Things That Go Bump #3

Welcome to this, my third installment of the Things That Go Bump series!

For today's blog, I visited two cemeteries. I took my camera, my Zoom H1, and the new Velleman Super Ear.

I paid a visit to Oxford's own literary superstar, novelist William Faulkner. His grave is pictured above; note my mics on his markers, and the airline bottle of Jack Daniels left as a gift by one of his many admirers. 

Sulking perhaps at the small volume of whiskey contained in the bottle, The Faulkners were silent during this session.

But they were the only residents being quiet. During my ten minute stay there, I recorded a dozen snippets of voices, screams, yells, thuds, bangs, howls, and, quite possibly, an entire operatic performance of 'Fiddler on the Roof.'

Hey, I don't write private eye fiction without having learned a thing or two. I rendered myself in film noir black and white. pushed my fedora down at a jaunty angle, and I walked the mean streets of Oxford until I discovered the source of these hellish vocalizations.

A bunch of kids were beating the ever-loving crap out of each other with those flexible foam pool noodle things not a block from the gravesite.

So I've tossed out the entire Faulkner EVP session. A choir of poltergeists could have covered Led Zepplin's second album two feet from my microphones, and they'd still have been drowned out by little Sally's furious pummeling of that awful Randall kid from two houses down.

But fear not, gentle readers, because I have something amazing to offer despite this.

My next visit, to the Civil War cemetery on the University of Mississippi campus, was anything but mundane.

The University of Mississippi Civil War Cemetery

Tucked away on the edge of campus, the Confederate Soldiers Cemetery occupies a small hill and is bordered by a waist-high brick wall.

You can read the official description on the marker.

What the marker doesn't mention is a bit of campus lore the campus had no doubt rather forget.

According to the story, the University decided to spruce up the graveyard sometime back in the 1950s. A truck was dispatched, and workers were instructed to carefully load the grave markers onto the truck, so that they could be taken away to be cleaned.

A nice gesture. The work was completed. The freshly cleaned markers were loaded back onto the truck, and the truck returned to the cemetery, and it was only then that the awful truth became apparent.

No map or plan of the location of the graves had been prepared. There was no way to tell which markers went where.

I can only assume that the single mass marker which now stands at the top of the lonely hill was quickly erected, probably in the dead of night. 

Nevertheless, I entered the graveyard, armed with my recorders and cameras.

 I was there for approximately 17 minutes.

During my stay, I captured two strange audio instances, and one photographic one.

Let's begin with the photo.

I take a lot of photos during an EVP session. Hundreds of them. It's a digital camera, why not? And most of the images -- the vast majority of them -- are just pictures. Nothing unusual at all about them.

But take a look at the image below.

Dead center is an odd purple aberration that didn't show before or after. 

Lens flare? Not so sure. If there was anything brightly reflective in the foreground, I'd attribute the haze to that. But there isn't.

Aside from the central marker itself, that is. I don't see anything bright on it. And doesn't the general outline of the blur suggest an oblong figure in front of the camera? Man-shaped, sort of, in a gauzy, insubstantial, Hollywood spectre sort of way?

I'm not calling this a ghost. I'm not calling it anything. It's just odd. 

I mentioned two pieces of audio.

At about 16 minutes and 45 seconds into the main session, as captured by the Zoom, I thought I had a voice.

I really did. I'm walking, you see. I say 'I'm halfway to the gate,' as I exhort anyone who wishes to speak to do so, before I leave. A few seconds pass. I reach the gate, and say 'All right.'

My Zoom seemed to capture a single word in that brief silence.

In preparing it for presentation to the blog, I removed some of the noise. I isolated the sound. Amplified it. Looped it.

Thankfully, I also identified it.

No ghost here.

I have new sneakers, you see. Sketchers. They have these annoying little suction cups on the soles. When I walk on a tile floor, I sound like an octopus engaged in frenzied tap dancing.

But of course the cemetery is simply mowed ground. My shoes were silent on that -- until I stepped on one of the half-hidden flagstones that make up the path from the gate to the central marker.

SQUNK.

And that's the sound I captured. I won't post it.

But what I will post is nothing short of amazing.

The Ghost On the Wall

At about 5 minutes and 30 seconds, my Velleman was resting on the wall that surrounds the cemetery. So was my Zoom.

So was I.

Let me preface this by saying I was absolutely alone. No one was in sight. I heard nothing at the time of the recording. No car was driving past. No kids were engaged in gleeful assault with battery.

I was alone.

Or was I?

As I rested in the shade, I remarked that the cemetery was 'very peaceful.' There is a silence. I then comment that the cemetery is probably the only speck of real estate safe from development, because of the bodies.

I even took this picture.

What the Velleman captured in the space of my comments came as quite a shock to me.

I looped the voice for clarity. What it says seems obvious to me. But you be the judge.

You don't even need headphones for this one.

Again, let me make it plain that I was alone. No women were present. No one was.

So what did I capture?

Was it wind noise, combined with pareidolia? I don't think so. The character of the voice doesn't sound like anything else in the entire recording.

A stray voice?

If so, why didn't the Zoom capture it? I checked the same time, listened to the space between the same comments. 

Look at the picture. They're maybe nine inches apart. One caught a female voice. The other caught nothing.

And why didn't I hear it, if it was merely a voice?

Explanations? I have none. Voices don't simply emerge from thin air, except when they do. 

I suspect -- and I'm only thinking out loud here, folks -- that so-called EVPs originate from very small spaces located close to the recording microphone. I mean small. Microscopic, even.

I can think of no other set of circumstances that would explain why two recorders in close proximity might result in a recording by one device and failure to record by the other. 

This point-source supposition might also explain why I never hear the sounds my devices capture.

It doesn't explain the nature of the sounds, of course, but there wasn't enough booze in Faulkner's bottle to even begin to tackle that question.

So did I manage to record some invisible entity saying the words 'a ghost?'

I don't know. I have the recording. That's really all I can state for sure -- that my device captured these sounds.

I hate to leave you with more questions that answers, but for now, I have no choice.

A Gift For You

Finally, gentle readers, I leave you with a spooky gift, suitable for hanging on your walls.

I enjoy art. I have a twisted sense of humor. 

Some of the things hanging on my walls are not quite what they seem, at first glance.

This diploma is an example. Ever wanted to be a certified Evil Overlord, with the papers to prove it? 

Well, download the form above and fill in your name and your desired degree. Hang it on your office wall. See how long it takes anyone to notice.

Yeah, I made this. All the Latin translates to 'Evil is Better,' 'No Mercy,'  and 'No Fear.' My degree is in Applied Hostile Geometries. The images are pulled from public domain woodcuts.

If you want me to add your name and degree in fancy text, email me and let me know. Looks pretty good, even in a cheap Walmart frame. Show those fancy-pants ingrates at work what a REAL degree looks like!

Things to Come

Next week, I add wind screens to the Velleman, and plan a daring twilight EVP expedition!

So stay tuned, and stay safe!

NOTE:

Links to the full Civil War EVP sessions are below, in case you are eager to torture your ears with my accent and running commentary.

Things That Go Bump #2

Broken face, Tula cemetery.

In this second October installment of my Things That Go Bump series,  we're going to focus on EVPs.

EVP is an acronym for Electronic Voice Phenomena. I'm sure you're familiar with EVPs -- every ghost hunting show and quite a few movies feature them now, usually billed as 'voices of the dead.'

I'm not suggesting such a thing. I have no idea what agency is behind the voices. In fact, when I first heard of EVPs several years ago, I laughed at the whole concept.

I laughed so much, in fact, I got a mic of my own, and I took it to a graveyard, and I walked around talking and listening. My intention was to fail to record anything, and then mock the very notion of EVPs on my blog.

But things didn't happen as I planned. I actually caught an EVP my first time out. I've recorded a number of them since.

So while I don't claim to know by what means these voices wind up on recordings, I do know the phenomena is real.

And, oddly enough, it happens to me most often in cemeteries. I can set up my mics in the backyard or the warehouse or anywhere else, and get nothing.

But head into a boneyard, and out come the voices.

Which brings us to today.

Yesterday, October the 10th, I ventured back to the tiny cemetery in equally tiny Tula, Mississippi. Is this cemetery haunted?

Nope. Haven't heard a single story.

Did I go in the dead of night?

Not just 'no' but heck no. I don't avoid rural graveyards after dark out of some fear of ghosts. I doubt they'd hurt you, even if they do exist.

But copperhead rattlesnakes certainly do, and will. Ditto for wild hogs and drunk teenagers and I can think of no better way to get off to a bad start with local law enforcement than for someone to call the sheriff on me in a cemetery in the middle of the night.

So I do day investigations. And yesterday's was certainly fruitful.

In addition to my trusty Zoom H1 field microphone, I employed a device I built that same Saturday morning. It's a Velleman Super Ear mic, which provides about 50 times the normal amplification and a stereo pickup.

After the EVPs, I'll go into the Super Ear build, but let's get right to the spooky stuff.

Manning -- or, I suppose, woman-ing -- the Velleman was Karen, accompanied by Executive Investigator dog Max.

They headed back into the old, overgrown part of the cemetery, while I took the Zoom and went in the opposite direction, to eliminate crosstalk.

About nine minutes in to the session, Karen thinks she hears a faint voice or voices. She's heard this before there, a sort of chant, and she comments upon it.

The mic picks up nothing then. But soon after that, it captured what sounds like a single word. I can't make it out. Maybe you can. The EVP is below, in the form of a YouTube video.

Here's the same word, with noise reduction in place.

That's a single word. Strange, but not really spooky.

What follows is probably the spookiest EVP we've ever recorded. It's nothing but whispering. This was about 4 and a half minutes into the full session.  She's just walking with Max, hasn't said anything in a few moments, when out of nowhere came this:

The next clip is from about 10 minutes and 30 seconds in. Karen hears something odd, and says 'Not sure of the recorder picked that up, but it was a very weird sound.' 30 seconds later, this was captured. A single word, maybe 'what?'

Finally, we have this. You may need headphones for this one, it's extremely faint. Around the 14 minute mark, Karen notes many of the graves lack markers, and comments that 'gone but not forgotten' sadly doesn't apply to those poor souls. About 5 seconds after she speaks, there is a faint murmuring -- but again, you may need headphones for this one.

Now let's switch to the things the Zoom H1 caught. It won't take long, because there are only two. 

The first is a single word. I laid the mic down on a sandstone marker, stepped back, and asked if anyone had anything to say. I then snapped the following picture.

It's a child's grave, from around 1850. I heard nothing, and after a moment I moved on.

But here's what the mic captured:

What word is that?

No idea. I can only say I didn't hear it while I was standing there.

Finally, I give you this. It too is faint, and headphones are recommended. I took a photo of another child's grave, commented that the poor little guy only lived a year, and walked away. This is what the mic caught (again, very faint).

With phones, it sounds as if someone near the recording device recently dined at Taco Bell. I can assure you the source of the mysterious raspberry was not me, and I don't think it was Max, either. 

What were these sounds? Why were they captured on recording devices, but not heard by the persons operating the devices? Why (in my experience at least) are they only captured in cemeteries?

Heck if I know. 

THE VELLEMAN SUPER EAR

Second only to screwing around on Facebook, building gadgets is my favored way to avoid real work (i.e., writing). So I build a lot of things, and most of today's EVPs were captured by my newest DIY gadget, the Velleman Super Ear mic.

The astute observer may notice the tell-tales signs of duct tape and Velcro. Why?

Because I'm a fantasy author whose name, when spoken, is almost always followed by the word 'Who?' 

So you do the best you can with what you have.

The heart of the Super Ear is a simple mic-and-amp circuit, available anywhere for less than ten bucks. It comes unassembled, so you'll have to do your own soldering and cutting.

What you get is a stereo mic with a built-in IC amplifier. The gain is set to about 50, which makes it extremely sensitive. The output jack can feed a pair of headphones or, in my case, a simple digital recorder.

Let's start with the kit, which looks like this:

You will need a soldering iron, and you'll need to know how to use it. The parts are tiny and the circuit board to which they must be soldered contains delicate copper tracings that are easy to short out.

I have a big magnifying glass on a flexible arm over my work bench. Otherwise I couldn't see anything.

So you follow the instructions, put resistors and capacitors and potentiometers and all the rest as indicated. 

Then you solder and trim the ends. 

After an hour or so of work, you have this!

It needed a case of some sort. I didn't have a box to fit, but I did have an old cordless soldering iron, duct tape, a broken camera mini-tripod, and some Velcro. I opted to use my Olympus digital audio recorder as the output, and viola, the Super Ear was born!

That's the device that recorded most of the EVPs above. Ten bucks, some batteries, a few junk odds and ends.

Mad science can be fun!

WRITING NEWS

Good news, folks! The new Markhat book is all but done. I mean 95%, and it's a good one, too.

I'll probably be posting IT IS FINISHED in next Sunday's blog.

I hope you enjoyed this foray into the unknown! 

See you next week!

Things That Go Bump #1

It's October, my favorite month.  Because October is the only month that culminates in Halloween. And Halloween is the only holiday that celebrates the spooky, the scary, and the mysterious!

In keeping with the spirit of the season, each blog entry this month we'll dig up a little cemetery soil to expose something buried in the shallow grave of rationality.

What better place to start digging, than beneath the headstone marked 'ghosts?'

Ghost stories are told within nearly all human cultures, and have been told throughout all the history we've been able to cobble together. Some ghosts are vengeful, some are sad, some are able to see the future, or dabble in the affairs of the living.

According to the stories, that is. Science has yet to recognize anything even remotely resembling proof that dead people go on as bodiless spirits.

But, for the purpose of discussion, let's say ghosts exist. It's October. Take the plunge. Ghosts are real. Fine.

What the heck are they?

You'll get a lot of replies to this question. Ghosts are spirits, of course. Beings composed of pure energy. Ghosts are the embodiment of our immortal souls. Ghosts are ectoplasmic remnants of our consciousness.

Today I'd like to suggest a different, lesser known theory for  the actual mechanism behind most so-called 'hauntings.'

What if the ghosts are, in fact, us?

More specifically, what if ghosts are the actualized, mobile results of our own imaginations?

I speaking about tulpas. A tulpa is said to be an entity created by the act of willful concentration and meditation of one or more people. If the people are determined and devoted to the process, believers (and this is an ancient belief) claim a tulpa can do all the things we attribute to ghosts, and more.

Case in point: the so-called Philip Experiments, conducted by a group of Canadian psychical researchers in the 1970s.

You can read about the sessions here or here. Or I'll summarize things for you. A group of researchers decided they would create a ghost. They named him Philip and gave him a detailed but entirely fictional history. They drew sketches of his likeness.

They got together and talked about Philip and thought about Philip and generally focused on Philip, even though everyone in the group was quite well aware there was not, nor had there ever been, any such person.

That's important. Because they weren't trying to contact the spirit of a deceased person.

Instead, the experiment was designed to test a theory that stated the expectation of psychic phenomena -- in this case, ghostly appearances -- was enough to actually trigger the phenomena.

Once Philip was well-known to the group, they began to engage in the methods employed by spiritualists and mediums of the last century. They sat in darkened rooms and urged 'Philip' to come forth.

If you believe the group and witnesses to the occurrences, Philip soon began to appear, even though he was imaginary.

The group reported knocks and movements and all the usual phenomena associated with seance-style apparitions.

There's even a video of a Philip session, captured by a Canadian TV show. The video shows table-tipping -- but you can see it for yourself, I've pasted it below. LATE NOTE: The video is replay-restricted, which means it won't open in the window on this page. Instead, click on the words CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS ON YOUTUBE and it will take you there and you can watch. Sorry, that's the way they posted it.

The video is either proof of the power of simple imagination, or a run-of-the-mill table tipping hoax.

Look, making a table tip via trickery is easy. Making it float isn't much more difficult. We've all seen stage magicians do far more impressive feats, and no one is suggesting anything paranormal was involved.

But what if 'Philip' was the actual agency behind the movement in that video?

Well, that means the physical world is subject to the influence of directed mental effort.

It might also mean that many of what we call 'ghosts' and 'hauntings' are nothing more than mental residue, set free to wander.

Is that really so far-fetched?  Take any location with a reputation for being haunted. People talk about what they've seen and heard. They speculate. They spend a lot of time wondering if they are alone. they jump at shadows and they tell their friends and pretty soon the whole place is awash in the very same kind of spooky energy used to raise up Philip, the imaginary ghost.

Which would make Philip a tulpa. And if my assertion is true, it would mean we are surrounded by tulpas, who make stairs creak and pop out of doorways and push glasses off of counters because that's just what we expect them to do.

Do I believe this?

Yes. No. Maybe. But it's fun to think about.

There is a downside to this school of thought, though. Let's say you are afraid of monsters in your closet, or under the bed.

If that's true, every time you think about them, they get a little closer to solidifying. A tiny step nearer to the door that opens into our reality.

But I'm sure that's all nonsense.

Sleep tight, my fiends.

What was that noise?

Ask Bender!

In case you don't recognize him, that's Bender, the chain-smoking felonious robot from the brilliant animated series 'Futurama.'

What is a 52-year-old man doing with a Bender (in)action figure?

Bender often acts my writing muse. See, this is no ordinary Bender figure. He talks.

And, being Bender, he gets right to the point.

For instance, when today when I sat down to write, I was feeling tired and overwhelmed and frankly all I really wanted to do was fire up The Witcher and take on a side quest or two.

Instead, I asked Bender for advice, and he imparted the following words of patient wisdom:

It's a short video, but one replete with ancient wisdom.

It's also the perfect advice for me today -- shut up and get busy.

Thanks, Bender!

OTHER NEWS

The Markhat Files now has its own Facebook page!

Head on over and ask Markhat, Mama Hog, or Darla a question. I'll also be posting new about the new book's progress there.

Here's the link:

https://www.facebook.com/themarkhatfiles

I've also updated the Paths of Shadow Facebook page. The link to that is below.

https://www.facebook.com/allthepathsofshadow

Stop by and say hello!

Bender is glaring at me. Time to get back to work. Take care all!

  

A Journey Nearly Complete

© Pintxoman | Dreamstime.com - Locomotive Photo

After many a false start, back-track, re-write, change of course, vow to give up writing forever, hasty return to writing, and severe headache, the new Markhat book is nearing completion!

I won't lie to you, gentle readers. 

2015 has been one of the hardest years of writing I've faced. 

By this time last year, I'd written and sold two complete novels. 

Now I'm just hoping to wrap this one up and get the new Mug and Meralda started before Halloween.

Why is that?

As with most wounds in this business, they've been self-inflicted. I think my biggest mistake was my blind determination to churn out a couple of thousand words a day. Yeah, okay, I did that -- but they weren't often the right words.

Which resulted in moments of gut-wrenching horror when I'd re-read things and realize the last 70 pages or so were, to be blunt, crap.

Badly-written? No, not necessarily. But even a bad story, told with eloquence and passion, is still a bad story.

Crap, in other words.

So I'd identify the spot there the narrative went off the rails, and I'd delete everything after that, and I'd start over.

I lost count of the number of times I did that with Way Out West. 

The only thing worse than gutting a book and going nearly back to page one, chapter one is NOT gutting the book and starting over. I am happy to say that, even though I was sorely tempted, I didn't shy away from taking a big sharp ax to my pile of words.

Not necessarily because I'm committed to my Art or any such lofty nonsense. No, I know my editors and my publisher and my readers, and they wouldn't be fooled for a moment by second-rate storytelling.

So, the good news -- the new Markhat book (Way Out West) is one I am truly proud of. I've done some new things, taken some risks. I think you'll see Markhat and Darla and their friends do some interesting and unexpected things, take off in directions no one saw coming. At least I hope so.

I am less than 20 thousand words from typing out the blessed phrase THE END. Now that I've gotten my head right and I'm working steadily, that won't take long at all.

How did I get my head right?

Back to basics. Fun, in other words -- forget strict adherence to some rigid outline. Forget walking the characters through intricate character and plot arcs that look good on paper but come off dry and rehearsed in the actual book. I think people read the Markhat books because Markhat makes them laugh, because he's a hero they want to cheer on, because he and Darla are a fun couple. 

So that's what I went back to. Sure, there's character development and arcs and subplots -- but there are also moments when Markhat spits right in Evil's eye with a wisecrack and a sneaky kick at its groin, while Darla prepares to shoot it right in its big red eyes.

So while I may not finish two full novels this year, I'll at least have written one good one and have a healthy start on a brand new Mug and Meralda that I hope is a worthy successor to that series. 

And maybe I learned something, too. Writing isn't typing. Word counts are important, yes, but 500 good words are preferable to 1500 mediocre ones all day every day.

When There Is No More Room in Central Casting, The Dead Will Be On At Eight

Zombies.

Undead Proctologist, coming this fall to TNT!

They're everywhere, if by everywhere you mean movies and TV. And books. And graphic novels.

Zombies have shambled, crawled, and stumbled their way right into Western social consciousness, which has resulted in a spate of scholarly papers penned by bewildered sociologists trying to explain the popularity of walking corpses.

I can solve that mystery right here -- zombies are cheap for studios to create and easy for authors to write. Some latex, some make-up, ragged clothes and a limp -- presto, you're a zombie extra!

Writing zombies is even easier. Here's an example of nuanced zombie dialog:

"Urg," said the zombie. "Urg," replied the zombie horde.

You can put that on a keyboard macro and skip even typing out the whole word.

I'm kidding, of course. I've read some truly excellent zombie books -- World War Z by Max Brooks foremost among them. The book, not the movie, which should really have been titled World War Z The Movie Which Doesn't Make Any Effort Whatsoever to Even Hint at the Contents of the Book We Just Used the Title Ha Ha Ha.

I've read some pretty bad zombie books, too. Reading zombie books is how I spin my mind down and try to relax after working on my own books. Every now and then I'll just buy a slew of zombie ebooks and plow right in.

More than half of them are awful. The kind of awful that generates a stench you can almost smell rising from the display of your ereader. I try to keep going, no matter how bad things are, for at least a quarter of the book. Sometimes I can't even make that.

It appears a formula of sorts is being circulated among certain zombie authors.

HOW TO WRITE A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE THRILLER

1) Introduce Intrepid Hero, who is surrounded by a vast collection of firearms. Introduce each and every weapon, being careful to include Rates of Fire, Muzzle Velocity, and Favored Ammunition, you big sissy.

2) Add four to seven Secondary Characters. Sure, give them names, although descriptions such as 'Dies Screaming After Failing to Clean His Weapon' and 'Clueless Office Work Devoured Alive in Chapter 2' would probably work about as well.

3) Rescue the Love Interest without neglecting to maintain a count of rounds expended and providing graphic descriptions of exploding zombie craniums. Bonus points for spontaneous sex scene in gore-covered gun store.

4) Point Hero, Love Interest, and Band of Expendables toward some distant goal ("If we can make it to Disney's Epcot Center we can hide in that big dome thing!")

5) You need dramatic tension! Cue the Mindless Shambling Hordes. Pare down the Band of Expendables. Remember to include one coward who is bitten but conceals the injury until they turn and interrupt another sex scene in a gore-splattered gun shop.

6) Stop when the Hero and Love Interest, the only survivors of the journey, are thirty miles from Epcot. Because it's sequel time, baby!

I shouldn't laugh too hard. You see, once upon a time, long ago, I wrote my own zombie apocalypse thriller.

My hero was the owner of a gourmet foods grocery store which hadn't had its grand opening when the world falls apart. Marvin rides out the initial rising by locking himself in his half-stocked store. He isn't looted because his signage wasn't up yet and the windows were still covered, so he dines on expensive German sausages and a collection of middling good wines for three weeks.

No roaming the wastes with a steely glare and his trusty Mossberg G-17 tactical automatic shotgun with nuclear flash suppressor and custom 900 round magazine for my guy Marvin. Nope. In his defense, he does bravely manage to pair an inferior Cabernet with a suspect platter of imported Beluga caviar and live to tell the tale.

Marvin isn't alone, though. He lets an injured clerk from another store inside before anyone knew what being bitten means. When the clerk expires, Marvin locks the body in the store's office, and when the teenager reanimates, our hero keeps him there. Marvin even throws food into the office from time to time, and he talks to the zombie out of boredom. After weeks of that, the zombie starts throwing bits of food back to Marvin, and when the zombie does finally escape from the office, he dutifully goes about trying to stock the shelves, showing no interest in biting anyone.

Ultimately, Marvin and domesticated zombie 'Dude' set out across the wasteland -- but only after a fire destroys the strip mall.

Marvin and Dude. Part buddy movie, part road comedy, part apocalypse novel.

It really wasn't all that bad, looking back.

Maybe one day I'll open up a new Word file and start all over with it. I'll need a catchy title, something with the word 'dead' in it -- CLEAN-UP ON AISLE DEAD, maybe. Or DUDE OF THE DEAD. Perhaps even THE CHRONICLES OF MARVIN, BOOK 1: THE ROAD TO NEWARK.

I smell a TV tie-in!

So Long, and Thanks for All The Hits

This may well be the very last entry in this blog.

No, I'm not going to stop blogging, but my log will be moving from Blogger (which has been a great platform) to an integrated blog on my new webpage.

The webpage will also be new.  Designed and executed by the good folks at ADsmith Marketing and Advertising, it will still be found at www.franktuttle.com, and you'll still be able to reach me via email at my usual franktuttle at franktuttle dot com email address.

What you won't need to do anymore is gaze upon my own amateurish efforts at web design.

I'm going to keep this Blogger blog up, as an archive of my previous work. When the new website goes live, all my "New blog entry is up" messages will send you to the new place. So will clicking on 'blog' at the new website. You won't need to do anything to get to the new place.

So stay tuned for big changes here in my electronic house!

For Us Readers

If you're looking for something new to read, and who isn't, there's a new book review site on Facebook worth checking out. Bear Mountain Books invites you to like their FB review site, which your clicky little fingers can locate by clicking on the Bearmountainbooks FB page here.

I trust Maria's judgment, and a good review site can save you a lot of time by picking through the slush to find the hidden gems. Check it out!

The Horror of Author Photos

Anybody who knows me will agree -- I have the perfect face for writing. 

My body is the perfect author's body. Shaped by many years of overindulgence and hunching over a keyboard, I am at once as smoothly aerodynamic as any perfect pear and metabolically well-suited to long periods of complete inactivity. 

Which are both useful qualities when swimming for the pool bar for a third whiskey sour or writing books, but the resulting physique doesn't make for a very good author photograph. New website, new pics, so I really need a good photo, but -- this is hard.

First of all, as soon as I am required to smile, I forget how. Yeah, I know the ends of the lips go up and you show some teeth, but my conscious smile is more furious primate defending territory than friendly author saying hello. 

And then there is  what I believe is called 'resting bitch face.' My usual expression, I am told, is one of mild but growing annoyance. This doesn't reflect my inner being, since most of the time I am basically unconscious, but that's how am I usually perceived. That look doesn't work well with photos either.

Which leaves me with the middle ground, or the 'simulated friendly grin.' Lift the corners of the mouth, yes, but keep your teeth out of sight since we're not really trying to frighten off a troop of rival gibbons.

This look comes off as demented and possibly also caught in the act of hiding a body. Honestly, if I came across someone with that face, I'd not turn my back to them. Ever.

Hiring a model would of course be both unethical and possibly fatal to the model's career, so that's right out.

Digital enhancement? Sure, but there's only so much you can do with that. Jabba the Hut isn't going to pass for George Clooney no matter how many filters you apply. 

I think my only hope is to wear a large hat and hope viewers scroll past really fast.

So expect big changes coming soon. Thanks for sticking with me!

Guest Spotlight: Cecilia Dominic

If love is the ivy, secrets are the poison. Aether Psychics, Book 1

Nothing is more fun than a new book release.

Well, okay, very few legal things are as much fun as a new book release. Which is why I'm proud to announce that fellow Samhain author and MidSouthCon alumni, Cecelia Dominic, has a new book out on the 25th of this month (but you can pre-order now with a single quick click, hint hint).

The book is called Eros Element, and the cover is above.

I've have the privilege of reading the book, courtesy of the author. So when I tell you this is a damned good book, I'm not engaging in guesswork or hyperbole.

Before I start blabbering, here's the blurb for Eros Element:

After enduring heartbreak at the hands of a dishonest woman, Edward Bailey lives according to scientific principles of structure and predictability. Just the thought of stepping outside his strict routine raises his anxiety.

Adding to his discomfort is Iris McTavish, who appears at his school's faculty meeting in place of her world-famous archeologist father. Worse, the two of them are to pose as Grand Tourists while they search for an element that will help harness the power of aether. 

Iris jumps at the opportunity to prove her worth as a scholar-and avoid an unwanted marriage proposal-while hiding the truth of her father's whereabouts. If her secret gets out, the house of McTavish will fall into ruin. 

Quite unexpectedly, Edward and Iris discover a growing attraction as their journey takes them to Paris and Rome, where betrayal, blackmail and outright theft threaten to destroy what could be a revolutionary discovery--and break their hearts.

Yes. Steampunk, baby. Set in an 1870 that never was but should have been.

I loved this book. I swear I could hear steam hissing and gears clacking the whole time I read it. The 'aether' of the title was my favorite of Dominic's inventions. She obviously knows her discredited Victorian physics, and she brought them to life brilliantly in a laboratory demonstration early in the book.

PROTIP: Show Frank a copper sphere and then cool it to draw down a vacuum, and you've won him over instantly. 

In fact, her handling of the more fantastic elements of the book is a great strength. Without giving too much away, there's the aether, which is being sought as a power source. There are also some subtle and well-handled psychic talents, which I won't name, that also add flavor to the tale. But nothing is overdone, and there is a refreshing lack of deux ex machinas throughout.

Her version of 1870 is perfectly executed. She did one thing I haven't seen a lot of lately, in that she showed the downside to steam-powered society. Early in the book, the party's train makes a stop on the outskirts of London, and though brief, the scene is particularly illuminating -- the sickly poor, the railroad workers passing mirrors on poles beneath the train to detect the presence of Victorian spy-bots that might be crawling on the undercarriage, waiting to creep inside and spy on businessmen. It's deft touches like that which really transport the reader into the world of the book.

But I've read plenty of books with stunning technical settings that fell flat because I just didn't care about any of the characters.

Not so here.  Edward Bailey and Iris McTavish step right out of the book from Page One, big as life and lots of fun.

This isn't a love-at-first-sight book. Oh no. Not at first sight or second or even well up into the twenties. I loved the way she handled the romantic aspects of the book, because -- well, you read it, I can't say too much, save to say I was well entertained.

There are a lot of characters to love here. Again, no spoilers, but Iris's female traveling companion is also thoroughly entertaining.

I think there's something for everyone here. You've got intrigue, suspense, and a globe-trotting party of adventurers. You've got aether and airships, romance and derring-do.

Best of all, Miss Dominic can turn a phrase.

If you enjoy steampunk, you'll love this. Even if you've never read a steampunk adventure in your life, you'll love this.

Here's a list of links to get you started. Eros Element, which is Book 1 of a planned series, goes on sale the day the 25th, but now's a good time to grab a pre-order!

EROS ELEMENT Amazon link

EROS ELEMENT Barnes & Noble link

EROS ELEMENT Samhain Publishing link

Cecilia has quite a few titles for sale. Check out her Amazon author page here, She also maintains a great blog, which is here: Cecelia's Blog.

That's all for this week! I'm still working on the new Markhat, while Meralda and Mug tap their feet and tendrils, respectively, in impatience.

Take care, folks!

Dreams and What They Mean

For some reason, my various media feeds have been full of dream interpretation spam this last week. I'm sure you've seen the same thing, each with a title such as 'Ten Dreams and What They Mean,' or something similar.

I never bought into the one-size-fits-all concept when it comes to interpreting dreams. I don't think the landscape of any two brains matches closely enough to let someone say 'if you dream about X, then it means Y.'

That said, I do think writers have their very own subset of nightmares. In keeping with the internet tradition of making lists, here's my list:

Dreams Writers Have

1) The I'm Being Chased by That Unfinished 92-Page Novel Manuscript I Abandoned Years Ago Dream

2) The I'm Falling on the Amazon Sales Ranking Lists Dream

3) The I'm Naked at a Book Signing and People Actually Showed Up Dream

4) The I Just Submitted a Book Manuscript in Comic Sans Font Dream

5) The My Cover Art Was Done Entirely in Microsoft Paint Dream

6) The All My Reviews Compare My Book To 'Battlefield Earth' Dream

And, since we're talking about writers here, all the dreams listed can be interpreted thusly -- "I recently returned from the liquor store."

News From Behind Keyboard Ridge

I'm still chugging my way through Way Out West, the new Markhat book. I'm finally making good progress, after yet another deep delete and change of plot. 

I think it's going to be a great book, so just bear with me! I'm lying as fast as I can....

In the meantime, why not give The Darker Carnival a try, if you haven't already?