The Dog Days of Pear Summer

Today's blog entry is brought to you by dogs. And pears. And maybe a cloud or two.

But we'll start with Lou Ann, who is neither pear nor cloud, but all dog and proud of it.

That's Lou -- Lou Ann Tuttle, in full. She came to us from a shelter in Olive Branch, Mississippi four years ago, I think it was. I just took this picture, out on the patio.

Lou is part Shepherd and all Alpha Female. She's even got Thor under control, and Thor is easily twice her size. Maybe three times. But when Lou Ann lifts those ears and gives him that look, Thor sort of nods and accedes. Which is good, because (don't tell him I said this) Lou Ann is far more suited to be pack leader than Thor, who is still in goofy-puppy mode.

It's still hard for me to understand why someone put Lou in a shelter. Her time (and her number) were nearly up when we got her. She's a loving, well-behaved dog who is genuinely eager to please. Yeah, she's not a full-blooded anything, but for that matter, neither am I.

Next up in the non-sequitur parade are pears. Specifically, the pears produced by a scraggly five-dollar pear tree I bought on a whim at a big-box store years ago. It was a little more than chest high, hardly more than a weed, really. But now it is a pear-producing machine, people. Seriously. There are hundreds of not particularly beautiful but certainly very tasty pears hanging from this determined little tree right now. Here's a shot of just one branch:

Yes, I was after a pear when I took the photo of Lou Ann. Do I always take my camera when I go outside for a pear?

Yes, because if Bigfoot is at the tree again I want proof. 

Finally, a cloud. Or a bunch of clouds, doesn't matter, just take a good look at this, and tell me what you see!

I see a dog, running. Playing. Happy.

That was the cloud, over the pear tree, being watched by Lou Ann.

What does any of that mean?

Everything. Nothing. Sometimes a dog is just a dog, and a cloud is just a cloud.

And sometimes they're all a part of something far bigger.

I suppose that's up to you to decide.

Me, I'm going to eat a pear and rub Lou Ann's head and watch that dog romp across the sky.

Art For Each of Your 29 Eyes

I've been on an art spree for the last couple of weeks.

Maybe it's because I've gotten hooked on a couple of comics -- er, graphic novels. That's one huge advantage the Kindle Fire has over the e-ink models; I can download and read graphic novels that I just cannot find anywhere in Oxford.

Naturally, I've enjoyed The Walking Dead series, as well as a few other works. Sure, I still love books, but seeing characters come to life on the page as art is a pleasure all its own.

I even took a stab at designing my own cover. The result, which I'm still proud of, is below:

One characters I've wanted to see an image of for a long time is Mug. Mug, as you may know, is a character from my YA fantasy series (which includes the novel All the Paths of Shadow and the novella Saving the Sammi). Mug isn't a human, or even a biped. He is a snarky, sarcastic enchanted houseplant with 29 mobile eyes and a dead-seated fear of aphids.

Even armed with a modest array of powerful graphics manipulation programs, my attempts to create a passable image of Mug were, shall we say less than successful. Less than successful as in so embarrassing I won't post them here.

So I shelved the 'Let's draw Mug!' project. Sure, I could hire an artist, but I'm on a tight budget, and the derisive laughter of artists is hurtful.

As it happens, though, I did find an artist who I could afford. Her name is Laura LaRoche, and she works with an outfit called Hercules Editing and Consulting. Hercules did my book trailer last week, and when I mentioned I'd always wanted to see Mug, Laura agreed to take on the project.

So, I am happy to present to you, for the first time anywhere, Mugglesworth Verity Ovis, Tirlin's foremost authority on theoretical mathematics and problematic beetles:

I know. Ms LaRoche did a fantastic job. That's Mug, single yellow eye, five red eyes, assorted other hues looking on, bemused by all the attention.

That's not the only image of Mug, either. I've added a new area to my webpage, which contains a variety of images (Mug and others) which I've resized and made available as posters and downloadable desktop images.

They're all free. You can grab any or all of them, and use them as you wish. I am particularly fond of the posters.

So head on over to my new art gallery page and take anything you like! Here are a few small samples...

Like I said, all free, just click and save! Oh, and if anyone wants a desktop sized for a particular screen, just email me the dimensions and I'll cobble one together for you.

New Mug & Meralda novella! Book trailer release! Dancing elephants! S'mores!

It's a busy day today here at Casa Tuttle!

In just a few sentences, I'm going to announce the publication of a new Mug and Meralda novella. And I'm going to put up a link to the book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. I'll even talk a bit about the new novel now in progress.

But first, a few words of thanks.

No matter how careful I am, typos rceep in two everY man-ewe-screept. And no number of thorough editing passes ever quite catches them all. In fact, I hereby propose a new Law of the Universe, which shall hereafter be known as Tuttle's Truthful Ratio of Typos to Effort, expressed thusly:

The number of undetected typographical errors in any manuscript is equal to the number of editing passes plus 1. Or maybe plus 3, or 6, or 16, depending on how ornery the Universe is feeling on any given day. 

In simpler terms, I suppose one could say of typos 'You never correct them all.'

Which is where beta readers come in. The purpose of a beta reader is threefold. The beta reader sees the complete and uncensored ineptitude of a writer, takes steps to point out the writer's errors, and then keeps this dreadful knowledge a secret, lest the writer be revealed for the quasi-literate poser they are.

So many thanks to my faithful beta reader Kellie, and now her husband Stephon and daughter Ava, who helped stamp out the scourge of missing letters and doubled quotation marks (and that is all I will admit to).

So, without further ado, I present to you the world premiere of the new Mug and Meralda novella, Saving the Sammi!

You can pick it up now at Amazon for a mere buck and a half. I'm working on a Nook version, and should have that ready later this week. I will of course let you know!

I enjoyed writing Saving the Sammi. Without giving away too much, it's a very straightforward adventure story, involving the rescue of the family trapped aboard a storm-stricken airship trapped in a deadly ascent. Market testing even among eight-year-olds (okay, a market of one, but still) placed it just below Harry Potter and possibly even with Warrior Cats, which I consider high praise indeed. Adults will enjoy it too!

So go grab a copy. It's a quick read, and you'll never look at a rowboat quite the same way again.

Now, for book trailer news! That's right, I have a book trailer, which is to a book what those ads before the movie starts are to motion pictures. My book trailer is for All the Paths of Shadow, and it was created by the fine people at Hercules Editing and Consulting. I heard about Hercules through a fellow author (thanks Elyse!), who said they did excellent work at prices authors can afford.

The phrase 'at prices authors can afford' is understood to mean 'whatever loose change you can shake out of the couch,' so I did some checking, liked what I saw, and hired Hercules to produce a short book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. The result is lovely -- but hey, see for yourself!

Click here for the book trailer!

I love the trailer. So a huge thanks to Beth and Syd at Hercules!

I hope you enjoy Saving the Sammi and the book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. Both represent a lot of work -- not so much by me on the book trailer, since my skills in that arena are limited to spelling the words 'book trailer,' but I know just enough to know putting it together wasn't easy. Writing Saving the Sammi was fun, and I learned a lot about airships and the early days of flight in the process. Mostly what I learned was you have to be a special kind of crazy to climb aboard a huge cloth envelope filled with hydrogen (the word hydrogen comes from the Greek hydro, which means 'wants to explode,' and gen, 'very very badly'). But climb aboard they did, usually while smoking big cigars, and for that, I salute them albeit from a safe distance.

So now it's time to get back to work on the new Meralda and Mug novel, All the Turns of Light. There may be another short story (or two, or three) released in the near future, depending on how work on the novel goes. Look for more airships in Turns of Light. Because darn it, I like airships.

I'd love to hear what any of you think about the story or the trailer! My email inbox is always open, so drop me a line at franktuttle@franktuttle.com.

A Book by Its Cover

If you've heard those rumors I started a couple of weeks ago, I'm here to tell you they are indeed true.

A new Meralda and Mug short will be out soon. Soon as in 'as soon as I can get it formatted, converted, uploaded, and out there.' It's written, so all it needs is the conversion into e-reader ready formats.

This one is a novella, which means it's about 11,000 words long. So it's not a full-blown novel. No, this is just a short piece as a sort of thank-you to the fans. Something to read and enjoy while I work on the next novel, which will be considerably longer than 11K.

Even novellas need covers, though. And since I've decided to just put this short piece out there myself, I'm acting as my own cover artist.

Now, given that I have the artistic skills of a mollusk, making a book cover represents quite a challenge. Let's face it -- you put a book out there with a lousy cover, and you might as well emblazon the words THIS BOOK BLOWS right below it, in flashing red letters.

I won't buy a book with an ugly or amateurish cover. Call me shallow, go ahead, but I figure if they can't make a good first impression with the art the words inside are even worse.

I suppose there have been a few times when I bought a book despite seeing what I thought was a lousy cover.  Thud, by the brilliant and infallible Terry Pratchett, leaps to mind. Here's the cover:

I hate that book cover. Love the book. But for reasons I can't even express, the cover absolutely makes my skin crawl, and that's no easy feat.

So, when I set out to design the cover for the new Meralda and Mug novella (still trying to decide if I'm going to reveal the title yet), I knew a couple of things I didn't want to do.

1) No depictions of clubs bearing the title of the work about to strike armed heads.

2) My name should probably not take up a fifth of the cover. Terry Pratchett can and should take up that much space. Frank Tuttle should not. Such is the way of the world..

With those points out of the way, I had to ask myself what elements I did want to include on the cover. Here's what I came up with:

1) Meralda. She's the heroine, so she needs to be the primary figure on the cover. 

2) Mug should probably be there two. Wait, did I really just write Mug as an enchanted houseplant with mobile, gripping vines and twenty-nine eyes of various colors? I did, didn't I? And now I'm supposed to draw that?

3) An airship. The story centers around the unlikely rescue of a stricken airship, so putting a dirigible-like craft up in the sky is a must.

4) The title, the author byline (that's me!), all that jazz.

So, armed with this list and the finest in modern drawing implements, I laid out my supplies, put some Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, naturally) on the turntable, and unleashed my Muse Artistic.

Minutes crept by. Hours. Then days. Victuals were brought to my garret, and hurled down in contempt, such was my fevered determination to bring forth Art.

I drew. I imagined. I erased, I crumpled, I despaired, I started anew. In a corner of the room, a passing wind blew the pages of a by-day calendar up and over. Calendar pages were ripped away, one at a time.  Seasons changed. My beard grew long, and housed a den of foxes.

In the end, I looked wearily down upon the hard-won fruits of my labor, and I cried out in a great voice, 'How much does Photoshop cost again?"

First, you'll notice two things about this image. One, I slipped and revealed the title of the new novella, which is Saving the Sammi.

Second, the cover really stinks. Although I think I really nailed the magical effluent around Meralda's wand. That is some Impressionist masterwork there, people. Each dot a masterpiece.

After long and careful consideration, I decided against drawing my own cover art. Which sent me scurrying back to the net, in hopes of finding legal, suitable images I could use.

It was the legal aspect of this I found most daunting, originally. I'm no Intellectual Property lawyer, but I know you can't just snag any old image that catches your eye and make your own book cover out of it. That would make me as bad a book pirate, and I hate those guys.

So I did a little research, and was glad to find a number of sites which sell royalty-free images that are licensed for use on book covers. And the prices aren't always the hundreds or thousands of dollars I was afraid of finding, either. Many were well within my budget.

The legal hurdle crossed, I settled on www.dreamstime.com and began my search for suitable cover images.

Now, I knew I wasn't going to find a ready-made image which depicted the scene I had in mind. But I have Corel Paint Shop Pro X4, which makes it easy to edit and combine multiple images and which offers a vast array of effects and graphics features. I've seen it called the 'poor man's Photoshop,' and at $75 I concur.

So what I was looking for turned out to be three images -- one of Meralda, one background image, and one of a steampunkish airship.

Searching on 'steampunk female' or the like inside Dreamstime pulled up a wealth of images. Some were drawn. Some were photos. Some were....

Well, let's just say that wardrobe malfunctions must be common among steampunk females. Not quite what I was looking for, since Meralda is adamant about remaining clothed. 

Finally, I found what I was looking for -- a young woman wearing flying goggles, black gloves, and a scarf. 

And she's got a smirk. I liked it, so into the cart it went. 

Now I needed a background. Something stormy and ominous. I found plenty of photos of storm-fronts, but they tended to include cityscapes, and modern-day Chicago doesn't really work for depicting steampunk Tirlin. 

But then I stumbled across this:

That had it all. Some clouds, an airship, a steampunk porthole and vintage maps.  

I was set.

All that remained was to resize and combine the two images. 

The optimum size for an Amazon catalog image is 1562 pixels wide by 2500 tall. So I resized my background -- no problem. Then I did a rough insert of Meralda, and quickly found she was facing the wrong way, which covered up the airship.

No big deal. Paint Shop let me mirror her, and also extract her from the dark background in her image. Then I resized her extracted image, over and over, until I found one that fit.

Then, just for fun, I added a title and a byline, and voila! A rough draft of a book cover, all done by a guy who has yet to manage stick figures on paper...

No, this isn't the final image. I'm still messing with a few things.  But I thought a few of you might be interested in a behind-the-scenes walkthrough  of how book covers are born here at Casa Tuttle.

Oh, and yeah, no Mug. I suppose the demand upon artists for depictions of many-eyed houseplants is still relatively small. I'd have drawn one myself, but -- you saw how that went.

So if you're a fan of All the Paths of Shadow, keep a lookout for the new Meralda & Mug novella, coming any day now. I'll announce it here, on Twitter, on Facebook, from my cell at the Lafayette County Detention Center, all my usual haunts.

And if you like the cover, now you know its story!

Snug Nugget Open for Business!

As a long-time resident (some would say nuisance) of the Amazon Kindle discussion boards, one of the complaints posted most frequently is that e-books cost too much.

I'm not one of the people posting these price complaints. E-books are almost always cheaper than their paper counterparts, and if they aren't, factors such as portability, accessibility, and zero-shelf-space more than make up for a few pennies in cost.

But if you do feel that e-books cost too much, I'm happy to announce you now have the chance to set your price! A new publishing venture opened this morning, which means when you buy from Snug Nugget, you pay whatever you feel is fair.

Better still, Snug Nugget sells e-books by the bundle, and a generous portion (nearly 15 percent) of each purchase price is donated to Book Aid International, which supports literacy, education, and development in sub-Saharan Africa.

So you get good books at a good price and you do good. Which is good. And a blatant over-use of the word 'good.'

If you're curious as to why I'm touting Snug Nugget's new business model and you decided Frank is enthused over this pay-as-you-want strategy because Frank is a forward-thinking philanthropist, well, I'm afraid you're dead wrong. Frank has a small role in this enterprise, in that the three Wistril stories included in Wistril Compleat are a part of the bundle.

So you get Wistril Besieged, Wistril Afloat, and Wistril Betrothed as part of the bundle.

The other four entries are novels in genres ranging from mystery to SF to fantasy, which allows you to visit the Mars of the future (Mankind's Worst Fear, by David L. Erickson), confront a saber-tooth cat on the loose in the present (Smilodon, by Alan Nayes), solve a mystery in Florence (Intrigue in Italics, by Gayle Wigglesworth), and visit an alternate Earth during a very different Renaissance (The Plight of Angels, by Ian Hodge).

All for the low, low price of whatever the heck you wish to pay.


So browse on over to snugnugget.com and grab a bunch of e-books. And remember a portion of the purchase price goes to some genuinely deserving people in a hard-hit part of Africa, so pat yourself on the back as you click that buy button.

http://www.snugnugget.com/

The Writing Olympics!

As everyone on the planet knows, the Summer Olympics are underway.

I didn't see the opening ceremonies. From what I've managed to piece together from assorted tweets and bits of Facebook postings, the Olympics opened with Doctor Who and Mary Poppins joining forces to defeat James Bond. Or the Queen. Frankly I'm a bit fuzzy on that bit, although I do think the same little old lady who stared Hitler down back in the day could probably shove Mary Poppins' umbrella in an entirely undignified spot.

You may have surmised that the Olympics hold little interest for me. And you'd be right, because at the risk of posting heresy, it all boils down to people running, people chasing balls, or people running while chasing balls. They don't have cheerleaders. I can't even pretend interest in any sporting event that lacks cheerleaders.

No, if the Olympic committee wants my viewership -- and let's face facts, they lie awake at night hatching plots to get it -- they'll have to include events that appeal to me, Frank the writer.

And that will have the happy benefit of attracting my surly circle of fellow writers, many of whom last saw the outdoors (or even an image of the outdoors) the last time they changed houses.

So here is my list of suggested Olympic Events for Writers. Olympic Committee Members may direct their checks and adoration to my email address.

OLYMPIC EVENTS FOR WRITERS

1) The Fifty-Yard Coffee and Sandwich Run -- Look, if we had time to prepare real food we'd be cookbook authors. But we've got people to kill, worlds to ravage, forgotten subplots to tie up. Check bread for mold, smear one slice with peanut butter (if any), smear the other with whatever we can scrape out of the jam jar, nuke seven-hour old coffee, balance the cup, saucer, and sandwich in one hand while running through a darkened room toward the dim glow of a flat panel display. That's our life. So make it an event -- with a timer, horns, and of course a couple of dogs running underfoot. Oh, and make the coffee an unstable, explosive fluid. We've got ratings to worry about.

2)  The Just A Quick Email Check Relay -- This one will be a hit. Put two computer workstations one hundred yards apart. One station is set up for word processing, no net, nothing else. The other station, one hundred yards distant, is equipped to check Twitter, Facebook, email, Fark, Cracked, and various other sites. Authletes (that's my word for 'author athletes', and I get $1500 PER WORD, Olympic Committee) must compose a brilliant paragraph of prose, race to the social media station, and return within an allotted and ever-shrinking time. Naturally a few authletes will die trying to beat the buzzer after a marathon session of defending their paragraphs from critics on Twitter, but hey, this is the big time.

3) Query Letter Hide N Seek -- Fiendishly simple, yet endlessly entertaining. A fit young runner is handed a blank sheet of paper in the middle of a circle of authors. When the pistol sounds, the runner chooses any author at random and dashes toward him or her. If the runner manages to touch the author with the blank paper, that author MUST sit down and, in one pass, create the perfect query letter, or be lampooned mercilessly by a panel of New York literary agents.

4) Rejection Selection -- A modern-day reboot of a gory Roman favorite. Authors are placed into the arena. Each author may defend themselves only with the printed copy of their current work in progress. From the stands high above, editors and first readers take aim with finely-honed harpoons, while Strunk & White's timeless classic 'The Elements of Style' is read aloud over loudspeakers. The last author standing is awarded a gift basket filled with moist towelettes and a complementary copy of the current 'Writer's Market.'

5) The Dangling Participle of Death -- Authors and their grammar skills are put to the ultimate test within this maze of boobytraps and deadly machines.  At every turn, authors must use state-of-the-art graphic displays to correctly diagram complex sentences. Once the sentence is diagrammed, a door opens -- but is it the door to freedom, or death? Was that a gerund? Was that a dependent clause? Do you feel lucky, punk?
Correct answers lead the way to the next sentence. Incorrect answers result in amusing but gruesome spectacles. Don't you wish you'd paid more attention to Mrs. Fitzgiggens now, Mister All Knowing Author?

Add some of those events, and I'll watch. Otherwise, I'll stick to reruns of South Park.

Data Stream Lost

What is the significance of the image above?

None. Sometimes a wooden skull superimposed against the sky is simply a wooden skull superimposed against the sky.

Hey, I never promised I'd start making sense.


It's been a busy week for me. Taught my last Summer Writing Course on Thursday evening. The Library has plans to start an adult writing course in January of 2013, so if you're in the Oxford area and you have an interest in listening to me babble for an hour and a half once a week for a month or two, hit me with an email and I'll keep you posted on dates and other specifics.

Since the new Markhat novel Brown River Queen sold a couple of weeks ago, I've started on the new Meralda and Mug novel, All the Turns of Light.  I'll keep posting here about my progress or lack thereof. I would welcome emails of encouragement, especially if they arrive as credible threats to my physical well being. I'm having a hard time writing these days, folks. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's my own innate slothful nature, combined with a complete and utter lack of any discernable work ethic.

Sure, I sit at the keyboard and pound away. Like I've done all afternoon, just now.

I deleted it. Every word. It was awful, and no amount of editing was going to fix it.

They say every writer has a million bad words inside they have to write down before the good ones start emerging. I thought I'd gotten rid of the bad ones already.

Guess not. You learn something new every day, which as far as I'm concerned is a compelling reason to stay in bed with the covers pulled over your head.

That's my pal Thor. We call him Thorazine sometimes because he's nuts. But in a good way. Like any German Shepherd dog, he's attentive and protective and always, always eager to please. He's at my feet right now, half-asleep, ready to get up and play should I do anything but type.

Thor's a rescue dog. All of our dogs are. He was a year old when we got him, and it took him about 15 minutes to fall utterly and completely in love with Karen and I. His former person gave him up because he stopped being a puppy. News flash, idiot former owner. That's what dogs do. Stop being puppies.

I hope Thor doesn't remember Former Idiot Owner. I bet he does. But he seems very happy here, and this is his home, forever.

Thor is the second GSD (German Shepherd Dog) I've had the pleasure of knowing. Maggie, bless her soul, was the first. She was twice Thor's size, and he's no dwarf. Honestly, Maggie was the size of a small horse. I'm not exaggerating. She frightened people from considerable distances, even though she was a gentle, kind giant.

And she loved me. As, perhaps, only a GSD can. Once upon a time -- I won't go into the details -- I found myself face to face with an angered redneck, of the gap-toothed and tattooed variety. The guy was puffed up and ready to fight.

Until Maggie, who never had a moment of formal training, squeezed her massive frame through a partially-opened pickup truck window and joined me, at my side.

Redneck lad went from furious to calm and submissive in a heartbeat.

Maggie never growled. She never bared her teeth. She never breathed hard. She sat, right by my side, but we all knew that if Redneck started trouble Maggie would be the one to end it.

I walked away unscathed. Maggie obeyed my 'girl, truck' command like she'd been trained by the Mossad.

Maggie is buried, along with seven others, here on the property. She died of sudden acute kidney failure. 

I think of her daily. As I do of the others. They were all amazing animals, all our friends. All rescues, all strays, all judged worthless by the wide, wide world.

Which just shows what the wide world knows.

You may have seen this pic before. It's a steampunk gun. Okay, truth time -- it's a Nerf gun I modified so that it appears to be a steampunk gun.

I like making things. It's relaxing. Throw some Pink Floyd on the stereo, grab the super glue, dump a bin of spare parts on the workbench, and get busy. It's therapy, people, for minds that don't respond well to any other kind of therapy.

It's a bit like the gun Markhat now carries. You know, the gun Evis and his pals created in the catacombs beneath Avalante. First they created gunpowder, which allowed them to create cannons. Then some bright tech thought 'You know what? Scaled down, a man could carry one of these!'

And thus the handcannon was born. Markhat first carried one in The Broken Bell. Haven't read it?

Then get thee here and grab a copy! Look, it's got magic. Gunplay. A film noir detective. Intrigue. Adventure. Love. Hate. Hope. Despair. 

It's five bucks. 

Give The Broken Bell a try!

That's my bike.

She's a Honda Rebel. 250 cc, so we're not talking hog here. She'll do an easy 85, though, so she's no scooter.

Karen has a similar bike a Suzuki GZ250. Both get around 68 MPG. We ride them to work when the weather is nice, and kick around in the country on the weekends. 

I'd never ridden a motorcycle before buying the Honda. I laid her down the very first day, when I learned the hard way that making a turn into gravel at speed is a good way to test your protective motorcycle gear. I walked away without a scratch; the Rebel has a tiny ding in her gas tank, and since I've learned to ride a bike.

The first thing a motorcycle teaches you is speed. More precisely, the significance thereof. 

You're in a car. You're doing 65. You're bored, you're listening to the radio, you're thinking about work and a thousand other things.

Get on a bike. Do 65.

Oh, boys and girls. You suddenly understand, down to your bones, that this speed can and will kill you.

There's no illusion of safety. There's no deceiving simulation of your comfy couch in your living room.

The wind is screaming past your helmet. It's grabbing at your jacket. It's pelting you with bugs and debris, the tiniest of which sting like bullets.

The bike is roaring and shaking. Every miniscule bump in the road causes you to jump and lurch. The seat slams your butt with every rise, every dip.

The cars you barely glance at, when you're one of them, are each driven by Death himself. Because -- and this is true, gentle readers -- NONE OF THEM SEE YOU. 

They don't. I don't know why. I see motorcyclists, when I am driving my car. I recognize them as vehicles, and act accordingly.

And if you do too, I salute you.

But most don't. They go right on texting, go right on changing their radio stations while they pull out four meters in front of you, or merge right into your lane.

Just to survive, motorcycle drivers have to be twice as good as car drivers. Three times as good. Four times faster.  

That's why you'll see bike drivers waving at each other, when we meet on the road. 

We share a common fear -- that of the old lady in the Cutlass Supreme, who will turn in front of us and tell the Highway Patrol she never saw that awful motorcycle, it just came out of nowhere.

Here's me at my last book signing.

Hold the Dark is old news. I've written and sold and published two more books since then (The Banshee's Walk and The Broken Bell). But I like that photo, since it proves I still have hair.

And now, for an audio segment!

Click here for a new segment of Out on the Patio!

Hope you enjoyed the audio segment. I promise that's the last installment of 'Big Dogs Howling.' 

My friend Elsye Salpeter, author of Flying to the Light, just sold the sequel to Cool Well Press. So congratulations, Elyse! Well done!

See you next week!

And the beat goes on . . .

Some afternoons you write.

Some afternoons you take old barn lumber and make wearable skull masks, complete with display stand.

No wonder people worry about my mental state.

Normally, when I build things, I spend a lot of time making scale drawings and building it in my head to make sure all the pieces will fit before I make any cuts.I measure and mark all my lumber carefully, and check everything twice before the first sawdust flies. On this piece, I just went nuts with a jigsaw. No measurements, no straightedges, no squares. I just laughed maniacally and cut.

Surprisingly, the pieces fit together. You can't see them in these photos, but I even made my own square-head nails.

Total construction time: less than three hours, including the stand. Cost: zero dollars.

I'm not done with it yet. The wood needs some aging. And a bit if subtle finishing, to get the look I'm after.

What does one do with a life-sized but anatomically inaccurate rendition of a human skull, you ask?

Wearing it to work is out. Ditto for trips to Kroger or the bookstore.

So I'll probably put this up on eBay in a week or two as 'folk art.' If it doesn't sell there, my truck needs a dash ornament, and just by adding a stiff spring I can have the world's largest folk art skull bobblehead!

If nothing else, it served to let me build something, no matter how ridiculous, which I need to do from time to time.

Maybe now I can get back to writing!

Markhat News!

And so a great hush fell over the land. Everywhere, creatures fell silent and still. Squirrels halted in mid-scamper. Wolves paused in their howling. Woodchucks stopped doing whatever it is that woodchucks do.

For there it was. The email that would determine the fate of the Markhat series, in the inbox that held the email that would determine the fate of the Markhat series (repetition emphasizes content).

The woodchucks grew restless, eager to resume their tireless efforts at establishing a stable fusion reaction (they're a lot smarter than they look, people). The wolves gave me the stink eye, fearful that Sarah Palin might be sighting in on them from a Stealth helicopter. The squirrels complained bitterly, because re-establishing a sustained scamper isn't nearly as easy as it looks.

So I opened the email, and . . .

. . . and . . .

BROWN RIVER QUEEN, the new Markhat novel, has been accepted!


Yes, that's right, the 7th Markhat title will be making its way to a bookstore near you soon.  This is another full-blown novel, not a novella or a collection of short stories. The old gang is back, with a new face or two as well.

At the moment, it looks like we're heading for a March 2013 release date. I will of course keep you posted here.

Thanks for all the support! Now let's all go hug an Ogre in celebration!

Belfast: Both Barrels

According to the latest news out of the sewage-encrusted wasteland that is Northern Ireland, the Belfast City Council put dog Lennox down after holding him hostage for two years of sham court hearings and clumsy lies.

Here's a quote from the official TheLennoxCampaign page --

Official Statement From Lennox's Family:

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all again for your messages of support. We are sorry to say at the present time Belfast city council seem to be intent on killing our boy. Despite previous assurances otherwise, we have been denied the opportunity to say goodbye. We have also been told that we cannot collect his body and bring Len home. We have been informed however that we will receive "some" ashes in the mail.


Keep in mind that poor Lennox was a service dog to a special needs little girl. Keep in mind the Belfast City Council (spelled 'Baby-stomping Nazi bastards') dragged this whole wretched mess out for two years, while they kept Lennox in a despicable little wire cage surrounded by his own feces (and yes, there are photos).


In the end, the Belfast City Council wouldn't even let the Barnes family say goodbye. 


I suppose the Belfast City Council's offhand promise to mail 'some' of Lennox's ashes to his grieving family counts as rare fine charity in merry old Belfast. I imagine each member of the Belfast City Council (I want to make sure Google remembers what the Council is destined to be most famous for, thus the repetition of the words Belfast City Council) was teary-eyed and filled with pride when they magnanimously offered to mail the innocent dog's remains to the grieving little girl.


I suspect they'll send the envelope postage due.


Send it postage due, and then levy charges against the Barnes family for 'storing illegal dog-breed ashes' or something equally inane.  This is, after all, the Belfast City Council we're talking about. 


Because that's the kind of cruel, sadistic, unfeeling, vindictive, unreasoning, cold-hearted, psychopathic, puppy-murdering, bloodthirsty, evil-minded, rotten, despicable, worthless, cowardly, vicious execrable foul vile depraved repugnant malodorous inhumane barbarous stinking hateful reprobate maleficent bags of crap that make up the Belfast City Council.

I'm not even doing them justice in the paragraph above. They snatched some kid's dog after showing up at the wrong address, they decided Lennox was a pit bull when his Belfast-issued license and a DNA test clearly showed he was a perfectly legal 7 year old bulldog/lab mix, and then they kept the poor dog in a cage until they murdered him, two years later, with an offhand note saying 'Nope, no goodbyes, we'll mail you some ashes, are we good now?'


How do you even convey the depth of such blatantly cruel behavior?


I suspect that Lennox either died in his deplorable confinement or was put down months ago. I suspect the Belfast City Council was afraid to reveal this, after the media firestorm surrounding Lennox became apparent to even their dim, ratlike little minds.


Internationally-renowned dog trainer Victoria Stilwell recently traveled to Belfast with an offer to take Lennox away to the US at no expense whatsoever to the Belfast City Council.


The Belfast City Council refused to even speak with Victoria Stilwell. Consider that for a moment -- fat-headed career politicians refused to cavort in front of cameras. With a celebrity. Does anyone else find that strange?


I suspect they refused for two reasons -- first, not one of the Belfast City Council members is capable of completing a sentence without lapsing into a violent alcoholic rage. And second, because they knew Lennox was already gone. Lennox's ill-treatment was apparent in the few photographs leaked from his pathetic quarters. I believe Lennox died through abuse and/or neglect, and that's why the Belfast City Council refused to meet with Miss Stilwell or let the Barnes family say goodbye. 


They'd already killed the dog.


Which makes them liars as well as heartless villains.


It's too late to help Lennox. Unless the legacy of his horrific mistreatment at the hands of the Belfast City Council, the ignoramus judges, and the truly incompetent 'dog experts' that made up the whole wretched tale causes some change in the dark heart of Belfast, Lennox will have died (badly) for nothing.


So, by all means, put Belfast at the top of your holiday destination list! Belfast, famous for its exports of boils and goiters, where the authorities are so friendly they'll quite possibly mail you the remains of your pets a couple of years after they murder them. 


Belfast, city of delights, if by delights you mean bloodthirsty dog wardens and a City Council bent on casual slaughter of all dogs, whether they are a prohibited breed or not. 


Belfast, where pride trumps reason, where compassion is something that happens elsewhere, where they'll mail you the ashes of the one you loved.


Belfast City Council, you people are rotten to the core.