It's usually a good idea to pander to your strengths in whatever you do. And I feel that, as a writer AND an editor, I have some pretty cogent things to say about how to get things done with writing. I see the same kinds of mistakes all the time.

Like ya, know. Whatever.

So I made this:

Of course, if I'm trying to help out with site traffic, who's this for: other writers, the very people to whom I already have a surfeit of access. Go on my twitter account and they're always there, yelling at me to take their free books and then never read them so they can feel good about meaningless numbers on their Amazon pages.

Still. I like it. And because I'm like a four year old who always wants to show you what he's made, even if it's a mud pie that he wants you to eat, here it is: I made this.

Take my mud pie, internet. Take my filthy mud pie and you like it.

Lately I've been privileged to be in the company of some fine quality writers, a few of whom I'll be happy to showcase on weekends. Enjoy.

When Cherie Marshall catches her fiancé and best friend in a compromising position, she cancels her upcoming wedding and jumps at the chance to escape to quiet Klondike, Pennsylvania to care for her elderly aunt. She thought her biggest issue would be adapting to life in the middle of a National Forest, so very different from her upbringing in the deserts of Arizona.

But that was before she met State Trooper Fire Marshall Jamison "Jazz" Maddox at the scene of a mysterious fire. As they both become acquainted with the close-knit Klondike residents, things get complicated as Cherie and Jazz find themselves in the middle of a local crime wave where arson, kidnapping, embezzlement and a decades old murder are just the tip of the iceberg.

Be sure get your free copy of the Klondike Kompanion from the author's website and read the "Meet the Characters" interviews.

When eager, young journalists Tyson Palmer interviews the occupant of a torched building, a reputed lunatic who blames the blaze on a cult with ties to terrorism, Tyson believes he might have just found the story that will launch his career.  Only thing is, he has nothing to go on but the ramblings of a paranoid conspiracy theorist .
Much to the chagrin of his mother and his best friend, Tyson decides to infiltrate the group and get the story from the inside.

Armed with his formidable denial of vulnerability, and as much information as he can find on the group, Tyson slips in undetected, or so he thinks. He plays the part to perfection, becoming one of them, until he encounters the one thing he hadn't counted on; Krista.
 
As this beautiful, intriguing woman woos him into dropping his guard, he falls deeper and deeper the under the control of a charismatic leader  with a dark political agenda.  By the time Tyson learns the truth, he knows too much to ever be allowed to walk away.

Lately I've been privileged to be in the company of some fine quality writers, a few of whom I'll be happy to showcase on weekends. Enjoy.

The first in the Jehovah and Hades series.

Jake was just a normal kid who enjoyed hearing his mother's bedtime stories. The stories became shockingly real when he discovered that he was a descendant of Dr. Jekyll and that he had his own Mr. Hyde living inside him. Driven by a desire to do good, he attempts to hunt down and kill the remaining Hyde monsters. Can he finish off the onslaught of Hyde monsters and keep the girl he loves safe from their retaliation?

Before an invasion it is wise to gather intel on your foe. Harbinger begins the tale of the fight to save Earth as told from the perspective of an unlikely hero...

In 1957, a group of wilderness adventurers are confronted with the unexpected. They are forced to defend themselves against an unworldly enemy. Will man's first encounter with aliens force them to run or will they stand and fight? This is the first thriller in the SODIUM series. Follow along as the unwitting group determine their own fate.

Picture this if you will. A chilling scenario which reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book:

You're seated at a fire with as many as eight or nine other people. You're scared, you're restless, you're tired. At your feet, and within easy reach, each of you has a weapon: sticks with crudely-hafted stone blades, or sharp hand-axes with serrated edges.

Behind you, beyond the furthest reaches of the light, monsters slide through the darkness. Picture fangs the length of your fingers,  claws like knives; they're as quick as regret and as quiet as cold. Only the fire keeps them from dashing in and snatching you away at will. You try to forget they're there and enjoy yourself, but sometimes you catch brief glimpses of oval eyes glittering in the light.

To find out your fate, turn 600,000 pages to the future.

The people in this scenario didn't really have much of a choice, because this isn't fiction, this is history. This is the beginning of culture, the beginning of what makes us human. This is page one, the beginning of you.

Our ancestors gathered around campfires like these nightly, while real monsters watched. Back then, claws and fangs didn't fear us like they do today. We were soft and slow and blind at night. So why should they?

The other day I was asked to give a quick blurb about stories. Stories: what are they? Having degrees in English and Anthropology, I'm always like that guy who only has a hammer: to him, everything looks like a nail -- ask me a question and all my answers come back 'caveman.'

(Okay, not 'cave man,' that's an outdated and always-has-been inaccurate term, but you know what I mean.)

Because, hey, the answers for most questions do involve cavemen if you wish to be properly thorough. So what if 600,000 years have passed since the campfire. Inside we're still the same. Except now we have more stuff. 

We have our scenario. Campfire. Monsters. Weapons. Now add: Stories.

While we were making all our great stuff, concurrently we were sculpting ourselves through our stories, and this process began in the safety and comfort of the flickering firelight, the birthplace of all culture.

Because any of the people sitting there in the light who didn't physically have the propensity for storytelling, or for  listening to stories, probably wouldn't be your neighbor, or anyone's neighbor, much longer.

Scenario within the scenario: Bob the Caveman was out that day and ran into a spot of trouble. In fact Bob was attacked by a gyro-slug, the huge imaginary prehistoric slug the size of a bear. Ferocious, were gyro-slugs, famous for having two spinning antennae atop their heads which they would use to commit acts of unparalleled aerial predation upon poor bipedalists stuck to the ground by their feet.

Page one is a strange and scary place.

Normally, meeting a gyro-slug would mean certain death for poor Bob, but this day Bob evades its first assault, the slug crashes to the ground, and quite by sheer dumb luck, lands near the salt lick which Bob had been quarrying, and melts with many unpleasant raspberry noises into a pile of gyro-slug mush.

Bob is ecstatic, and fortunately for everybody around the fire, Bob is a good storyteller. He arranges his thoughts about the incident in an orderly and rational fashion, using compelling details about the event, and is skillful at providing emotional cues about how he felt at the time to which his audience can relate. Finally, he brings the tale to a satisfying crescendo. Everybody sighs. Denouement. Good ol' Bob. What would we do without him. For a few moments, the monsters sliding through the darkness are forgotten.

Here's where I need another graphic: WHERE I ACTUALLY REALLY, REALLY COME TO A POINT.

REALLY. FOR TRUE.

Half the people around the campfire don't have the physical propensity for storytelling, or for the rational organization of information that Bob possesses. But just for the sake of simplifying a ridiculous scenario, let's say that one of them is very, very poor at it, even while being wonderfully bright in every other respect. From Bob's story he fails to take away -- with any serious retention -- the location of where Bob was attacked, where Bob found salt, or how he evaded certain death. The rest of the group begins carrying salt with them wherever they go. When attacked by gyro-slugs in the future, suddenly they are the victors, until the terrible squishy predators learn to fear humans.

But not before they fall upon our hapless outlier -- saltless -- and lacking the genetic predisposition for storytelling, removing him from the gene pool.

This example is a bit extreme, of course -- Gyro Slugs were only two-thirds the size of what I've described -- but, in essence, the propensity for storytelling allows for the greater diffusion and retention of facts and ideas. Those with the best ideas and communication skills were the best suited to survive and pass on their life-saving storytelling acuity to successive generations.

Especially since what our unlucky outlier lacked most from that fireside meeting was the sense of growing closeness and comaraderie with the rest of the band, the buddings of cultural identity, without which, we could hardly call ourselves human.

And if you question in your mind whether unconscious keys like this really could have been passed down through the ages, ask yourself why people have an intrinsic fear of the dark, or why so many find fire so immediately comforting.

A mere 600,000 pages later, we still crave stories that involve danger, triumph, and reward, even though we no longer have to face these things on a daily basis. Now we crave them because we love them.

So, tonight, as I Lord of the Rings myself to sleep, I'll take a moment to remember page one and my predecessors who listened.

And I'll remember to bring a small bit of salt in my pockets tomorrow when I go to the store.

Just in case.

I know this is not about writing, but it's incredible and majestic. If I say it's 'awesome' I'd probably be the first human to use the word correctly in years.  Seeing a video like this one makes me just want to spin around in my wheelie chair and march outside to simply look at ... everything.

Taken from this blog. Worth the read.

Lately I've been privileged to be in the company of some fine quality writers, a few of whom I'll be happy to showcase on weekends. Enjoy.

Part one of a serialized novel. 13,000 words.

What if everything you thought you knew about your home, your friends, your family--even yourself--was a lie?

A storm of change is coming to the planet Earth, and no one will escape it. Many will perish, unable to accept the total reshaping of reality as we know it. In the aftermath that follows, a handful of ragtag heroes must adapt to this strange, new world and begin a quest to save the Earth's remaining inhabitants from total annihilation.

Combining elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, PriorEarth takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through a world that is alien yet familiar at the same time.

THIS INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED SUSPENSE THRILLER by Michael Meyer has been compared to Robert Ludlum's Bourne series, and the writing style has been compared to that of Dean Koontz.

Imagine waking up remembering intimate details about a country in which you have never traveled and fluently speaking a language that you have never spoken. B.J. is living the ideal life. He has a great wife, a wonderful job. And yet he is experiencing life-like vivid dreams of Munich, a city he has never visited.

Stan Halsey is a professor in Saudi Arabia, who sends for his wife to join him. She arrives, and, in the blink of an eye, she vanishes, leaving no trace of ever being alive in either the United States or in Saudi Arabia.

COVERT DREAMS is a fast-paced international suspense thriller that moves from Munich to the burning sands of Saudi Arabia. What is real, and who is responsible for the terrifying nightmare?

Lately I've been privileged to be in the company of some fine quality writers, a few of whom I'll be happy to showcase on weekends. Enjoy.

Code name: Jet

Twenty-eight-year-old Jet was once the Mossad's most lethal operative before faking her own death and burying that identity forever.

But the past doesn't give up on its secrets easily.

When her new life on a tranquil island is shattered by a brutal attack, Jet must return to a clandestine existence of savagery and deception to save herself and those she loves. A gritty, unflinching roller-coaster of high-stakes twists and shocking turns, JET features a new breed of protagonist that breaks the mold.

Fans of Lisbeth Salander, SALT, and the Bourne trilogy will find themselves carried along at Lamborghini speed to a conclusion as jarring and surprising as the story's heroine is unconventional.

Christo's life fell apart when his partner of eight years walked out on him. There wasn't even a reason for it: sometimes love just fades, as quickly and mysteriously as it appears in the first place.

Enter Damien. Damien's the guy with a different man on his arm for every event, he's smooth and arrogant and always impeccably turned out. Christo hates him. But God, he's gorgeous. Damien could be exactly what Christo needs to get him over John.

It's only going to be a fling. Nothing serious, nothing that will affect their working relationship or the rest of their lives. So why are they fighting through the night rather than letting go and walking away? Why does Damien's secretive nature bug Christo so much? And why does he even care that the other man might not be as tough as he pretends to be?

CONTENT WARNING: This book contains explicit scenes unsuitable for those under 18.

But hey, I have another day or so until I'm finished my next blog post, and so have a gaping huge white space here on my blog. A torture, the blank pages. They mock me and hide in my closet at night. No matter how many shows of Doctor Who I watch, they're still there. I guess I'll have to take care of it by myself, Tardis-less.

Now where did I put my sonic pencil?

So anyway, here's an interview I did for We Write Worlds last year. I'll add some pictures shortly, perhaps scandalous ones.

Here's a suggestion: Turn the interview into a drinking game. When I sound pompous, that's one shot. When I plug my own books, you chug a beer. If you end up thinking, Oy, I wanna smack this little sock-puppet right in the chops ... well, perhaps it's time to stop reading it as a drinking game and go for a nice lie-down while I surreptitiously sneak out the back.

Mind you, that impulse would verify that you were reading closely.

Allons-y!

As early as seven, I said I would be a writer when I grew up. I wrote a lot during junior high. I wrote every day in high school. Of course in high school I wanted to be a poet, and I have many old notebooks still sitting in my old room at my parent’s house that I need to burn someday.

For a while I let myself be convinced that writing was not a viable career path (That may, unfortunately, yet prove to be true). I studied English in university until I dropped out after two years. Then I got a science degree in Anthropology, studying Osteology and Archaeology, until I realized I would, at best, be a mediocre archaeologist, and that simply wasn’t good enough.

One day I decided I would write, and that was that.

At the time I was living in a bush camp a hundred miles from civilization in the north of British Columbia. I still remember the exact moment when, in the middle of the forest, I stood up, looked around, decided I wasn’t going to go back to do an archaeological thesis – I would write instead – and I was happy.

At the end of the summer, I returned home and wrote a terrible novel.

2: How many books have you written?

I have completed three books. I have two in states of undress.

My first novel remains untitled, best left buried in my bookshelf. It was a compilation of true hitchhiking stories to a fictional place, tales that I had either experienced myself, or compiled from the experiences of people I knew.

My second novel was A String of Momentary Silences, which is the only novel-length piece I currently have available through Amazon and Smashwords, about a man who decided to step off the hamster wheel of his dreary life. He stutters rather badly and hates his existence, and decides he’d be better off never speaking to anybody ever again. After he does that, life is easier for him, and he explores his world as an unspeaking individual. He meets a fellow who runs the puppet show at the local market, a man who also doesn’t speak, and the two become friends. Meanwhile he meets a woman online, and struggles with wanting to tell her that he can talk to her as he feels terrible lying to her with his silence. A String of Momentary Silences is not a long novel, but I always have trouble describing it.

My third is unfinished Twice Against the Same Stone, about a woman nearing her golden years, but who’s lived a bit of a criminal life, and she’s trying to make amends for her many mistakes.

My fourth is Raw Flesh in the Rising, about a man exiled to the leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai in the late 1800s. There, the one healthy man among the sick, he becomes the leper among the lepers.

My fifth, and current work in progress, is where I relinquish my grip on five-word titles.  Systematic Rube, my first non-fiction book, is a rough outline of the silviculture industry as it represents rite of passage in Canada. I received a grant from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council to work on Systematic Rube in the spring of 2011.

3. What inspired you to write your (latest) book?

My latest book is Systematic Rube, exploring tree planting as rite of passage in Canada. It was not born from inspiration; rather it is a child of exasperation.

I spent thirteen months, working every day, writing Raw Flesh in the Rising. Then I spent sixteen months editing , every day, seven hours a day. I didn’t work for those two years; I wrote. Six months into editing I needed a break. I wanted to write – firstly – something new, and – secondly – something fun.

I had learned so much from writing Raw Flesh in the Rising. I wondered what my first person writing would look like. One day I sat down and began to write, cataloguing my favorite stories from my years working in the forests of British Columbia. At the time, thematically, it was very free-flowing. Having since gained purpose, it has become regimented and directed, though I still love working on it as I can do anything I want as long as I stay within the boundaries I’ve set for myself.

4. What is your favorite genre to read?

I read roughly equal amounts of literary fiction and science fiction, and then a smattering of fantasy, history, and science writing. If it’s well written, engaging, and/or introduces me to new ideas and concepts, I’m game to read it.

5. Is your writing style at all influenced by those of your favorite authors?

My style is influenced in different ways by different authors. Firstly, stylistically, I love writers with a flair for language, such as Jack Kerouac, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Herman Melville, Thomas Wolfe, and others. I first fell in love with Kerouac when I was sixteen. I read On the Road, decided it was over-hyped, and set it aside. Back then, however, I would read every book twice; only by reading it twice, I had decided, could I truly get a good grasp on the flavor of the book.

I finished On the Road for the second time two days later, and already I was in love. The man was a genius with language. To think that everything he wrote is a first draft still blows my mind.

Steinbeck is my favorite conventional author. His stories capture straightforward characters doing everyday things – and they are stories told simply as well – yet they add up to an amazing thematic complexity which I love. Very powerful.

I won’t say I’ve been influenced by either. More like inspired and admired. In the end, they are benchmarks.

6. Which is your favorite book that you’ve written?

My favorite book, to this point, has to be Raw Flesh in the Rising. I spent two years writing and editing the novel to my satisfaction, crafting everything the way I wanted. Then, when I was finished, I cut 50,000 words out of it. To say that any other novel was my favorite would be a harsh pill to swallow at the moment.

Luckily, it’s paid off. In 2011, I won the Percy Janes First Novel Award for Best Unpublished Novel in the NL Arts and Letter’s competition. I’m currently shopping the book to publishers.

I should probably flash this around more often while I still hold the award:

http://www.tcr.gov.nl.ca/tcr/artsculture/artsandletters/2011/lee_burton.pdf

7. What is your opinion of the art of writing?

Writing is an art like any other. One can be an artist who understands every facet of the history of his art and how his own work relates to all the other work which has come before him, or one can simply be an artist for fun and enjoyment. There’s value in both, and the best writing, in my opinion, combines the two.

8. What advice would you give someone who is just beginning their own novel?

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Don’t rely too much on writing guides or you’ll just end up writing like everybody else who’s read them.

Remember the lessons of your high school teachers when it comes to making jot notes and outlines. They work.

Walk sometimes instead of driving. And without headphones.

Listen to critics, but don’t write their words in your heart.

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation, are supremely important. A writer not using the tools of his trade properly would be akin to a carpenter trying to build a house by hammering screws with a wrench.

Don’t emulate the best in your genre, but the best writers in general.

Read a lot; and again, read the best.

Write a lot. Make sure you love your writing for what you’ve written, not because it’s you who’s written it.

       
9. Do you have any funny and / or interesting stories about how you’ve come up with plots or characters?

In my novelette, Do Unto Others, which I’ve published to Amazon, the mayor and priest of my fictional town of Scanlon are based on the real historical characters, Bernard and Pierre Clergue, the local bailiff  and parish priest of the town of Montaillou, France, in the 13th century. Pierre was a womanizer who used the priesthood to seduce women, and Bernard a bit of a brute who used his authoritative position to become wealthy.

Also, and I’m still not sure if I consider this funny or not, but I began writing Raw Flesh in the Rising on a whim. It was supposed to be about forty pages and take me a month. It consumed the next two years of my life.

Lately I've been privileged to be in the company of some fine quality writers, a few of whom I'll be happy to showcase on weekends. Enjoy.

When Tate entered a vision quest hoping to learn something that his Grandfather insists is vitally important, he never expected a nightmare! He had heard about Skin Walkers, but he never believed they were real...
                 
When Morningstar left her village, her dreams were to please her Ancestral God, and return as a potential bride and future mother to her people. However, motherhood always comes with a price...

Three hundred years ago Yellow Bird Mountain didn't exist. Now it marks the location of the Makoce Indian Reservation, containing some of the riches oil deposits in the region. Russell Blanding wants that oil, and will stop at nothing to get it...

Blood is the first volume in the Ancestral Skin Saga, and lays the foundational tale of Native American Skin Walkers with mystical creatures, and thrilling suspense. This Paranormal novel is laced with humor, romance, murder, and deceit.

(This book contains material that some may find offensive. It is intended for mature audiences.)

From best selling mystery author Traci Tyne Hilton comes Gone, the first novel in The Tangle Saga series.

One woman, heir to a throne back on Earth, found life on a remote space station a comfortable way to avoid responsibilities waiting back on her home planet.

But when her rebellious teenaged brother and sister disappear her responsibilities catch up with her.

Thousands of lives hang in the balance--including her own -- as she digs into the darkest corners in space. Can she find the missing kids before their rebellion sets off a chain of violence no one can stop?

"Thomas?" Verity knocked on the screen of his sleeping compartment. Her efforts were rewarded with a groan. She popped the steel blade of her defender and jimmied the door to the compartment open. Thomas lay on his side, moaning, his sandy hair hanging over his ashen face. His hands were bound together with shoelaces.

Verity reached in and shook his shoulder, "Thomas? What happened?"

The tutor's eyelids flickered. His mouth was slack but he groaned something that sounded like Tamsin.

Had Tamsin slipped Thomas a mickey and then tied him up in his sleeping compartment? The idea beggared belief. "Where did they go, Thomas?" Verity stood on her toes and reached inside to untie the laces.

He groaned again then said, "coffee" or something similar.

"They went to the coffee shop?" Verity gave Thomas another shake. His eyes fluttered shut again.

Verity pressed the palm of her hand to Thomas' forehead. He was clammy and cold. " Oh,Thomas, what happened?"  She let her hand rest on his forehead for a moment. Could she really find them without Thomas? Her heart fluttered in her chest. She wouldn't think about without Thomas right now. She'd check the coffee instead.

There was a coffee cup in the drinks holder of his sleeping compartment. Verity dipped her pointer finger in it, letting her embed-comm soak in a sample. She tapped the wall of the compartment and said, "Send sample data to chem-lab 52."

Her comm crackled a little. The voice of the lab tech came through, "Is this Verity?"

"It is. Could you run a scan on the data I just sent?"

"Absolutely. Does this have something to do with your brother and sister?" The tech had a high-pitched note of panic in her voice.

"Yes, probably. And they are going to be in serious trouble when I lay my hands on them."

"Got it. Where do you want the results sent?"

"To my data center and the nurse. Tell her to come to the tutors' lodging, district 9, Thomas Montcrief's pod if it looks like she'll be needed. Tell her I'm administering some charcoal, just in case."

"Will do." The comm crackled again and the call ended.

Verity stored the steel blade and dispensed a charcoal tablet from her all-in-one defense unit. Almost the last one. She'd have to remember to refill when she made it back home. Thomas didn't look like he'd be able to swallow the pill so she popped the capsule into the ejector, stuck the barrel in his slack mouth and sent the charcoal on its way to absorb whatever poison was still lurking in his stomach.

Pardon the roughness. I'm jumping the proverbial gun a little by posting. Hope you enjoy.

The last fingers of the morning fog were slinking away, little waves collapsing on the shore like exhausted swimmers. Hunkered down behind the fishing boat, Stephen knew the longer he stayed near the dock, the deeper the acrid sting of the brine would burrow into his nostrils. He’d taste it all night, even in his sleep, and probably have dreams about stinking seaweed dragging him into the ocean.

It was times like these that tested Stephen’s understanding of how to be a good priest of Banyon. As he saw it, he could put his trust in his judgement of people, that they were rational and straightforward, or he could put his trust in how the world worked: one day followed the next — tomorrow would be much the same as today.

Because therein lay the problem. The day before had derailed spectacularly and had come crashing into this morning.

Acolyte Daniel was still peeping over the edge of the boat, scanning the houses and the fish-drying rooms. If someone happened along then to see them, they’d look foolish.

“What do you think, Daniel?

Daniel was as sure as ever. “I don’t see anything. No, there’s definitely nothing there.”

“No, about all of this. What do you think?”

“Oh. No. There’s definitely no such thing as monsters.”

Monsters, thought Stephen. Someone had finally said the word. Over the houses, Stephen could see the plume of pale orange rising from the hillside. Some of the men claimed it was a kind of smoke coming from a strange thing up in the woods. Like a big pimple just ... just sprung up out of the ground.

“It was a northern rake,” said Daniel, “drifted down with the ice. That happens sometimes. The current brings them right past here. I’d be scared of a rake too. They get big. Have teeth the size of my fingers. They can take down gannocks over four times their size and rip them to shreds before they eat them. They have three stomachs, see....”

That was the last Stephen heard before he tuned Daniel out and looked out over the glittering ocean. He wasn’t so sure the townspeople had seen a northern rake. At heart, he wanted to dismiss everything they had said — wave away all the strange talk about the animal, pat the dust off his robes, and run his errands the way he would normally; life wants to go on like that. But the people who’d come running to the monastery were hardy folk, faces carved by scouring winds, hands sculpted by pulling wet ropes out of the ocean, by pulverizing thick bread, by the hilts of fish-gutting knives. Not people to tell tall tales: people who would know a northern rake if one drifted in on a stray piece of pack-ice. Surely, half of them had seen it happen before, and had probably eaten rake-steaks for days afterward.

Monsters.

Banyon himself had only to believe that he wouldn’t die from thirst, that water would erupt from the bare stone about him. Even he hadn’t had to wrap his mind around monsters in a quaint place like Bay Banyon. Normally, the worst monsters found in town were the ugly clawfish the nets sometimes trawled up, with faces like fistfuls of nails. Too late in the season and they tasted terrible, and tended to give Stephen pungent gas.

“Easy for you to say,” said Stephen, cutting into Daniel’s lecture arbitrarily, “your room is up near the tower. I’m down by the hall. All night people were wailing and pulling their hair out. I might have closed my eyes for a couple hours, maybe two. Up in the tower, see, it’s quiet. Down near the hall where I am, last night it sounded like a circus was going on in there. Now, it’s not so bad normally—”

“People see all kinds of things that don’t really exist. This is a small town. People here were probably still seeing sea maidens and tree people until recently. They see a northern rake and they panic.”

Sobbing and crying had crept stone to stone across the ancient quiet of Banyon hall, twenty people camped on the sacred steps. Few of them had brought food. Some of the women still holding their knitting needles. The men with their high rubber boots on their feet trampling the vegetables to relieve themselves in the corner of the yard when Mrs. Johnson took too long in the communal water room.

Young Mrs. Cole had hardly said a word the past two days. She’d just curled up on the stone steps of Banyon’s chamber and talked quietly to herself. Talking to her absent husband, someone had said. Where her young daughter was, nobody would say.

Stephen hated hearing her crying, and Old grumpy Ben Terra, gnashing his gums together and grinning at everyone, seemed determined to make the ordeal worse for everybody. Every so often, when the room had quietened, he’d smack his hands together loudly and yell, “Shooped up like a great blot of steam! Clamped down upon like two hands clapping in that great mouth of the beast, then SHOOP, there he went!” In the quiet of the great stone chamber, his hands clapping reverberated inside the ears like gunshots.

The women scolded him. These gentle mothers of Bay Banyon with their ankle-length dresses and flower-print aprons had eyes like wild beasts when needed. He was scaring the children, they said. A man of his years should have better sense.

But Old Ben Terra had been ignored in town too long to keep himself quiet. Before long he’d raise a ruckus again. Maybe not of the same sort, yet trouble nonetheless. What men weren’t out with their rifles only looked at their feet, not knowing their place.

Stephen picked a yellow peeling of paint off the boat with his finger and shifted on the loose shore stones. His knees were starting to ache; the soles of his shoes were too thin and his feet could feel every lump.

 Daniel stood up and stretched his neck to look further. “It doesn’t exist … what they described. And it doesn’t make sense. It’s only about four hundred paces to the store. The front door is open. The sign’s still on it, even.”

“That may be true, but I’m not so sure that—”

“You got your robes on, Stephen. Trust in Banyon, right?”

Stephen didn’t like the condescending tone in that. Daniel had missed the point of being a priest of Banyon altogether. It didn’t make him live with faith in the optimal outcome, it made him cocky and restless.

“Okay ... but Banyon wasn’t stupid, Daniel. Seems to me that’s why the monastery’s on a peninsula, and there’s fifteen foot high walls around it.”

Daniel scoffed. “To keep the gardens from being attacked, maybe. The walls by the road don’t even go anywhere.”

“Well, they’re probably symbolic or something.”

The waves hissed down at the beach and the stones clattered, reluctant to be drawn down by the white fingers of the surf.

“See, said Daniel,” holding his hand to his ear, “if there were a northern rake anywhere near here, we’d have heard it scraping its front claws together by now….”

Stephen stood slowly and stretched his legs, sliding his toes around against the rocks. He could feel his knees and ankles popping. Probably be crippled by fifty, he always said. It felt good to stand, but that orange column rising from the hill looked to be blowing towards them, and he felt exposed strolling along as if everything was normal.

“Fine, you go on,” he said, “you be the brave one. I hope you don’t mind if I hang back a bit and stick close to the houses. I don’t got the young danglers that you got.”

Quiet. That was true. An assault of quiet. The wind was waving in the far trees, the branches bowing their heads, and Stephen could hear dead leaves scraping across the pavement somewhere, and the tinkle of tiny rocks against a metal grate.

Usually there’d be a crowd of men down by the dock, mending nets and spitting, gregarious, with thick fingers and impenetrable mumbled accents. He could ignore them until they weren’t there. Then their absence made him nervous.

Back at the monastery, he’d counted nearly twenty people before their milling had ruined his tally, but that left nearly three times that many unaccounted for. Down the road all the doors were closed, the houses quiet. Where was the clatter of dishes being put away after breakfast, the squeak of clothes being fed out to a backyard line? And now that he thought about it, no whistle fish were singing down by the beach. Nor was there a single cheep to be heard from a gray-wing overhead.

Inside every house, he saw only pictures and chairs and dishes, sewing machines and pipes on windowsills. These were dolls’ houses. He wanted somebody, anybody, to be around, and he wanted them to come ambling around a corner carrying their potatoes in an old shirt, not to be found hiding in a closet, or running for their life. If this was all a joke, he was tired of it.

He decided he would not call out, and wouldn’t mention the quiet to Daniel either. The boy would start yodeling over the rooftops with his next breath.

He’d been glad to take Daniel and escape the Banyoners invading his home. Another hour tending to the braying of Mrs. Johnson and they’d have been prying his hands off her throat. The people of Bay Banyon had never been friends to him, but he found himself wishing for a sidelong glance from a window, a sneer from an open upstairs door. He didn’t like being nervous, and wanted to be at home, hoeing in the garden and making repairs to their crumbling monastery; he missed the tedium of his morning rituals.

An orange stain roughly two arm-spans wide was slowly running off the side of the outside wall of the store. Some of it had apparently washed away with the rain the night before, but it looked to have soaked into the boards underneath.

Shooped up like a great blot of steam!

“This is going to take some paint,” said Daniel. He plowed his finger through the orange sheen and it looked viscous and slippery. Daniel sniffed it and coughed immediately. “Ugh, that smells like a jeck’s udder.” Not wanting to wipe it on his pants, he wiped his finger crisscross against the doorframe.

SHOOP! There he went. Gone!

“Ahh, my finger still smells!”

“Not so loud.”  Stephen couldn’t get the sound of grumpy old Ben Terra clapping out of his head. Gone! Just like that. Gone! Clap! Gone!

Today I was directed to a Tumblir site making fun of Bad Book Covers. Or, as it says, lousy book covers. Trolling through them however, I thought a few of them simply didn't belong. To me they seemed homages to the science fiction book covers of the 1960s and 1970s.

Which, in my opinion, are great.

Make no mistake, I'm well acquainted with those. On many occasions I've come across books -- often wonderful critiques of society as a whole, great anthropological fiction, or early thought-experiments on how technological society is changing us all -- that I've simply been too embarrassed to buy because of their covers.

I couldn't bring myself to hand the book to the clerk and say, "Yes, I am interested in purchasing this. Here is real money."

Heinlein's Friday comes to mind immediately. Many times, while delving deep into second-hand shelves in tiny bookstores in small towns in northern places, I came across this book, and always considered buying it.

But nope. Never did. Probably never will.

Heinlein is famous for his space floozies, as I'll try to demonstrate below. Some of his books should have come in brown paper bags.

I have a number of examples of interesting old book covers, but science fiction covers of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, seem to epitomize a certain way of thinking. 

Essentially, the way I see it, many science fiction publishers didn't take their own genre seriously. When it came time to produce covers for what often became classic works of the genre, this is basically how I imagine their line of thinking went:

QUESTION:   Who reads science fiction?
ANSWER:   Adolescent boys.
        QUESTION:   What do adolescent boys like?
         ANSWER:   Spaceships. And girls.

Mind you, the male 'hero' in the Ellison cover above is also wearing short-shorts over a pink unitard, and what appears to be a motorcycle helmet on his head. All too often, I think science fiction covers of this era were a reflection of what could be achieved at the time by television and film special effects.

Heinlein received a lot of credit with me for Starship Troopers, which slowly dwindled away as I read more of his catalogue. The last of that expired halfway through I Will Fear No Evil, which has the plot complexity of low budget pornography. I put it down mid-paragraph and I've never looked back. Since then, even telepathic nazi Doogie Hauser and the cast of Saved by the Bell in Space versus the alien bugs has been regarded leerily.

I don't recall much about the plot of The Heaven Makers, but I remember enough to know that the cover hardly relates to the book at all. The damsel on this one is rather small, but of course wearing some lovely low-cut evening wear. I always thought the fellow with the cool curvy sword meant to defend her from what appears to be Sesame Street's the Count's close family, but upon closer inspection it looks more like she's running towards the nearest of their captors, and he's getting ready to cut her down.

Just another day at Gringotts.

Of the next two, the Asimov cover is my favorite example of flying space ladies. The publisher just couldn't resist playing up the word 'naked' in the title. As you can see from the Wikipedia entry below, just like all of Asimov's titles -- especially his annoted version of the bible -- the book is a filthy, perverted space romp:

Asimov, being brilliant, predicted World of Warcraft by fifty years.

The other side of that equation, of course, is the space ships. These days, this popular sort of future-ism is sort of a -- ironically -- nostalgic art form. Here's a great page of spaceship conceptual art.

Many old book covers from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, are fine examples of the art that spawned the genre.

I'm not quite sure what's happening in the covers below, but it sure is 'spacey.' I've noticed that Niven's name tends to get a little heavy around the middle.

John Berkey's work is generally considered classic these days. With a little digging, I've learned he designed the I, Robot cover above.

Chris Foss is the designer for the Foundation cover, which is also a good early example of orange-blue constrast.


Older John Wyndham's books usually have classic examples of space ships and sciency stuff as well:

Some of his more recent editions, however, disappoint in that they attempt to portray what the reader could expect from THE ACTUAL BOOK.  I guess that's the Penguin influence.

Now there' s a heading that demands attention.

I've always loved Jack Kerouac. Cliche, I know. I don't care. I love his writing. That everything he published, with the exception of The Town and the City, is a first draft still blows my mind.

Don't try this at home, kids.

When he exploded on the scene back in the 1950s, it was a turnaround for established literary circles. Sure, he wrote like jazz, like closing your eyes and seeing colors, but he wrote about youth and adventure, often in a free-spirited, devil-may-care manner. It was a mainstream embracing of counter-culture.

The first edition of On the Road is a rather severe, classy, black cover, a cover that goes to church on Sunday and hardly ever says swears. These paperbacks, however, seems to be pushing another angle altogether. I only have three old Kerouac paperbacks, and I have five nekkid ladies.

Ladies and gentlemen of the 1960s, buy these steamy paperbacks to find out what your kids are doing: posing nekkid with strange floating houseplants. Mind you, come to think of it, the cover for The Subterraneans was probably pretty risque for the time (1966).


By 1962, John Steinbeck, another of my favorite writerly gentlemen, had a Nobel prize. Win that kind of recognition and your covers begin to take on a friendly, earthy atmosphere, lit with a soft glow.

Of course, every once in a while, even Nobel prize winners get the nekkid lady treatment.

From these next three, I take the lesson that if your work survives long enough to be recognized by pretty much everyone, your publisher may actually read the book and okay a cogent cover.

... well, we can't help you there.

LARRY NIVEN WANTS TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE WITH HIS TITLES!

The cover designer for these bad boys had heavy metal in his soul. These are covers that head-bang to Black Sabbath, that have Slash on speed dial. In truth, Lucifer's Hammer probably shouldn't be included in this list as it's a little too new. Yes, it was first published in the 1970s, but this edition was published in1993.

Essentially, I'm pointing out that this sort of thing has been going on for quite a while now. And it needs to stop.

Also, it's a really good example of how book design gets recycled.

I think for any other author, these two covers would be laughably cheezy, but for Lovecraft they're absolutely perfect.

On my shelf I discovered these great 1960's paperbacks of The Aeneid and The Iliad that I never knew I had. Any designer these days, with current trends in book covers in mind, will tell you that the Iliad cover is too busy, potentially has too many colors, and not enough empty space to draw the eye to where you want it to be. I think that's unfortunate. Because this cover is fantastic. I'd hang that on my wall.

And with that, I'm out of my best examples of fun old book covers.

Not exactly an anthropological study, but a fun visit through the furthest antipodes of my bookshelves. Sad to say, but with e-readers gaining more and more widespread adoption, it won't be much longer before nostalgic digs such as this one become virtually impossible.

Okay, now I have armloads of books stacked on my desk that I need to reshelve. Hope you enjoyed.

My fellow citizens, we ask your patience.

We at the PWYFC,  the support group for People Who Yell From Cars, feel it is time to foster understanding and acceptance of our members.

The PWYFC realizes that the time for yelling at people indiscriminately has passed in this country. Times change, and we must change with them. Yet we wish to remind you that yelling at people from cars, until recent times, was an acceptable and upstanding pastime.

Yelling at people while mobile has been around a very long time. Some would say it’s the second-oldest profession, second only to yelling at people while standing still. As soon as somebody created a moving platform to yell from, it was quickly utilized. The advantage of height was quickly apparent; the marvel of mobility must have seemed the next logical step.

History has a fine tradition of people yelling from horses, camels, elephants, litters, buggies, wagons.... The Ancient Egyptians may have been the first PWYFCs. Technically, they were People Who Yelled From Chariots. If a slave was slack, the Egyptian would drive by and let him know, usually with the lash of his whip.

Siegfried Marcus invented the first gas-powered automobile in 1870. History notes that the first thing Marcus did afterwards was take a spin around the block and yell at a lady for wearing pantaloons which weren’t puffy enough.

We wish to remind you that it was the celebrated Henry Ford who revolutionized modern yelling at people. With successful means of mass production, people could be yelled at from the convenience of one’s own personal transport. Zoom past, yell in perfect anonymity, and still get home in time to rebuff one’s butler for having an air above his station.

As agreeable as apple pie, yelling at people from cars, going on nearly a century now.

It is our belief that people who yell from cars are merely misunderstood. Traditions, and the old ways, are being forgotten. Just recently a man I once counted amongst my friends pulled his car over to the side of the road and told me to stop yelling at people from the safety and comfort of his backseat, even going so far to compare me to a yappy little dog.

He, and his ilk – as indeed they are, ilk – have forgotten the unwritten social service that people who yell from cars provide. People who yell from cars are the purveyors of social fluidity. I can’t stress how important that is. These days, people have no overriding commitment to a larger cohesion. Everybody feels they need to find their own way in the world – which, frankly, is balderdash – as if everybody could be special. They forget that they are merely one cell in a larger social organism.

It has long been the role of people who yell from cars to remind society of our commonalities. If a person has parted ways with the center strata of acceptable dress and decorum, it is people who yell from cars who gently give them a pat back into place. I agree absolutely that sometimes the individual sentiments may sting a little, but a tangled mess of hair sometimes needs a going-over with a rough brush, and we are that brush. We’re the eveners, the straighteners. Without us, society would get even more tangled than it already is.

My father was a yeller. His father was a yeller before him. My grandfather began yelling at ‘ducks’ ass’ haircuts and Davy Crockett hats on grown men, and carried on through beatniks, hippies, and long-haired freaks. When the day came that he could no longer fasten the wayward pips and nibs of society back together again, he passed the torch – and the keys to his Studebaker – to my father, who then yelled at disco hopheads, yuppies, and break dancers from the family seat.

My father, in turn, was one of the first people from our province to attend the PWYFC convention in San Francisco. Back then, in the mid-80’s, the convention was but a small collaboration of nine or ten attendees. Very grassroots. They rented a van, rolled the windows down, and happily drove the hills all day yelling at aging hippies still hanging around their old haunts wearing patchouli and sandals. All in good fun.

My father took me to my first convention when I was ten. By then, the event had grown. People came from all over the world to yell in Dutch, French, German – excellent yellers, the Germans. We rented the top floor of a hotel. The people below looked like ants. I’ll never forget my first afternoon driving around in a double-decker bus with my father, hanging over the side and yelling together.

But times have changed. Last year’s convention was cancelled.

No hotels would rent to us. Somehow, every bus was booked when we called, no matter how loudly we yelled at them.

In retrospect, we probably could have handled that differently.

In a way, the boycott has proved beneficial. It’s forced me to get to know local yellers in my area better. Once a month we get together, have a few beers, play cards, and yell at each other. We play games: who can think of the most yells in under a minute, most creative yell of the night, and so on.

Sad, I know. But it’s who we are.

So, dear people, what I'm trying to say is this: we’re not the monsters you make us out to be. Surely, we're as loveable as kittens when compared to smokers, or bronies, or people who wear crocs. Just ordinary folk trying to get along in the world, the same as you,  trying to help out the only way we know how.

We realize we have to change to suit the times, to adapt to the new social order. And I compose this letter to spread awareness and foster mutual respect.

In the meantime, if members of the public so please, there are ways they can aid us in our cause. 

For instance, you can stop wearing silly hats with Teddy Bears on them, actual Teddy Bears. Or not slouch as you stroll – look up at the world and be happy. And stop wearing such strange boots and fancy jackets. And don’t wear brightly colored clothes, or clothes that are too dark. Stop having big noses, short hair, no hats, funny walks. Please, people, stop being so pedestrian.

And I know we’ll get along just fine.

Thank you for your time. I mean, THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.

(you funny-looking wieners)

Sincerely,

Ted, c/o The PWYFC.

A thought-bubble, as the title says, about Lovecraft, of the H.P. kind.

It's probably important to put the H.P. there if googling that.

Today, I was wondering if the phrase 'something seems fishy' had something to do with H.P. Lovecraft. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read his The Shadow of Innsmouth.  Essentially, everybody in that town were relatives to some sort of underwater ... frog ... men ... who worshiped some ... ya know ... elder god or something.

So ... I wondered if saying something seemed 'fishy' about a person, implied that there was an aspect about them which seemed a little off, like they had risen from the depths of the ocean to breed with our women and begin a race of ... well ... not supermen ... but severely strange-looking recluse weirdos who don't like to go out and quake behind shuttered-up windows and who probably have slightly translucent toes.

Because that'll show the normals.

But then I figured nawww. Probably just means that fish stink when they rot, and people find that suspicious.

I do think it would be great to turn that around, however. If I were, say, out buying fish which were perhaps  a day past its hypothetical due date, and had a (shockingly) fishy scent about it, I could complain to the manager: Hey! 'Scuse me. Phew! This fish smells a bit like it worships an elder god ... see? I want a discount.

I also wondered if fans of Lovecraft dressed up like godlike squid monsters to attend a convention called Necro-comic-con.  But try not to think about that. You're better off.

Merry Christmas.

I thought this video was hilarious, witty, and educational.

Obviously, The Cannons was intended for a local audience, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch for anybody who doesn't attempt to speak only in swears and vowels. Writing in regional dialect is an exercise in futility, Trainspotting debatable, and I've even written out the word as 'm o t h e r,' with a fancy (townie) 'th' and everything.

Sure sign of a class act, that. Bet he cleans behind his ears and everything.

I'll just get on, now. You have at 'er.

Dicky tipped the beer bottle to his mouth, a short swig, and asked, “How much you think I could get for the metal in one of them cannons?”

His nephew, Bryce, next to him on the curb, pushed a smirk at him. “What cannons?”

“God, you know what cannons. How many places got cannons?"

The first intrusions of dawn were folding a lighter blue into the black backdrop of the night sky. The men peered across the width of the harbour into the darkness. The lights around Signal Hill, the elderly sentinel of the Atlantic ocean, high above St. John's harbour, were little more than fireflies to them, but they knew where on the hill the cannons were and mapped them against the gloom.

Bryce shoved his sneakers out in front of him and tugged at his ball cap. “Oh, those cannons. I don’t know. Five bucks. Ten?”

Dicky’s thinning hair was incredulous. He swivelled to face his nephew, fifteen years younger, home from university that day. “Ten dollars? Holy Moses, Jimmy Hoskin’s got a hundred for that roll of copper he stole from the power lines, and there’s more to a cannon than there is a roll of copper.”

Nephew Bryce, with a big grin on his face, hummed, “Hmm. So a cannon?”

“Yes, a cannon. Those things up there on the hill what shoots big bowling balls.”

“Twenty dollars?”

“Twenty? Twenty?” Dicky pulled at the bib of his own cap and pushed it around backwards, readying for battle. “Bryce, me buddy, I don’t know what to do with you.”

Bryce chuckled and accepted the bottle when his uncle Dicky — Richard, but Dicky all his life — passed it his way. His sip was too small, as were all their sips. Their shared bottle was the last survivor from a case of twelve and neither of them wanted to finish it too quickly. It was their tether to the evening, their only excuse to sit and keep talking on the curb, so they sipped slowly, and drew no attention to their dainty tips.

Bryce lowered the bottle. “I don’t know, Dicky, those cannons are way out there, you know, not by the road. They’re down and over the hill.”

Dicky nodded. “Yeah, I know where they are. We’ll drive the truck right over, hoist ‘em in the back ... no problem. Couple cannons.”

“Yeah. Couple cannons.”

“But that wasn’t the question, Bryce me buddy. The question was how much do you think we could get for the metal in one of them. If you’re so smart, then answer me that.”

Bryce was not won over so easily. “No problem? Sure you got a problem. What truck you talking about? You don’t got a truck.”

“I got a truck,” said Dicky assuredly.

Bryce leaned in drunkenly, halfway to the dirt. “Since when do you have a truck? You got that old wheelbarrow maybe, that one that’s out in the shed. Full of empties.”

“Wheelbarrow,” scoffed Dicky. “Watch me moving a cannon with a wheelbarrow now.”

“At least you got a wheelbarrow. I knows you don’t have a truck.”

“Yes, you’re right. But I never said I had a truck….”

“Yes you did. Just then.”

“My good pal, Lundy, got a truck. We get his truck. We’re set.” Dicky clapped his hands decisively. “Just like that, see. No problem.”

Unconvinced, Bryce shook his head. “Lundy? Don’t he only got a Ranger? A cannon’s probably the full weight of that old Ranger of his.”

Dicky chewed on his lip and took the bottle when Bryce nudged his arm with it. Half full, warm, Dicky pressed it to his lips cautiously. Neither of them wanted to be the one to finish it.

“Them cannons are clamped down,” added Bryce. Less than a day home from school, he could already hear his old accent returning. The beer helped bring it out too.

“You mean at night?”

Bryce laughed. Real laughter this time, not forced mockery. “No, you goof, not just at night. You think someone’s gonna steal a cannon when nobody’s looking? They’re cemented down in concrete blocks all the time.”

Dicky was impervious to his nephew’s scorn. “Well, smart guy, if no one is gonna steal a cannon, why are the cannons cemented down?”

Bryce shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what all cannons are like. Bolted down. Maybe because of the wind.”

Dicky lowered him a disbelieving look. “The wind?”

“I don’t know. Yeah. The wind.”

“You think the wind can knock down one of those cannons?”

“No.”

“The wind can but I can’t?”

“I know you can’t.”

Pushing back his sleeves, Dicky cocked his bicep and struck a pose. “You might know a bit about those guns up on the hill, but you don’t know nothing about these guns that I got right here. Check out these cannons.”

Dicky hadn’t done an honest day’s work in months. His arms were pasty tube socks.

Bryce laughed out the side of his mouth, “Don’t know, Dicky. They look more like peashooters to me.”

“We’ll see who’s got peashooters when we bust up that concrete.”

Bryce scoffed again. “Bust it up? With those arms? It’d take years.”

Uncle Dicky shrugged. “Well I don’t know about that. From what Rose tells me, you’ve been lifting ten thousand bucks worth of books all year long. A cannon shouldn’t no problem for the likes of you.” He followed his shrug with another delicate sip and passed the bottle back.

Bryce shifted on the cold cement curb. “I’ll smash those blocks like the Hulk. Carry a cannon down the hill on my shoulders. Two of ‘em. One on each.”

The blue of the sky had raised high enough to silhouette the fort watching over St. John’s harbour against the dawn. It would be a rare fogless morning, clear and sunny.

“Yep,” muttered Dicky with a nod, “good ‘ol Lundy with his truck. He turned to his nephew. “We should head over his way now. Get a start.”

Bryce shifted his ball cap. “Now, hold on now. You don’t think things through, Dicky. You never does. Lundy’s arms are like two skipping ropes. We’ll need more than just us three to move a whole cannon. The two of us plus ... maybe fourteen more of Lundy.”

Dicky tapped at his teeth pensively. “Hmm. Yeah. Might need to cut another guy in too. Still, plenty of metal on a cannon to go around.” Dicky pushed himself to his feet. “We should head on over to Lundy’s now.”

“Probably need a couple guys,” said Bryce with a grin. “You aren’t that young anymore.”

Dicky laughed. Finding the nearest scraggly rose bush, Dicky unzipped his fly and bowed himself, talking over his shoulder. “Any day you wants to pit yourself against a real man, little buddy, you know where to find me.”

“I knows where to finds you — in bed.”

“Damn right. No need to get outta bed to drop a skin-bag a bones like you. You’d think they didn’t feed you at all up there in that school.”

“Then I’d let on that you were trying to rope me into something illegal.”

Dicky feigned shock. “Sweet Jesus, you’d set the law on me, your own dear uncle?”

“Worse. I’d tell mom on you.”

Dicky straightened. “Yes, lord, that’d be worse. Rose’d kill me. Don’t you be talking to your mother about none of this. She don’t like your drinking, especially not with me.”

Bryce laughed and picked up the bottle where Dicky had laid it on the curb. The beer was low now, the foam resting against the brown bottom.

“Illegal,” muttered Dicky, zipping up his pants. “Hardly illegal, taking one of those cannons. Not like anybody’s using them.”

“What if pirates attacked the harbour? Then what would we do?”

Dicky sputtered, “Pirates? Pirates? There hasn’t been pirates around here for what … fifty years.”

Bryce wasn’t even trying to keep a straight face anymore. “You steal those cannons and we won’t have any cannons to defend ourselves if they come back.”

“I don’t want all the guns, just the one.”

“That’s not the point,” said Bryce animatedly, leaning back to talk to his uncle who was stretching his legs. “Besides, what would you do with it?”

“Money me buddy. Money.”

“Money.”

“Yes, money.”

“What money? You bring a cannon to the recycling place and they’d knock you over the head and call the cops.”

“As long as they don’t call your mother.”

Bryce laughed. “I missed your foolishness when I was away, Dicky.”

“No foolishness about it,” said Dicky. “I’d take care of it.”

“You’d melt down a whole cannon?”

“I might. I can’t say.”

“You can’t say?”

“I know a guy. He’d take care of it.”

“A guy? What guy? Some guy with a wood stove?”

Dicky tapped the side of his nose and looked down at the bottle in Bryce’s hand. “Finish that off now. I don’t want no more of that backwash.”

“You sure?”

“Give ‘er.”

Bryce tipped the bottle up, made a face as he swallowed the last of the tepid foam, and placed the bottle down gently on the curb with a hollow click. “Must be one hell of a wood stove,” he said after a burp, “fit a whole cannon.”

Dicky pushed a smirk out to one side of his face. “Must be nice being young, having all those brains. But you’re not half so smart as you thinks you is.”

Bryce smirked back at his uncle. “Smart enough to know you’d be better off melting down the stove and using the cannon to have fires instead.”

By now, the outline of Signal Hill was pushing inland. Closer to the shore, they could see that a military ship had docked in the night. A smaller boat with a searchlight was doing aimless loops in the harbour, keeping guard.

“Smart enough for that to be sure,” said Dicky, arching his back; “a woodstove’s no thicker than the tinfoil inside a pack of smokes, but not smart enough to know that Lundy hides a case of beer in his garage in case of emergencies.”

“Emergencies, huh?”

“Yes sir, for all kinds of emergencies. Floods. Earthquakes, or two good fellas with grand plans who don’t got no beers to bring it all together. All Lundy needs  is a good emergency for waking him up. Even a bad emergency that sounds good at the time would be good enough for Lundy. He’s not particu-lar. But, I don’t know ... I can’t think of none right now. No emergencies at all. Certainly not no emergencies to do with cannons.”

Birds were yawning noisily in the trees around them.

Dicky peered out over the harbour. “No sir, I thought there for a minute that I had a dilly of a yarn about stealing some cannons to make a few dollars off of them, but now I knows the error of my ways. You’ve convinced me, Bryce ol’ buddy. Stealing cannons, it simply ain’t possible. I ain't keen enough to know what they’re teaching you up there in that school, but I guess it’s working, because you got me convinced — and I’m hard to teach, I am. That’s what the ol’ nuns used to tell me mother.”

“Well —”

“Yes sir. You’re one smart lad. We would need a dozen stout men to move a cannon, probably a backhoe with a driver, a crane with an operator, and the man from the Department of Works who oversees all the stealing done in the city, just to take a one of them. After a crew that size got their cuts there wouldn’t be much left of our little cannon for us, and hardly enough beer to wet our lips for that matter. Lundy don’t keep no more than twelve around at any one time ... a good measure, that. So no buddy, we can’t be at no cannons. Not this night anyway.”

Reconsidering in the light of new information, Bryce shuffled. “We could —”

“Nope, nope,” said Dickie, “I’m already sold, smart feller. I think it’s time we should be moseying inside now before Rose sees you’re out and strings me up.”

“We could call Lundy. I got my cell.”

“Well I hope you knows Lundy’s number, and can figure out where he stashes his case, because I’m going to bed. Goodnight, me boy.”

With that, Dicky took a circuitous route across the street and disappeared up the concrete front steps of the house. The door slammed – it had been sticky, opening with suction, for years – and Bryce heard Dicky thump over the coffee table in the living room. 

His mother’s light flicked to life in her bedroom window, first a dull yellow, then brighter.

Bryce looked out over the water one last time. A little blue fishing boat was making towards the narrow mouth of the harbour and the choppier cradles of the ocean. Bryce could see the colour of the morning now, the dark green bushes of Signal Hill, the white froth candles of the far waves. The little boat squeezed between the rocks of the harbour mouth, raising higher with each passing second against the lightening sky. Down at the docks, the thrum of huge motors was building.

Bryce picked up the bottle they’d perched on the sidewalk. He threw it into the bushes and sighed. No way to sneak in unseen now, not with Dicky stumbling about the living room like a frightened bird. Bryce waited a few moments for the light in his mother’s window to darken, but it never did.  

Failed stories. Every writer has them. 

Born of good ideas which just didn't quite pan out, they sit in the literary junk drawer for months and years. Every so often, in moments of boredom or with pulses of meandering creativity, they're taken out and turned over again, and they're never quite BAD, failed stories, they just don't quite deliver on what they originally advertised.

Inevitably, looking at the story again, it's thought, Well, this isn't so bad. A few words get added here and there to strengthen images, dialogue gets a bit of a tweak. I'll just make this chap a bit sassier. Generally, any alterations are chalked up as being telltale for personal improvements in the craft since you last looked.

Yet ... something about the story still doesn't quite work, and again it goes back into the dusty drawer with old bits of overheard conversations and correspondence which you once thought was clever.

For me, The Cannons is my failed story. I have bigger failures, but The Cannons is the most successful failure. The other failures don't even have the luxury of a literary junk drawer. They're bricked up behind a wall down in my dank literary basement, never to see the light of day.

I don't dislike The Cannons, but something about it never quite works for me either. I wrote it for the Cuffer Anthology Contest in St. John's a few years back. The contest basically wants a pretty written advertisement for the island, geographic masturbation if you will, but when I think about Newfoundland I think of the widening separation between the generations, the grizzled old beards with hands like baseball mitts down on George Street passing the pink Republic of Newfoundland headscarves holding the ipods. I wanted to reflect upon that in some small way, but the constraints of the original context -- 1200 words -- might have squeezed it a little too much.

Pardon the hat in the picture. It's my visual placebo. I shaved off my beard for Movember and I'm still in shock at how small my head looks to me right now.

Also, I took the photo on the one day of the year where I wasn't wearing my tuxedo and sipping martinis. Isn't that always the way?

(In truth, it being November the first and only three kids having come to our door last night, I'm shocked I'm not currently wallowing in some sort of debilitating sugar coma. By all medical logic, syrupy brown glucose should be oozing from my pores.)

For those of you who might not know, Movember is where men -- obviously -- grow mustaches for the month of November, usually competitively, either singly or with a team, to raise awareness of, and money for, prostate cancer research.

This year will be no different. I pledge to flaunt the hairiest, filthiest soup strainer that I can possibly coax from the middle of my face, like an old pushbroom that's been used to stamp out fires -- such a grubby lip-caterpillar that even Tom Selleck would shirk away in disgust in public. If people aren't approaching me on the street and asking, "Why are you doing that to yourself?" then I'm just not doing it right.

Ladies, if your men are doing the same this month, please be patient. It's for a good cause.

Plus, as an extra, he will gain all the old-timey superpowers of mustache: the ability to talk to, and reason with, bears and other wild creatures; mastery over words like 'indubitably,' and phrases like, 'I say, what a disgraceful moppet she has become;' and, best of all, the ability to set petticoats ablaze with his smouldering gaze.

Myself, I'm lucky to have such a wonderful and understanding lady who supports the must-stache.

On the flip side, in the past, because there's so many fuzzy lips around for a good cause in November, I've encountered quite a few cheeky fellows who have grown hair snakes themselves simply because it suddenly became socially acceptable. These gentlemen -- though I use the word laughingly -- being gutless and vain, won't stray outside the shorn facial norm at any other time of the year, needing a group within which to hide and blend.

Now, normally, dear readership, I wouldn't call for the social shaming of any creed or group, but I do advocate admonishing glances for anybody you suspect might be a hairy-lipped Movember cuckoo. I implore you to dust off your pitchforks and torches and put their business ends to good use. Drive the pretenders from your beds, shun them from your pubs. To the barbershop with them!

To be fair, I've given thought to the counter-argument that simply having a face sweater in November raises awareness of prostate cancer research. And that, to a point, may be true. However, when people approach me on the street and ask, "Why are you doing that to your face?" I tell them that I'm my own personal Chia-Pet for Movember and prostate cancer research. Also, "I'm taking donations through the Movember website. Would you like to donate?"

Approach one of these other fellows and they'll reply, "Because it's No Shave November, dude."

If not the rusted point of your pitchfork, make them give you ten dollars towards cancer research. It's only fair. And a good trade-off, I would think.

Forgive me if I sound sanctimonious, but I believe the good intent of Movember should not be a smokescreen for the face-cowards of No Shave November. 

Last year, around the world, over 854,000 people participated in Movember, raising $125.7 million CAD.

For more information, please visit http://ca.movember.com/?home

If you would like updates on the progress of my dirty, filthy, nose bush, or would like to donate, please visit my profile at: http://mobro.co/4232721

Any contribution would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I know a bear who has a very interesting story to tell.

Indubitably.

This morning I self-published a short story of mine with Amazon. I'm not very good at blurbing, blurbinating, or blurbtastic exclamations, but this one came out fairly well.

"Nick stepped up onto a rock and proudly planted a solid print in the cinnamon soil on the other side. One small step for a facilitator …

Nick Hutchinson hates Mars, and hates his new job as Earth Liaison.

One month down, five to go. Think of rivers, think of clouds, think of frogs and dresses in summer and umbrellas. Five months until antelopes, snowflakes, storm drains …

But when he volunteers to venture out onto the surface, hoping to convince a widowed hermit to sell her land to Friends of Earth Co., it’s she who has the most to say, and he who had better listen."

As an aside, if there's no such job as a person who writes winning blurbs for books, this is a niche that somebody needs to fill. And I am certainly not that person.

This story came about when my friend, Michael, challenged me to write a science fiction story as a bet for the Friends of Merrill short story contest. As usual, I doubled the allotted wordcount and forfeited the contest. But it was fun, so that's okay.

Though Mars is popular these days, and always in the news, writing a story about Mars that doesn't infringe on areas already flavoured slightly by the greats is next to impossible. The scientific material we're getting about Mars these days rides the wave of imagination established by A HUNDRED YEARS of stories about the planet, starting with H.G. Wells, peaking at Bradbury, and firmly achieving maturity with Kim Stanley Robinson.

On that note, it's very difficult to write anything political about the colonization of Mars while avoiding falling into Robinson's rather sprawling, erudite, and epic shadow. So I decided the best course of action was not to try. Exercises in futility are not my forte.

So I laid my thoughts out about the inevitable trend towards privatizing space flight, and voila, Daisies of Mars. It's a trepidation that I think is valid, seeing that Virgin is building a space port in New Mexico and Google has lately invested in a company to take advantage of future asteroid mining.

The story is also a turning point for me in my mindset towards publishing.

Just a year ago, I would have held onto the piece and sent it out to journals, hoping for print publication. Daisies of Mars began that way, but after I waited three months to hear back from Asimov's, and a few weeks from Analog (great publications), I realized I simply didn't care to run the gambit of submissions anymore. I don't write many short stories, I don't write much science fiction -- and so don't have a thorough knowledge of that side of the industry -- and I have other projects to write which get neglected while I'm trolling through web pages and looking for submission requirements.

Publishing it on my own -- sorry traditional publishing -- is so damn easy. I know I won't sell much, if any, as I don't write the sort of material that does sell on Amazon, and I know I never will. But it's still nice to be able to give a piece a fond farewell, and a chance at completion: being read.

Now that I've conjured up a strange image of a singing backbone, or at least of a song about a backbone, potentially one that is singing, I won't take long to come to the point -- unlike most of my other blog posts.

As I suggest on my Ocean's Edge page, often it's useful to search for certain key words in your work and try to replace them with more descriptive phrases. I single out the term 'something' as an example. But it's also important to try to pin down your pet words, your go-to words, your bosom buddies of diction.

I hummed, figuring that certainly this absurd number of 'the's were due to the free-flowing nature of the piece. I was just sprinkling words everywhere, a dash here, a jigger there. It was a crazy time. I can't be blamed for anything I may or may not have done. Surely, my more polished and uppity novel, Raw Flesh in the Rising would have much fewer.

In Raw Flesh in the Rising, at a 113,604 words, I find 10,396 instances of 'the.' That's just under 10% of my words. The 'the' quotient is high.

I know that I'm catching all the similar words like 'there' and 'their' and 'they're,' but it seems to me it's all the same family -- cousins and brothers, and that strange cousin, 'other.'

And, in truth, I don't know if it means anything. More than likely: Absolutely Not. I Am Just Rambling. 

But, if anything, it does impart the rather large importance of such a little word. It's the opening act for most nouns, warming up the audience.

In general, it's fun to dig into a familiar piece and see it from another angle.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've had this conversation MULTIPLE times. You get much more honest feedback from callous people and strangers than friends. Anyway, this amuses me GREATLY. Ironically: well written.

Originally, I had intended this post to go in a different direction, but once underway, it essentially ran on a parallel track to my previous entries about leaving the house and having large and melodious thoughts descend upon me.

I guess it's all the trees around here.

All week I've been editing and writing, writing and editing. After a few days, the mental body is bled white of attention and needs repose, inaction.

So, as usual, I concocted an excuse and hopped in the car. It was more about driving on a sunny Saturday afternoon listening to the Pixies loudly than about shopping.

See HERE for the excuse -- holy horsepills.  I'm keeping them as noseplugs.

Hopefully the same company doesn't manufacture suppositories.

My town is small, and it didn't take me long to get where I was going. Never even got to Monkey Gone to Heaven.

At the bookstore, after having been browsing for only a few minutes, I looked up and thought, What the 'colourful colloquialism' am I doing?

At home, I edit books all week. Then, when I have the time, I write for myself. After that I flirt with twitter and bat my eyelashes at people in writing forums, visit Goodreads, write emails.... Words and books. Books and words. Editing and writing. Writing and editing. Paper dolls of ideas hooked together page to page.

Then when I need to get away from it all, I go to the expletive bookstore....

Up one rabbit hole and down another.

So I got out of there and went to another bookstore.

I went to the grocery store.  A woman pulled up by the entrance and, without getting out of her big truck, asked me if I knew what time the store closed.  I walked over and checked the time on the door for her. Had she been waiting for someone to come along so she could drive up?

The avacados in the grocery store were actually not rotten unlike the store downtown where fruit flies flitter nonchalantly around the bin. My people are not known for their great love of strange fruits and vegetables. But roll a potato through a crowded room and watch as fights break out.

Strolling near the frozen meats, I decided that I was now old.  I had a new benchmark for comparison.

With school having started, there's many young people around, and I can no longer distinguish between kids of college age and kids in junior high. Sometimes when I go out for gentlemanly libations and get dragged to sports bars and dance clubs, I think the young folk I see with their beers and umbrella drinks would look more appropriate holding Pokemons and Barbies.

I passed a blonde girl of perhaps eighteen, shopping with her cell phone to her ear. I thought, Typical.

Bear with me. I'm building to some semblance of a point.

In line for the express cashier, the line wasn't moving, very expressly not moving. A kerfuffle was afoot about the price of an item. Calls were being made for the secret knowledge of special grocery sages, the cashier's face a tapestry of ignorance and apology.

I drifted back and forth to find an express-er cashier, and finding none, floated back to the line I'd left to find two young gentlemen had supplanted my place in line. Fine. That's fine. I left. All is fair.

I couldn't tell how old those guys were either, but for one of them, at least, I could tell his future.

In five years time, young man, you shall become bloated with beer, sodas, and bad eating habits. To hide your baby face -- like the baby head from Toy Story with the crab legs and cyborg eye -- atop your man's body -- and really he did look like he'd attached the Gerber Baby's head to a grown man's body, I can't emphasize that enough -- you will grow a goatee, and wear a silver chain around your neck as a sign of your ascension into manhood. You will then wear your shirt-neck open so everybody may gaze upon it and marvel.

So it is written....

Then an employee was ahead of me in line, apparently taking her break, and joking with our cashier, lingering for laughter. 

Then the same girl who had been talking on her cell phone five minutes earlier got in line behind me, still talking on her cell phone. And I thought, Typical.

I found I was a little mad at the cashiers and their fraternizing, and at the girl behind me talking on her phone. Why can't you take that thing away from your head for five minutes?

And then, for the second time, I thought, What the 'colourful colloquialism' am I doing?

Firstly, I was vexing towards this girl on her cell phone. Meanwhile, the entire day I'd been slicing snapshots out of life, mentally saving them, sifting and sorting them, and adding clever captioning and dialogue, meaning to feed them to twitter or blogs or forums -- or merely to the moving scrapbook that is any piece of literature.

In fact, I couldn't go twelve seconds -- to choose an arbitrary number -- without picking up people by their lapels, shaking them to see if any interesting words would fall out, and placing them gently into my artistic picnic basket for later.

For you tech geeks, think of that as my rudimentary meatspace sandbox. Human 1.0.

Though I was not physically connected to my vices and devices, I nonetheless was carrying them with me. My proclivities had become as much as part of the functionality of the software as the actual written code.

Annoying girl with the cell phone, you and I are one.

Secondly, I had ire for the people ahead of me in line, as if they didn't have enough problems with having to wear beige uniforms all day.

I guess, almost as a bi-product of my first point: with technology, we're used to being able to control our worlds -- or at least the perception of our worlds -- in ways we were never able before. This applies doubly for those heavily invested in social media.

If I want to be amused, if I want to be maudlin, if I want ... anything -- or if I want the things that bother me -- politicians, rocks stars, advertisements -- if I want them to cease, I can make them stop existing in my immediate cone of attention.

Going out in the world, this no longer applies, and frustration is the response that gets triggered when immediacy is not allowed. One has to actually put up with what is happening in the functional, physical world of interacting people made of squishy bits, teeth, bones, and toenails.

Take a deep breath there.

Often, I think brains need enemas, or at least an accessible and safe RESET button.

I let the cell phone girl continue her so-very-important conversation. I laughed along with the socially apt cashier. This new-model monkey then went home to dinner.

It must have been difficult for a genius of Tesla's calibre to live in the latter half of the 1800s, when scientific quackery was rampant.  Electricity -- and pretty much any form of new-fangled thingamajiggery -- came to be peddled by the worst charlatans to a poorly educated public for every sort of miracle cure.

Take any sort of device, add ELECTRIC to the name, and VOILA -- snake oil.

Personally, I'm glad we live in an enlightened age.  Just this morning I arranged for a Nigerian Prince to forward me some money so I could pay for the penis enlargement pills that an Assertifed Doktor of Medicinal Stuff sent specifically to my 'Electronic Commerce' email.

Some people are marvelous. Never even had to leave the house. I could keep working at home.

This train of thought sponsored by The Oatmeal's article on Nikolai Tesla, to be found HERE, or even at this link:  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Beginning when I watched the Simpson's episode in which Homer is obsessed -- and might I add, a little bit titillated -- by the douchebaggery of Thomas Edison.

THIS, of course, I now realize, would be much more preferable. Also, more hilarious.

A bit of a continuation for Doesn’t Get Out Much ...

... born of brief reliefs from the heat as the fan panders by, energy spurts of teeth-rotting tea in dark-roomed afternoons, of lots of eye rhyme and incandescent slurs against the neighbor children doing their devil-worship beneath my window.

I believe I am jealous of the technical prowess of the latest writer I’ve discovered, slapping back the only way I know how -- by eating chocolate and typing.

That'll learn 'em.

A bit of background and then thoughts on the clichés of writing, maybe art. Though there are many, I’ll stick to the applicable -- with many asides, as much meat stocked on the perimeter of the plate as the middle.

As stated in my previous Doesn’t Get Out Much, I work from home. People give me their apple slices of life; I chew them over and regurgitate. We call that freelance copy-editing.

When I’m done editing for the day, I meander to the edge of the white space at the bottom of this page -- and every page like it -- and hang from the last loops and whorls of the a's and q's, the rare bottom bars of the z's, stretching them down as far as I can.

I’ve been remarkably successful at this of late, discovering how much easier it is to unroll a regular story of woes than a literary work with themes. It goes quickly.

I work as much as I can. Forget the sunlight, I have my monitor's pale glow; scritching on paper for the wind in the trees; a nice earth-tone beige colour, my desk. At heart, it makes me happy.

Yet I know it’s not healthy. It's more a life for a pupa than a person. 

... being an all-encompassed creature inside your artistic cocoon is almost what a writer has to be these days. One cannot just write. It’s not as simple as that. One has to make content, writing’s slut cousin.

Flirt with twitter. Sidle up to forum users and slip them my room card. Share contacts, measurements -- you show me yours I’ll show you mine. Play footsy with my emails. Freshen up in Photoshop. Try to smell nice for Google Analytics.

Content.

This is the puzzling cycle of pablum prescribed to fledgling writers these days. More-experienced writers, perhaps as a joke, slip them a piece of paper with instructions: ‘How to be a writer: Step One: make content. Step Two: Rejoice in the success of your content.'

Unfortunately, the majority of content makers misconstrue these instructions as Outdo even the most vexing spambots in the proliferation of your content! Really belt it out there! Loud and proud!

Usually, the recipients of a content-maker’s devotions to his promotions are other content-makers, which then leads to reciprocation, and escalation, until it’s all stirring together in a whirligig of droning voices and canned laughter, like the soundtrack to an old Hitchcock movie.

Any reader who accidentally gets sucked into the maelstrom swears never to go anywhere near it ever again….

Back to the cliché of the created world seeming more real than the real world.

Actually, I’m going to go with the ungrammatical word, ‘realer,’ here. Because it’s not my supposition that the real world seems irreal to the artist. It’s that the created world seems real-er.

Walking back from the store, not allowing myself to accept the cliché that a construct of my mind could seem realer than what I was actually seeing, perhaps I laughed a little too quickly. Often, I aim for the median course when the sacrifice of aiming high without a safety net (Being in the arts, actually doing art) gets to feel costly on a relatable level (No money, aging without palpable success).

Because, not long after, I had a very interesting moment.

It was but a pip, a tenth of a second. Crossing the road, I looked down the street. The row houses were colourful and interesting, every postcard of Newfoundland that’s not a whale or a puffin exemplified.  I saw them lined up like drunken friends leaning against one another, and I recreated them.

None of this will I ever do with the real houses.

In that moment, the houses I had created with my snapshot were realer for me than the houses that existed in the world.

I don’t know who lives in the real houses, but if I want a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses to live in my created snapshot house, until I actually go and ring the doorbell for myself and the real-life tenants answer the door to become a part of my external reality, that’s who lives there.

Similarly, the landscapes I've created recently with my shut-in literary splurging -- and which consume most of my mental idling -- have this sort of invaded property about them. I can concoct histories for every stone, consecrate closets and cupboards with meaning, switch the semblance of rooms in an instant.

The people that inhabit them, I can crawl inside their ears if I want, or tell you what they had for breakfast.

When they were nine.

I have no external wireframe for the reality houses, but possess a solid blueprint of the fantasy down to a cellular level. The created is realer than the blank.


Most clichés are true to some extent. Applicable to real life. Many of them, we reject only because past popular movements have denounced them. That doesn’t make them false.

The irony is, I'm denying my own perceptions because I’m adhering to a structure of behavior that our current culture says is preferable ...

... when, as people, we make the constructs of our heads realer to us than what we see in the world all the time.

Ask any daydreamer. Any political idealist. Any naïve mother. Ask any racist.

I’m just making a home inside mine, and inviting people over for popcorn.