A Post Five Decades in the Making

© packo michael | Dreamstime Stock Photos

I turn 50 tomorrow.

The rational part of me realizes any birthday is simply an arbitrary and entirely artificial milestone that has no relevance beyond the realm of cheesy birthday cards. My fiftieth birthday? It's just a number. I'll be no different tomorrow than I am today, on any meaningful level.

The irrational part of me (roughly 89% of my makeup) is running in panicked circles screaming bloody murder because I may no longer count myself among the young.

Sadly, I resemble both images.

Face it, man, when you start getting those AARP membership forms every couple of weeks, the needle on your YOUTHFUL TIME REMAINING METER just fell into the red, hit the zero, spat gears, and started smoking.

Too, I'm attracting a lot of interest from buzzards lately. I get the feeling they're eyeing me with regards to how much oregano they need to have handy.

© Odm | Dreamstime Stock Photos
So what do weigh? 190? 200? Just asking, no reason...

Of course there are upsides to growing older. Really, there are. I'll list them all below:

• Yep. Ought to be something written here.
• Here too.
• This is a lot harder than it looks.
• I give up.

Now, if anyone wants to give me a birthday present, go to Amazon and review one of my books if you haven't already. Especially Brown River Queen. That would be so awesome of you I'd start rocking faster in my squeaky old rocking chair.

Grim reminders of impending mortality aside, I do have one bit of news for Markhat fans. Drumroll and fireworks please:

Boom.

The first draft of the new Markhat novel, currently entitled THE FIVE FACES, is finished!

Finished. Done. Complete. Yes, it's only a first draft, but it is done.

The village mob seems pleased.

Now, if anyone believes that a completed first draft is subjected to a cursory spell-check and then shipped straight to the printer, I have bad news. Because that's not at all how the process works. 

This first draft, beloved though it is, is flawed. Deeply flawed. It's full of typos and poorly-chosen words and scenes that don't work and plot holes I can nearly shove my old-man electric mobility scooter through. 

My work on it is far from done.  

I'll start by doing a cold read, beginning to end, making notes as I go. Then I'll address plot holes and big issues. Once that's done, I start again, this time looking for scenes that don't work. Again, to check dialog. 

Then again with spelling and word choice.  

By this time, I'll be so sick of the book I'll need to pass it off to my fearless beta reader Kellie, who will wade into the fray and no doubt laugh at my authorial shortcomings.

Only after that will the completed manuscript get anywhere near an editor, because A) I'd rather publishing industry professionals not realize the true depth of my incompetence and B) See A.

But, even with all the work that goes into editing and revising, completing that first draft is all-important. Without the first draft, without all its warts and faults, there can never be a final book.

So, as I look back on a half-century of life, I can at least say I wrote a few books. I hope people have enjoyed them. 

Well, I'm off to start the edits. Here's to another fifty years of avoiding prosecution!

Cheers, all. Have a good week!

Found Money and Lost Plots

First of all, a yellow-green ladybug perched on a flower!

I attempted to interview the ladybug, but it turns out they aren't fans of social media. Who knew insects could even make that gesture?

If you read last week's blog, you may remember the bird I couldn't quite identify. Well, I got a good close look at her this week, and she's a mockingbird, complete with distinctive wing-stripes.

The first draft of the new Markhat book is nearing its end. We're talking the last ten thousand words or less, which means it's time for the big dust-up and the aftermath.

I'll certainly finish up this month, and get a good running start on the next book, which will be the sequel to All the Paths of Shadow. I plan to finish it within the year as well.

I'm eager to wrap up the last few scenes of The Five Faces (the new Markhat book) and do a re-read from start to finish. I have a nagging suspicion this book is going to go down as the darkest in the series thus far. I'm not sure why it wound up that way, but it certainly has. All necessary, of course, because this book deals with some intense subject matter -- Markhat is forced to relive some of his experiences as a dog handler during the War, for instance. He and his dog Petey explored Troll tunnels, hunting owl-eyed giants down deep in the dark. There's absolutely no humor to be found there.

An exploration of free will versus pre-ordained fate also crept into the plot. I won't even give you a hint as to where I land on that.

Oh, and here's a hint for my writing class -- don't EVER write yourself into a corner that requires you to solve the 'Grandfather Paradox.' Talk about a headache! But I believe it was worth it, because it really lent the ending quite a punch.

A start-to-finish cold read of a newly-written novel is necessary for a number of reasons. My primary mission on my first read is to seek out and resolve instances of what my friend Denise Vitola calls pocket amnesia.

Denise describes pocket amnesia as it relates to writers in her blog Thomas Talks to Me. Her entry on pocket amnesia describes the phenomena as akin to unexpectedly finding a twenty dollar bill in a jacket pocket. Yes, you left the twenty there, and yes, it was important (because to all the writers I know, a twenty dollar bill is something that happens most often to other people), and yes, you completely forgot about it as soon as you took off that jacket and stored it away for the winter.

Think of chapters as jackets, and the twenty as a plot element, and then wipe that smile off your face because the literary form of pocket amnesia isn't nearly as much fun as the money-finding kind.

It's like this. Say I state in Chapter Five that my hero, Markhat, is allergic to shellfish, but in Chapter Ten, I sit him down to a lobster dinner.

That's a simple example of pocket amnesia. That one is easily fixed; either omit the allergy reference altogether, or serve beef in Chapter Ten.

The danger, of course, lies in not catching the problem in the first place, and winding up looking careless and inattentive to your editor. In extreme instances, you might also find yourself facing an insurmountable plot conflict -- what if I established, in Book Two, that vampires can always tell when a human is lying, but the pivotal scene in my current book, Book Eight, relies entirely on all-too-human Markhat successfully lying to a vampire?

You can't go back and re-write the previous book. Gutting your current book is tantamount to applying sandpaper to your own tongue. But despite the work and the pain involved, the problem has to be fixed.

Not that I suspect I've done anything quite that disastrous. But the fear is always lurking, a constant companion on that perilous first reading of a first draft.

What if I've neglected to address some fatal plot flaw? What if this entire intricate plot is about to collapse, flying apart like a house of cards in a whirlwind?

And people wonder why we writers are such a morose, glaring bunch. It's because we're always just a few words, a single turn of phrase, between fame and infamy.

Okay, that's a bit melodramatic, especially in light of the irrefutable fact that most of us are so far from actual Fame we'd have to buy time on the Hubble Space Telescope just to get a distant glimpse.

It's either Fame or Fomalhaut, either way, I can't make out much detail...

But we are always at risk of losing that precious unspent twenty-dollar bill.

And for the modern writer, that's a sum we can ill afford to gamble.

Wish me luck this week! I will of course post a bonus IT IS FINISHED WOOHOO post as soon as I type the last word.

The Big Green Birds of Spring

All too often I get wrapped up in my own little world of private jets and international espionage and I forget about the small dramas playing out all around me.

That's easy to do when you're, say, trying to open your secondary chute after leaping from a flaming 747 twenty thousand feet over the French Alps (that was Tuesday afternoon, I believe), but it's true.

Consider, for instance, the birds. They're everywhere, now that summer is near. Chirping, flapping, pecking at the ground, relaying messages to former KGB cells -- in short, going about the business of being birds.

Most of what I know about birds involves pounds of body weight and hours spent basting in an oven at 375 degrees. I can usually distinguish between a bluebird and a mockingbird, or a hawk and an incoming Exocet missile, but that's about the extent of my birding skills.

So when I noticed the chirping of baby birds coming from an old birdhouse I stuck in the crook of a Bradford pear tree last year, I naturally assumed they were bluebirds.

Now, I'll go ahead and say what most men fear to whisper, which is that all infants of all species are ugly. Sorry, but they are. Shriveled and wrinkled and usually an odd shade of blue, babies just aren't pretty, and these are no exception.

Still, I didn't see a mother bird, or a father bird, or even a social worker bird from PCS.

So I grabbed my camera and, after quickly dispatching a pair of Ninja assassins hiding in what they failed to realize was a bed of poison ivy, I waited for mama bird to appear.

The following pics are the fruits of my patient labor.

The birdhouse. One bedroom, one bath, priced to move at 120K.

You can see the little birds poking their heads out. Below is a close-up:

We demand bugs!

Here's another shot:

Look, maybe we're cute from a distance.

I waited for a long time, before I saw Mama bird, perched in the next tree over, giving me the eye. If anyone knows what species she is, let me know! I suppose she is a bit blue, in a greyish-green sort of way, but frankly she doesn't look much like a bluebird. Of course I'm colorblind so I'm not the best judge of these things.

I managed to grab a single image of Mama actually feeding the babies, and then I decided I was making them all nervous, so I left. But here it is!

Notice how even in the image above she's looking at me and saying, in Bird, "You want I should peck your eyes out? YOU WANT DAT MONKEY-BOY?"

This next pic is just a green leaf. But it's the green you get only in spring, and only for a few weeks of spring. Soon the rains will stop and things will turn desert-dry and blast-furnace hot and this shade of green will go brittle, touched with brown, and dry.

I like this next image because it captured green, blue, and white, all in the same frame. It was shot looking up beneath a young oak tree.

Next up are many shades of green, taken over a blackberry patch:

Finally, and this is just for anyone who occasionally collects weird images to use as samples or bits for webpages, this shot of weathered cedar:

Birds and random leaves aside, I've been working hard to push the new Markhat novel to a close. And I'm getting there, via the most complicated ending I've ever written. I do like the way what started as Markhat's most mundane case (finding a little dog named Cornbread) turns into a mess that, as Stitches warns, could result in the unraveling of the entire universe.

But some days are like that, aren't they?  

I meant to have Mug's contribution to Sidekick Sunday ready for today, but alas, it was not to be. Instead, I'll leave you with a link to an MP3 sound file of me reading aloud 'The Knocking Man,' a scary short set in a cemetery where the dead are laid, but seldom rest....

The Knocking Man

Problematic Paranormal: Ghost VS Dynamite

Maybe you believe in ghosts. Maybe you don't.

I believe ghost hunting reality shows have truly jumped the shark.

I won't name the show, because the guys making it seemed like good guys doing what they believed was right, but when your ghost hunt culminates in blowing up a 'ghost trap' with very real dynamite it's time to re-examine your investigative protocols.

First of all, the ghost trap featured in the show. They constructed what has been called a 'devil's toybox,' which is simply a cube, about a foot on each face. The interior surfaces of the cube are lined with mirrors.

The premise is that the hapless ghost enters the cube only to find itself unable to exit, because the mirrors prevent this. How do mirrors prevent this?

Because, you know, they're mirrors. Reflective and, um, stuff. Partly magic. Magic, because apparently the ghost is forced to remain at the center of the cube and ponder its own reflection for all eternity, which is quite a trick considering their lack of optical surfaces or detectable reflection.

Curse you, moderately reflective surface!

Another problematic feature of the so-called ghost trap is this -- if a ghost passed freely through the mirror to get into the box, why can't it do the same to get out?

A mirror is nothing but a sheet of glass backed by a reflective substance. Silver was once commonly used, but the mirrors you get at Walmart use cheaper reflectors (probably aluminum), so there goes any kind of superstitious mumbo-jumbo about the mystical properties of silver. After all, you never see vampire hunters or the like cry 'Halt, vile spectre, for I wield the power of sacred aluminum!'

Side note: Telescope and other special optical instrument mirrors place the reflective surface on the front, to prevent refraction as light passes through the glass. They are called 'first surface' mirrors for this reason. That science moment brought to you by the letter I (for incredulous).

If you want to get really snippy with the whole ghost trap critique, wouldn't it be necessary for each and every interior seam to be perfectly reflective? Since that's impossible to achieve with flat mirrors cut and glued to plywood, wouldn't the 'ghost' (which hasn't been proven to exist anyway) simply slide out through any imperfect and therefore unreflective joining of walls?

Okay. Forget all that. I'll give them a pass -- let's say some mystical property of mirrored surfaces does act to block the movement of spirits. You've caught a ghost, huzzahs and Miller Lites all around.

That still doesn't explain what these ghost hunters did with the trap after confining their ghost.

They took the trap outdoors, put dynamite around it, and blew it up.

Eat C4, Casper.

Okay, that's a first for a TV ghost hunting show. Dynamite, things blowing up? Not the usual visuals.

But really?

Let's say the mirrored cube did somehow trap a disembodied spirit.

What possible good would blowing up the trap do?

Wouldn't the spirit simply be freed? One second it's pondering its lack of a reflection and wondering why it can traverse space and time but can't pass through an eighth of an inch of cheap mirror glass. Then some guy presses a button, and BOOM the mirrors are rapidly-expanding clouds of dust and the plywood cube is a million windborne splinters.

Wouldn't the ghost simply float away, possibly to return to its home and resume bedeviling the unfortunate homeowners?

Not according to some. Trap the ghost, detonate the trap, problem solved. Roll credits and previews for next week's show.

Sorry, I cannot complete the mental gyrations required for that to make sense. If a being is immaterial, neither mirrors nor dynamite can interact with it. If a being is NOT immaterial then it can be seen, photographed, and probably even heard screaming to be let out of the bloody box.

Now, I'll be the first to admit the mirrored ghost trap has a certain dramatic appeal. I plan to steal the concept and use it as soon as I can in a book or story, simply because A) it's cool and B) it has a certain intuitive logic about it. Mirrors creep people out, always have -- so naturally they would affect ghosts in some way as well. That's how our brains work. We're always making sense of out a nonsensical world.

But that doesn't make any of it real.

So I'm pretty much giving up on ghost hunting shows. Not ghost hunting, mind you -- just the TV depictions of it.

I do wonder what's next for that particular show. Will they go after pesky poltergeists with shoulder-launched missiles or hidden Claymore mines? Will viewers be treated to one-sided firefights between ghost hunters armed with shotguns and unseen ghosts returning fire with silenced ectoplasmic spook rifles?

If the network smells ratings, possibly so...

Work on the new Markhat book continues. Hey, I do have a favor to ask -- if you read the last Markhat book, BROWN RIVER QUEEN, and you liked it, how about giving me a quick review on Amazon? Reviews mean sales, and sales mean money, and money lets me buy dynamite to blow up ghosts. You do want to see ghosts blown up, right?

Right?

So please, a review, if you will! Thanks.

Speaking of reviews, check out this review of ALL THE PATHS OF SHADOW. Look, too often book reviews themselves aren't much fun to read, but this one is a hoot. And yes, Meralda does spend a lot of time in her laboratory doing math....

FANTASY REVIEW BARN

Finally, a record review. Record as in vinyl music LP, and review as in not a review because I can't play the album.

I didn't know I couldn't play the album at first. It's a standard-sized album, entitled Strange Cacti, by Angel Olsen.

I carefully put the record on my turntable and then scurried upstairs to get to work.

The first song started.

Now, I bought this album based on whim and caprice. I'd never heard of Miss Olsen, or her music. I have no idea what her style is. The earnest, bearded young man at the record store praised my choice, so I thought I'd stumbled on a hidden gem.

The sounds emanating from my homebuilt speakers were anything but precious, though. If ghosts in traps sang, this is what their songs would sound of -- discordant, growling, unintelligible.

Okay. I'm an open-minded dude. Pink Floyd has some weird intros too -- A Group of Small Furry Mammals in a Cave Grooving With A Pict, anyone?

So I kept listening.

It got worse. Growling, keening, muttering. The music, too, was strange -- slow, dragging, like a funeral procession gone inexplicably underwater.

Thor looked up at me, his head tilted in doggie confusion. He listened with me for a moment, and then he came to his feet and, for the first time in all my years with dogs, he began to howl at the record.

I went downstairs, sure I was experiencing some sort of turntable malfunction. I tried a different track with the same results.

Then I looked at the tiny print on the record label, which indicated the album might be a 45, rather than the usual 33 RPM record.

The jacket said nothing of the sort. Indeed, the jacket is so secretive it's hesitant to even reveal the album's name.

I switched to 45 RPM, and the sound quality improved, although the vocals do seem, to put it kindly, distant.

Anyway, I haven't made up my mind about Strange Cacti, since Thor won't let me play it without growling.

Okay, back to work for me! Have a good week, people. Be nice to strangers, kind to animals, and show cheese who is boss.

Weird News Roundup

Meet Nick and Nora, resident buzzards. They're now roosting in my backyard. I hope they weren't led here by anticipation of a good meal...

This image popped up as I snapping away trying to get a good shot of Nick and Nora in flight. Yes, it's blurred, and the exposure and shutter settings are all wrong -- but look at the tree trunk on the right side. Doesn't that look like a monstrous spectral eye, looking back at you?

It isn't, of course. That trunk belongs to the cherry tree not 30 feet from where I sit. It's not haunted, or hexed, or even spooky. It's just a bad photo, which produced a weird image.

Scouring Google Earth and the like for bizarre images is a hobby for many. Not for me, because I'm too lazy to sift through tens of thousands of entries hoping to find that one picture that is truly unusual, but thankfully not everyone is as slothful as I. Case in point -- the so-called 'Antarctic Nessie' video you can see for yourself below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkwwJ3QepiM&feature=youtu.be

I'm not saying it is a frozen sea creature. Without any indication of scale, it could be fifty feet long or five thousand; we just don't know. But it is interesting, in a 'hey look at that guy he's really too exhausted to blog today' way.

Next up, there's a sea serpent video you may or may not have seen. It's relatively clear, as these things go, and it honestly does look like the creature's head emerges ahead of the body. But see for yourself!

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/other-shows/videos/alaskan-monster-hunt-sea-monster-witness.htm

Here's some decent underwater video of a Swedish lake monster, with English translation, because without the translation most of us won't have any idea what the Swedish lake monster is saying (it's singing the old ABBA tune Waterloo,fiy).

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/blobbogey-vide/

Sea monsters aside, this Bigfoot video answers the age-old question of whether Bigfoot prefers boots or sandals.  Watch the feet as they leave the water. Seriously, people, if you're going to fake a video TAKE OFF YOUR FREAKING GALOSHES.

http://www.cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/mount-beacon-bigfoot/

And now to UFOs. This story is out of Quincy, Massachusetts, and it's ongoing. An unidentified aircraft has been doing low-and-slow flyovers of the city for days now, and while the FAA admits it's there and they know it's there they won't say who is flying it or why. The FAA was quick to point out it wasn't a drone, though. Because having a spy plane filled with actual spies is a lot less scary than a robot drone?

Here's the full story:

http://www.realufos.net/

Ghosts? You bet! Here's a new ghost video that's caused some stir. Story with video...

http://metro.co.uk/2013/02/19/ghost-caught-on-cctv-at-haunted-community-centre-in-south-ruislip-3503584/

Scariest ghost images of 2013? Meh. Most seem to me to be explainable. Judge for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hfeRCEFchqo#!

Okay, this is a prank and it doesn't pretend to be real -- but it is funny. Done by a Brazilian TV show, about a little girl ghost in a malfunctioning elevator...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N5OhNplEd4

Finally, the best sketch from SNL's Kristin Wiig host gig last night. Mom's a Korean Water Ghost!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ssWzqc62g

Have a good week, people!

Our Stupid Bodies: Frank's Tips on Wellness and Healthy Living

It's been a bad week.

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

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

(From 05/2013)

Your body is either a wondrous living engine powered by a spark of the divine or a ludicrous assemblage of evolutionary short-cuts, depending on your point of view.

Having seen myself naked (police video enhancement techniques have shown a marked improvement in recent months), I know where I stand on the whole wondrous construction / meat-based Rube Goldberg contraption controversy.

An injury to my back last week left me thinking about the fleeting and fragile notion of health. Since the injury also left me in a crumpled heap on the floor, I had plenty of time to ponder my attitudes toward wellness in between bouts of cursing and attempts to raise myself by climbing a nearby window-frame.

So, with a renewed appreciation for the simple things I took for granted -- walking, standing, crouching to hide from store detectives, lifting liquor bottles or barrels filled with deep-fried hamburgers -- I'd like to offer a few thoughts on our bodies, and how to keep them healthy.

Your body is a biological machine, powered by food and air, which will give you many years of trouble-free use if you perform regular maintenance, especially routine oil changes. Wait. I got my body mixed up with my riding lawn mower. Let me start over.

Your body is a wildly inefficient hodge-podge of finicky, unreliable chemical processes and damage-prone tissue structures. Even with the best of luck, it's going to start failing faster than a Russian-built sports car after forty years, and probably well before that.

Let's take a look at the major structures and systems that make up the human body:

Might as well pick out a plot....

1) THE SKELETAL SYSTEM. Beneath your skin is an appalling volume of gooey wet stuff.  Hidden inside this gelatinous mass of goo are your bones. Each bone connects to another via muscles, tendons, ligaments, and cleverly-hidden wires. This complex arrangement of jointed bones and opposing muscles allows you to wave awkwardly at strangers who you thought waved to you, but were in fact waving at their friend behind you. Too, whereas the lowly ant can only lift a mass fifty times its own body weight, your skeletal system grants you the ability to beg for help opening a jar of mayonnaise. Maybe that stranger has a stronger grip than you do, from all that bloody waving.

The most common skeletal problem is that of having to endure a skeleton in the first place. Face it, used  skeletons wind up wired in humorous poses by bored medical students or spend decades popping out of doors in carnival spook-houses, and even then the things are prone to make a lot of clattering noises and require frequent repairs. Many commercial and medical establishments have switched to sturdy plastic skeletons these days, which is a move you should check into as well.

The human brain.

2) THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. Your nervous system conveys the brain's instructions to your muscles via a series of nerves. Given the poorly thought-out nature of most of your brain's instructions, this crude and error-prone delivery system is probably a blessing in disguise, since it gives you time to reconsider flipping off the burly, tattooed Neanderthal who just bumped you in a checkout line.

Humans share virtually all of their nervous system chemistry and neurobiology with the graceful soaring hawk and the surefooted mountain goat, but you'd never suspect that after watching the average person put on a drunken rendition of the 'Mashed Potato' dance at a karaoke bar. Honestly, half the population is likely to suffer minor injury just playing 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' and the other half couldn't walk across a foot-wide plank without falling if their lives depended on it.

Nerves are composed of neurons, glial cells, and quite a number of other microscopic structures which are wasting their time and effort on a species that still hasn't quite mastered the rhythmic finger-snap.

3) THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. Your body requires proper nutrition to function at its best. A quick appraisal of your body's so-called 'best' clearly explains the shelves lined with Cheetos and the presence of a McDonalds drive-thru every sixty feet in the developed West.

You can spend forty years nibbling on nothing but free-ranch kelp and gluten-free naturally-occurring whole-grain tofu and still wind up diagnosed with the exact same terminal diseases as the 400-pound trucker who has eaten nothing but tobacco-soaked gas station burritos since 1987.

Still, you might improve your odds a tiny bit if you maintain a body that conforms to the following simple formula:

Height > Maximum girth.

Thus, if your waist measurement is six feet, remember to maintain a height of AT LEAST six feet. Seven would be better. Eight is just showing off.

Choose a height and stick with it. Your digestive system will seek to undermine your efforts at every turn, but  if you can ignore the aching constant hunger and nearly-irresistible urges to consume the entire Sarah Lee display in a single sitting, you can at least maintain a healthy weight. This ensures your last words can be smug ones.

A healthy heart is a bloated misshapen heart!

4) THE CARDIOPULMONARY SYSTEM. Your heart and lungs comprise your cardiopulmonary system. The hearts pumps the blood, which passes through the lungs. In the lungs, the blood releases carbon dioxide, absorbs oxygen, and craves tobacco just like it's done day after tiresome day since Prince released his breakout '1999' album.

Much ado is made by physicians and the media concerning blood pressure and the importance of keeping one's blood pressure within certain clear limits.

Regardless of your age, general health, or activity level, doctors have determined that your blood pressure is well beyond both the upper and lower safe limits and you will soon expire unless you:

• Switch to a healthy diet by removing all food from your diet.
• Pester harried waiters with demands that your tablecloth and silverware be certified gluten-free.
• Lecture everyone you know about the benefits of a Vegan lifestyle.
• Reduce your body mass by no less than 67% between now and the next celebration of Earth Day.
• Stop using bacon as both dental floss and chewing gum.

By taking care of your heart, you will ensure that Cyborg Dick Cheney has a steady supply of cardiac tissue for at least the next half-century.

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

5) THE BRACHIOSTATIC - ARTERIOPEDIOTIC SYSTEM. All the squishy things not covered by topics 1 through 4 above. Feet, nose hair follicles, ear wax glands, etc. Basically, all the squirming bits of this and ropy parts of that which ancient Egyptian mummy-makers hurriedly sealed up in jars. Because, yuck.

If something goes wrong here -- and it will -- odds are you'll first learn of it in that brief moment between floating above your motionless body and being pulled into The Light. Early symptoms of a sudden demise from brachiostatic complications include itching, sneezing, feelings of calm or well-being, anxiety, hunger, thirst, any sensations of fullness, sounds or vocalizations from the mouth, blinking, yawning, skin, or regular bouts with sleep.

There is a way to keep your complex brachiostatic system in perfect function by consuming a half teaspoon of a certain Greek plant pollen per day, but this same pollen causes rapid, irreversible heart failure. Who says Nature doesn't have a sense of humor?

Really, the best you can do is keep those toenails trimmed so the morgue attendants won't snicker and post awful pics on Instagram.

HEALTH CONCERNS: AGING

From the moment you are born, your body begins to renew itself.

Sadly, your body is no better at this renewal business than it is at regenerating limbs or developing acute night vision. Now, if you cut a starfish in two pieces, each piece will heal and become a really pissed-off starfish, and no one will ever leave you alone with their pets or small children.

But cut off the tip of your pinky finger, and aside from profuse bleeding all that happens is a rapid realization that your Blue Cross insurance coverage is woefully inadequate.

Aging is merely a slow-motion fatal car crash into a rather solid stone wall. You are placed in the doomed car at birth, the doors are locked tight, and the steering wheel and brakes don't work. But take heart; each year, advances in medical science bring us closer to a truly lifelike embalming process.

We really, REALLY mean it this year.

HEALTH CONCERNS: DISEASE PREVENTION

Not a flu season passes without dire warnings from the CDC that the current strain of bird flu will wipe all of humanity from the tortured face of the soon-to-be-barren Earth. We are bombarded with media instructions to get flu shots, wear breath masks, and refrain from huffing the missing CDC canisters of experimental bird flu viruses.

This year will be no different, and the outcome will be the same. The worldwide death toll from the latest incurable superflu will be dwarfed by the sum total of all Nerf-related injury deaths suffered while riding atop a rhinoceros at noon on Arbor Day. If this is pointed out, CDC spokesmen will mutter under their breath and hint that next year the Great Unwashed are really gonna get trashed.

The only way to prevent disease is by avoiding childbirth, especially your own. Once you're here, disease is both inevitable and a vital component of our thriving Health Care and Mortuary industries.

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

HEALTH CONCERNS: EXERCISE

Use it or lose it, they say. They also say five times five is thirty-six and London is the capital of China, so listening to them is a complete waste of time.

Another complete waste of time is exercise. You can run, you can lift weights, you can practice Yoga every hour of every day for your entire life, but your body will still direct its energies toward devising ways to undermine your efforts. If you run, you will ruin your knees. If you lift weights, you will tear things with cryptic names such as the 'ACLU' or the 'Isles of Langerhams.'

You may forestall this inevitable decay by injecting steroids directly into your muscles, which will make you  stronger, faster, and easily capable of swinging that blood-soaked claw hammer for hours on end while a SWAT team peppers you with rubber bullets.

An alternative to this is low impact aerobic exercise, which consists of rapid-fire channel surfing while seated at an athletic and unyielding 46 degree angle. Additional motion may be added to the workout session by incorporating the chip-dip arm action, or by walking briskly to the refrigerator at regular intervals for another Coors Lite.

Marathons, triathlons, paragons, pentagons, and the Running of the Bulls are best left to the obsessive-compulsive, the rabidly insane, and the Spanish.

Grab your ankles, sailor.

HEALTH CONCERNS: YOUR DOCTOR - PATIENT RELATIONSHIP

Finding a competent, caring physician is an important step in maintaining wellness and a healthy lifestyle. However, you could achieve the same results by engaging in a quest for solid physical evidence of Bigfoot. In fact, that's altogether the better idea.

The modern physician left medical school only to find him or her self buried under a veritable mountain of debt. The only way to ever hope to pay it off is to run patients through their practices at speeds normally reserved for slaughterhouse cattle-chutes. Pharmaceutical reps help out by pushing thousands of pills and saving the poor beleaguered doctor the time of actually listening to his patients, who are by nature a whiny complaining lot anyway.

The modern doctor-patient relationship works like this -- you, the patient, are presented with a bill. You pay the bill. If the bleeding resumes return for another rapid-fire office visit, receive another bill, and this time, a blue pill.

Repeat until wellness or a body temperature equaling that of the ambient air is achieved.

It's just not that hard, people.

The spiders tell me to dance!

HEALTH CONCERNS: MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

Many mental health care providers recommend quiet introspection and frequent self-examination as part of a health-conscious lifestyle. These health care providers recommend these practices because that BMW 328i with the 36 speaker Bose sound system and the heated leather seats isn't going to pay for itself, and the usual reaction to any interval of honest self-appraisal is panic followed by weekends in Vegas spent mainlining pure grain alcohol.

An important first step to achieving true mental health is learning to distinguish between the voices of friends and family, the voice of Grolog, Dark Lord of the Underworld, and the voice of Mark, who will be your server for this evening. Honestly, if you can refuse to loan your cousin Theo money, ignore Grolog's suggestions that you emulate the dietary practices of Hannibal Lecter, and convey to Mark your wishes for iced tea, the turkey club, and a side of spicy fries, then you're already in better shape than 75% of the other diners in Chili's.

Spiritual health is best achieved by waiting to become a disembodied spirit yourself, and if you keep ordering the spicy fries, you won't be waiting long, Mr. Unchecked Hypertension.

I intended to end this section on health and wellness with an audio recording of the noises my back now makes when I stand, but the FCC stepped in and I'll either have to skip that altogether or move to and post from Singapore, where the rules are more relaxed.

BIG NEWS

BIG NEWS

BIG NEWS

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

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

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

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

I Have To Write

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

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

All the Paths of Shadow

In Which I Do Terrible Things to My Back

I suppose everyone has that one nook or hidden cranny (hey, get your mind out of the gutter, I'm talking about spaces within one's home) which they use as what I shall charitably call an unorganized free-form storage space.

I had one. Here in my study. The study is an A-frame cabin style structure, which my Dad and I built by hand back in the early 1990s. The loft area, which is sized for Hobbits, has three-foot knee walls, and in the southwest corner there is a tiny closet.

In this diminutive closet, chaos reigned. I must confess I simply stacked things in it, usually with my eyes closed and always before hurrying away. It was a mess.

But no longer! I went in today, armed with three stalwart Sherpas, a vintage 1944 Sherman tank, two flamethrowers, the USS Strident, and a towel.

We lost the Strident in a pitched battle with a stack of old Writer's Market books, and one of the Sherpas fled after witnessing a dust bunny achieve sentience, but at the end of the day, the space was cleared.

The bad news is that I did something awful to my lower back. There was a prehistoric Sony CRT, you see, and there were stairs. I won't go into the details any more than that. The CRT, which still works and occupies a volume slightly less than a Buick, is now at the end of our driveway bearing a sign which reads WORKS, FREE. I'm hoping someone out there takes it home because frankly I can't bend over anymore.

The good news is that I unearthed my valiant Smith-Corona PWP 5.

I'm not entirely sure when I bought this machine. I believe it was 1984. I do know that I bought it because PCs were, at that time, both enormously expensive and basically incapable of doing anything other that waiting for the late 1990s to arrive. Seriously, a computer capable of doing even rudimentary word processing in 1984 was the approximate size of a dorm refrigerator, and almost as effective as a dorm refrigerator at doing word processing. What? You want to <gasp> cut and paste? Move a sentence?

Wait a few years, future boy. In the meantime, dial into AOL and enjoy some 8-bit graphics.

I couldn't afford a PC anyway. So I went with the Smith Corona PWP-5 instead, and that's when I started writing in earnest.

Marvel at the PWP's awe-inspiring seven-line LCD display! It could do global word replace. It could print -- one sheet at a time, fed and removed by hand. It could store manuscripts on disc. One disc could hold nearly 100 pages of double-spaced text!

Man, I was in technological heaven.

I wrote a lot of stories on that tough old machine. Wrote them, printed them out one page at a time, and then mailed them via the United States Postal Service, because this 'e-mail' of which you speak hadn't even hit Star Trek yet.

There is an old homily which states that every writer has a million bad words they must write before they get to the good ones inside them.

If that is true, then this poor machine endured my million bad words.

Speaking of bad words, on top of the PWP-5 there was a box.

Inside this box, dwelt horror.

I speak of the last surviving manuscript of my first complete novel. I thought I'd burned all the copies, but this one survived.

DO NOT LOOK TOO CLOSELY UPON IT. You know that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazis open the Ark? Remember that guy's face melting?

This manuscript was in the Ark. 

Yeah. It's that bad. All 314 unrelentingly bad pages of it. Each of which was printed out over the course of a weekend in 1985, page by appalling page.

Thinking back to that weekend, I realize now a small part of me knew just how bad this book (its title may not be spoken aloud, nor may its cover page be shown) was.

I was young. Young and inexperienced. I sent this thing out, thus exposing unsuspecting tens of slush readers to near-certain doom.

I apologize to any survivors.

I'm going to keep the PWP downstairs now, to remind me how easy I have it now with my monstrous 4-core dual-monitor rig and my snazzy Word 2010.

The Manuscript Which Cannot Be Named will be sealed in a lead box, encased in concrete, and put in a deep underground vault which is quickly filled with tons of molten lava. A stainless steel placard on the surface will warn the people of the far future away from the site with prominent displays of dangling participles and graphic examples of adverb overuse.

I'm still amazed my valiant PWP-5 didn't just run away about the time MTV first aired.

A few more random pics, and we'll dispense with history.

Meet Big Blue. Big Blue is my ten-inch Dobsonian reflector telescope. I mention her because she weights a combined 90 pounds (scope and stand) and it appears I will never lift that kind of weight again.

I built Big Blue six or eight years ago in a fit of telescope mania. It took months, because even a Dobs needs to be a precision instrument and that takes time.

Does she work?

Yep. The first thing we saw with her was the Orion Nebula, and it was beautiful.

That was years ago, and I haven't hauled her outside since. Why?

I'm lazy.

Last pic!

A couple of cool things unearthed in the Great Closet Assault of 2013 wound up on my shelf. Specifically, the dowsing rods around the central steampunk gun.

They're cool rods, solid copper, hand-made by an expert dowser. I myself have absolutely no talent for dowsing (if in fact there is even such a thing). But they're well-made and I'm glad they're down where they can be appreciated.

If you're like me, and let's hope you're not, the first thing you asked yourself this morning was 'Self, where can I obtain and/or purchase a Mug-themed coffee mug, or other items or apparel related to the book All the Paths of Shadow?'

If you did make that query, well, as usual I'm here to help.

Drumroll, please, as I announce the grand opening of.....

Meralda's Magical Merchandise!

Want a Mug mug? We can hook you up! Prefer a tee shirt? Got that too!

Mousepads, posters, nightshirts, adult tees -- check out the store. If there's something you want that isn't there, let me know, and I'll ask Meralda to whip something up.

That's all for this week! I'm going to go lie down flat and hope the stabbing pains subside.

Stay safe out there, people!

This Week in Pictures

Welcome back!

I thought after the horrors of this week you might enjoy seeing something pretty. So let's begin with some photos I just took, out on the porch, of the azalea bushes we planted around our porch several years ago.

These azalea bushes have proven to be utterly indestructible. We do water them through the hot dry months of August and September, but other than that, they require no care. They bloomed out Tuesday or Wednesday, mostly white, although there are a few red flowers.

Here's what the whole east end bed looks like. I guess the red plants decided to bloom white:

While I was taking the pics, I noticed a bumblebee busily buzzing (see what I did there?) about, and I managed to coax him into posing:

He's probably still out there, bumbling away. I've always liked bumblebees. They've never tried to sting me, and I admire their work ethic. I don't share it, but I do admire it.

Next up, my current steampunk gun project. This one isn't quite finished, but here's what I have so far.

And the other side:

This is actually a cheap water gun, some PVC water pipe, a few odds and ends of wire, a couple of springs, three washers, and a bit of old hose.

A lot of you have probably seen this next item. It's one of my wands. Specifically, it's from Meralda's Royal Laboratory, marked 'Wand 116, Type II Non-Linear Discharge, Do Not Store Next To Type IV or Type VII.'

The image immediately above isn't blurry because I was too lazy to unfold the camera tripod. No. It's just impossible to take a clear photograph of a charged Lysson module without an aether compositor filter, and I lost mine in Moria.

It's springtime here in Mississippi, which means the snakes are shuffling off their winter coats and the frogs are getting the band back together. I was struck with how early the critters have emerged from their winter quarters this year, so when I found myself out on the patio while Fletcher took a midnight bathroom break I made a recording of the night sounds here. My Zoom H1 mic did a marvelous job of capturing the midnight cacaphony, and I'm pleased to share the recording with you now. It's short -- only a minute -- and best heard if you crank up the volume a bit. No, I didn't stick any loud noises at the end to scare you, because that's an old tired trick by now.

Give it a listen, it sounds like the jungle!

Midnight on the Patio

One night I hope to capture the local coyote pack in full-on howl mode. It will lift the hairs on the back of your neck, I promise you!

In writing news, well, I've been writing. The Five Faces is galloping along without a hitch, and at this rate I'll be done with it and deep into the new Meralda and Mug book All the Turns of Light very soon. Well before that, you'll see a short story penned by Mug himself right here in the blog; he's already pestering me to get it posted, as he's convinced Hollywood will trip over itself in its haste to make a movie of his 'undiscovered genius.'

I warned Meralda about getting Mug a Netflix subscription, but...

By the way, anyone interested in communicating directly with Meralda or Mug can do so on Facebook. All the Paths of Shadow has its own FB page, and both Mug and Meralda post there. So drop by and say hello -- Mug is always happy to talk. And talk. And talk...

I'll leave you tonight with a brief excerpt from The Five Faces.


 Darla met me at our door. She had flour on the tip of her nose and a revolver in her right hand.

“Welcome home,” she said, smiling. “I’ve baked us a pie!”

“Did you shoot it before or after you rolled the crust?” I kissed her. It happens sometimes.

“Before, silly,” she said. She wrinkled her nose. “You’ve been somewhere unsavory.”

“Duty demanded that I carouse and cavort on the docks,” I said. We made our way to the kitchen, where supper lay waiting on the stove and a peach pie baked in the oven. “This is the earthy aroma of the noble working man.”

“I can’t picture you cavorting,” she said. “Do you start off with your left foot, or your right?”

Tiny feet scampered across our roof.

The neighbors have squirrels. We have a banshee.

Darla’s smile died. “She’s been up there since dark.” She opened the oven and pulled out a tray of cookies. “I’ve been trying to coax her inside, but she won’t come.”

Buttercup, our resident banshee, is the size and shape of a pre-teen girl who hasn’t enjoyed many good meals. Darla’s fresh-baked sugar cookies are her favorite, and the mere scent of them usually brings her inside in a hurry.

I hugged Darla. Having a banshee walk the roof when your spouse is out working a case can’t be the best way to pass an evening at home.

“She’s probably just playing with her head-bone,” I said. “Anyway, look, I’m here, and all in one piece.”

The scampering on the roof stopped. Tiny bare feet ran into the kitchen, and skinny arms hugged my waist.

Banshees don’t bother with doors.

“Hello, Buttercup,” I said, tousling her ragged mop of golden hair. “Darla made you cookies.”

Buttercup squealed and leaped. Cookies began vanishing in a veritable hail of crumbs.

“That’s hot, honey,” said Darla. Buttercup snatched up another one and crammed it in her already-full mouth, grinning.

There might be things out there capable of injuring Buttercup.  Old magics. Powerful sorcerers. Eldritch spells. Hot cookies, though, aren’t on the list.

Darla began uncovering pans. I helped by getting in the way and received a playful slap on my hand when I dared grab one of Buttercup’s cookies.

Finally, we sat and ate. Darla fries a mean pork chop. We had corn and green beans and a big fat potato each. Buttercup finished off the cookies and then amused herself by playing peek-a-boo with the whispering skull she carries.

“Gertriss came by earlier,” said Darla, as she put down her fork.

You live with a woman long enough, you learn to recognize the subtle difference between a casual conversation and a conversation that only sounds casual but can veer off into the significant at any word.

“Let me guess.”

Darla laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them. “She said you left this morning looking for an awful man named Hurry-up Pete and returned in the employ of a pair of street kids who’ve lost their dog.”

“I believe in maintaining a diverse range of clientele.”

“So this wasn’t some elaborate prank you played on Mama Hog?”

“Nope. A man in a wide-brimmed hat who spoke with a strange accent cut the leash a little blind girl named Saffy was holding. The man took her dog Cornbread, and Saffy’s brother is going to work off the debt working in our yard this summer.”

Darla smiled. “And Hurry-up Pete?”

“I’ll tell the clients what I know. Refund half their advance. They’ll either find Hurry-up, or they won’t, but I’ll not be a part of it. Not this time. Not anymore.”

Silence, save for Buttercup’s unintelligible murmurings and her skull’s equally cryptic whispered replies.

“That’s why I love you,” said Darla, at last. She rose and came and kissed me.

Later, we ate that pie. Best damned pie I ever had.

Sidekick Sunday

Greetings, gentle readers!

Today sees the start of a new feature here on the blog. I'm going to call it Sidekick Sunday, so when you see those words in the title you should know you'll be treated to a new, original short story told from the point-of-view of one of the  supporting characters in one of my two main series.

Today you get The Swindled Jenny, an original short (4000 words or so) told by none other than Mama Hog herself. Links to the story in various formats will follow; I've got a Web version, a plain Word document, a PDF file, and a Kindle ebook ready for download and sideload, at your convenience.

But first, a few other bits of news.

Anyone wanting a printed copy of All the Paths of Shadow is in luck, because the new print version is up for sale on Amazon! Click here for the new print version, or here for the Kindle edition.

All the Paths of Shadow has seen a sudden surge in popularity. It sold nearly 500 Kindle copies in a single night, last month. I mean sold, too. No freebie special, no free borrowing, we're talking straight-up sales here, in the wee hours, with no omens preceding. Which is a great event, and I'm thrilled -- I just wish I knew what triggered the surge, because I'd like to bottle it for later use.

Anyway, if you've been looking for a print copy, look no further! All the Paths of Shadow is once again available in print, and all you have to do is click.

Brown River Queen is also for sale, if you're looking for more Markhat. Not in print yet, but it's coming. I'll let you know when it hits the stands.

On a side note, I'm now trying to juggle work on the new Markhat, The Five Faces, with work on the new Meralda and Mug, called All the Turns of Light. Writing two books at once is something I've never tried, mainly because I'm not a conjoined set of twins, but it's going better than I expected. Sure I sometimes forget and put Mug on Markhat's desk and write Mama Hog into Meralda's laboratory, but that's what I get for staying up extra late to catch up on The Daily Show.

A couple of people have emailed asking about Fletcher, our diabetic doggie. I'm happy to report that he's doing fine, and is happy, and is coping with his loss of most of his vision quite well. His hair has grown back, and he's resumed all of his old habits, including 'talking' to us with grunts and marking the arrival of mealtimes with spirited barking and dancing.

Now, it's time for the first installment of Sidekick Sunday!

Tonight features The Swindled Jenny, a Mama Hog story which I hope you'll enjoy.

For anyone unfamiliar with the series, Mama Hog is the protagonist Markhat's neighbor. Mama claims to be a hundred and twenty five years old, and she makes her living telling fortunes and dispensing advice from her ramshackle card and potion shop in the heart of Rannit.

In this story, Mama does much more than merely dispense advice. No, her client has been wronged, and Mama takes offense, and -- well, choose your format, and see for yourself. Click the link, and you should see a list of files. The first is a mobi file, which can be downloaded and then put on your Kindle device. The next is a PDF version -- just click and download. The next is a plain Web file, which you should be able to read just by clicking. Finally, there is a Word document, which should download with a click.

I hope you enjoy it!

List of Story Formats for THE SWINDLED JENNY

That's all for today. Take care, people! See you all around the bookstore!