Progress Report

My part of the second round edits for All the Paths of Shadow is nearly done.  I'll be shipping it off in a day or two, much improved I hope.

I really like this book.  It's a complete departure from the Markhat series, but I think it has a charm all its own.  I hope readers agree, when it hits the stands later this year.

The target audience for All the Paths of Shadow is young adult, and believe me, that's a tough crowd.  I'll be competing with a wild variety of flashy electronics and social media for their attention.  I think I would have loved the book, as a kid, but then I was a pretty weird kid so my opinion is almost certainly worthless in this regard.

I tried to make my characters strong ones.  I think that's one aspect of the Harry Potter books that made the series such a commercial juggernaut.  Harry and Ron And Hermione are loyal and brave and true to each other.  Hermione is a wonderful female character, too -- she's smart, tough, and self-assured.  Contrast Hermione with Bella from Twilight, and I think you'll see what I mean.  Hermione will never let her self-worth be dependent on some dude, vampire or other.

I'm not directly comparing my book,  All the Paths of Shadow, to the Harry Potter series.  They are wildly different; mine has elements of steampunk, for instance, and my protagonist is 18 when the story begins.  I didn't set my book on Earth.  My magic is a lot more like electrical engineering.  Heck, at one point Meralda the heroine even does math as part of the magic.  She also invents the electric light shortly before the book begins.

So I guess I'm hoping geeks like me will flock to the book.  Ladies too.  I purposely put Meralda down in the middle of a grumpy, bearded Old Boy's Club setting so she could set out to prove she was as smart as any of them.

But I should shut up about Paths of Shadow now.  Readers will vote with their wallets when it's released, and no amount of blathering on my part will affect that event in the least.

In other news, my persistent post-pneumonia cough is nearly gone.  I can breathe again without sounding like a mortally wounded bagpipe.  I feel ready to take up the chainsaw again, and start whittling away at the storm debris still lingering in the back yard.  Maybe this weekend.

One final note -- if anyone out there is on Google+ and feels like adding me, I'd be very grateful.  I need to keep up with the latest things you crazy kids are doing on there here Interwebs.

So email me!  franktuttle@franktuttle.com

Thanks!

Passing the Narrows

People seemed to enjoy The Powerful Bad Luck of DD Dupree (posted a link to the story a few blogs ago -- if you missed that one, click here to read the whole story, for free) so I'm going to post the first part of another Haunted South story in today's blog.

This one is called Passing the Narrows.  It was first published by Weird Tales in the spring of 2000, where it was later voted favorite in the issue.  It's one of my favorites too, because it's the closest thing I've ever written to a straight horror story.

Landing a sale to Weird Tales was a milestone for me.  That was no easy market.  Big names made regular appearances in those pages, Stephen King among them.  

I think I'd submitted one other piece to Weird Tales before putting Passing the Narrows in the mail.  That piece was The Mister Trophy, which they liked, but wouldn't run because it was too long.  I went on to sell The Mister Trophy twice, once to Adventures of Sword and Sorcery, and then again to Samhain Publishing as part of the Markhat series.

The editors at Weird Tales were sticklers for historical accuracy.  Even though Passing the Narrows is set in an alternate South where magic works, the folks at Weird Tales were insistent that every detail of the story was consistent with historical and geographic fact.

That insistence had me sweating.  I'd written the story after a cursory glance at a couple of maps and a brief remembrance of canoeing down in south Mississippi.  I'd looked up the names of a few famous Civil War generals and sprinkled them here and there.  

Painstaking research?

Um, no.  

Given the enthusiasm and knowledge of Civil War buffs, I was taking a huge risk with my casual attitude.  One wrong name.  A single misplaced river.  A battle put a few miles too far one way or another -- any of these mistakes could have seen me torn to whimpering little shreds in the letters section of Weird Tales magazine.

The editors knew that too, so they checked my fictional downriver route against maps.  They checked the names.  They made sure I had my riverboat references right.

I got lucky.  The story passed muster, and saw print, and I learned a valuable lesson about research, which is that blind dumb luck is a perfectly good substitute.  Once.  And I've used my free pass!

I'm pasting the first part of the story below.  If you like it, well, it's for sale here (about a buck) at Amazon, if you have a Kindle (or you have the free Kindle app on your PC or other device).  

Anyway, enjoy the excerpt!

                       Passing the Narrows

                         by Frank Tuttle

     The Yocona surged ahead, paddle-wheel churning, cylinders beating like some great, frightened heart.
     "Dark as Hell and twiced as hot," muttered Swain from the shadows behind the clerk's map-table.
     A ragged chorus of ayes answered.  The Captain checked his pocket watch; ten o'clock sharp.  Old Swain and his hourly announcements hadn't lost a minute in twenty years.
     The Captain snapped his pocket watch shut and peered out into the darkness.  There, to port, loomed a hulking mass of shadow twice the height of any around it -- Cleary's Oak, last marker before the riverboat landing at Float.  "We're an hour from Float, Mr. Barker.  Notify the deck crew we'll be putting in for the night."
     "Aye, Cap'n."
     "She won't like that," said Swain, whispering.  "Fit to be tied, she'll be.  Full of fire and steam."
     "Who, Swain?"
     "You know who.  The wand-waver.  The Yankee."
     "Go back to sleep."
     "I heard her talkin' while the boys were hauling me up the deck," said Swain, gesturing with the stump of his missing right arm.  "Said she was aimin' to make Vicksburg 'fore the moon came again.  Said she had orders, and papers, and -- "
     "I give the orders here, Swain.  Not any damn Yankee wand-wavers."
     Swain cackled.  The Yocona churned past Cleary's Oak, picking up speed as the Yazoo River turned narrow and straight. The Captain rang three bells, and the thump-thump-thump of the pistons slowed.
     The Yocona’s running lamps began to touch the trees on each bank of the Yazoo River.  Shadows whirled and twisted, caught mid-step in some secret dance before fleeing back into the impenetrable murk beyond the first rank of trees.  Some few seemed to run just ahead of the light, capering and tumbling like shards of a nightmare given flesh and let loose to roam.
     The shadows reminded the Captain of Gettysburg and Oxford and a hundred other haunted ruins left in the wake of the war. The Yazoo River was the only safe route through the countryside now, unless you were a sorcerer, a Yankee, or a fool.
     "Eyes ahead, boys," said the Captain, softly.  "They're only there if you look."
     The pilothouse door flew open and slammed like a rifle-shot. The Captain whirled, cursing.
     In the dim red glow of the pilothouse night-lamps, the Yankee in the doorway looked little more real than the shadows in the trees.  A long blue Union sorcerer's robe and hood concealed all but angry green eyes and long, pale hands.
     "Why are we stopping at Float?" said the sorceress.
     "Warned you," whispered Swain.
     The sorceress stepped forward and glared down at Swain. "You are the Captain of this vessel?"
     Swain guffawed.  "No ma'am," he said.  "I'm the clerk.  If you want a freight book marked or a Federal river-map copied I'll be happy to oblige."  Swain cocked his head.  "Tell the truth, now -- don't them robes get awful hot?"
     The sorceress turned, traded frowns with the Captain.
     "You gave the order to put ashore at Float?" she said.
     "I did," said the Captain.
     "You will rescind your order.  We will proceed on to Vicksburg.  Tonight.  With all possible speed."
     The Captain turned his back to the sorceress and listened to the paddle wheels for a time.  Far off in the night, he heard the shriek of another riverboat's steam-whistle.
     "Get off my bridge," said the Captain, staring out into the shadows.  "Get off, and stay off."
     "We go to Vicksburg."
     "Tomorrow.  First light.  Not before."
     The sorceress stepped forward.  "I am an official representative of the United States government," she said.  "I have Papers of Empowerment which authorize me to commandeer this vessel, if necessary.  Is it?"
     "Just like a Yankee," said Swain.  "Commandeerin' stern-wheelers without no notion of how to steer one.  How far you reckon you'd get before you found a sand-bar or a snag?"
     "Vicksburg," snapped the sorceress.
     "Hell," said Swain.  "In pieces, you might." Swain scooted himself sideways on his bench, grinning as he saw the sorceress look down at the stumps of his legs and then look quickly away.
     Another steam whistle rang out, and another.  "Hear that?" asked Swain.  "Two more boats puttin' in at Float.  Probably twenty there, maybe more, every one of 'em losin' time and money by stoppin' for the night."  Swain cackled.  "Ain't many things tighter than a Mississippi river-boat master's fist, wand-waver, and there's some that would steer for Hell itself if they thought the devil had a penny in his britches.  But not a one of 'em will pass the Yazoo Narrows without a moon, and that's a fact."
     "One will tonight," said the sorceress.  "Or he'll get off and watch me take his craft.  I don't care which." Papers rustled.  "This is a Presidential writ, Captain," she said.  "This craft and my cargo are going on to Vicksburg.  Tonight. Any further obstruction will be met with force.  Is that clear?"
     "Go to Hell," said the Captain, not turning.  "Go to Hell and take Lincoln with you."
     Paddle-wheels churned.  Tiny flickers of light played over the backs of the sorceress's hands.
     "We'll need half a hour at Float to unload the passengers and such of the crew that ain't eager to die, ma'am," said Swain. "Course, since Yer Mightyness is in a hurry, we could just throw the women an' babies off now."
     The sorceress let out her breath in a long weary sigh.  The glow at her fingers vanished.  "You may have half an hour at Float," she said.  "No more."
     The Captain was silent.  The sorceress turned and stepped through the open door and then turned again to fix the Captain's back with a glare.  "I will forget your insubordination if there are no further difficulties between us, Captain," she said.  "And I may have neglected to mention that you will be reimbursed for any losses you incur if passengers remain behind."  The Captain didn't stir.
     "The War is over," muttered the Sorceress.  "Why can't you people accept the peace?"
     "I reckon," said Swain, nodding toward the haunted night beyond the pilothouse, "because it ain't any too peaceful south of Memphis these days, yer Yankeeship."
     The door slammed.  The sorceress's heavy footfalls faded, buried under the Yocona’s steady throbbing.
     "Well, Captain," said Swain quietly, "Guess I just saved your ass from the Yankees.  Again."
     The Captain shook his head and lit a cigar.  Purple-grey smoke drifted wraithlike through the pilothouse.  "You believe the stories about the Narrows, Swain?"  asked the Captain. "Because if you do, you just sent us all to Hell."
     Swain pulled himself back into the darkness behind the map table.  "Bound for it anyway, ain't we?"  he said.  "This way, maybe we get to take a Yankee wand-waver with us."
     The Captain took a long draw of the cigar and watched the shadows tumble all the way to Float.

Click here to purchase Passing the Narrows!

Editors and Editing!

This latest round of editing on All the Paths of Shadow has taught me one thing.  Well, two things.  First of all, I need to pay more attention to Point-of-view (POV) shifts.  And second, I need to stop using the word 'gaggle' more than once a week.

It doesn't bother me to jump from one head to the next in a book.  Probably because I run through at least nine different personalities in my own head each and every day.  There's Work Frank, there's Hungry Frank and Grumpy Frank, there's Distracted Frank and Frank Who Is Listening To Pink Floyd In His Head And Who Can't Be Bothered With Anything Else Right Now.  Mainly the latter.  I like Pink Floyd.

But that's no way to write a book.  Pick a POV and stick with it, unless you have a good reason to switch, and just cracking a joke is not a good reason.

And repetition of words.  I'm bad about that.  Worse, I have trouble spotting the repetitions later, which means they slip past my own internal editor, who is apparently spending a lot of time with Frank Who Is Listening To Pink Floyd In His Head And Who Can't Be Bothered With Anything Else Right Now.

Which is why I'm lucky that my books aren't self-published.  Because if they were, I might never have spotted some serious issues with the prose and the structure.

Fortunately, I'm paired with some very accomplished editors (Beth at Samhain, Christine at Cool Well) who see what I don't or can't, and flag it for discussion.

I've read a lot of comments by self-pubbed authors who claim they're glad they don't have to submit their works to any sort of editorial process.  This gives them full creative freedom, they claim, and I suppose they have just that.

Maybe it works for them.  But I've come to realize that it most certainly does not work for me.

Markhat wouldn't have Darla, for instance, if Beth hadn't suggested that certain events in the original manuscript of Hold the Dark play out quite differently.  And Beth was right -- if I'd insisted on keeping the original chain of events, the whole series would be floundering right now.

We're still editing All the Paths of Shadow, and already it's much improved from the original because Christine has spotted several gaffes I'd have gleefully left intact.

It's not that I'm a sloppy writer.  I'm not.  But I'm human, and I make mistakes, and then later I tend to read what I meant to write, and not what's actually on the screen.

My point, if indeed I have one, is this -- the next time you read a really good book, say a quick word of thanks to the editor who helped bring it to life.  Even if the editor's name isn't on the cover, I assure you that they helped shape the book just as surely as the author.

I'm not against self-publishing, mind you.  I've self-pubbed a few of my own previously sold titles just for fun.  But when people ask me now why I don't just go straight to Kindle, I'll have a better answer than 'Uh, well, er, hmm.'

Two heads are indeed better than one, especially when one of the heads in question is mine!

Free Read!

Got a few minutes?

If so, ready your clicking finger for The Powerful Bad Luck of DD Dupree.  I wrote and sold this back in 2004, when woolly mammoths still roamed and I weighed 170 pounds.  Or maybe I roamed and the mammoths were 170.  Look, it was a long time ago.

It's a free read, and it's a short story, so you don't need to set aside the whole afternoon.

What is The Powerful Bad Luck of DD Dupree about?

It's set in my native Mississippi, in 1974.  I was 11 in '74.  Mississippi was a different world then, if one compares it to the present.  I've tried to make that clear in the story, and yes, I'm talking about race.

The character of Wade Lee is based on a black man I grew up knowing.  The rest?

Well, read it, and you decide.

Here's an excerpt, for anyone still on the fence:

Wade Lee lifted his wire-wrapped bundle.

"I call you out!" he shouted, in a voice that split the sky. He hurled his bundle into the fire, and the flames roared up and consumed it, as though it were soaked in kerosene. "I call you by yo' name! Come out!"

DD rose suddenly, jerked upright on as if by strings. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open and his right hand lifted sudden across his face as though to shield a blow.

The flames shot up then, blue and roaring and higher than I was tall. And when they fell, as they quickly did, dead gone Lucas Dupree stood two steps away, just on the other side of the knee-high bank of blue-edged fire.

Lucas Dupree stank. A wind rose up and the stench of him, of rotting flesh soaked in cheap whiskey, curled about us. He exhaled, wet and gurgling, and I gagged and nearly puked.

"I reckon it ain't natural, and I reckon it's gettin' worse," said the dead man, with a crooked, bloody grin. He tossed an empty Black Crow whiskey bottle into the fire, and the flames leaped up and took it. "You was right about that, boy," he said, to DD. "I ain't done with you yet."

Enjoy!  And have a good weekend.  I'm planning on catching the last Harry Potter movie at some point, will probably blog about that too.

The Secret Lives of Hoarders

Book Review: The Secret Lives of Hoarders


If you're like me (and for your sake, let's hope that is not the case), you have a few television shows you simply cannot miss.

One of mine is Hoarders, on A&E. Hoarders are people driven by compulsion to collect and keep items which vary from case to case but range from old newspapers to soiled adult diapers -- and worse.

Much, much worse.

We're not talking about a few odd shelves stuffed with bric-a-brac.  We're not talking about closets filled to overflowing with quilts or shoes or boxes.  No, an instance of full-blown hoarding usually involves a dwelling that is literally stuffed to the ceilings with the most bewildering variety of junk.  On Hoarders, I've seen mounds of coat-hangers surrounded by bags and bags of rotting groceries.  Sometimes the refuse is stacked and packed over such a long time that it compresses down into disgusting layers of trash-strata, whereby one can date the layers by identifying the flattened remains of cats squashed amid the bits of unrecognizable debris.

You think I made that up?  I didn't.  It's happened, more than once, and with more than a single carcass found in the same home.  Think about that for a moment, and ponder the intensity of stink required to mask the scent of multiple decaying cats.

That, my friends, is as good an introduction as any into the tragic world of the hoarder.

Enter Matt Paxton, cleaning specialist extraordinaire.  Matt is the owner of Clutter Cleaner, and he and his team will go where angels fear to tread and take a shovel to boot.  Tackling hoards and helping hoarders and their families is Matt's business, and his experiences as the founder of Clutter Cleaner and as cleaning expert on A&E's Hoarders made him uniquely suited to write the book on hoarders.

In fact, Matt did just that -- write the book on hoarders, I mean.  That book is The Secret Lives of Hoarders, and I give it five stars out of five.  Although stars are perhaps not the appropriate symbol here -- call it five tons of gooey refuse out of five tons.

Either way, it's a great book.

Author Matt Paxton is very effective on the show when dealing with hoarders and their often-dysfunctional families.  With them, Matt is firm yet compassionate, even-tempered, and dedicated to helping people who simply cannot help themselves.  All those qualities come across easily in the book, which never once descends into the sort of cruel mockery a lesser person (I'm looking at me) would be sorely tempted to include.

Matt's book introduces us to a number of more or less representative hoarders.  He gives us a background of each, the source of their hoarding behavior, and any family interactions that help or hinder.  Yes, Matt describes the hoarding behavior in the same sort of gut-wrenching detail featured on the TV show.  But that's not the emphasis of the book.

Instead, Matt and co-writer Phaedra Hise look past the mounds of rotting diapers and dehydrated cats and into the minds of the people who simply cannot throw anything away.  I'll never watch the show the same way again, because now I've seen an inkling of how desperately trapped hoarders truly are, and how they'll struggle with their compulsions every minute of every day for the rest of their lives.

It's tragic.  It's disgusting.  It's often irreparable.  But it's never boring.

Fans of the show will also enjoy Matt's candid revelations into his own past.  People who have never seen the show will too.

I'll end with a bit of honesty here.  I sometimes view celebrity book offerings with one part suspicion (and probably two parts jealousy).  Oh wow, he/she is on TV, and now they have a book out.  I'm sure it's good.

Forget that, though.  This is a good book, and it was published because it is a good book told in a wise voice about a fascinating topic.  The Secret Lives of Hoarders is an honest, unblinking look at what for some families is a dirty little secret.  Paxton deals with it all with compassion, wit, and an empathy born of a genuine desire to help those suffering from a mental illness that literally weighs them down with tons of garbage.

So check it out!  It's not hard to find.  Amazon has it in print and as a Kindle e-book.  You can buy the print version direct from Clutter Cleaners.  Barnes & Noble has it in print and Nook format.  I've put all the links below, so enjoy!

AMAZON:
Secret Lives of Hoarders in print

Secret Lives of Hoarders Kindle e-book

CLUTTER CLEANERS:
Clutter Cleaners website

Buy Secret Lives of Hoarders direct from Clutter Cleaners (Matt will even sign it for you!)

BARNES & NOBLE:
Print or Nook e-book

Memphis Animal Shelter or Hell on Earth: Toss Up of the Day

We have a wonderful animal shelter here in Oxford.  The staff is caring and professional, the facilities are clean and new, and the animals kept there are comfortable, clean, and well-fed.

Travel north about eighty miles to the sprawling metropolis of Memphis, Tennessee, and it's a completely different story.

The Memphis Animal Shelter (shortened hereafter to MAS or the more descriptive HELL) has long been a hotbed of cruelty, incompetence, and outright criminal activity.  Recent attempts at cleaning up the physical and procedural messes at the MAS have been somewhat less than successful.

Case in point -- the missing dog Kapone, and the arrest of a felonious animal control 'officer' who has a criminal rap sheet longer than that of most Memphis City Council members (and that alone is impressive).  And we're not talking petty crimes here -- there's burglary.  Robbery.  Fraud.  All manner of very grown-up mayhem, and yet this person was issued a uniform and put on the MAS payroll in keeping with the existing shelter policy of 'Uh, what?'

Here's what happened -- last week, two dogs belonging to Memphian Brooke Shoup escaped from their backyard and were picked up by an 'officer' with the MAS.  Yeah, I put 'officer' in little quotes.  As I mentioned before, the 'officer' in question has extensive experience with law enforcement, if you count being arrested over and over.  I have to wonder how she included so many convictions on her resume -- did she just claim 'extensive experience in entrepreneurial property re-assignment' and hope no one asked?

But I digress.  The two wandering dogs were picked up by the 'officer' and transported to the MAS.   But when owner Brooke Shoup came to MAS to claim her two dogs, only one dog was produced.

11 year old Kapone was gone.

Now, I imagine communicating the whole 'two dogs is more than one dog' concept to the MAS staff required several hours and the use of drawings, songs, and an appearance by the entire cast of Sesame Street.  But somehow owner Shoup managed to convey the missing dog idea to the MAS, and the search for Kapone began.

Began, and pretty much ended, right with the same 'officer' who claimed to have brought the two dogs into the MAS.  This 'officer' explained away Kapone's absence by claiming he wasn't absent.  This clever stratagem was not entirely without merit; the MAS itself admits that thousands of dogs go missing from its care every year.  Missing.  That's their word for it.  Theories abound on the cause of these canine vanishings.  Some point fingers at the elusive Memphis Bigfoot.  Others maintain the Shelter was built on the site of an ancient energy vortex.  Most of the staff at the MAS, if asked about this statistic, look quickly at the floor and suddenly remember pressing business elsewhere.

The 'officer' was arrested (again) today on two counts of animal cruelty, which is precisely the kind of accusation one demands in an animal control officer.  Poor Kapone, like so many other hapless pets who have the misfortune to enter the care of the MAS,  is still missing.

This next part is conjecture, but I think I know what happened to Kapone.  It is my opinion that he was sold, by someone (I can't imagine who, I really can't) employed by the MAS.  Sold  to a dogfighter, for use as a bait dog.

I imagine this very transaction takes place quite often at the MAS.

Which makes employing persons with extensive criminal records a -- oh, what is the phrase I'm looking for?

A very bad idea.


I feel sorry for poor Kapone the dog, who I fear met a sad and undeserved fate.  I feel sorry for his owner, Brooke Shoup.  I feel nothing but contempt for the 'officer,' who should never have been placed in a position of authority over any creature, great or small, and certainly shouldn't be allowed anywhere near MAS.

I doubt that any of this will bring about fundamental change at the MAS.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that our 'officer' is quietly reinstated at some point.  I hope I'm wrong on that last bit.  But I'd lay even money I'm not, because in some circles in Memphis, criminal activity is not only winked at but bought fruity little drinks with umbrellas in the glass and then taken out for dinner and dancing.

Kapone, rest in peace.  You did nothing wrong.  It's a terrible world where leaving your yard means you risk your life, especially at the hands of those who are being paid to protect you.

PS -- I hope the dog-fight trash who bought Kapone dies an agonizing, gruesome death from untreatable butt cancer.  And that goes for all the dog-fight trash everywhere, and frankly dying from rancid butt-tumors is far too good for the lot of you.

Blurb Blip Blues

It seems bookseller Barnes & Noble has some interesting ideas about what precisely comprises an effective online book description.

Personally, I like to see a short, entertaining blurb that simultaneously gives me a general idea what the book is about and just a taste of the book's style.  The right blurb gets you hooked right away, resulting in the subtle but happy click of the mouse on the BUY button, and the resultant unseemly cries of avarice assuaged from me.

The wrong blurb sends readers -- and worst of all their precious, precious money -- on to other titles.  This makes me weep, and the plaintive cries echo faintly up the slimy walls of my abandoned well and disturb passers-by.

So you can imagine my injured howls when I happened across this listing for my book Dead Man's Rain on the Barnes & Noble Nook book site.

Scroll down to the book description.

Now, if it mentions Markhat and Mama Hog and starts off with "Can a haunted man help the dead find peace?" you can stop reading now, because Barnes & Noble has fixed the mistake and all is well.


But right now, the description for Dead Man's Rain reads like this:


 "As a dark web of spells closes in, Magaith may be Sygtryg's only hope and she his only destiny. Magaith is resigned to fulfilling her father's command that she marry the King of Connacht, even though she harbors a secret love for her knight protector, Sygtryg,..."

Which isn't my book at all.  Frankly I think Magaith and the unfortunately-named Sygtryg could solve a lot of their problems by first eloping and then changing their names to Bess and Harold, but since I didn't write the book I don't get to make that call.

I wondered if perhaps the book that belonged to the blurb above had the description of Dead Man's Rain beneath its cover, so I employed the might of The Google. I found the book to which the blurb rightly belongs, but oddly enough it isn't available from Barnes & Noble at all.  I can only imagine that my fellow author would have been as eager to have my blurb removed from her book as vice versa -- nothing against her or her book, but finding the wrong blurb no matter how good it is attached to your book is somewhat akin to opening an envelope of pictures of your kid to discover the photo place has swapped heads with those of strangers.

And you didn't think I'd work a swapped heads reference into this one.  Ha.

No matter.  I emailed the always professional folks at Samhain Publishing, home of the Markhat series, and they're working with Barnes & Noble (i.e., poking B&N with pointy sticks) to get the blurb set right.

Hopefully,  this will result in a sudden skyrocketing sales ranking for Dead Man's Rain, and I can finally afford to get a mail-order ladder and emerge from this, my dank, cricket-covered lair.

Prepare for Re-entry

I'm going back to work tomorrow.

I'm still not running at 100%, but this will have to suffice.  When your dogs set your alarm clock and pack your lunch and make up little paw-printed 'Have a good day at work, to which you are returning, we're frankly sick of you, kthnxbye,' it's time to find a shirt with a collar and pretend to be a grown-up for a bit.

I wish I could say I did a lot of reading while I was sick, but that would be a lie.  Mainly what I did was cough up things that one normally only sees in low-budget horror films and watch TV.  TV doesn't demand much attention, and my Kindle wisely hid itself under a cushion during the worst of the coughing fits.

But I did read one really good book.

Nekropolis: A Matt Richter Novel by Tim Waggoneer is one of those books I picked up on a whim.  I'd never heard of Tim Waggoneer, or Matt Richter.  But the cover was emblazoned with three words I can seldom refuse -- zombie private eye.

So I snagged it, several weeks ago, and only pulled it up yesterday when I managed to catch my Kindle sneaking around on a bookcase.

People.  If you have any love at all for the hard-boiled or the macabre, then you owe it to yourself to give Nekropolis a chance.  This is first-rate stuff -- you've got your hard-case ex-cop, your mean streets, your damsel in distress.

But you've got all that in Nekropolis, which is unlike anywhere you've ever been taken by a book.

I'll admit it.  I'm jealous.  I kept kicking myself while reading, which requires no small coordination and is tough on the bedclothes.  Why didn't I think of that, I'd say?

There's a jukebox in a bar called Skullies that consists of three severed heads which sing.  In Nekropolis, you speak into your cell phone's ear and you listen to its mouth.

Matt Richter is a Cleveland cop who pursued a murderer native to Nekropolis through a portal to Earth.  Matt died in Nekropolis, but as with so many things over there, being dead takes a twist.

I won't give away any of the plot, because I hate it when people do that.  Suffice it to say Matt may be dead, but he's still very much a streetwise cop.  These aren't the same streets he knew in Cleveland, but crime is crime, and victims are victims, and Matt is determined to bring just a glimmer or law and order to a lawless, chaotic place.

I'm not doing Nekropolis justice.  It's only three bucks and change.  Get it yourself; you won't be sorry!

Seriously, Pneumonia?

Just be glad you're nowhere near me right now.

Sure, I'm still good to look at, but frankly I'm annoying myself to the point that I'd get up and leave the room except that I'd just go right with me.

What began as a chest cold three, count 'em, three weeks ago has devolved, I am told by a licensed medical professional, into pneumonia.

Which came as a bit of a shock, since I've always associated pneumonia with, well, old folks.

But here I am, barely out of my teens and laid low with the awful stuff.  And here is a world of constant hacking coughs accompanied by a chest that has apparently been stuffed full of wet cotton and rusty steel wool.

I've been put on Cipro, the same lovely antibiotic that is prescribed for anthrax infections.  I can kill things just by walking slowly past them, so potent is the Cipro.  Sadly this lethal effect is doing my stomach no good either, but the less said about that the better.

And steroids!  More of them.  I took seven pills yesterday and overnight I grew horns and learned to scale near-vertical cliff faces with my nifty new hooves.  I took six this morning and I'm just back from a run that is a bit of a blur but included parts of France.  You'll know the path I took by the dead grass beside the road and the reports of a pale, coughing hoofed thing that smelled of Vicks Mentholatum chest rub and a vague, raw anger.

What I can't do is maintain a coherent train of thought for any sustained length of time.  I tried writing a bit, and the results reminded me of that old story about monkeys given typewriters if the monkeys were also slapped in the face before being given bottles of whiskey.  It wasn't good.

I did wash clothes and dishes and vacuum.  I have to say that Dyson vacuum cleaner is freaking awesome.  It will inhale the most amazing objects, including but not limited to, the following:

* entire dishrags
* trade paperbacks
* small Jehovah's Witnesses
* the dog Fletcher's tail (sorry about that, Fletch)

And it looks like the secondary hyperspace navigation module from an Arcturan star cruiser.  You just don't often see that in a home appliance.

I'm off to have another coughing fit and watch some Gordon Ramsay on the BBC.

I don't often fall ill, but when I do, I contract pneumonia.
Stay healthy, my friends.

Summer Fun, With Corpses!

I'm not a big fan of public swimming pools.  Oh, I can swim, but the thought of immersing myself in the same fluid that extends to the nether regions of the crowd that regularly graces the pages of People of Walmart has no appeal to me.

Do I not like people?

I like most of them just fine, as long as they A) keep their distance or B) live in other states.  Preferably B.  

But I've digressed.  Swimming pools, as I said, are not for me.  I can say much the same about the outdoors in general, these days.  I find that my preferred environment is cooled to 72 degrees, dimly lit, and features menus and wait staff.  I mean, why bother evolving into a sentient creature in a technological civilization if you don't spend every waking moment getting as far away from that hunting and gathering nonsense as is possible?

Now, I'm sure my primitive forbears had to spend a lot of time mucking about in various dirty, dangerous bodies of water.  And I'm also sure they hated it, right up until the time the crocodiles ate them or the deadly snakes bit them.  So I feel I owe it to them to keep myself well-fed, comfortable, and well away from bodies of water, including swimming pools.

Face it, pools are bacterial resort areas.  People bring in babies.  People bring in themselves.  Have you looked at people lately? Gross. Unless there's enough chlorine in the water to bleach my swim trunks a sudden stark white, forget it.

But pools can harbor worse things that the contents of a baby diaper.  Case in point -- this public pool in Boston held a dead human body for at least two full days.

That's right.  A woman drowned in the pool, and despite the presence of lifeguards and numerous other swimmers her bloating corpse just floated there for forty-eight gruesome, awful hours.

It's not that no one noticed.  At least one kid made a report to the laughably termed 'lifeguards,' who ignored both the report and the green limp woman floating face down in the deep end since yesterday.

I have to wonder -- just what constitutes an emergency in that particular pool?

Drowning obviously isn't it.  Dead bodies clouding up the water with the by-products of decay?  Nah, no biggie.

Splashing, though -- I bet splashing gets you a whistle, and two splashing incidents rates a ban.

The story gets even funnier, aside of course from the 'corpse' part.  The pool was visited by inspectors once during the dead woman's marathon motionless float.  

The inspectors did note a 'cloudiness' in the water.  But, since they apparently never made it past the Scotland Yard entrance exams, no one connected the cloudiness with the gas-filled cadaver making slow turns in the corner.

So yeah.  Let's all rush to the nearest public pool and exchange body fluids with strangers.  It's what summer is all about!