The Perfect Face for Radio

I'm going to be on the radio this week, live from the KWAM 990 studios in Memphis, Tennessee, courtesy of The Steve Bradshaw Show! You can either listen at 8:00 AM on Tuesday June 3 by tuning to 990 on the AM dial, or you can fire up a web browser and click your way to the live show feed. Remember, that's Tuesday morning at 8:00 AM Central Standard Time.

We'll talk about a lot of things. I seem to recall that someone I know, possibly me, has a book coming out on June 17. We may also discuss Bigfoot, ghost hunting, parapsychology, and why I'm still wearing my pajamas in the studio. It should be a lot of fun.

Now, those of you who know me also know that my usual pre-noon vocabulary consists of the following phrases:

• Huh?
• Ugh.
• Grr.
• Look, officer, I'm sure my pants are around here somewhere.

But don't worry. I've constructed an unholy hybrid machine consisting of a twelve-cup Keurig coffee machine and a forced-dose IV system, which will keep hi-octane Columbian bean coursing through my veins all the way to Memphis early Tuesday morning. I should arrive at the studio alert, verbose, and, possibly, resembling the Tasmanian Devil from the old Looney Tunes cartoons.

I'm ready for my radio spot, Steve.

So if you're near Memphis at 8:00 AM Tuesday, tune in and mock my accent. If you're not anywhere near Memphis, pull down a sneaky browser tab set for here and listen in at work.

Meralda and Mug Update

The new Mug and Meralda book, All the Turns of Light, is still in the edit stage. I expected to finish that up last week. Alas, sometimes Life not only intrudes on my writing, but also assaults, attacks, and/or engages in vicious acts of bludgeonry. Yes, I know bludgeon is a real word and bludgeonry is something I just made up, but it fits and I'm hoping it catches on.

I will say this -- I've seen a mock-up of the cover that will shortly grace All the Turns of Light, and it's beautiful!

The Obligatory Book Pitch

As I may have mentioned some forty-seven times already, the new Markhat book goes on sale June 17. It's called The Five Faces, and below is the cover and a link.

I'm eager to see the reactions to this entry in the series. It's probably the grittiest, most unflinching book of them all -- poor Markhat really gets in deep, this time around. This book is set in Rannit, the whole gang is back, and I really hope you like it.

The next book in the series, The Darker Carnival, is still under consideration at Samhain. 

That's it for this week! Wish me luck and my radio appearance, and listen in if you can!

Water, water everywhere...

I don't think I've posted this map before. It's the hand-drawn map of the Realms I use as a reference when working on the Mug and Meralda books. For the last couple of weeks, I've been deep in edits on the new one, All the Turns of Light. I'm hoping to be done with that in a week or two!

The Realms are a very small part of Meralda's world. The Great Sea stretches twenty-five thousand miles in the shortest direction to the world's other land mass, a much larger continent that is home to the Hang. Which makes the world of the Realms several times larger than Earth. 

I did that intentionally. Why?

Ha. I won't tell. Not until around the end of Book 3, anyway.

This new book will have seen the most extensive re-writing I've ever done. But it's going to be a really good book, so it's well worth the effort!

Other Authors at Work

I took this photo inside novelist William Faulkner's home. He famously wrote out the entire outline for A Fable on his walls. He later won a Pulitzer for A Fable, and even wrote the outline on the walls a second time after Mrs. Faulkner had the walls repainted.

I post this image because I'm envious of Faulkner's talent. Let's conduct a thought experiment -- Frank Tuttle partakes of a respectable volume of good whiskey, outlines a book on his wall, and churns out a novel. Does Frank Tuttle win a Pulitzer, get a Historical Society marker erected in front of his house, and then go on to win a Nobel Prize for literature?

Not so much. Frank Tuttle sheepishly repaints the wall and nurses a hangover.

I'll always regret ignoring Step 1 on my Master Plan to be Rich and Famous. What was Step 1, you ask?

Step 1: Be born William Faulkner.

Man, you just can't skip steps.

Faulkner's desk and PC. Bet it runs XP.

Lou Ann Says Hello

Lou and I, on an expedition to replace the memory card in the trail camera earlier today. Taking pictures of Lou is challenging, because she rarely stands still. She has just emerged from a cooling dip in the pond, and is considering a return because she doesn't smell quite strongly enough of mud and algae. Mud composed of rotting vegetation and a thick scum of algae is, of course, Chanel No. 5 to dogs, and is to be applied liberally and often. She's at my side now, exuding an aroma only Swamp Thing could love.

Upcoming Markhat Release

A reminder -- the new Markhat book hits the shelves on June 17!

Here's the Amazon link:

The Five Faces

You can pre-order if you haven't already!

Here's an excerpt from THE FIVE FACES, in case you haven't read any Markhat books and would like a sample before diving in.

From THE FIVE FACES:

My new client’s name was Saffy, short for Saffron, and her big brother’s name was Ted, short for Ted. They were hesitant to offer up their surname, as most Orthodox Rannites are, so I didn’t push.

Saffy and Ted lived in an attic flat with their grandparents in the jumble of old alleys that run north of Camptown. Put the kids together and they’d still be outweighed by a sack of moth-wings, which is why I left them in my office and fetched Mama Hog.

Mama has her faults—and then some—but put a hungry child in her vicinity and she’s a one-woman charity kitchen. She took a single look at Saffy and Ted and vanished with a squawk, only to reappear moments later with a basket stuffed with biscuits and big thick slices of salted ham.

She left after delivering her feast, and by the time my new clients and I got down to business, I could smell Mama’s soup-pot boil as she brewed up something hot and savory.

Ted choked down the last bite of his fourth biscuit and wiped his chin on his sleeve.

“Mister, I’m much obliged for the biscuits, but I’m telling you straight—right now—we ain’t got a penny between us.”

Saffy nodded. She was on biscuit five, herself.

“I don’t know much about finders,” added Ted, “but I know nobody does nothin’ for free. So tell me this—why did you tell Saffy you would find Cornbread? We got no coin. And you ain’t havin’ nothing else, neither, if you get my point.”

I nodded. I liked the way the kid looked me in the eyes when he spoke. I liked the way he didn’t brag or threaten or bluster.

“I was a dog handler, during the War,” I said.

He returned my curt nod.

“So you know dogs.”

“Know them and like them. Cornbread—he help your sister get around?”

“I don’t need any damned help, mister,” said Saffy through a mouthful of biscuit.

Ted nodded silently. “Cornbread’s the smartest dog I’ve ever seen,” he said. “We raised him from a pup. He’s been with Saffy all his life, and she’s been with him all hers. We want him back, mister. But I can’t pay you. Not right now, anyways.”

I leaned back in my chair and pretended to ponder the matter. “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ve got a house on Middling Lane. Summer’s coming. My wife likes a neat lawn, and I like a lazy afternoon and a cold beer. What do you say to this—I try to find Cornbread. You give me a summer of yard work as payment if I find him. If I don’t, you still work for me for two months.”

Ted eyed me with mild suspicion. “That’s it? No funny stuff?”

“That’s it. No funny stuff. Meals thrown in by Mama Hog. Deal?”

Saffy grabbed his elbow, whispered something in his ear.

“She wants to know if you’re any good,” he said, giving me that same flat, hard look. “Like I said, I don’t know anything about finders. So, are you? Any good?”

I opened my desk drawer and got out my writing pad and my good ink pen.

“I guess we’ll see. So tell me. What happened today at the Park?”

Saffy swallowed and coughed. “A man came up and asked me what kind of doggy I had. I heard him get on his knees, and I thought he meant to pet Cornbread, but the leash jerked and Cornbread barked and the man took him—”

I spoke before she could start crying again.

“The man. Did you know his voice?”

“No. He talked funny.”

“Funny how?”

She knotted her dirty brow in concentration.

“What keend of a doogie is that, lass?” she said, aping a deep baritone and a thick accent I couldn’t place. “What a wee leetle doogie he is!”

“He sounded like that?”

“Just like that.” She hesitated. “He smelled funny. Perfumy, like a fancy lady. And he had a big hat.”

I raised an eyebrow. Blind she might be, but she sensed my unspoken question somehow.

“His shadow was too big. I could feel it when he blocked out the sun. He had a big hat, mister.”

I scribbled on my pad. Fancy toilet water, wide-brimmed hat, strong accent.

“And you,” I said to Ted. “Where were you?”

He didn’t blink or look away. “I was watching the birds,” he said. As he spoke, he made a rapid reach and grab motion with his hands. “I lost sight of Saffy, just for a minute.”

Pickpocket, I added to my list. Mind your coin.

When I didn’t spill the beans to Saffy, Ted actually showed me a brief, narrow smile.

“So you never saw the man who took Cornbread?”

“No. I’d have gutted the bastard if I had.”

I didn’t doubt that for a moment. Life doesn’t breed any gentle children of leisure in Camptown.

Mama Hog pounded at my door. “Boy,” she shouted. “Let me in. Got some stew I needs to get rid of.”

I rose and let her in. Her basket was full of bowls and spoons and a pot with a lid and half a loaf of hard-crust bread.

“Reckon you young-uns got room for a bite of stew?”

They were face-down in the bowls and sopping up stew before Mama could hand out spoons.

Mama grinned, showing off her remaining front tooth.

“So, what are these here urchins hiring a finder for, pray tell?”

“Someone snatched their dog. Cut the leash and took him in the park.”

Mama’s grin vanished. “You’d best find them another dog,” she said. “I reckon them what took it has intentions of using it as a bait dog.”

Saffy swallowed hard and cleared her throat. I made frantic shushing motions at Mama.

“We don’t know that,” I said. “Her dog’s name is Cornbread. Saffy. Tell Mama here how the bad man talked.”

Saffy repeated the man’s words, complete with accent.

“Mama, that accent sound like anybody you know?”

She shook her shaggy head. “I reckon not. Though there’s all kinds of foreigners coming out of Prince these days. Some of them talks outlandish, I hears.”

Dogfighting is illegal in Rannit. And not much practiced. Too many War vets came home alive because a dog warned them Trolls were closing in. Anybody caught fighting dogs for sport tended to meet with the kind of displeasure that takes months to heal, if one survives it at all.

Maybe they didn’t think that way in Prince.

Mama leaned against my desk and watched my new clients eat.

“Reckon it must be nice, bein’ able to give away work for free,” she muttered. “‘Course, now that you got Gertriss bearing most of the load, you can afford to be all charitable, can’t ye?”

Mama’s great-niece Gertriss is now my junior partner. Since Mama brought Gertriss to Rannit to be trained up in the card-and-potion trade, Gertriss’s defection to the noble art of Finding has been a sore spot with Mama of late.

“I certainly can,” I replied with a big grin. “I’ve even got time to help you run your business, Mama. Set me up a table, and I’ll start reading the cards this afternoon. Can’t be much to it. The card with the skulls means death, right? And the one with the swords means conflict?”

By then I was talking to Mama’s back as she stomped out of my office muttering about ingrates and the poor upbringing of those who failed to respect their elders.

Ted looked up at me, stew leaving greasy trails in the soot on his chin. “You got a mouth on you, Mister.”

“So I’m told.” I noted his observation on my pad in a show of attention to detail. “Finish the stew. You two need to run along home and I need to start looking for Cornbread.” I pointed at the address I’d scribbled on my pad. “I can find you here?”

Ted nodded. “First door on the right, second story. Grandpa’s deaf. Grandma can hear but not speak. She’ll know your name.”

“Fine. Scoot.”

They drained their bowls. I fussed with my notes and pretended not to see the loaf of bread or both Mama’s spoons find their way into any shabby little pockets.

When they were gone, I put the empty bowls back in Mama’s basket and swept the few crumbs that had escaped off my desk.

I put the basket by Mama’s door when she refused to answer my knock. “Got a few hours before Curfew,” I said, loud enough for Mama to hear. “I’m heading down to the docks to ask around about newcomers from Prince. Darla will worry unless somebody sends a kid to my house with a note telling her I’ll be late, but that can’t be helped, since Mama isn’t home and I’m pressed for time. Woe is me, alas, and etcetera.”

With that, I hailed a passing cab and bade the driver to head for the docks.

He jokingly asked if I was looking for trouble, heading for the docks this late in the day, and I jokingly replied I was, and where better to look?

I tossed him a coin, and off we went, toward the setting sun.

END EXCERPT

So it all starts with a blind kid's missing dog, and winds up -- well. Let's just say things get complicated and dangerous for our hero, wise-cracking Markhat.

I mentioned editing earlier, and I have a lot left to do, so that's all for this week. Take care, folks!

Mad Science: Optical Shenanigans

The image above is an actual picture. It's not digitally manipulated, and it was taken on my worktable a few minutes ago.

The subject is a piece of jewelry from The Noble Collection. And no, I didn't fill a room with candles and jewels -- the picture was taken inside an infinity box, and there are a lot more pictures below.

What's an infinity box?

Some ghost hunters claim spirits can be 'captured' inside a box lined with mirrors. Such a thing is sometimes called a 'Devil's Toybox,' and while I don't believe ghosts, if they exist, can be trapped inside nine dollars' worth of Home Depot mirror tiles and twelve bucks worth of MDF, I did wonder -- what would happen if you built such a box, and put a camera inside it?

So off I went. Building a cube with each face measuring 12 and one-quarter inches took me about an hour. I thought myself a clever lad, because I remembered to account for the thickness of each mirror face. I did forget to account for the dimensions of the glue that holds each mirror in place, and had a few moments of high drama getting the glass panes to slide inside, but got lucky and didn't break anything.

Total cost; 37 dollars, when all was said and done.

I found that four small candles provided enough light to keep the camera's flash from activating. Focusing in the box is largely a matter of sheer blind luck. As soon as I close the lid, I can hear my poor little Fuji Finepix S1000fd start cussing in Japanese, because autofocusing in the optical equivalent of a circus funhouse isn't any fun. I used the S1000fd because it's the smallest camera I've got. My new one has an enormous snout of an optical zoom, but I may try it later too, just to see how its updated hardware deals with the reflective environment.

I'm putting the best of my images below. I hope you enjoy them!

Candles and a crystal ball (yes, I have a crystal ball, and it shows me episodes of The Walking Dead two weeks in advance, nyah nyah na nyah na).

You just can't find ceilings like this outside of Vegas...

Markhat's Mark IV vampire-built revolver. Loved the way the copper color was scattered.

Got this effect by skewing the camera on its little tripod. I've also gotten this effect before without a camera, with a quart of Old Overcoat malt whiskey, but I much prefer this method because my ears don't bleed afterward.

SpongeBob discovers LSD.

Who doesn't have a private horde of precious gems?

Look, Ma, no tripod!

Everybody needs a Treasure Room.

Bikini Bottom, Saturday night.

A herd of dinosaur.

Meralda's favorite latching wand.

Seven million candles.

So that's where I left all my rubies.

I like this one because it suggests a row of dragons, ready for battle. Or the Grand Opening of a new Subway sandwich shop, depending on your level of militarism.

Finally, gargoyles, because nothing keeps your treasure horde safer than an infinite number of highly-motivated gargoyles.

I'll be playing with the Infinity Box this week, trying different cameras and contents. If you've got a suggestion for a subject, let me know! Keep in mind it needs to be smaller than a foot across in every dimension.

No ghosts were trapped, harmed, or even mildly annoyed in the construction of this project.

In writing news, the new Mug and Meralda is still in edits, and the new Wistril is chugging along. The new Markhat is under consideration at Samhain, but I don't expect any word on it for six weeks or so. I will keep you all informed, though!

Okay, back to my edits. I hope you enjoyed the photographs. If anyone is interested in the actual plans I drew up before building this, let me know and I'll scan the paper and email it to you. It's not a difficult build.

Take care all!

Remember, The Five Faces goes on sale June the 17th, but you can pre-order now.

Undressing Meralda

One of the rare pleasures of writing is seeing your characters come to life on a book cover.

Markhat and I could be twins!

After all, you live with your heroes and heroines while you write about them. You hear their voice in every line of dialog, see their face each time you describe an expression. You conceive them, raise them, educate them, shape their personalities. You give them their talents and their flaws, their good and and their bad sides. You dress them, and wake them. You put them to bed. Sometimes, you even kill them.

But unless you remove random faces from magazines or use this new-fangled thing the kids call 'the interwebs' to cut and paste images, you never really see your protagonist, except in your mind's eye, until the book's cover proof arrives.

I'm speaking of Meralda, since I just finished editing the first draft of her new book. With any luck, one day in the not so distant future the book will be published, and the very first thing you'll see on this published book is a cover.

And on that cover, you will probably find Meralda depicted. She's earned top billing as the heroine, after all, and her presence on the cover is well-nigh mandatory.

Before I say anything else, let me say this -- don't panic. Because I will have nothing to do with making the cover. I know my limits, and such a task lies well beyond them.

That said, I wondered if I might find an image somewhere that captured Meralda's look sufficiently well to merit passing the image along to the cover artist one day. Armed with Google, and caught between tasks in a moment of boredom, I searched for images tagged 'fantasy woman.'

Google dutifully returned hundreds of images. Most were stunning, since fantasy art is a rich, well-established field. But very few of the images evoked my Meralda. Why?

Well, it seems that most fantasy realms are plagued by winds of sufficient velocity to make keeping oneself fully clothed nearly impossible. Undergarments tended to remain, although in various states of disarray.

Don't even THINK about it, quoth Meralda.

Look, I'm no prude. Seriously, I'm not. But upon seeing the images, Meralda, who was looking over my shoulder, raised her right eyebrow and announced in no uncertain terms that if she were to be clothed in a handkerchief and a bit of string she would be very, very unhappy, and would likely remain so for the next three hundred thousand words. 

At a minimum.

It's one thing when ordinary people say that. It's another when your protagonist -- the star of the show, so to speak -- says it.

Which led me to wonder: Why did Meralda feel so strongly about this?

I suppose the answer is obvious. I wrote her as a bookish, intense person. An introvert. She'd be perfectly happy spending the rest of her life behind the closed doors of the Laboratory, as long as coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches were delivered at regular intervals. Yes, she does have a gentleman friend in this book, but he understands all this, and is happy to accept her as she is.

I remember wondering, when the first book was published, if readers would be able to connect with such a withdrawn protagonist. Meralda sounds a bit dull, to be honest, if all I had to go on was the paragraph above.

But she's proven to be popular. And she's fun to write -- dragging her, kicking and screaming, out of the Laboratory and then out of Tirlin altogether in this new book was quite an experience.

I suppose the best thing one can do when writing a character is to let the character start writing themselves. So, Meralda, don't worry about being handed a micro-mini-skirt, a bustier, and thigh-high leather boots for the cover shoot. Not going to happen. I have nothing against such covers, but to thine own self be true, and all that.

Is there a timeline for the release of the new book? No, nothing specific yet, although I will say it will be this year, and it won't be too cold. Vague enough?

Things To Come

Since the new Markhat is off to the publisher and the new Mug and Meralda is in the capable hands of my fearless beta reader, it's time to start something new.

I'm determined to start and finish a new Wistril story. If you're unfamiliar with Wistril the White Chair wizard and his wise-cracking apprentice Kern, you can read their first three exploits in the anthology below.

Wistril Compleat

The new Wistril, which will end up somewhere between a long novella and a full novel, will be entitled Wistril Ascendant. I haven't visited Wistril and Kern since 2007, and this seems like an excellent time to drop by Castle Kauph and see what the boys have been doing.

I'll be posting regular progress reports here, every Sunday, so stay tuned!

One Away, One on the Launch Pad

Fig. 1, the gun my Muse keeps pointed at my head.

I'll say this much for the year 2014 -- despite the usual (and a few unusual) external pressures, I've been able to get some writing done.

The new Markhat novel, The Darker Carnival, is in the hands of Samhain Publishing. I'll probably have a yes (yay!) or a no (no!) in about eight weeks. That's the first book I wrote this year.

The second book, All the Turns of Light, is now undergoing the brutal process of first-draft revision. So far, it's been a relatively painless process, but I'm only about ten percent into the book, so anything could happen.

All the Turns of Light is the second book I've written this year. It's only May. If I can maintain this 2000 word a day pace, I might manage another pair of books before 2014 closes.

I don't say this to brag. But if you're out there, like I was last year and all the years before that, thinking 'I'll never be one of those writers who can turn out ten pages a day,' please think again. You can do it.

Look. I'm inherently lazy. There are sea sponges with more vim, vigor, and get-up-and-go than me. I believe hard work is best performed by other people, preferably at a location so far away the sounds of their determined industry don't interfere with my napping. If work truly builds character, thanks, I've got enough character already and anyway it's time for Supernatural.

So how did I defeat my powerful inner sloth, and actually get a respectable amount of work done?

I trumped my inner sloth with my inner OCD freak. Every morning, I make a list on a little card of the things I need to do that day. On that list is the entry 'Write 2K words.'

I cross things off the list as they get done. Now, my sloth would gleefully eat the list, or wander away from it to find a nice patch of cool shade, but my inner OCD guy cannot abide the sight of an incomplete item.

Yeah. It really was that simple.

I am using my own mental defects against myself. There's probably a clinical term for that, but if you know it don't tell me.

Motorcycle Update

My mighty Honda is back! Putting everything back together took several hours, but when I turned the key and hit the starter, she cranked. 

Honestly, I couldn't believe it. I was fully prepared to hear the engine sputter and fail. I wasn't even going to employ bad language at the realization I'd have to start all over. I nearly fell off the bike when she started, as though nothing had ever been wrong.

I got the book below, and followed the instructions, and avoided a trip to the shop. Books rule!

Final Words 

Like I said, the new Mug and Meralda is only about 10 percent done with the first editing pass, so I'd better get back to work. Have a good week people!

And don't forget -- the new Markhat The Five Faces goes on sale June 17! But you can pre-order now, wink wink nudge nudge...

Knee Deep in the Alligators of Editing

We hear you're editing, and we came to help.

As I mentioned last week, I'm making a deep editing pass through the new Markhat book, The Darker Carnival.

Writing a book is one thing. I've found that my best way to write is to just dive in and keep going, letting nothing (except snakes or large hail) slow me down. Can't remember what I named the doorman in Chapter 3, when we see him again briefly in Chapter 6? I type  **** and keep moving, knowing that I'll come back later and look up the name and fix that.

Which brings us to the edit phase, when all those **** entries have to be fleshed out and made whole.

That's the first and easiest part of editing, at least for me. I took care of all that in an hour. The next pass saw me searching for grammar mistakes, omitted words, or transposed letters. Those are quick fixes too, as long as you spot them. 

Now I'm reading through the corrected manuscript as I imagine a reader will, and my main mission is to spot passages that invite the reader to close the book. Those are the passages that must be re-written, and that can take a lot of work, depending on the nature of the text.

The author, upon confronting the horror that is Chapter Nine.

So far I've used the scalpel, but not the machete, and that's great news. Snipping a paragraph here and there requires the literary equivalent of a few stitches, and no more. But when that awful realization that an entire chapter or subplot just isn't working engulfs you, you know you've got a mountain of work to do just to get things back on track.

With any luck I'll get The Darker Carnival submitted this week. Then I'll return to the Meralda and Mug book and give it the very same series of re-reads.

Isn't the writing life glamorous?

Below, for no apparent reason, is a short sample of the new book.

Excerpt from The Darker Carnival:

(Not taken from the beginning of the book. Markhat is posing as a newspaper man to poke around Dark's Diverse Delights, a traveling carnival encamped outside Rannit).

I learned a lot about circus folk, that day.

First of all, they drink, and drink hard. Especially the side-show wonders. I met the Man of Bones when he stumbled out of his tent, went down on all fours at my feet, and vomited between my boots. I was amazed at the volume of liquid he expelled, given the emaciated state of his spindly frame.

The circus master kicked the Man of Bones unceremoniously in his gut. "And here we find the Man of Bones, who has terrified audiences from the Sea to the Wastes," said Thorkel, as he sent the scuttling wretch away with a kick to his backside. "A living skeleton, whose grinning skull will haunt your dreams forever."

I nodded and scribbled in my notebook. It didn't seem polite to point out that the Man of Bones was entirely covered in skin.

We met the Queen of the Elves next. She wore a moth-eaten flannel gown she hadn't bothered to fasten with a belt. A pair of mis-matched work boots adorned her dainty feet. She puffed on an enormous cigar between swigs of dark brown liquid gulped from a dirty jar.

"Say hello to Mr. Bustman," said Thorkel, to her.

"Go to Hell," she opined, before sprawling lengthwise on a bench. 

"Men have traveled the world to pay homage to the Queen of the Elves," said Thorkel. The Queen responded with a raised middle finger. "Her beauty and charm are unmatched in all the mortal world."

"She wears flannel as only an Elf could," I added. Thorkel's brow furrowed beneath his immaculate top-hat. 

"That is to say, her ethereal beauty blinds, so dazzling is she to gaze upon," I said, quickly. Thorkel rewarded me with a  jackal's quick grin.

I love the book so much I suspect someone with more talent than me is sneaking out here at night, erasing what I've written, and replacing it with tight, colorful prose. 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I don't have that book. One day soon I should get a copy, because I do a lot of motorcycle maintenance lately.

My faithful Honda, after hibernating all winter, can't quite wake up even though spring has sprung. She tries to crank, but doesn't, which led to a choice -- either take her to the nearest bike repair shop (in Batesville, a forty-mile round trip) or take up my wrenches and attempt the repair myself.

The 83 dollar-per-hour shop rate made that decision for me. So I bought a book detailing the viscera of my model of bike and started taking her apart.

The carburetor, between the warp core and the shield emitter array.

The problem lies with the carburetor, which is a twisty metal thing composed of floats, urchin barometers, and hemorrhoids. It mixes fuel with air or air with better air or, possibly, does nothing at all except keep the gas tank and the air cleaner from banging together. I wouldn't really know. What I do know is that my carburetor didn't look like the ones featured in the book so I took it all apart and scrubbed the pieces with gasoline until they gleamed. 

Who knew gasoline has such potent cleaning properties? But it only works on metal things. My dress shirts didn't fare too well, and my black dress socks simply dissolved. I wish I hadn't been wearing them at the time, but I'm told toenails grow back.

Fig. 1, a carburetor. Or maybe that's a pasta maker. Frankly, we're not sure, but if the bike emits perfect angel hair pasta instead of exhaust we'll know why.

The book I bought is a Kindle book, and at first I was apprehensive about using it around oil, gas, and tools. But now that I've done it, I find that having good clear photos I can enlarge and clickable hyperlinks and a working TOC makes repairs much easier than trying to leaf through a dog-eared printed manual. 

I wasn't able to clean my idle jet (see how I toss around mechanical terms as though I've been doing this for years), so I ordered a new one. Total cost of repairs: $23. I haven't put the bike back together yet, but if she cranks I'll have spent about six hours repairing it and less than twenty-five dollars in parts. Not bad, as opposed to the $300 or $400 bucks a shop would have charged.

Obligatory Plea for Reviews

Hey, not to be a pest (okay, I'm being a pest, might as well own it), but if you've read any of my books and liked them but haven't had a chance to leave a review on Amazon, now would be a great time!

Brown River Queen could use a few more reviews.

The new Markhat book, The Five Faces, goes on sale in a few weeks, on June 17. 

Okay, the alligators are getting restless, so it's back to work for me. Take care all, and see you next week!

Bugs, Poems, and Waxings, Though Not In That Order.

Fig. 1: The author's new haircut. Does it make my thorax look fat?

First things first -- the new Mug and Meralda book, All the Turns of Light, is done. No more pronouncements of 'nearly done' or 'almost finished' or 'surely this week, it will wind up.' The first draft is in the can. The new book weighs in at eighty thousand words, which is a perfect length for a novel as long as most of those 80,000 words are the right words. But only time, a couple of editors, and readers can determine that.

Now that All the The Turns of Light is done, I've picked up the new Markhat book I finished a few months ago. I'll give The Darker Carnival another long hard look, and when it's ready to strike out on its own I'll send it on the good folks at Samhain Publishing, who will then decide whether A) it's a worthy addition to the series or B) Frank has finally jumped the shark and needs to take up knitting. 

I hope to have The Darker Carnival out in a couple of weeks. Then I'll give All the Turns of Light its turn under the harsh, unforgiving light of editorial scrutiny, and then it'll be shipped off to my beta readers, who will return their own judgment regarding sharks, jumping of, or going on to the next step.

Then, it will be time to start a new book -- either the next Markhat, or a new Wistril the Wizard, I haven't decided which yet. Those are my next two books. Just not sure of the order at the moment.

The image at the top of the page is a bug. I took it through my new microscope a few minutes ago, because who among us doesn't love magnified views of big bug heads? Oh? Really? That many?

Sorry. You'll be happy to know he's a nice bug, and that I put him under some bark after I made his portraits. 

I wasn't the least bit surprised to find him coated in pollen. Everything is coated in pollen around here. Most particularly my nostrils, but don't worry, I will not be posting any images of those.

Below is a thistle, which blew away before I completed half a dozen photos. Even the flying thistle-bits have pollen all over them.

Nature is, if I'm any judge, far too amused with pollen.

In Which I Wax Poetic

Someone asked me recently if I wrote poetry.

Nay, quoth I, for poetry is the language of the soul, filled with, er, what are those things called? Feels? You know, the source of tearful eyes and quivering lips -- emotions, yes, feelings, those sorts of things, and I don't have any, so there.

But it later occurred to me that I have in fact written the odd bit of doggerel, strictly in the service of a story. 

For instance, here are the opening lines from The Harper's Lament, sung by Jere the castaway harper at the opening of my short story The Harper at Sea.

I am a luckless vagabond,

bereft of land or country,

Unchained, unbound by love or law,

unhomed till death does take me.

Jere was a recurring character back in my early short-story days. I think my favorite story of his was The Truth About Arphon and The Apple Farmer's Daughter. Without giving too much away, Jere finds himself trapped in a shadow world, with only a numberless horde of ravenous ghosts for company. He remembers a tale told by the legendary harper Arphon, who claims he held a mob of ghosts at bay with wholesome, cheerful songs of summer and daylight. Naturally, Jere tries this approach, beginning with a merry dance tune, Vival's Dance. 

I wander fields, I wander woods,

I wander sky and sea,

I wander lone beneath the stars

Come wander, lass, with me.

The ghosts are not impressed. Neither do they appear amused by any of the other songs Jere plays. Despairing, and nearly frozen solid by the press of the ghosts and their frosty exhalations, Jere's magical harp moves its own strings, and Jere sings along, not realizing at first just what song it is he's beginning to sing...

The apple farmer's daughter

was all alone one day,

When Og the mighty hunter happened by the way...

As the song progresses, Jere sings along, horrified but unable to silence his harp. 

Mighty Og spied lovely daughter,

and his blood did right quick boil...

I'm not going to post the whole thing here, because Jere and I share a similar respect for decorum.

The daughter grinned and fanned her skirts, 

and mighty Og did shout....

At this point, Jere begins to suspect the legendary Arphon lied about a thing or two concerning his encounter with ghosts.

Mighty Og began to weep, and lovely daughter laughed,

I'll not be shamed, the hunter roared, one boot upon one foot...

As the last note of the infamous Apple Farmer's Daughter song dies, his harp selects even worse songs, including Queen Mavan Tames the Dragon, The Happy Donkey Song, and, worst of all, Lords Love Ladies. 

I won't tell you how the story ends. If you're curious, it's here in my The Far Corners anthology.

I believe there's a single nursery rhyme in All the Paths of Shadow, a rhyme that sticks in heroine Meralda's head as she winds her way up the Tower's long, dark stairs. It went like this:

The old, old wizard goes round and round the stair,

The old, old wizard goes sneaking everywhere,

The old, old wizard goes where you cannot see,

The old, old wizard is sneaking up on me!

The Markhat books also feature songs, now and then. Brown River Queen is set aboard a lavish gambling riverboat, and part of the floor show includes a black blues singer named Miss Rondalee. Miss Rondalee, like Mama Hog, commands a magic uniquely her own, in that Miss Rondalee's songs are touched with power. For instance, no two people will hear them quite the same way, because no two people need to hear the very same song. Here's an excerpt from Brown River Queen, in which Miss Rondalee's lyrics foreshadow things to come...

From Brown River Queen:

The music faded away, and the spotlight flared to life, and a tall black woman in a long white gown took the stage as the musicians tapped out a rhythm and began to play. 

The Queen lurched—just a bit, but enough to cause the remaining pair of formal dancers to stumble and lose their place. The lights even flickered.

And then it was over. The sounds of dice clattering and wheels spinning and gamblers shouting and cheering never faltered, not even for an instant.

“Did you see that?”

“I did.” I felt Darla’s heart beat faster. “Trouble?”

“Don’t know.” We kept dancing. The black lady introduced herself as Lady Rondalee of Bel Loit and dedicated her first song to ‘all the lovers out there.’

“Trouble,” she sang. “Trouble, bad trouble, been dogging me all my days...”

“Well that’s comforting,” whispered Darla. 

“Ain’t no comfort, ain’t no comfort, no comfort ever comin’ my ways...”

“I think she can hear you,” I said. 

“I hear you, I hear you sayin’, sayin’ I needs to be changin’ my ways...”

Darla stopped swaying. “You don’t think—”

“I don’t. Coincidence. We’re on edge, that’s all. It’s just a song.”

A waiter pushed his way through the crowd. His starched white shirt was stretched to near bursting by his muscular physique. A scar ran all the way down the right side of his face. Something under his black dinner jacket bulged, and I didn't think it was a salt shaker.

He bore down on us, mindful to keep his hands visible and open, palms toward me.

He stopped a few paces short of us, and waited until I gently disengaged from Darla and moved to stand in front of her.

He nodded, reached slowly in his jacket, and came out with a note. He held it up and I took it from him, and he vanished into the crowd—doubtlessly to employ those muscles in the precise pouring of any one of Rannit's finer wines.

I unfolded the note, just halfway, to make sure it didn't bear hex signs. Instead, I recognized Gertriss's tall plain hand, and I opened it all the way.

BOSS, it read. BY THE PORT STAIR. COME QUICK. IT’S BAD.

Darla gasped, reading over my shoulder.

“Don’t suppose I could convince you to wait here?” I said.

“Waste of time trying, dear.” 

And we were off, weaving through the dancers, plowing through the drunks and the gamblers and their noisy entourages.

I caught one more stanza of Lady Rondalee’s song, before the din drowned her out.

“One day soon, one day soon, trouble gonna be the death of me...”

“Not tonight, I hope,” I muttered. Darla didn't hear.

I put my shoulder to the mob and charged toward the stairs.

Brown River Queen, available now!

Is Miss Rondalee due to make a second appearance in the Markhat series?

Yes she is, because she's a powerful lady with a fascinating talent. I suspect Miss Rondalee and Mama Hog will be up to shenanigans, at the very least. Oh, and by the way -- Markhat's hometown of Rannit is based (loosely) on Memphis, Tennessee. Just south of Rannit, down the Brown River, lies Bel Loit, Miss Rondalee's home. Bel Loit is my version of New Orleans.

Final Words: Did Something Actually Go Bump?

I lack a clever segue for this segment of the post, so I'll just be blunt -- for the first time ever, I got absolutely spooked at a graveyard yesterday as I attempted to capture another EVP sample.

Eerie headstone pic of gentleman who is an ancestor of mine. Note epic 'stache.

Yesterday, I returned to Midway Cemetery, where I've actually collected a few good EVP recordings.

It was a bright, warm day. Hardly a cloud in the sky. Seventy-nine degrees. In short, the day couldn't have been less conducive to spookiness had it been accompanied by a brass band and a parade.

I've been to Midway Cemetery dozens of times. Half of the plots are occupied by relatives. I have no fear of the place, or its denizens.

But when I pulled up to the cemetery gates yesterday, for an instant I was sure a man was standing at the very back, at the edge of the trees.

Let me set the scene. Midway lies at the dead (ha) end of a gravel road traveled only by cemetery workers digging the once-a-decade grave, family members going to lay out flowers and pay their respects, and mildly-deranged ghost hunters intent of waving mics about in the hopes of recording a spectral word or two.

On the way there, I saw no tell-tell traces of recent traffic ahead of me. There is no parking lot. The road simply ends at the gate. No other vehicles were in sight.

But for a split second, I was sure I saw an upright figure, featureless and dark, standing at the very rear of the cemetery. I blinked, and it was gone.

Below is a picture noting the approximate location of the figure I probably didn't see:

Part of me was suddenly reminded of pressing appointments elsewhere, and moved to table the EVP session, citing an urgent need to watch re-runs of 'Stargate SG1' at a location many miles from the cemetery.

But I made of sterner stuff (mostly sausage, cakes, and steak) so I entered the cemetery and conducted my EVP session as planned.

I wish I could report I captured half a dozen ghostly voices imparting mystical wisdom, but the truth is that I got nothing. Not a faint whisper, not a muttered monosyllable, not s single anomalous exhalation.

I walked through the headstones and stood in the very spot I didn't see whatever it was that wasn't there. Again, no EVP hits.

I took about 60 photos while I was there. Two of them show what I'm pretty sure is blurring caused by wind-induced leaf motion. It is odd that only two photos were thus affected, and both of them were taken in the spot my dark figure (aka Mr. Trick of the Light) made his brief and undoubtedly imaginary appearance.

But here are the photos, for your amusement.

The blur effect is hard to see in reduced-sized images. It's plain when I inspect the full-sized pics on my big monitor. 

In the first image, start at the lower left corner of the pic and travel about a third of the way to the right. Then look up, about three-quarters of the way to the top. Subtle but weird blur. Wind? Yeah, probably.

In the second picture, just find the tallest grave marker (can't miss it, right side, little bell-shaped thing on top) and look left of the bell-shaped ornament. 

Like I said, probably wind. I spooked myself so naturally I'm seeing things that aren't really there.

Back to Work!

Okay, it's time to get editing. Have a good week people!

Mad Science, Creepy Crawly Edition!

Today, we journey not into the realm of the supernatural or the paranormal, but of the very small.

Earlier this week, I was helping my Dad look for some papers at his house when I came across a set of 60 prepared microscope slides I got as a kid. Because, yes, I was that big of a nerd, even back in 1973. The box of slides is pictured below.

The slide set appeared to be in good shape. My old microscope, though, was nowhere to be found.

Having the slides but no microscope presented something of an annoyance to me. True, I have neither seen nor thought about this set of microscope slides in 40 years, but now that I've found the slides, I feel the urgent and entirely unreasonable urge to view them, because how often do you get a chance to see a perfectly preserved specimen of Rhizobium Radicicola, or Mycrobacterium Ranae, whatever the heck they might be?

Now, at this point I really should have just started trying to find a decent old microscope on eBay, or even a modest new one from Edmunds or Amazon. But why do the reasonable thing when you can dive into your surplus parts pile and spend an hour or two building your own gadget?

Aha, quoth I. I will build my very own scanning electron microscope. It will be huge and imposing. Sparks will fly. Thunder will crash. The lights in four adjoining counties will dim, and I'll finally get to wear my snazzy new safety goggles and my 1930s-style side-buttoning lab coat.

But a quick check of the bank account revealed the lack of 80 million dollars in discretionary funds, so I was forced back into the realm of the merely optical, and with only such parts as I might already have lying around at my disposal. I did wear my side-buttoning lab coat when I finally did start construction, but without the sparks and the strong sudden smell of freshly-minted ozone it's just not the same.

But I did build a microscope, for about $14, and it actually works, and below is the proof!

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the rear leg of the common honey bee, photographed with the new microscope. The bee leg was part of the old Sears prepared slide set. Not too bad for 14 bucks!

Below is the rig itself:

Okay. I'm cheating a bit by using my iPhone as the primary optical device -- put the phone on the rig, placing the phone's lens carefully over the rig's primary lens. All that is contained in the top layer of cheap clear acrylic sheet, which is held up and steady by the bolts. The base is a scrap piece of oak, and I countersunk the bolt heads on the bottom so it would sit flat.

Below the top layer and the phone and the lens is the staging layer. See the wing nut in the photo above? There are two of them, and by spinning them you bring the staging layer up or down. And since you sit the specimen on the staging layer, it moves up or down until it is in focus.

Here it is with the phone removed. The lens is between the two bolts on the top. It is held in place by a steel washer.

There's nothing special about the lens. Okay, it is glass, and not plastic, because plastic lenses are worthless. Seriously. I spit on them. I cast aspersions on them. Bah! Plastic lenses are an abomination and I have no truck with them!

I got a dozen cheap glass lenses from American Science and Surplus for a couple of bucks years ago when I was messing with telescopes. I selected one at random, cleaned it, made sure the raised rounded side faced up, and glued it in place. Why select at random?

Because when you have that many buttons to fasten on your starched white lab coat, you don't have TIME for complex calculations of focal length and diopter! This is MAD SCIENCE! If you don't finish quickly the villagers will reach the castle gates, and we all know how that ends. Honestly, it's a wonder I ever a single monstrous body fully reanimated.

Yes, it's a quick and dirty rig that costs almost nothing, but the results are actually impressive. Below are a few photos I took right after completing the device.

Close-up of dandelion bloom (smaller than my thumb). Look at the stamen and the pistils, and all that lovely pollen. I didn't even notice the two ants aboard when I picked it. By the way, they were released into the wild when I was done.

Even more pollen.

Next up, a penny. Here's the whole penny:

And here's a close-up of Abe:

Salt crystals? You betcha!

Below is a burned-out tail light from my father's Toyota. Note the defective filament!

Below is a close-up of the author's skin. Note to self: Inquire about various lotions and healing balms soon.

Nah, that's not really my skin, that'ts tree bark. Here's me:

I took a fingertip image, and then I thought 'Hey idiot, do you REALLY want to post a hi-res magnified image of your fingerprint on the internet? Is that a good idea? Really?' so this is below the first knuckle.

Here's a common NPN transistor, which I'm sure you've all been dying to see magnified:

And below is rust on an iron band.

Ever wondered what dog food looks like magnified 100X? Well wonder no more...

Yeah, I wasn't exactly thrilled either.

For next week, if you can think of something you'd like to see magnified, email me (franktuttle at franktuttle dot com) or post your request in the comments below! If I can make it fit on the rig, I'll give it a shot.

Mama Hog Revealed?

I've made mention several times in this blog that Mama Hog, a recurring character in my Markhat series, is based on my grandmother on my father's side.

Her real name was Beatrice, but we called her Grammaw Bee. Not 'grandmother' or even 'grandmaw,' because I grew up in rural Mississippi, and thus she was Grammaw Bee.

Mama's Hog's speech patterns and even some of her appearance were inspired by Grammaw Bee. For a while now, I've tried to find a photo of my grandparents, and I finally located one.

It's a tiny 3 by 4 photo, and it's in terrible shape. I scanned it, enlarged it, and did all I could to enhance the focus and remove the worst of the scratches and pits. It's still not very good, but it's all I've got.

On the left is Grammaw Bee; on the right, my grandfather Henry and his ever-present cigar. Also note the presence of the commanding Tuttle nose, which I inherited. Small children often take refuge in its shade.

Picture the lady with her hair all wild. Remove her glasses. Hand her a stir-stick and a black iron pot, boiling in the yard, and that's Mama Hog.

She was a nice lady. She cooked for an army and knew all kinds of natural cures and neither of my grandparents ever knew an idle day, but they were happy, and I suppose that's all that really counts.

Mug and Meralda News - Is the new book done?

Well, is it?

By the time you read this, yes. I'm posting this early so I can settle into what will be the final writing session for the first draft of All the Turns of Light.

Length? A little over 80 thousand words. Do Mug and Meralda ever leave the Laboratory, this time around?

Oh yes. Whereas the first book in the series (All the Paths of Shadow, available from Amazon) was a sort of anti-quest novel in that Meralda never went more than a few blocks from home, this one takes the gang on a long journey across the Great Sea. There are airships and sea monsters and storms and magical menaces. I believe people will like this book even better than the first one!

By the way, there will be two more Mug and Meralda books after All the Paths of Shadow and All the Turns of Light. When all four books are put together on a shelf in the proper order, the titles will form a poem. And no, I'm not telling what the next two titles are.

So, on that note, I will take my leave, and get back to work. 

But I will leave you with a final image, which I discovered when I downloaded the pics from my iphone. It's not a good picture. It's out of focus and it's dark. But that really doesn't matter.

Below are our dogs Max and Fletcher. Fletcher on on the right. He's old and blind and diabetic, but he still takes care of Max. Some would say dogs are incapable of love; I heave asparagus at such people, and then mock them for their silliness, because dogs do indeed love.

Okay, off to finish the book, wish me luck!