More From the Muse

Back in January, I met my personal writing Muse, the plain-spoken Visavarevagitaga. You can read abut our first meeting here.

I didn't expect to hear from Visavarevagitaga again so soon. Or ever, to be honest. But today I received an email from her, subject line HEY MORON, which I have pasted below:


Date:  Sun, 3 Feb 2013 11:52:43 -0600 [12:52:43 PM EST]
From:  Visavarevagsitaga <Visavarevagsitaga@ancientwritingmuses.org>
To:  franktuttle@franktuttle.com
Subject:  HEY MORON

I see you're working on a new book. If one defines 'working' as pecking at the keyboard between screwing around on Facebook. But I'm feeling generous so we'll call it working. Idiot.

As your Muse, I've got a few things to say. Most of them involved being removed as your Muse, but that request was denied. Twice. So.

The book is a train wreck. A flaming, toxic spill, nuclear-waste-hauling five-alarm evacuate the surrounding counties smoke plume seen from space train wreck, and that's just the dedication, and it's all downhill from there. What were you thinking? What were you *drinking?* Can I interest you in another hobby? Origami? Animal husbandry? Spelunking? Anything that doesn't involve words?

The sad bit, the part that truly makes me want to lay waste to all of Mesopotamia and then weep abut it for a dozen centuries thereafter, is this may be the best thing you've ever written. Let that sink in, and then Google the many joys of spelunking.

Great. My third request for a transfer was just denied. Sigh. I miss the Bronze Age. So much less paperwork.

If you insist on pursuing this book to completion, the first thing you need to do is STOP BEING SO NICE TO YOUR CHARACTERS. Honest to Zeus, are you writing a murder mystery or hosting some demented fictional tea party? Here's a quick tip from an ancient Muse to you, bub -- for it to be a murder mystery SOMEONE NEEDS TO DIE.

So kill one of them off. Kill two of them off. Take my advice and kill them all off and try your hand at origami -- it's soothing and there's never a risk of dangling a participle...no?

Lackwit. Fine. Ignore my advice, what do I know, I'm only older than recorded human history and I once held the fate of millions at my whim. But hey, you read an article about Stephen King's writing habits, so obviously you're the expert.

Even if you refuse to kill off whatshisname, Muckrat the finder, or his wife Duller, consider smiting one of the minor characters. Zeus knows nobody will miss any of them. And if you can't bring yourself to kill them, at least maim them a little bit this time. You've got to thin the herd, pal, or by book ten you'll be drowning in supporting cast and forget I said that, we both know there will never be a book ten because you cant' stay off Twitter long enough, can you, monkey boy?   

I give up. Or rather I would give up if Central Assignments would let me. This email constitutes my official dispensation of my Muse duties for this Julian calendar month. To summarize:

1) Give up.
2) Seriously, give up. Woodworking! That's a good hobby for someone with your literary skills.
3) Give your characters nothing but grief. Grief, trouble, and constant turmoil, followed by epic disaster, and all before you type the words CHAPTER TWO.
4) Stop referring to me mentally as Visa-veggie. I can hear your thoughts, you ungrateful chimpanzee. 
5) Moron.

Sincerely,

Visavarevagsitaga (See #4 above)

PS Don't reply to this email. Or any of my emails. I'll delete your replies unread and if you think a rain of toads isn't impressive wait until it happens in your bedroom with high-velocity toads.

Actually some of what she said makes sense. I do have a tendency to coddle my established characters. And maybe it's time to rock the boat a bit, at least in the Markhat series.

Speaking of Markhat, the new book, BROWN RIVER QUEEN, hits the stands March 26!

Dem Bones: The Movie

Yeah. I know. I have a thing about skeletons.

I blame my fascination on stop-motion animation master Ray Harryhausen. Even if you don't recognize the name, I'll bet you've seen his work -- and if you haven't see classics such as The Golden Voyage of Sinbad or The Valley of Gwangi, you've missed out on some great old-school animation. The fighting skeletons Mr. Harryhausen created are probably part of the reason I write (and read) fantasy -- they intrigued me as a kid, and that led to a search for more of the same, and now here I am.

The photo of the skeleton above is taken from a short movie I made this afternoon. The skeleton is a five-dollar Halloween prop that normally sits on my writing PC. I spent half an hour adding some stiff wire to him, so that he can stand and pose.

The thick wire (flexible aluminum antenna grounding lead, actually) extends down about half an inch below his heels. I drilled same-diameter holes in a scrap piece of plywood, and that became his stage. Hang a scrap of red velvet on the wall, and viola, the stage is set for DEM BONES, a short (very short) film about a dancing skeleton.

I took 104 still photos, moving Mr. Bones a bit between each shot, making the little film. Putting the still images together as an animation was easy -- I imported the photos and then used Windows Movie Maker to stitch them together with a 0.2 second display time for each frame. Add an opening sequence and some credits, and it's a wrap.

But let us dissemble no longer! Watch the movie by clicking here for the DEM BONES video on YouTube.

Or just press PLAY below!

Yeah, I know, don't quit your day job. But it was fun, the animation actually worked, and you get to see a short movie rather than read yet another tearful entry in the 'writing is hard' parade o' writer's blogs.

I'm still working on the new Markhat novel, which is going well. It's fun, having an established stable of characters to draw on, and then introducing someone new. Without giving away too much, Markhat finds himself running afoul of the new and improved City Watch, now run by a man named Holder, who is no fan of Markhat and his casual approach to proper police procedure. 

The rest of the gang is back as well. Or at least the ones I didn't kill off in the upcoming book, BROWN RIVER QUEEN. Ha! See what I did there? I know. I have a thing about skeletons, and money. Mostly money.

Hope you enjoyed the film! I've got to get back to work, so until next week -- DEM BONES!

Worth 885 Words!

I had a mild case of the Black Death this week. Or maybe it was a touch of Ebola. Either way, it left me so weak I am barely able to water ski, so this week's entry will rely heavily on the posting of fascinating photographs, such as the one below (see what I did there? For those of you in my writing class, it's called a transition! For everyone else, it's called sloth).

Those of you who read my old Wordpress blog may have seen this photo before. But it's still quite possibly the best photo I've ever taken. I love the exploding firework and the motion-blurred crowd, and yes it is entirely possible I have absolutely no ability whatsoever to judge the quality of photography.

I took that photo with a vintage 1969 Pentax K1000 fully manual SLR film camera, using the time-honored method of holding the shutter open and hoping for the best at a Fourth of July fireworks show here in Oxford. I love messing that old camera even though getting film developed is becoming harder and harder to do.

Next up, I have captured the Moon in my evil moon-capturing device! Bwhahahaha. I actually had to alter the Moon's orbit just to take this photograph. Sorry about the extra high tides, folks, but art accepts no half-measures.

This is Jake. I know, I know, it's blurry, but Jake exists in a special state of quantum doggie excitedness, which means he is always moving in at least two directions at once. I was amazed I got him to be still long enough to get this image. Jake enjoys long walks and reducing entire century-old oak trees to splinters. Seriously, beavers watch in awe.

Above is Mr. Fletcher. He's our special-needs guy; last year he developed diabetes, and now he's on a strict diet and he gets two insulin injections a day, twelve hours apart. He bears it all with quiet good grace, and he's still a goofy puppy at heart.

Meet Petey, who is so camera shy I have very few pictures of him. He's peering down at me from the loft in the study, and I snapped this before he saw the camera.

This is the storefront to the right of Taylor Grocery, which serves up the finest catfish in north Mississippi. Notice the smaller busts on the shelves behind the pale lady. Creepy. Oh, and that bright orange line coming out of the pale lady's head? Looks like a ballistic path marker used by CSI techs to determine line of fire in shooting investigations. What it's doing there is a mystery to me.

The old general store on the town square in Bruce, Mississippi. Taken on a motorcycle ride just after a rainstorm.

I've been experimenting with a camera probe, and it took this image of my spleen Thursday evening. At least I think it's my spleen. Frankly, it's hard to tell, nothing in there is labelled. 

A nice red sunset. Or a distant nuclear test blast. Either way, it's pretty, especially the way the gamma rays highlight the clouds of noxious carbon monoxide.

I was already forty feet up in this tree when I decided to stop and take the picture. Then I leaped gracefully to the ground, landing with catlike agility and only a pair of shattered femurs. You're welcome.

Here's a skeleton, holding a book. I don't know about you, but when I see a skeleton holding a book, I feel compelled to rush out and purchase said book. Is it working? Working at all?

I had this toy when I was a kid. It walks, and the eyes light up. There's also a red light in its mouth, because apparently biology and physiology were played fast and loose in the early 1960s where toys were concerned. How I've managed to hang onto this guy for all these years I couldn't say. I think maybe he follows me from place to place, plodding along one slow step at a time, red eyes glowing in the night...

This is what the inside of a 300 disc CD player looks like. It stopped working a few weeks ago, so I took it apart and found a stretched drive belt. When the new belt arrives, I'll spend a good five hours fitting it around various pulleys only to learn that some other irreplaceable component has also failed, because that's how these things work.

One of my steampunk prop pistols. This is a Mauser Armaments Type II Aether Disruptor, favored by airship pirates of the late 19th century. Making these is a good cure for writer's block.

Here is a carved oak wand. Yeah, you've probably seen it before.  It;s the one I use to alter Lunar orbits and add extra cheese to take-out nachos. Such power is not to be wielded lightly.

Next week I promise to return to actual written content. Oh, one last thing -- BROWN RIVER QUEEN has a page up at Samhain, click here to see it!

Meet my Muse

If you're an author, you're supposed to have a Muse.

It's an ancient tradition, stretching all the way back to early Greece, where the Muses were said to be the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne.  The Muses inspired mortals to create great works of art and literature, which couldn't have been an easy day's work since neither pants nor Microsoft Word had been invented.

The Muses were actively sought by artists of the day, because having a Muse whispering in your ear pretty much guaranteed you the Bronze Age equivalent of best-sellerdom. The poet Homer even dedicated the first book of his Odyssey to a Muse, stating:


"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy." (Robert Fagles translation, 1996)


I don't agree with the Fagles translation above. What Homer really wrote was this:

"Let's sell a few hundred thousand scrolls, baby, because Daddy needs a new pair of sandals."

And, since Homer's Muse was one of the original nine, he did just that, becoming the J.K. Rowling of his day.

I don't live in ancient Greece, which is fine by me, because no number of finely-carved Corinthian columns could ever make up for the inexcusable lack of wifi. Seriously, it's no wonder that all ancient cultures did was fight and brew increasingly powerful alcoholic beverages. Who can get through an whole day without checking their email at least once? I'd be ready to sack Troy on a whim too.

But even modern-day authors a long way from Athens claim their own Muses. Not any of the original nine, of course -- Amazon's introduction of the KDP self-publishing platform spawned a recent sharp increase in the number of people claiming to be authors, which means Muses are in short supply and often working double or triple shifts. In fact, the shortage is so severe demigods from other pantheons and areas of endeavor are often pressed into Muse service, resulting in situations where Andraste, the Celtic goddess of rabbit-magic, winds up red-faced and mumbling into the ears of half a dozen romance authors who don't understand why their characters twitch their noses so often these days.

I've wondered about my Muse for years now. Aside from occasional distant snickers or airy whispers of "Oh, not that again" I don't get much divine inspiration while writing.

But I am a writer, and I do have books on Amazon, so by the Ancient Code I get a Muse. It only took a bit of digging through old bookstores and a brief glance inside the Kindle version of the Necronomicon (Second Edition, Mad Abdul Press, with illustrations throughout) to discover the ritual for invoking one's personal Muse.

The tricky part of the ritual involved getting the Klein bottle inside the tesseract without spilling the two-headed squid, but after that, it was simply a matter of reading off a few words of ancient Greek. As the final echoes of the words died away, the air inside the summoning circle shimmered, and a voice spake the words 'All circuits are busy, please try again later, you will find a charge for $29.99 added to your wireless data bill, thank you for using Verizon.'

I haven't gotten my Muse to materialize, but after six repetitions of the summoning ritual I finally got an email, which I've reproduced below.


Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:52:43 -0600 [12:52:43 PM EST]
From: Visavarevagsitaga <Visavarevagsitaga@ancientwritingmuses.org>
To: franktuttle@franktuttle.com
Subject: Enough With the Summoning Already

Mr. or Ms. (Insert Author's Name Here),

Greetings! I am (insert your name here), your personal writing Muse. I am pleased that you have attempted the ancient rite of summoning. We Muses deeply regret that our current schedules and work load do not allow us to meet with every client.

Please make no further attempts at a summoning, as they will go unacknowledged. Also the squid will explode.

As your Muse, I, (insert your name here), am always ready to provide you with Divine inspiration for your writing endeavors. If you find a spiritual connection does not meet with your needs, you may use this email address NO MORE THAN ONCE PER JULIAN CALENDAR MONTH to ask six brief questions of me. 

We look forward to providing you with quality literary inspiration.

Sincerely,

(insert your name here).

An afternoon of research revealed that my Muse Visavarevagitaga was the daughter of  the Sumerian god of pointed sticks and his consort, Eatalottasalsa, who was reputed to hold dominion over red feather-dusters and a small plot of land east of Ur.

Of the goddess Visavarevagitaga herself little is known, save for her disdain of shorn oxen and songs featuring the lyrics 'la la la.' The only recorded miracle performed by Visavarevagitaga resulted in the sudden appearance of half a dozen lethargic toads and a tankard of beer later described as 'just more of that sour Egyptian stump-water.' She is said to have vanished from the Sumerian pantheon in a snit after being depicted on a temple fresco as having the head of a wombat and a length of toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

But, as we know, one must take the Muse one is assigned, and hope for the best. With this in mind, I sent her an email yesterday and asked my six questions. The reply just came in, so read along with me...



Date:  Sat, 14 Jan 2013 11:52:43 -0600 [04:51:43 PM EST]
From:  Visavarevagsitaga <Visavarevagsitaga@ancientwritingmuses.org>
To:  franktuttle@franktuttle.com
Subject:  Re: My Six Questions

Mr. or Ms. (Insert Author's Name Here),

Greetings! I am (insert your name here), your personal writing Muse. I am pleased that you have chosen to ask My wisdom in regard to your six (6) allotted monthly questions. My replies are below. Sorry about the squid, but you were warned.

Question 1: What can I do to improve sales of my existing books?
Answer: How in Hades should I know? I'm a Muse, not an Oracle. I whisper inspiration in your ear. What happens next isn't my problem. I can do a couple of toads, if that will help. Moron.

Question 2: Lately, I don't feel the same motivation to write that I once did. Why? What can I do to change this?
Answer: Look, monkey-boy, stop trying to cram three questions into one. This ain't my first rodeo, got that? And maybe you'd feel more 'motivated' to write if you'd listen to me once in a while instead of messing around on Twitter. Yeah, you think I can't see that? Hashtag lazywriter, pal. 'Nuff said.

Question 3: How can I make my characters more realistic, more sympathetic?
Answer: I am Visavarevagsitaga! I once ruled the entirety of Mesopotamia, and you ask me questions barely worthy of a community college Creative Writing instructor? Expect a pair of toads in your Cheerios, bub.

Question 4: Will I ever be a big commercial success?
Answer: Again, you want an Oracle, not a Muse, but let me save you a couple of squid and answer anyway -- you will be a big commercial success about the same time I sponsor a NASCAR team. So when you turn on ESPN and see a bright orange Camaro with "Visavarevagsitaga Racing" plastered on the hood, you know you're about to hit the big time. Idiot.

Question 5: Is it better to start by carefully outlining the plot, or by just diving in and letting the book shape itself?
Answer: Once upon a time, when I rolled My eyes in disgust, mortals dove for cover. So let me answer your question with a question -- What is the sound of  one hand slapping you upside your head? THWACK. The book gets written either way, and I couldn't care less. Mollusk.

Question 6: Is it best to provide a detailed physical description of main characters, or give minimal details and let readers create their own images of the people in the book?
Answer: I have no reply, because you just BORED ME RIGHT TO DEATH. So now I have to petition Otoralit, Dark Lord of the Underworld, for a bus pass just to get home. Thanks ever so bleeding much. That was your last question. Your height is five-six. There's your final answer. Go away. 

Best,

(insert your name here)


From now on, I believe I will seek inspiration elsewhere.

Frank's New Year Resolutions

I don't usually waste time on new year's resolutions, for the same reason I stopped putting teeth under my pillow -- the effort is futile. Plus it's hard to get bloodstains out of the pillowcases.

Look, I only had so many teeth, and the Tooth Fairy only leaves a quarter for each, so I had to start outsourcing. Saving for retirement is hard.

But I digress. The new year has arrived, all smiles and waves, full of hope and dreams and renewed determination.

I know. Annoying, isn't it?

Nevertheless. I don't want to put a damper 2013, so for the first time ever I'm making New Year's resolutions of my own.

Frank's 2013 Resolutions:

1) I will end my nightly hang-glider attacks on Bosnia and Herzegovina. You're welcome.

2) No more wee-hours experimentation with dead body parts and resurrection machines.

3) In reference to #2 above, I will clean out the basement.

4) I will write at least a thousand words a day. Different words, this year, although I can now spell yacht without looking it up.

5) I will seek to bring peace and harmony to all those in my life, every other Tuesday, between 4:46 PM and 5:11 PM .  As long as they bring snacks. And not a crappy Walmart pound cake, either. Put some effort into it, people.

6) I will stop silently mocking beliefs or opinions that differ from mine, because mocking beliefs or opinions that differ from mine aloud is a lot more fun.

7) I will establish a healthier lifestyle -- for my Sims. Seriously, what a lazy, nacho-gobbling bunch of hypertensive artificial intelligences they are. Getting them up at five AM for a brisk six-mile jog before settling down to a nutritious breakfast of grapefruit and air is just what they need!

8) I will spend less time on the computer and more time outdoors, experiencing the splendor and wonder of Nature. As soon as I recover from the fit of gut-wrenching laughter induced by typing the previous sentence. Hey, have you looked at Nature lately? It's hot, it's full of bugs and snakes, and if you get lake water in your ear you die because amoebas eat your brain. If I want Nature, that's what the Animal Planet channel is for.

9) I will get to know the people in my life better. Wait. No. A variation of Rule 8 applies here, just replace Animal Planet with The Biography Channel.

10) I will sell my fleet of gently-used hang gliders and un-expended munitions on eBay.

Anybody else want to take a crack at Bosnia?

In other news, The Oxford-Lafayette Public Library is starting an adult writing class this Thursday evening. If anyone reading this is in the area and interested, shoot me an email and I'll give you all the details.

I'll be teaching the class, or at least making mouth-noises from the instructor's chair. My hope is to present an even mix of fiction story crafting mechanics and a nuts-and-bolts look at the business side of writing -- how to submit, where to submit, what you should never do (it involves penguins and propane canisters), and so forth. Hopefully we'll have some fun too, or I've wasted a lot of money hiring Grammar Mimes.

Happy 2013, everyone. See you next week!

My Day as a Rental Suit Santa, and a CONTEST!

Everyone faces milestones in their lives.

Your first bike. Your first bloody nose. Your first completely groundless and utterly absurd arrest on suspicion of arson. The opening of your very own secret FBI dossier.

These are things that often mark divisions between the eras of our lives.

I've faced quite a number of them, and each has lacked that heartwarming quality of quiet dignity that fills Hallmark cards. Frankly, I think card-writers are smoking a certain potent herb, and a lot of it.

I faced another milestone last week. And it has marked the beginning of a new curve in the ever-increasing slope of my life's sad decline, for I have donned the red suit and oft-used beard of the Rental Suit Santa.

That's right. Me, ensconced in red and white, booming out 'Ho ho ho' at random intervals like some life-sized but poorly programmed dime-store automaton.

We all know there are very real health risks to being slightly overweight. Increased chance of heart disease. Diabetes. Elevated blood pressure. Blah blah blah. News flash, Doc -- life kills rail-thin health nuts just as dead as it does morose old fat men, but at least the fat guys don't die with a mouthful of granola. Put that in your stethoscope and probe it.

But perhaps the worst side effect of being, shall we say, portly, is the certainty of being singled out to play Santa in some ill-advised act of holiday costumery.

But that's what happens. One moment you're cruising along, not quite fifty, still might have a few moments of youthful vigor left under the hood, and the next you're trying not to choke on fibers of rental beard, last place of use unknown, which are snaking their way down your throat.

Let's back up here for a moment. Rental beard. Think about it. Should those words ever appear together?

No. No, they should not.

But I have worn the rental beard, my friends. I have fixed it to my face, and I have breathed deep the scent of Santas past.

Curious to know how rental Santas smell?

Two words, folks.

Whiskey.

Whiskey, and despair.

Wearing a Santa suit is akin to donning a furry, vision-obscuring oven. Sweat poured off me, soaking the beard, making breathing difficult. Sweat poured into my eyes, the saltiness stinging them, leaving me half-blind.

So there I was stumbling about on the verge of heatstroke, unable to see anything more than blurs and flashes of movement.

Which isn't really all that unusual, for me. Heck, it could describe practically any Tuesday. But this instance was far worse, because after all, I was Santa.

People have certain expectations of Santas. We are supposed to be jolly and personable and kind and merry and cram-packed full of Christmas cheer.

I suppose I could be at least a couple of those things, if you hooked an IV of purest grain alcohol to my right arm and one of Absinthe to my left. Otherwise, I'm about as far from Santa by nature as anyone can be. I can pronounce the words "Ho ho ho," and I did, but whether anyone found them particularly cheerful or not is anyone's guess.

Oh. And let's not forget the children. What was their reaction to Santa?

I'd say 'guarded expressions of horror and loathing' sums it up pretty well. Not that I blame them. Look, I'm sure when I was kid-aged (0.3 or 1 or 7 or whatever that might be) and some fat sweaty lunatic in a seedy red elf-suit came stomping up to me bellowing monosyllables, I probably started bawling too.  There's a reason Fred Rogers never hid behind weird clothes and excessive facial hair.

Anyway, I made my rounds and said "Ho ho ho" and traumatized half a dozen toddlers. And in doing so, I permanently divided my life into two distinct periods: BS and AS (Before Santa and After Santa).

Because now I'm just the fat guy behind the suit. I am one of that small, downcast band of middle-aged men who can look upon a sweat-soaked rental beard and merely nod in silent acknowledgment.

Ho ho ho.

*********************************************************************************

And now, the contest!

Last week I showed you the cover for the new Markhat novel, which should be out by March.

This week, I'm going to ask you a question. Be the first person to email me with the correct answer, and you get two things. One, a signed copy of the current latest Markhat novel, THE BROKEN BELL. Two, when BROWN RIVER QUEEN comes out in print, you get a signed copy of that too.

Not too shabby, huh?

Okay, there's the cover (points up), and here's the question:

Kanaxa, the brilliant cover artist, has hidden something in the cover. This something is an object which has played a major role in many of the Markhat adventures.  If you're a fan of the series, it shouldn't be too hard to spot. I put a large image up there, so take a good hard look.

When you see it, email me at franktuttle@franktuttle.com .

Couldn't be easier.

Next week I'll post the winner, and a cover image spotlighting the hidden thingy, which KaNaxA also kindly provided.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

The Return of the Thing, Or, I'm Back!

Well hello there, loyal fans.

Many of you have been wondering where I've been. Okay, it now appears most of the ones wondering were also the ones to whom I owe money, but I'm sure that's simply a statistical anomaly.

It has been several weeks since my last blog. Please be assured I would not abandon the blog under any but the most extraordinary situations.

Sadly, the past several weeks have been nothing but a parade of extraordinary situations. It's been akin to being repeatedly bitch-slapped by an inexplicable and wholly unscheduled parade of clowns.

Unnerving. Off-putting. Somewhat unpleasant.

But all that is over with now (it's not) so it's back to normal (was never normal) for life at casa Tuttle, including this world-renowned blog.

No ghost hunting exploits today, because I have something even better.

Oh yeah. Stand well back, gentle readers. Don your protective goggles, located in the bins on the back of the shield walls.

Goggles on? Minds set for BLOWN? Adult diapers at the ready?

Good. We're all set.

Because today is the cover reveal for the new Markhat novel, BROWN RIVER QUEEN, available in March 2013 at fine bookstores everywhere.

Not to brag, but I believe BROWN RIVER QUEEN is even better that THE BROKEN BELL, which up until now has been my favorite in the series.

I see a raised hand in the back. What? You're not familiar with the Markhat series?

Then pray continue until the end of the blog, at which time I will provide links to a brief description of each entry in the series. Oh, and a quick and easy BUY NOW button. Because you'll want to. Speaks in Jedi mind trick voice. These are the books you're looking for.

But for now, let's talk about the new cover.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the previous covers, which have all been beautiful. In fact, let's take a quick look:

There's the cover for THE MISTER TROPHY, which started it all. It even depicts a scene from the story, in which Markhat, who is a sort of private detective called a 'finder' in a world where magic and mayhem mix with murder and, er, mushrooms, has a card reading done which shows his future to be filled with anything but bunnies and rainbows.

Then came THE CADAVER CLIENT. Markhat finds himself working for a dead man, who claims he cannot rest until he finds his former wife and sets things right once and for all with her. But as Markhat learns, one can fully trust neither the living nor the dead.

Ah, DEAD MAN'S RAIN. One of the best things I've ever written. This is my homage to every black-and-white film-noir hard-boiled private-eye movie I've ever seen, with a side order of haunted mansion and a generous slice of dark, stormy night thrown in. Markhat doesn't believe a word of his new client's story when she claims her dead husband has been returning to their home at night. But as a furious storm breaks, he realizes there are darker things than shadows luring in House Merlat's deserted halls...

Brought together in print for the first time, THE MARKHAT FILES is an anthology containing THE MISTER TROPHY, THE CADAVER CLIENT, and DEAD MAN'S RAIN.

HOLD THE DARK sets Markhat on a course for vengeance, when a murderous sect of rogue halfdead break the Truce and robs Markhat of someone he loves. But once you tell the darkness your name, can you ever be truly rid of it?

THE BANSHEE'S WALK finds Markhat on the job far from Rannit's battered city walls. Instead, he's working a case at a remote artist's colony, run by an eccentric noblewoman who believes someone is out to steal her property and eject her from her ancestral home. Markhat is dubious -- until the corpses start to collect. But the thing about corpses in Markhat's world is this -- they don't always stay still long enough to be buried...

Rumors of war bring Rannit to a panic, but hard-working finders can't afford to turn down work until the enemy is not just at the gates but is storming them. So for Markhat, it's business as usual -- until he uncovers a murderous blackmail plot with its roots in the last War, and influence in the next. Will Rannit's fragile peace be broken, and will Markhat live long enough to solve what he believes may be his final case?

There you have it -- the Markhat series thus far. As I said, I've loved each and every cover, and the unbroken image theme they shared.

Markhat's face obscured by the brim of his hat. Markhat in coat, sans shirt. Those rumors that I posed for each Markhat cover?

True. Every bloody word. That's ME, and those of you who know better, please keep the awful truth to yourselves, because what good has the truth done anyone lately anyway?

Yes. I've been privileged to work with some of the finest cover artists in the business, and I am forever grateful to each of them for making me look good.

The Markhat series has grown, though. New characters have appeared. Some have perished. His world has even changed, as it enters the first years of an industrial revolution. Yes, magic works there. Harsh magic, most of the time. Brutal magic.

But so does physics. Markhat carries a gun now. So do a lot of bad guys. Swords are rapidly becoming decorative props.

Guns and steam engines and cannon. The title of the new book, BROWN RIVER QUEEN, is the name of a lavish gambling steamboat which is the setting for Markhat's new adventure. The Queen is an opulent stern-wheeler, right out of a Mark Twain story.

There are even rumors -- unfounded, this time -- that Markhat may or may not be getting hitched, or has gotten hitched, or has at some point discussed the act of getting hitched with Darla. I'm not saying here. Buy the books.

My point is this -- the series is changing, and my publisher, Samhain Publishing, thought it would be a good idea to move the cover theme along, too.

Most of the time, I embrace change with the ease and quiet grace of a wasp-stung wildebeest. I don't like change, usually because I still haven't quite got the hang of the Old Thing (life, shoes, emotions) and the last thing I want to do is try to learn the New Thing.

But this time, I saw the wisdom of changing the cover style, and I said, and I quote, 'Go for it.'

You're about to see the result, and let me say I have never been happier or more thrilled with seeing a piece of art associated with my name.

Enough. The new cover was created by the brilliant and awesome artist and author Kanaxa. Look upon it, ye mortals, and cry out with voices of loud wonder.

When you stop shouting, I'll be right here waiting.

Superlatives fail me. Markhat is still coyly concealing his face in the shadows, but he's got a snazzy new suit and a vampire-built revolver and if there is any doubt at all that he kicks much ass (that's a writing term) in this book, let those doubts be forever laid to rest. 

And yeah, that's Darla. Big brown eyes, flapper haircut, tasteful pearls. Perfect.

The Queen is in the lower right corner, properly portrayed below the Brown River bluffs upon which Rannit sits. 

Kanaxa, you didn't just nail the cover. You framed it in polished cherry and you hung it in the Louvre. 

Next week, I'll be back to the blog with more tales of Things That Go Bump, and a new contest based on the very cover you see above. So take a good luck -- there will be a test, later.

Now, for the gentleman at the back who wanted links and more info on the Markhat series, please click below:

 The Mister Trophy

The Cadaver Client

Dead Man's Rain

The Markhat Files (Print only)

Hold the Dark

The Banshee's Walk

The Broken Bell

All the above are Kindle e-books. You can also get each in Nook format from Barnes&Noble (click here for that link).

If you prefer print books, Markhat has you covered:

The Broken Bell

The Banshee's Walk

Hold the Dark

Finally, if Amazon or B&N don't provide you preferred format, head on over to the good folks at Samhain Publishing, where you can get any of my titles in print, pdf, Kindle, Nook, Sony, or any other format!

http://store.samhainpublishing.com/frank-tuttle-pa-297.html

Mysterious Mysteries of Mystery, Part 1

As you may have noticed, lots of things in this tired old world don't make much sense.

Some of these incongruities are obvious -- the fame of singer Ke$sha, the second-season renewal of TV series Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, fruitcake.

But some mysteries manage to fly under the radar, despite the inherent oddness of the subject. Whether it's a perfectly-machined metal sphere discovered miles underground or an apparent bucket handle encased in ancient quartz, every now and then things turn up which defy both explanation and the kind of easy pigeon-holing historians enjoy attaching to artifacts.

One such object is the Voynich Manuscript.

Screen-shot of a random page selection from the online manuscript!

The Voynich Manuscript is so called because it came to light shortly after it was purchased by an antique book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich in 1912. The book itself was written and illustrated in the 15th century, probably in northern Italy. Carbon dating performed in 2009 puts the manuscript's paper as being made sometime between 1404 and 1438. The name of the artist/author is unknown, as well as the actual title of the book, and that's as good a place as any to start describing the book's mysteries, because despite a century of determined effort, no one (including expert cryptographers and powerful computers) has ever been able to decipher so much as a single word in all the book's two-hundred-odd pages.

The text does appear, at least to linguists, to represent an actual alphabet and language, though one not seen before or since. The Manuscript is composed of about 170,000 glyphs, and the base alphabet is probably between 20 and 30 characters long. Still, it has defied each and every effort to decipher so much as a single sentence.

But the text is hardly the most intriguing aspect of the Manuscript. The book is also heavily illustrated, much in the manner of a Medieval field guide to medicinal plants. It starts out with large drawings of plants, each accompanied by notes penned in a careful if utterly unreadable hand. There are even little text bullets, probably denoting special attributes of each illustration.

In fact, if I were to have encountered the Voynich Manuscript in a used bookstore somewhere, I might have put it back on the shelf after perusing the first half a dozen pages. Here we have a plant. Here we have notes, presumably about the drawing of the plant, even though it's in a language I don't know.

I class plants into three distinct classes -- Plants On The Salad Bar, Plants I Should Never Ever Eat Because They Will Kill Me, and Who Cares, It's A Freaking Plant.

But people who know their flora realize one thing immediately, upon viewing the Manuscript.

These plants simply don't exist, at least on Earth. Not now, not in the 15th century.

And the further you go into the Manuscript, the stranger it gets. The plants become less daisy-like and more Geiger-esque. Pretty soon you've got whole pages of what appear to be brand new astrological charts combined with images of little people being swallowed up by toothed vegetable monstrosities, complete with careful if indecipherable footnotes which probably read 'Don't get too near the one with the purple flowers' or 'Man, these mushrooms are groovy.'

So is it a naturalist's guide to flora and fauna from somewhere else? An alchemical encyclopedia from another world?

Is it some mead-sotted monk's long, laborious practical joke?

The fun part of the Voynich Manuscript mystery is that, thanks to the Internet, you can pull it off its virtual shelf and have a look, page by page, for yourself, right this moment.

I highly recommend you do so. Whatever the Manuscript was, it's trippy. Put on some Pink Floyd and click the link below. It's a good fast connection, right to the Yale University archives, and how can you pass up perusing a book that has kept scholars and cryptographers scratching their heads for all these years?

The Voynich Manuscript Online

Like I said, trippy, huh?

What do I think the Manuscript represents?

Look, it's the year 1415, or thereabouts. Your choices for entertainment are pretty much limited to crapping in a bucket, dying of boils, or being burned at the stake for, well, darned near anything. There won't be anything resembling decent music played for another couple of hundred years. You'll have fleas and worms and lice until another three or four hundred years have passed. Frankly, the world is a miserable place to live, even if you're lucky enough to to be a monk with a passable roof and the aforementioned bucket at your disposal.

I think a very clever monk was born way too early and found himself in a place and time that put creativity in the same box as 'Worship of, Satan, see also Execution.'  I think the Voynich Manuscrip is this clever monk's way of thumbing his nose at his bosses, who displayed the same interest in yet another Field Guide to Boring Weeds of Italy that I did earlier.

Think about it. Our monk -- we'll call him Scooter, because I'm writing this, so there -- Scooter knows he's destined to spend his next miserable year hunched over a blank manuscript copying page after page of religious texts until the boils kill him or his eyesight fails, whichever comes first.

But instead of coping the book he was assigned, Scooter writes the world's first science fiction novel instead.

All those alien plants? All those weird astrological or alchemical charts?

Scooter made them up. I think the guy built a whole imaginary world in his poor 15th century head, and I think he did so out of sheer crushing boredom, because Scooter knew in his flea-bitten heart of hearts that life wasn't going to be anything worth living until the advent of Pink Floyd, the net, and the introduction of the cheeseburger.

And he was right. A world where one cannot go online, order a cheeseburger, and pick it up at a drive-thru to the accompaniment of Pink Floyd is a savage, desolate wasteland, unworthy of time or effort.

I'd still love to read Scooter's notes. I figure they're ninety-percent hard SF, and 10 percent slams against his bosses.

Take Pages 16 and 17 of the Manuscript, shown below. We're still in the relatively tame portion of the book, before the plants grow teeth and start chowing down on little naked people (hey, like I said, it was deadly dull in the 15th century):

My own loose translation of the notes on the left hand page reads thusly:

"Yea, this be the Snookered Blue & Red Stinkroot, which can be Used in ye Treatment of Flatulence, bad Breathe, and the Issue of Boiles upon the Buttockes, which Brother Isaac doth have, yea and in Spades, because he is a Wankere and a Close Talker besides, get a thee a Clue about Personale Space, willya, or I Feare I shalt open upon thy Pate a Roman-Empire sized Canne of Whoope-Ass, and how, I really Hate thatte Guy, Finis."

And the reason for the elaborate cypher?

Safety, of course. That way no one could claim heresy or blasphemy or even mild insult. Scooter was nothing if not careful.

I think our clever monk created his own alphabet entirely from scratch. Most of the glyphs are simple, and can be written with just a few pen-strokes. Which is exactly the kind of alphabet a hard-working monk would invent.

And the words?

Probably loose on-the-fly substitutions penned by Scooter using his own custom alphabet. Since he kept all this in his head, and wrote the Manuscript with the knowledge that no one would ever be able to read it, I doubt he bothered with corrections.

No, I think he was far more concerned with how the words looked, rather than how the text read.

Which is why I don't think the Voynich Manuscript will be be deciphered.

But that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyed. In fact, I lift my metaphorical glass to the unnamed author of the Manuscript, who like many of us was born in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Too bad he wasn't around to become a graphic artist or a SF author today, because he certainly had the work ethic and the drive.

I'm pretty sure this is the first draft of the script for Prometheus.

So here's to you, long-dead author of the world's most mysterious hand-drawn botanical manuscript. People are still talking about your book despite the fact that no one has a clue what it's about. That's got to be worth a crooked, gap-toothed 15th century grin.

And hey, if it's any consolation, at least you never had to beg for book reviews on Amazon, or watch your rankings plummet like a paralyzed falcon.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to turn my music up really loud and surf the ever-living crap out of the internet...

Things That Go Blah

Okay, so I have an embalming pump downstairs. Who doesn't?

Last week, during a daring midnight ghost hunt deep inside the forbidden ruins of an infamous cursed Antebellum manor house, I obtained video footage and an in-depth 22 minute EVP interview of an actual ghost. The afterlife and its mysteries were revealed to me, rewriting the entirety of modern scientific and metaphysical thought and philosophy. Too, I recorded a new Elvis song, and I can tell you where Amelia's plane wreckage lies.

Fig. 1: Random image bearing no relevance to text. Enjoy.

Sadly, an industrial rock-crusher chewed my video camera to bits and I accidentally dropped my audio recorder into a vat of molten steel. So that's bad.

Okay. The truth is, I engaged in no ghost hunts this last week.

Fig. 2: Turns out this guy was NOT a zombie. He just tripped at the All You Can Eat Spaghetti Buffet. Sorry about the machete wound, Mr. Ferguson. 

Instead, I engaged in the sordid pursuit of roof repair. What I could have done in a day twenty years ago took me three, and left me with the primal and enduring realization that the phrase 'getting too old for this' is soon to take on terrifying new significance.

I can't tell you how much a bundle of roofing shingles weighs. Fifty pounds? Sixty?  Eighty? I can't tell you because it never mattered before. No, before now, I grabbed the nearest bundle, scrambled up the ladder, no problem, done.

Saturday I found myself halfway up a ladder, bundle of shingles across my shoulder, when my body decided the remainder of the climb was very much a toss-up in the fall off or keep climbing arena. Make it to the roof? Freeze? Collapse?

These were all options explored by my spine in a nanosecond of humbling panic which left me with lingering and unpleasant reappraisals of my own mortality.

I made it up the ladder, panting and sweating, if anyone is wondering. That time. Next time?

It's anyone's guess.

So there will be no EVP snippets this week. No photos of obscure Mississippi cemeteries. Hopefully, I can get back to posting interesting blogs next week.

Oh, I haven't gotten any writing done either. I've been so depressed about sales lately that's not surprising. Look, I understand this business well enough to know that for every Stephenie Meyer there are ten thousand Frank Tuttles. I'm okay with that. I never set out to finance my collection of vintage Ferraris by writing fantasy novels (sure, I may go on ghost hunts, but even I know a pure myth when I see it). But to watch your titles sink like a bathysphere into the frigid, inky waters of oblivion -- it's just unpleasant. Having forks shoved in your nose unpleasant. Being trapped in an elevator with the whole Westboro Baptist Church unpleasant.

It's no fun, is what I'm saying.

I know. No one said it was going to be fun. It's work, and there's a business aspect to it all, and a certain level of unavoidable drudgery is both implied and inescapable.

But there's part of me which keeps whispering things such as 'Ha ha, you're nearly fifty. Face it, you've peaked. It's all downhill from here. Ha ha.'

It's that snide little laugh I hate the most.

Have I peaked? Am I destined to be just another footnote in literary history? Will a Google search of my name in 2060 return the single result 'Tuttle, Frank, born 1963, died 2050, should have avoided ladders, not much else to tell.'

First of all, Google, shut up, and second, shut up again, it was a rhetorical question.

And really, does that even matter? I know there are people out there who've read and enjoyed my writing. Many of you have even taken the time to write and tell me so. And believe me, it's appreciated, maybe more than you know. Markhat and Darla. Mama Hog and Evis. Meralda and Mug. They all have stories, and I'm the guy they're stuck with, and if I stop typing, that's it. The End, literally and figuratively, for all the fictional worlds and make-believe people that have been such good company thus far.

So I guess it's time to stop worrying about the weight of a bundle of shingles or my future obituary and get back to work.

Sorry for whining. We writers are a moody bunch. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go and have a series of excrutiating back spasms. Ignore the screams, please, those are merely a means of coping with the sheer joy of residing in a not-quite-miraculous physical body...

Fig. 92b. Extreme haircut, and why is my head shaped like that of a Yeti?

Things That Go Bump, Famous Author Edition: As I Lay Dead (The William Faulkner Interview)

Welcome back to another edition of Things That Go Bump!

Tonight, we'll take a trip to the grave of Nobel Peace Prize winning author William Faulkner, and we'll pester him with impertinent questions while drawing curious stares from passers-by.

I traveled back in time to 1874 just to take an authentic old-timey photograph.

I live, reside, and/or dwell in Oxford, Mississippi, which is where Faulkner lived, wrote, and was eventually buried, although I'm sure he died first. We're pretty careful about the whole die-first-then-bury thing these days.

Faulkner's grave is located in a genteel old cemetery not far from Oxford's town square. It's a peaceful place, especially when the Rebels are playing Vanderbilt on the far side of town, which is why I chose a game day Saturday night for my EVP session with Mr. Faulkner.

I armed myself with my trusty Olympus voice recorder, my new Zoom H1 digital recorder, my video and still cameras, and my Ball Microphone housing, which I described in last week's blog. Also along was my iOvilus device, which prattled merrily on but did actually startle me once with a single insightful exchange (you'll see it later).

I arrived at Mr. Faulkner's grave at dusk, and was greeted the usual small assortment of empty liquor bottles, which students and fans are prone to leave as hi-octane offerings to the shade of old Bill.

Airline bottles? Red Solo cups? Sheesh, people, show a little class...

My methodology was simple. I placed the Zoom and the Olympus atop the headstone, put the video camera to the side, aimed at the mics. I held a brief EVP session in which I introduced myself and blathered inanities for about four minutes.

I'm posting the audio and the video links below. Note that the Zoom's audio was rendered useless by the faint breeze for the few moments it was outside the Ball Mic housing; I deleted that portion of the audio track, since it was nothing but a deafening roar. Note to self -- the Zoom needs a wind filter anytime it's outside, even in mild breeze conditions. 

The Olympus carried on nonplussed, as did the video camera's audio. Below are links to the full audio and video files, in case you'd like to see and hear everything for yourself without any commentary. Or, if you want, skip down and I'll post the relevant portions to save you some time

LINK TO BALL MIC FULL AUDIO FILE (about 20 minutes)
FaulknerZoomEVP.mp3

LINK TO OLYMPUS FULL AUDIO FILE (About 25 minutes)
FaulknerOlympusEVP.mp3

LINK TO VIDEO (YOUTUBE LINK) (About 25 minutes. Warning: Scenes of graphic violence, full frontal nudity, and a guest appearance by Donald Trump's hair may disturb some viewers. Discretion is advised).
Full Faulkner session video

So, you ask, what did I find?

THE BALL MIC

Well, first of all, The Ball Mic is crazy sensitive. I heard a weird buzz-thump sound at about 9 minutes, and couldn't place it, until I reviewed the video and realized a fly landed on the granite grave-slab next to the Ball Mic. Not on the mic. Just close to it. Here, have a listen to it, looped:

Fly Landing Next To Housing

You can even hear his little fly feet hitting the granite. If that's not a stirring tribute to the awesome power of salsa bowls and duct tape, I don't know what is.

That kind of sensitivity is a double-edged sword, though. Traffic noise, inaudible to the other recorders or my delicate ears, was a non-stop cacaphony  in the Ball Mic. As excited as I was to use it on the Faulkner run, I think the Ball Mic is best suited for remote locations as far away from traffic as is possible.

Aside from the fly-landing, I'm afraid my Ball Mic didn't return a single apparent EVP occurrence. I've been through the audio twice now, and I never heard a thing out of place. 

THE VIDEO CAMERA

Again, nothing out of the ordinary. A few dogs barked. A few cars passed. At no time do any phantom voices admonish me to GET OUT. Camera-shy ghosts? Could be, I suppose. But the audio track is clean, and no visible spectres were observed waving from amid the headstones.

THE iOVILUS DEVICE

The iOvilus device managed to raise my eyebrows tonight, and I caught the whole exchange on all the recorders and the video camera. I was talking, asking questions, trying to engage something, anything, in conversation.

At one point, I said "Mr. Faulkner," beginning to address my host. Immediately, the iOvilus piped up with my name, Frank.

Here's a video excerpt of the exchange:

Now, is that evidence of something paranormal, or merely a statistically insignificant bit of random coincidence?

I lean toward the latter. The iOvilus has a thousand word vocabulary to draw from. Frank is one of those thousand words. It is odd that it chose to speak that word at that time, but until and unless it happens a lot more often than once every session, I'm going to call this happenstance. Although when you're sitting in a cemetery at nightfall and you hear your name called out of the blue it is a genuine hair-raising experience.

THE OLYMPUS AUDIO RECORDER

Of all the night's instruments, once again my humble Olympus returned the most amazing evidence.

I did not hear either of the voices I am about to present during recording. Neither voice was captured on any other piece of gear, though all were operating within a few feet of each other at all times.

The first piece of audio is a female voice speaking as I speak. I can't quite make out the words -- maybe you'll have better luck.

First you'll hear me speaking. I'm joking about my failure to drink the Faulkners any liquor, and I say "maybe I should have brought a case." Then a female voice says...something.

broughtacasevoice.mp3

Here's the female voice, looped:

hiphop.mp3

Hip hop? Hey pop? No clue, but something is there. Not the iOvilus, either -- it has a distinct male voice.

I get an even better voice as I'm leaving. By this point in the recording, I've left the Faulkner's gravesite, and I've taken a short stroll through the headstones. I comment that I'm about to leave, and a bit later, I caught this:

goahead.mp3

It sounds like the very same voice, but this time it's clearly saying 'Go ahead.'

That takes place at 22:32 in the full Olympus file. The wind was calm. The iOvilus was off and my phone was in my pocket. It doesn't have any speaking apps, and none of my gear talks.

So what the heck was that?

I don't have a clear answer for you. Two full words. Not a trick of the wind. Not a snatch of nearby conversation (check the video -- no one was there but me). Not a passing vehicle (again, check the video). I even checked the iOvilus log (it keeps a log of every word spoken, with a time stamp) for the words 'go ahead,' and it never said them.

I suppose some could argue that what we've just heard is an audio artifact created by the Olympus itself. After all, nothing else picked it up.

I really can't say. Do audio artifacts usually tend to present not only clear enunciation, but gender?

goahead.mp3

Very, very strange.

I do find it intriguing that the female voice presented after I invited Mrs. Faulkner to speak. Again, coincidence?

Could be.

I regret, of course, that Mr. Faulkner didn't bestow upon me a rambling 40-minute EVP which analysis revealed to be a single run-on sentence. A ghostly image in a photo, perhaps of Mr. Faulkner posing with one of my books, would have also been quite the coup.

But I am proud of the pair of EVPs I captured. I cannot explain either one in rational terms, which is precisely the kind of phenomena I'm after.

I hope you've enjoyed this week's October blog, even though it's November. I'm not sure when or if I'll switch gears away from the paranormal -- right now it's too much fun.

Next week will feature a visit to another local historical site, as well as the usual nonsense.

I can't let you go without plugging a book, though. I'm a writer, remember? With books to sell? If you haven't read my stuff, consider giving the Markhat series a try. Lots of graveyard gallivanting in those!

Dead Man's Rain

Or, if you prefer print books, here's a list!

All My Books At Amazon

Enjoy, and see you next week!