandparents, it's a place to swap eleven thousand baby pictures (daily) and distribute poorly-manipulated images of Obama as the AntiChrist. 

To scammers, it's a hunting ground. Last Friday, a Nigerian advance-fee fraud scammer picked me as his next victim, and initiated an IM conversation.

I'm not blurring out the scammer's name, which after all isn't really his name. Nor have I changed any of his words. If the scammer has a problem with this, he is welcome to A) bite me and B) bite me again. 

Now, a quick word about how the scam works. Rahman or whomever is running the thing contacts people at random with a bizarre song and dance about millions of dollars and a need of assistance to get it out of his country. The details vary, are NEVER spelled correctly, and don't make any difference anyway. 

All they want to do is trick the gullible into sending them money, via wire transfer or Western Union, as some ridiculous 'fee' which will, upon receipt, unlock untold millions of easy money.

It's a clumsy scam, but people get taken by these clowns every day. Which is why I try to waste the scammer's time whenever I can. 

Below is the IM conversation. I emailed the 'banker,' but haven't received a response yet. If I get one I'll post it here next week.

Enjoy this tragic tale of 'euphoric' lung cancer, and my Pastafarian blessings upon the scammer!

Yeah, I was getting a little testy by the end. Us Pastafarian ministers aren't known for our patience. 

If you'd like to see even more scam-a-licious hijinks, I suggest you check out 'Scamorama!' Link is below...

Click here to visit Scamorama!

Book Away

NOTE: To read this in the large print Easy on the Eyes edition, click here!

At long last, a new Markhat and Darla book is out and away!

Way Out West is now with the publisher, under consideration. So while I may indeed be popping the champagne cork early (there's no guarantee Way Out West will be bought), just finishing and submitting a new book is a minor victory in itself. 

2015 has been a rough year for writing. But I got one book out, with time enough to start another, and I'm proud of that. 

My next project will of course be the continuation of Mug and Meralda's adventures. If you read All the Turns of Light, you might remember them spotting something very strange in the sky, high above the Great Sea. Will that play a role in the new book, which is entitled Every Wind of Change in my files?

Could be. You'll just have to wait and see!

On a Serious Note

My original plan for today was to include a section about how writers celebrate sending off a new book. But in light of all that's happened, it came off as being in poor taste.

Maybe later. I'm not going to post any images of the Eiffel Tower, or pontificate about the need for peace. 

In fact, I'm not going to say anything at all. I'll let the great Charlie Chaplin do the talking, in this remarkable clip from 1940's The Great Dictator. If you've never seen this speech, I humbly suggest you take a couple of minutes and listen. It was true then, and true now.

Take care, everyone. 

Way Out West

NOTE: To read this in the large print Easy on the Eyes edition, click here!

At long last, the new Markhat book, Way Out West, is done!

I finished the first draft late in the afternoon yesterday, on Halloween. That's the first time I've ever finished a book on Halloween. As with all writers, I'm appallingly superstitious at heart, so I'll go ahead and start believing this event is a mystical portend of things to come (i.e., bestseller-dom, movie deals, merchandise ties-ins, maybe even a new soldering iron). 

Of course finishing a book and selling a book are two entirely different events.

Some may say selling a new installment in an established series is easy. Some might also say sticking one's face in a fan is a good idea, and there's probably somebody uploading that very video to YouTube as you read this.

My point is that, in publishing, there are no sure things.

Now, that said, it is true that Way Out West won't face the same hurdles as the first book in the series did. Back then, Markhat was just another name in the slush pile, competing with a thousand other would-be books for a contract. 

It's a nerve-wracking experience, the waiting. Are they laughing at me? Taking turns burning manuscript pages as they read aloud from the synopsis? Is my name even now being circulated on secret publishing forums, as Doofus of the Day?

Why yes, I am under the scrutiny of a mental health care provider. Funny you should ask. But I digress.

But back in 2008, Samhain Publishing took a chance on Dead Man's Rain, the first Markhat title. That was also my initial introduction to a book publishing firm.

I'd worked with magazines before -- Weird Tales, for one. That's fun too, but it's a different experience than having an actual publisher and putting out book-length titles.

For instance, you get an editor. More than one editor, actually, but you'll work primarily with one editor, who turns a practiced eye upon your book and suggests changes that will result in a stronger final product.

This is where a lot of new authors short-circuit and send their own careers up in flames. How dare anyone presume to judge my sacred prose, these authors cry, twisting their berets in fury. How dare she!

Well, bub, she dares, and for good reason.  I can say with good authority that without my Samhain editors in the mix, the Markhat Files series wouldn't be as good as it is (that's not a brag; note I offered no indicator of how relatively good the series actually is. That's not for me to say. I just write them. Readers decide if the books have any merit).

Holly, my current editor at Samhain, spots things I miss. Suggests things that would improve a scene. Is willing to wave the Wand of Irrevocable Deletion over entire passages that could better be summed up with the sentence 'I ran.' 

That's what a good editor does. That's a service I get for free by going through a publisher.

Cover art design and execution? Also provided free. Conversion to different formats? Marketing? Placement in various online and physical stores?

I never lift a finger, and I certainly don't write any checks.

All that is why I'll be submitting Way Out West to Samhain. Because it benefits us both, as long as the books sell. 

Note that I'm not slamming self-publishing here. I do that as well -- All the Paths of Shadow and All the Turns of Light are books I put out. 

I decided to try self-publishing the Paths series when the original publisher of Paths of Shadow left the business.  I knew Samhain didn't handle YA-flavored light fantasy, so I thought why not try?

That's been a good decision. The books are still selling well. In fact, now that Way Out West is done, I'll start back on the 3rd Mug and Meralda book.

I'll probably hire my own cover artist and editing and self publish this next Meralda title too, unless I find a publisher willing to take the first two books on as well.  

I've seen a lot of ads for how-to books and courses which claim 'Self-publishing is EASY! Publish your book with 3 quick clicks!' and the like.

All of that is clickbait nonsense. If you're going to do it right, self-publishing is a costly, time-consuming process that frankly is the authorial equivalent of sucking down a big tall glass of metal shavings. 

Not saying it cannot or should not be done -- I'm just saying set aside plenty of time for the act and the aftermath, because this isn't a pleasant walk in the park.

If you're curious about my process, here's what comes next for Way Out West. I'll spend a week or two doing an edit pass of my own. Once that's done, a copy or two will go out to my army of fearless beta readers. At that point, I will put the book aside, and start on the new Meralda book (working title is Every Wind of Change).

When the betas have finished, I'll read their reports, make a final edit pass based on that, and only then will the book go to Samhain, if I judge it to be finished.

I will reveal that the next Markhat adventure will be titled Bad Moon Rising. The significance of that title will be made apparent in the course of Way Out West. 

And that's all I say about that.

PS: Early in the blog, I suggested someone was probably posting a face-in-the-fan video to YouTube as you read my blog. Well, after finishing this entry, I thought 'Surely no one would actually do that,' so I checked YouTube just to see.

Sigh. Yes, there are face in the fan videos. This one has four million views. 

I'll go back to writing now.

Things That Go Bump #4

Bill O'Neil

George Meek

NOTE: To read this entry in the Easy on the Eyes version, which features larger print and black text on a white background, click Easy on the Eyes edition!

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

NOTE: To read this entry in the Easy on the Eyes version, which features larger print and bacl text on a white background, click Easy on the Eyes edition!

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.

NOTE: To view this blog entry's 'Easy on the Eyes' black text on white background format, click here --> EASY ON THE EYES VERSION.

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

NOTE: I've created a mirror site to this one, with a larger font and black text on a white background. Same content, same images. To view this blog entry with black text on a white background, CLICK HERE.

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!