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Tuesday Night Party Club #30

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Gallery: 2019 Daily Sketches 91-120

This week’s gallery is another collection of the daily sketches I did in 2019. This is the fourth gallery.

Story Seed #49
Write Like An Animal

Watership Down. Duncton Wood. Tailchaser’s Song. These are novels that feature animals as protagonists. Specifically, these stories feature anthropomorphic animal societies that keep more to the “natural” versions of the featured animals rather than human societies in animal drag i.e. Wind in the Willows or the Redwall series. Watership Down is a survival adventure story starring rabbits. Duncton Wood is a mythic fantasy featuring moles. Tailchaser’s Song is a claw and sorcery tale starring cats. These are the books that come to mind because I’ve read them. There are many others.

Animals are social creatures. They all have some sort of society, a way of interacting with each other. So pick a species and tell a tale. Mice? Bears? Elephants? Possums? What sort of cultures would these critters have? What kind of adventures (or romances or domestic dramas) would they experience?

I find that thinking like an animal often helps me to understand and sympathize with my fellow humans. Despite some of our fellows’ claims to contrary, humans are animals. Animals are people. And people have stories.

Recommendation : Charles Stross

Charles Stross is a writer based in Scotland. He’s known for a couple of series – The Laundry Files (horror/espionage)  and The Merchant Princes (science fiction/space opera). His blog is a good source of commentary on the business of writing and the political scene in the UK.

Local News

I think of myself as having three jobs. The first and most time consuming job is as a mail carrier. That’s the one that gives me income to pay my bills and look after my family. The second job is as a “creative person”. Mostly that’s creating illustrations and cartoons. Sometimes that’s doing designwork or writing stories. It’s a job that both brings in some extra income and keeps me sane. I do it more for the sanity keeping than for the extra income. The process of drawing is mostly relaxing and mostly quiets my mind even if the rest of the day has been filled with stupidity. On those occasions when drawing is frustrating, when I’m trying to draw something unfamiliar or really complicated, the process still takes quiets my mind and focuses it on a specific task.

My third job is marketing my second job. It’s the job for which I have the least time. Marketing can be sending out announcements about one’s skills and talents. Marketing can be a more direct process of contacting potential clients and flashing your portfolio at them. As much as possible I combine both my second and third job. Last year I posted a drawing a day here. This year I’m writing this newsletter. The drawing/writing of random things is a pleasant activity. Regular posting keeps eyes on this site and makes me more visible to search engines. So I hear anyway.

I finished my last illustration for The Lovecraft County Holiday Collection a couple of weeks ago. It’s a week until the Growing Up / Overnight Kickstarter launches. The campaign will last 30 days. Assuming it funds at the correct stretch goal, I’ll have some more illustrations to do.

In the meantime I’m working on concept art for Kaiju Weather, a graphic novel that I’m writing with my wife. The concept art is to help her see the world of the story the way I see it. It’s a huge project. Finishing it will take a few years. I will post the concept art when there’s enough of it (and we’re farther along in the rest of book) over at our Kaiju Weather page. I’m currently expecting to start doing that in January, 2022. Yeah, I’m thinking long term.

I’m also in the process of putting together a Zazzle shop. I’ll provide a link when there’s something to sell. Right now I’m working on designs and figuring out products. That means I have to think and learn. I love thinking and learning! I just wish I didn’t need solitary, quiet time to do it. I don’t have a lot of that. Still, I should have some merchandise available before the end of this summer.

Thank you for dropping by. It’s a chaotic world out there. Keep yourself safe and reach out to your friends. We’ll make it if we hang togehter.

Tuesday Night Party Club #29

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Gallery: Coloring An Inner Darkness

An Inner Darkness is one of Golden Goblin Press’s supplements for the Call of Cthulhu RPG. The scenarios deal as much with real, historical human evil as they do with the spectres of the Cthulhu Mythos. The book is profusely illustrated by Reuben Dodd. As production on the book neared completion, I was asked to color one of the illustrations in each scenario for a total of six. Mr. Dodd does fine color work but he’d already moved on to other projects. The editor, Oscar Rios, sent me tifs of the chosen illustrations and I set to work.
This is the first time I’ve colored anyone else’s artwork.The illustrations are clearly designed to be in black and white. So the trick was to add color without having that color clash with the linework – enhance not compete. For this specific illustration I started by chosing a set of flat colors that I thought emphasized the depressing nature of the situation – yellows, greys and sickly green. Once the main colors were chosen I added light greytones to indicate shadow and contour. I used the orignal linework as a guide for my light source. I’m happy with the results. I’m even happier that Reuben liked them too.

Story Seed #48
This Face Knows Your Secrets

A wealthy businessman turns himself in to the authorities. He’s come to confess his involvement in a money laundering scheme. It had started out simply, just cooking books, some shady investments, but it grew to covering up greater crimes including kidnapping and murder. The businessman is terrified. Not of his partners. They’re scary people but they’re just people. He’s afraid of the Face he sees in every reflective surface. The Face that stares at him knowingly from the windows of the building across the street. The Face that mouths truths to him before he can look away. The Face that no one else sees. 

The Face was a crime fighter from the early days of comic books. From 1940 to 1946, reporter Terry Trent would put on a fright mask and go beat up bad guys. Other than a scary disguise, Trent had no super powers. Due to the vagaries of copyright The Face is a public domain character.

I’m suggesting a couple different new versions:

  1. The Face is an actual supernatural entity. It appears before evildoers and torments them until they, out of fear and greed and their own stupidity, are undone. Sometimes they turn themselves in. Sometimes they destroy themselves trying to escape the Face. The Face rarely appears physically. Mostly it manifests as shadow or a reflection where there should be neither. Sometimes it’s a voice telling secrets. Perhaps it has been summoned by one of the evildoers victims. Perhaps it picks its targets on its own.
  2. The Face is the creation of a team of actors, hackers, make-up and special effects artists who use it to bring justice to those too rich and powerful for the law to successfully prosecute. Perhaps they originally created the character to get revenge on one untouchable man and then, once they succeeded, they decided to go after other targets. Their M.O. is similar to the supernatural version of the Face, they work to get evildoers to undo themselves.

Recommendation – Zebragirl

Zebragirl by Joe England is/was one of the first webcomics I followed. It tells the tale of Sandra Eastlake after her accidental transformation into a demon thing. The series ran from 2000-2018. The early strips are crude in comparison to the later ones but I find the evolution of the art interesting to watch. The story is now complete although England still adds the occasional postscript strips.

Local News – Postal Slang

A lot of jobs have their own slang, a jargon that only makes sense to people who do that job. I work for the Post Office as a letter carrier. These are some of the words and phrases that are otherwise nonsense to civilians.

Throwing Parcels
This is what the clerks do at the beginning of the day. Pallets loaded with parcels come in. The clerks bring the pallets into the station and center them in the middle of an network of hampers, one hamper for each route. They scan each parcel to indicate that it’s been received and then literally throw the parcel into its appropriate hamper.

Hot Case
There’s a case in the center of the station with cubbies for each route. The carrier put missorted mail into large general cubbies and the clerks sort that mail into the proper route cubbies. The carriers are supposed to empty our cubbies before we pull down our routes.

Pull Down
Each route has its own a case – a couple of racks with slots labeled for each address on the route. At the beginning of the day we sort mail into those slots. When we’re done sorting we pull down each swing and put into a tray. The trays go out to our trucks.

Swing
A swing is, generally, a block of mail. That is, it’s the mail for a block on a street. Usually it takes 15 minutes to deliver a swing. Usually. Time varies depending on whether the swing is mounted, a cbu, or a park and loop.

Park and Loop
A Park and Loop is a swing that is delivered on foot. The carrier generally parks their truck at one end of the block and then delivers up one side of the street and down the other in a “loop”.

Mounted
Mounted deliveries are those that can be done without leaving the truck. The carrier drives along a street and delivers to mail boxes at the side of the road. In some areas, all the routes are mounted.

CBU
A CBU is a Cluster Box Unit – a set of mailboxes that can be opened with a single USPS proprietary key. The carrier opens a single door and is able to deliver to all the boxes that are part of the unit.

Car Hop
A Car Hop is a delivery that is usually separate from other deliveries – a single address on a street,. Sometimes a swing consists of a series of car hops, single deliveries down one side of a street.

Deadhead
A Deadhead is a street with addresses on one side that is delivered on foot. The carrier parks the mail truck, delivers to the addresses on foot and then walks back past those addresses to return to the truck.

Long Week (Iron Week)
Postal employees have rotating days off. One week a carrier might have Monday off. The next week Tuesday. Then Wednesday and so forth. The Long Week is our six day work week from Monday to Saturday.

Long Weekend
The Long Weekend is the one where our scheduled Friday off and our scheduled Saturday off and our scheduled Sunday off happen consecutively and we get three days off in a row.

CCA
CIty Carrier Assistant. These are the folks who are delivering mail while waiting to become “career” i.e. permanent employees. They’re the carriers in training. The substitutes. They deliver whatever route needs delivering. They work overtime whether they want it or not. They work Sundays delivering packages for Amazon. They have no consistent day off. I was a CCA for about a year and a half before I made “career”.

Office Time
Office Time is the time a carrier spends sorting mail, setting up and pulling down their route. Management has a series of metrics that they believe reflect that amount of time that a carrier should use as “office time”. Those metrics are accurate so long as the mail arrives on time and in proper order, there are no emergencies and the carrier remember to clock to street time whenever they are not doing office time things.

Street Time
Street Time is the time spent sorting parcels into the truck, loading mail into the truck,  and then delivering the mail. Street time is more fungible than office time.

DPS
The DPS is the mail – letters and postcards and small flyers – that comes from the local mail sorting plant. The DPS should be sorted for line-of-travel and therefore the carriers shouldn’t need to sort it before taking it out to our trucks. I have about 170 active delivery addresses and I average about 1400 pieces of DPS for my route. Since the coronapocalypse the DPS numbers have gone way done. I’ve had a couple of days when I had less than 325 pieces of DPS.

LIne of Travel
The line of travel is the order in which a route is delivered. 

Nixies
I don’t remember what Nixie is an abreviattion for. A Nixie is a piece of mail that we can’t deliver on our route. Maybe that letter belongs on another route. Maybe it”s addressed to someone who doesn’t live at the address on letter. Maybe the address doesn’t exist. We bring the undeliverable mail back to the station and put in the clerk’s throwback case for sorting.

____

Stay safe. Be smart. Look after each other. Remember to dance.

Tuesday Night Party Club #28

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Gallery – 2019 Daily Sketches 61-90

Here are another thirty of the sketches that I posted on a daily schedule last year, now in a convenient gallery so you don’t have to scroll through posts day by day.

Story Seed #47
Music of Mystery

A couple has purchased a big house. It had previously been a rental with multiple tenants. Not all the tenants took their stuff with them when they moved out so the couple is having to clear out the abandoned belongings as they move in. They find a box with a couple dozen cassette tapes. The cases are labeled with a list of the songs on each tape. The couple doesn’t recognize any of the songs. Out of curiosity they decide to play the tapes to find out what the music sounds like.

From there the story can go many directions –

  1. The tapes are filled with amazing songs and the couple are compelled to track down the original albums that the music came from.
  2. The songs listed aren’t actually songs. They’re weird interviews that reveal secrets that the couple wishes that did not now know.
  3. The songs alter the couples thoughts and moods, slowly driving thiem insane and/or sparking epiphanies that lead them to enlightenment.
  4. The music on the tapes is strange and obscure. The couple is inspired to track down the original albums and, in the process, they discover hidden worlds and forgotten histories.
  5. Every time one of the tapes is played, something changes in the house. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for worse. Sometimes simply for strange.
  6. ????

Recommendation

My brother, Glenn, used to blog regularly. Him starting a blog is what inspired me to start blogging. He’s got two blogs: Lovesettlement and Dare I Read? In recent years he’s left them quiet. Until the coronapocalypse and the California Lockdown. What’s been bad for “normal life” has sparked him to do more posting. He uses Lovesettlement to post about his poetry. Dare I Read? is where he posts a wider range of thoughts.

He’s been called back to work so the blogs have been quiet again but there’s enough interesting stuff up that visting is worthwhile.

Local News

A good way to start thinking of all the ways I might be screwing up at my job is to have the boss say as she walks by my case,  “Come see me in the office before you leave today”. That happened to me on Wednesday. And I spent a bunch of time trying to think of what I might have done wrong. Too many u-turns? Too much office time? My delivery time isn’t matching the metrics that corporate thinks it should?

Nah.

Turns out she wanted to give a me a certificate of appreciation for the extra work I do beyond delivering my own route. With mail volumes down I often have undertime available and I volunteer to carry parts of other routes in that undertime. It was a pleasant surprise to get acknowledged for that.

On Thursday the boss gave out small gift certificates to those carriers who had scanned 100% of their packages in the last month and slightly smaller certificates to those who had managed 99% scans. I’m a 99%er.

On Saturday we were given new procedures for how and when we’re supposed to sort our mail and parcels. I’m not going to try to explain the details. Mostly it’s an attempt by management to get the carriers to do our “office time” work during a designated “office time” and everything else during “street time”. I have to compliment our stations managers for actually taking carrier complaints into account and restructuring the way the clerks sort parcels to try to accomodate the new mandates. Past managers have have heard the same complaints and just shrugged.

On Sunday I finished the last illustration for the Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. Now the clock is ticking until the Growing Up / Overnight Kickstarter launches on August 1st. I will have more to say about that as the date approaches.

Today is my day off. I made a batch of bacon bits – 1 pound pork bacon plus 2 pounds turkey bacon, chopped and baked for a couple hours at 375 degrees. I’ll use those as a garnish for the next couple weeks. I also made a huge lasagna. Five layers of noodles and homemade sauce and five types of cheese. That’s lunch for the next ten days.

And that’s another week gone. I hope yours had more high points than low ones. And I hope that the coming week looks bright. There’s a lot of nonsense happening in the world right now but there’s also a lot of beauty and brilliance. We’re all in this together and when we remember that, we thrive.

Tuesday Night Party Club #27

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Gallery: Fantomah Hates You
Let’s be very clear about this. Fantomah hates you. And you. And you. Fantomah hates y’all.
You know what I love about Fantomah? She’s angry and horrible and not at all nice. To the right people.

Story Seed #46
Number 17

The Shock Artist has unveiled a new “installation”. Every 28 days, on the night of the new moon, somewhere in America, the body of a young woman is found. The corpse is incorporated into a bizarre sculpture, the sort of avante garde creation that would look good in a modern art museum were a dead woman not part of it. Coroner’s report indicate that each woman had been killed the previous day. Each woman’s face is obscured beneath a hood. On the front of the hood is printed a photo of the face of the Shock Artist’s next victim, a victim who has already been kidnapped. This latest installation is found in the underground parking lot of a mall in San Francisco. The face of the next victim is Sharla Donner, daughter of Georgia’s Senator Alexandra Donner.

The FBI assures Senator Donner that they will catch the Shock Arist before he can make her daughter into his next installation. Senator Donner nods and assure them that she will cooperate in any way she can. She doesn’t expect them to succeed. They’ve already failed sixteen times. Senator Donner serves on the House Intelligence Committee. She knows of a man who has been able to go where no one else thought possible to kill “impossible” targets, a highly paid international assassin code named Mr. White. Mr. White is credited with sixteen assassinations. Senator Donner reaches out and offers to pay his multimillion dollar fee if he will rescue her daughter and kill the Shock Artist.

She doesn’t expect a reply. If she does get a reply she doesn’t expect a yes. Mr. White is an assassin, not an extraction expert. She isn’t really sure that Mr. White exists. He might simply be a fiction, a myth among spies.

But reply he does. And agree he does. One boogeyman sets out to hunt another.

Recommendations

This week’s recommendation is Beau of the Fifth Column. Beau posts videos on an almost daily basis. He comments on current American political news. He’s well informed and articulate. And, since his videos are just him talking, I can put them on in the background while I draw. His Youtube channel is here.

Local News

I’m writing this on Monday afternoon. It’s the third day of a three day weekend. I’ve gotten art done. I’m working on the last two illustrations for the Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. I continue to be tired, more mentally and emotionally than physically but physical tiredness follows the mental and emotional.

I’m not complaining. Just reporting. I never expect my feelings to be a permanent state.

Hopefully your week went well. Hopefully your coming week has bright spots planned. And if everything looks like a slog, you have my sympathy. There are better days coming.

Tuesday Night Party Club #26

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Gallery: The Lovcraft Country Cousins Grow Up
On Aucust 1st, Golden Goblin Press will launch its next Kickstarter – Growing Up Overnight. It’s a two book offering. An Eldritch Legacy is a collection of novellas featuring adult versions of the kids from the Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. Between Twilight and Dawn is an athology of short stories that takes place between sunset and sunrise. An Eldritch Legacy features stories of the individual cousins in their early twenties.I did the cover illustration and Mark Shireman worked his design magic so that this cover will be a match for Children of Lovecraft Country. If all goes as planned I will be providing an illustration for each of the stories. And what are the stories, you ask? Take a gander at these blurbs:

Dreams and Nightmares by Peter Rawlik – Artist and gallery owner by day, secret paranormal investigator and spirit medium by night, Donald Sutton does his best to make sure these parts of his life are kept separate. After a particularly frightening investigation he decided to take a break from ghost hunting. He begins spending more and more time exploring the Dreamlands, a skill he learned as a child from his cousin Melba Sutton. However, when taking photographs at a Kingsport Congregational Hospital for their annual Christmas party, he encounters the beautiful and mysterious stranger, Ms. Aspinwall. Not only does she somehow know his secret work as a paranormal psychic but she desperately needs his help with a haunting in the hospital’s Mariner’s Ward. But the winter solstice is a dangerous time for spirit mediums, especially in Kingsport, because the veils between worlds and realities become perilously thin.
Warden of the Dark God by Glynn Owen Barass – The rolling hills of Dunwich have always been a mysterious, sometimes dangerous place. Every so often children go missing and when they do, Gordon Brewster is the one who sets out to find them. While still working on his family’s farm, he’s become an expert hunter, tracker, and a member of the Believers, a local collective of arcane practitioners dedicated to defending the people of Dunwich, and all mankind, from eldritch threats. However, things are coming to a head as an ancient evil, slumbering in alien ruins, begins to awaken with a need to sate its endless hunger. Donald gathers up a couple of allies and goes on the hunt once again, only this time the fate of every man, woman, and child in Dunwich hangs in the balance.
Separate Lives by Christine Morgan – After spending most of her life struggling with memories of past lifetimes, Gerdie Pope has learned to channel them into a gift allowing her to help people. Now a world renowned clairvoyant, she lives in Lily Dale, New York, a haven for mystics, psychics, and practitioners of folk magic. Then her peaceful life is interrupted by a challenging client and a visit from distant relations. Her client, a young girl with vivid “memories” of another life, one far stranger than any Gerdie has ever lived. The child’s parents are desperate for help, after doctors recommended she be committed to an asylum. But when relatives from her mother’s side of the family turn up, the degenerate side of the Whateley Clan, things quickly spiral out of control. They want her to return to Dunwich and use her gifts to continue her grandfather’s, the late Wizard Whateley, work.
George Weedon and the Secret of Infinite Horizons by Lee Clark Zumpe – Life is good for George Weedon, starting quarterback for the Pittsburg Pirates, living his dream of playing professional football. However, some things never change, and dark mysteries keep placing themselves in his path. This time he’s asked by his team’s owner and founder, “The Chief” Art Rooney, to track down some close friends who’ve gone missing while visiting their newly built vacation house in the Allegheny Mountain, a large but strange structure called Infinite Horizons. Expected to take years to build, it was completed it just 10 months, and the designer had a complete mental breakdown shortly afterwards and was committed to an asylum. So George sets off with a small party, the missing couple’s daughter, a boxer, and a professional baseball player to solve yet another mystery.
A Dark Legacy by Brian Sammons– Edward Derby, the youngest associate professor at Miskatonic University, was looking forward to catching up on reading during his first summer break as a member of the faculty. When he gets a call that a large house once owned by his birth father, Leon Derby, has been damaged in a storm, he’s called to Marblehead to deal with the repairs. Edward’s technically owned the house for years now, but has avoided visiting the property, afraid of what he might find. Leon Derby died before Edward was five years old, and the son has no real memories of his father. Edward does know that his father battled dark and unknowable forces, much as Edward, himself, does now. While exploring the house and beginning to learn its secrets, Edward discovers he has a lot in common with his late father. However, a long dormant evil begins to stir, and kill, forcing Edward to finish something his father started many years ago.
Blood and the Turning of the Tide by Oscar Rios – Who would have thought escaping the federal raid on Innsmouth would be the easy part? For Alice, a young Deep One Hybrid leading a small group of Innsmouth refugees, things keep getting more complicated. While she established her band successfully in Port Jefferson, New York, keeping them safe is another matter. They struggle with learning to live among “normal” people. Federal agents still hunt for Innsmouth residents who escaped the raid. Then her Aunt Margie, kept in hiding in her attic, nears the end of her “Change.” A federal agent arrives in town asking questions, a member of her community asks permission to marry a Port Jefferson boy, and a local mechanic even asks her out to dinner! When just surviving isn’t enough and the refugees want more out of life, can her community’s secrets and their safety survive much longer?
I will provide links once the Kickstarter goes live. In the meantime, here’s a gif of the cover art. Hats of to Mr. Shireman for putting it together!

Lest I forget, here is a description of the contents for Between Twilight and Dawn:

TUMSHIEHEID by William Meikle – There are older traditions than pumpkins and candy, more basic traditions. Jack of the lantern does not like being mocked, especially on a night when the veil is thin and the old ways can return, with their vengeance.

FORGETTING by Richard Lee Byers – Out of sight, out of mind. Out of mind, out of life. A son learns this bitter lesson when trying to help his sick father work through some issues one night.

KAMLOOPS LAKE by Neil Baker– Unseasonably cold weather means that Kamploops Lakes in British Columbia is a viable ice-fishing spot for the first time in decades. Unfortunately, it is not just the plump rainbow trout that are being lured and caught, as Ethan and Mel are about to discover in a tale of beer, ice, and cosmic dread.

BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON by Pete Rawlik – Two dead men, one old and blind, the other pale as chalk, both died struggling for the book that lay between them. That aged volume was blank, just like every other book in the immense private library. Why would one man kill for a blank book, and why would another die to keep it?

MARY IN THE MIRROR by Christine Morgan – For pre-teen girls in the 1980s, what would a slumber party be without MTV, mini-pizzas, and the latest magazines? Well, how about playing ‘Mary in the Mirror’ to see if the spooky stories are true? After all, it’s just a silly game…

SHARPE SHAVER by Glynn Owen Barrass – A missing person, a riot in New York City, and a private detective who may have bitten off more than she can chew. An Urban Myth becomes macabre reality as Cassandra Bane encounters a dark, underground world of nightmares in the flesh.

BLACK JACK by Lee Clark Zumpe – Audra Kramer leads her documentary film crew on a dangerous overnight mission to infiltrate the abandoned mining town of Black Jack. Inside the restricted zone, the team quickly discovers that the community’s downfall had been caused by something more ominous than an environmental disaster.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT by Brian M. Sammons – Jordan kills for the CIA. Monsters, mostly. What should be a quick, by the book extermination job takes an unexpected turn when one night he has to work a literal graveyard shift.

UNCLE CRAIG’S WAKE by Konstantine Paradias – When cancer took Uncle Craig, it was supposed to be forever. But Deborah weaved Mister Danh’s spell and spoke the words from his warped little book and now, something lurks in the fruit cellar, prodding from its otherworldly perch into our reality.

THE DOUBLE-GOER BY Orrin Grey – Who are you when you go out? Is it different from who you are when you’re at home? And what would happen if the two were ever to meet?

WHISKEY, BEANS AND DUST by John Linwood Grant – Mamma Lucy didn’t know the Rantons, or the nature of the storm that followed them, tearing the land apart. She surely didn’t know what they’d learned, and what she was supposed to do about it all. But then again, what came that night didn’t know Mamma Lucy…

RACE ROCKS by Paula R. Stiles– A frontier lighthouse is the first line of defense when a mysterious meteor shower turns deadly.

FERTILE GROUND by Oscar Rios – A Dunwich farmer’s sheltered daughter invites her beau over for an overnight stay when her family goes out of town for the night. Both are excited to be together but nervous their secrets might ruin their chances at happiness, when they suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives.

Oscar Rios, the mastermind behind Golden Goblin, is still in the process of putting together this campaign. I will have more to say when there’s more to know.

Story Seed #45
The Title is the Seed

I have a writer friend who comes up with titles for his stories before he’s worked out their plots. He’s always willing to change the title if he finds out it’s already taken or he thinks of a better one but, for him, thinking of a title is an important part of the story creation process. Most of my ideas don’t arrive with a title. If an idea seems strong enough for me to want to turn it into a story I might play around with titles until I come up with something that seems to fit.

A interesting title can get a potential reader to pick up a book or, for a film or tv show, get a viewer to watch the preview. It’s gotten me to pick up books. And, as I’ve said, ideas come from anywhere.

Now, to me, an interesting title is one that suggests a story or a premise. Conversely, if the title is odd enough that I don’t get the premise I often feel curious enough to check out the story. A lot of authors, especially best-selling ones, get by with very generic title. The Judge. The Skrieking. The Lovers. The Count. The books are sold on the author’s reputation as a best selling author not as an individual story.

All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The Halloween Tree. Alex Driving South. All these titles make me curious about the story. Three of these titles suggest situations. I love titles like that. The Halloween Tree juxtaposes a couple of words that one wouldn’t normally think of in combination. Combining seemingly unrelated words is the exercise I’m suggesting today. It keeps the title short while piquing the curiosity.

The Dancing Monoliths
The Angry Butterfly
White Gravity
The Yellow Footprints
Finger Trigger
The Mismatched Staircase
Falling Skyward
Zoom Kitty
The Eternal Sedan
The Laughing Haircut
The Missing Shadow
Accidental Romance
The Impossible Heartbeat
Electric Bondage
The Slow Suspicion
The Other Other
The Prodigal Otter
Shark Dance
The Green Armadillo
The Rhinoceros Tiptoes

I wrote these out in just a few minutes. About half of them immediately suggested a premise beyond the title. Whether or not the inspired story would still fit to the title isn’t important. The title is just the seed.

And if a title doesn’t suggest a story it can always be used for the name of a band.

Recommendation : And You Thought It Was Safe

I used to read a lot of movie reviews online, particulary reviews of old scifi and horror b-movies. I don’t have the time for that much these days but there are a few sites I still frequent. I started reading And You Thought It Was Safe before the YouTube explosion. The reviewer, David DeMoss, started out posting written reviews and then moved into doing videos. He focuses more on blockbuster films these days and often his opinion differs from mine but he puts enough thought into his reviews that I often end up agreeing with his analysis. He posts both a video review and a transcript of that review.

Local News

It’s vacation season for postal carriers. That means I’m working overtime delivering parts of other routes. That adds some variety to my days. Mostly I’m volunteering for the extra. I’m not on the Overtime Desired List so I have more of a choice of whether to carry. I am low enough on seniority that if management mandates regular carriers to carry I’m likely to get tagged so volunteering gives me more say in which route I get. And volunteering often enough means I can say no if I really need to work a shorter day.

I had my Long Weekend this week and we got social.

On Friday we met friends at a park in Tacoma to celebrate a birthday. We wore masks, kept a distance from each other when eating and elbow bumped instead of hugging. We picnicked and enjoyed the sunshine.

Saturday I went shopping and worked on art.

Sunday we drove down to Lacy to see another set of friends. The excuse for the get together was to celebrate a high school graduation. The boys had graduated a couple weeks ago. I’d watched them pick up their diplomas live via streaming video. That was as exciting as high school graduations usually are. It was much more fun hearing the boys talk about it and catching up with them and their parents. The day started out grey and rainy but the sun came out and we spent a good part of the visit hanging out on the deck. Sarah got a sun burn.

I have three illustrations to finish for the Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection and then I’ve got nothing on my plate until An Eldritch Legacy funds.

I hope your week has gone well and the coming week has good waiting for you. Cheers!

Tuesday Night Party Club #25

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Gallery – Half Hour Sketches 31 to 60

From last year, the second set of thirty daily/half hour sketches. Do you have any favorites?

Story Seed #45
A Bad Seed Blooms

Karren was always a difficult child. Demanding, clingy, prone to throwing tantrums when she didn’t get her way. Dealing with her on a daily basis was enough to convince her parents that they didn’t want to have another child. Yes she was often charming. Yes she was usually very entertaining and she could seem very loving but, damn, she was awfully narcissistic.

When Karren was eight, her mother became pregnant (their contraception method failed) and her parents decided that they’d keep the baby. Karren would adapt, she’d have to. Right? And for a while it seemed like Karren would. She was delighted by the idea of having a sibling. She had fun playing nursemaid and helper to her mother and she revelled in the appreciation that her parents showed her for her new attitude.

The baby came, a little sister. Karren played doting big sister, giving cuddles, helping with bottles and rocking her to sleep. But, her parents had less attention for her and got crankier form lack of sleep, the old Karren resurfaced. She was jealous of the baby, angry that it just wouldn’t behave. Her play became meaner and rougher. One morning her mother caught her holding a pillow over the baby’s face. She wasn’t trying to kill the baby, she was just trying to make it stop crying, she didn’t know what she was doing, did she?

Her parents made arrangements to send Karren to a boarding school. Until she could depart her parents never left her alone with the baby and they locked her room at night.

Two days before Karren was to depart her mother took her and the baby to run errands. Karren had been behaving. She seemed contrite. Maybe safe? As they returned to the house their car was blocked in by a pair of black SUVs and armed men pulled them from the vehicle.

Karren’s parents were comfortably upper middle class. Karren’s grandfather, her father’s father, was rich and had made a lot of enemies getting that way. The kidnappers were in the employ of a Russian gangster that Grandfather had doublecrossed.

Karren, her mother and her little sister are taken to a remote location. Karen’s mother is forced to record a ransom plea. Karren pouts, Karren yells, Karren is not a cooperative hostage. The kidnappers beat her, tie her up, cut off one of her little fingers and send it with the ransom demand.

Karren’s father is in shock and desperate. Grandfather is disappointed. His son was always a weak thing. Grandfather harrumphs and takes charge. He has his security chief put together a team to rescue the kidnapped mother and her girls. But Grandfather didn’t get rich by giving a shit about anyone but himself. The team is to rescue the family if it’s convenient but it’s more important to him that they kill as many of the Russians as they can. The “girls” are expendable.

And Karren? Karren is very, very mad. Her parents could be boring. Her parents could be strict. Her parents often spoiled her fun. But they’d never hit her. They’d never hurt her. And now these smelly men have dared to hurt HER and threaten HER mother and HER little sister?

Karren is clever. Karren will get out of her bounds. Karren will make them all very, very sorry.

Recommendation

I am behind on my newsletters. I have a virtual stack of them waiting to be read and, at the moment, I can’t remember which ones I’ve already recommended. So this week I’m recommending a youtube channel: Cartoonist Kayfabe. Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor are veteran comics creators and they regular post a lot of videos about comics. I’ll let them introduce themselves –

Local News

I don’t have heroes. When I was a kid I kept discovering that the folks my history classes promoted as role models were often pretty horrible people. Even the ones the weren’t horrible were usually … human. That is, they weren’t necessarily nice, they weren’t always faithful and they often did things that were sloppy and stupid. As a kid, I was looking for perfect heroes to model myself after and real humans just kept failing provide me with the examples I wanted.

As I grew up I came to admire the people who stood up, who took action to make the world a better place, regardless of whether they were also shitty spouses, terrible parents or lousy friend. Rather, I’ve learned to admire the noble actions they took and accept that the rest of their lives and behaviors were probably pretty messy.

I’ve been following and reading Warren Ellis‘s work since I encountered his columns at 9th Art back in the 90s. I posted some art in the Remake/Remodel challenges in the FreakAngels forums. I found a lot of interesting newsletters (and was inspired to do this one) because he recommended them.  I don’t get many regular comics these days but I did pay attention to what he had coming out next. I mostly heard about that when I read his latest newsletter. I only heard about the controversy when he posted his last one. This essay gives the pertinent details with links to more info.

Of all the bad actors who have come in to light in the last few years, Ellis is the first one whose work really matters to me. After a few days passage I’m still … I don’t know. I believe the women. You don’t get 30 or more artists to agree on something unless there is truth there. And they’ve got the emails. (And being a whistleblower is never about money unless you’re already rich and famous. Being a poor whistleblower means you, at best, become a famous and poor whistleblower. Anyone who thinks that someone calls out injustice for fame and glory and wealth is someone who doesn’t actually care about injustice.)
I admire his work. I’m sorry he’s behaved poorly and kind of relieved that he didn’t behave worse. I sympathize more with the women who had to put up with his shit than with him for what’s happening now. What struck me, in his statement, was this –
“I have never considered myself famous or powerful, to the point where I’ve made a lot of bad jokes about it for twenty-odd years.”
 
It’s a reminder to me that our perceptions of ourselves are often off the mark. You might think that someone in Ellis’ position, who has had the accomplishments and influence that he’s had, would have a better perception of his place in the world. But most of us don’t. Most of us hear our internal dialogues, our fears and our doubts, much louder than the feedback we get from the outside. We rarely perceive ourselves accurately. 
It’s a reminder that I/we have much more power in the world than I/we think I/we do. It’s a reminder to be more aware, to think before speaking and acting. It’s a reminder to talk more about perceptions and expectations even when doing that seems like it’s going to kill the flow of an interaction. I may think things are hunky dory but the person I’m with might just be being polite. 
I don’t think I’m currently in a position of power. In previous jobs I have been a supervisor and an assistant manager and a manager. As I moved up in responsibility I became conscious of having a responsibility to model “professional” behavior. Getting wasted and flirting with one’s coworkers isn’t a good look for the boss. Now I’m just one mail carrier in a station of about a hundred other carriers. I go to work. I don’t really socialize. I just want to put the hours in so I can get paid and go home and draw. Do I have power? Of course I do. I’m an older white guy who, to the new hires at least, probably seems like I’ve been around forever. Postal carriers have a union. Carriers advance by seniority. There’s a culture of not ratting on your fellow carrier when they misbehave. So I maybe could fuck with the new hires and get away with it. I’m pretty sure that veteran carriers already do that.
I have gotten tired. I have withdrawn. But I’m not dead. It’s time to pay a little more attention at work and in the world. I am not a hero. But I do have power and I can take a few noble actions now and then.

Tuesday Night Party Club #24

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Have I mentioned that I’m a fan of both swamp monsters and public domain characters? Of course I have.

Have I said that I often fall back on familiar characters when I’m doing practice illustrations? I’m sure I have.

So here’s another faux cover for an imaginary Heap comic. Of course it’s a number one. Number one’s are more valuable than number twenty-sevens. Usually. Below is a process gif. I had mostly finished the image before I thought of turning it into a cover so the gif is a different size than the cover.

Story Seed #44
Move the Spotlight

Everyone is a protagonist of their own story. Everyone plays a supporting character in someone else’s. One way to find a new story is to take a favorite story and move the focus. This is not a new idea. John Gardner’s Grendel tells the story of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view. Gregory Maguire’s Wicked tells the story of the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. John Kessel’s Pride and Prometheus tells the story of Frankenstein from the point of view of Mary Bennet. Heh.

There are many, many more examples. And there are so many more “supporting” characters than there are protagonists. Each one has a story waiting to be told. That cardboard villain may have a good reason to behave so poorly. That butler might spend his evening hours doing far more interesting things than bringing the master drinks. What did that femme fatale do once she’d screwed over the square jawed sucker and left with all the cash?

All we have to do is listen.

Recommendations- Pulp Covers

Pulpcovers.com does daily posts of pulp magazine and early pulpish paperback covers. They have thousands of images to peruse. One can easily lose a few hours looking. And I have. Still more fun and rational than a lot of Facebook.

Local News

Life at home is fairly quiet. The cats are doing well. We tried scheduling a couple of get togethers at the homes of friends who have big yards but ended up cancelling due to rain. This has left us with a freezer full of varieties of cheesecake. There are worse problems to have.

I’m working busily to finish up the last of the Lovecraft Country Holidays illustrations. After that it looks like I may be illustrating a short comic story. The writer and I have tried to work together before and the projects … stalled. We’re firends and do want to finish some kind of project together. My stipulation for working on this one is that he provide a complete script with thumbnails. I’ll then do new, more detailed thumbnails with the dialogue roughed in. If we both like the result I’ll do final drawings.

I hope that your days are as fun and/or relaxing as you need them to be. Times are weird and will get weirder. Be as weird as you can. Be kind. Be patience. Be stubborn. See you next week.

Tuesday Night Party Club #23

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Gallery: 1-30

I had wanted to participate in Drawlloween/Inktober 2018. I like to do a little prep for sustained events so, earlier in the year, I’d checked to see if prompts had been posted for either challenge. Nothing. Checked again. Nothing. And then I forgot until October was a couple of days old. Joining in on October 2nd would have meant I was playing catch up. I hate playing catch up. I shrugged and figured, “Next year.”

A couple of days went by and the thought became, “All year.” Instead of drawing and posting an image a day in October of 2018, I decided to post an image a day in 2019. My parameters would be simple: spend no more than a half an hour on each sketch. By starting to do the sketches in early October I’d have enough of a headstart that I was sure I’d be able to manage the pace.

I posted an image a day, every day, in 2019. I actually only did 362 half hour sketches. I misnumbered a couple of my scans midway through and didn’t realize the mistake until I got the end of the year. For December 29th and 30th I posted a couple of more complex illustrations that I finished for the occasion. December 31st was a blank image – New Year, New Possibilities.

The sketches can be seen if you look at the daily posts here for 2019. To simplify things I’m going to be posting galleries of the 30 images at a time, 12 galleries total, between now and the end of 2020. This is the first one.

Story Seed 43

Exploring the Last Sky Jungle

In November 1913, The Strand Magazine published Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story The Horror of the Heights. At the time airplanes were novel machines and few people had flown in them. Sure, the idea that there might be entire ecosystems up there above the clouds seemed implausible but that part of the world was unexplored enough that it wasn’t completely impossible. I read it when I was a kid, probably sometime in the 1970s. By then the airline industry was well established and the idea that huge creatures were living in the stratosphere was, at best, quaint.

The skies are full of planes and, as far as we know, no one has been attacked by any air predators. Not recently. There are two possibilities why –

  1. The 20th century air pollution and the airline industry destroyed the sky ecosystems and by the 21st century all those animals are extinct. The aerohabitats were always fragile things. The toxins that rose into the upper atmosphere killed them. Faster and stronger airplanes tore through flocks of the creatures without the pilots even realizing it. Some of the larger and speedier beasts were mistaken for aircrafts and labeled “UFO”s.
  2. The aerohabits existed and continue to exist just outside our perception. They were seen by early aeronauts because the lack of oxygen, greater exposure to cosmic radiation and other effects of the upper atmosphere created heightened perception. The aeronauts saw things that, with better, safer equipment, are no longer seen.

So that gives us two obvious possibilities for stories –

  1. There are places in the atmosphere where few planes fly and where the air is less polluted. I tried doing some quick googling to find out what parts of the world see the least airplanes but came up short of useful info. The Antarctic skies is probably one region. There’s a big chunk of the Pacific Ocean with no islands and therefore no spots to refuel. I looked at satellite images of those areas in Google maps and the photos there are really low rez. Humans don’t watch the places where humans don’t go. So now you’d just need a reason to have someone go there and discover the last Aerojungle.
  2. H.P. Lovecraft’s story From Beyond features a device called the Tillenghast Resonator. When activated the resonator allows a human being to see the creatures that exist beyond our normal, limited perception. An aeronaut in a new, experimental ultralight craft, attempting to make a new altitude record, finds him/herself in the middle of an aerohabit. The craft was accidentally constructed in such a way to alter the pilot’s perceptions and senses. The pilot can now see the air beasts. And the air beasts can now see the pilot.

Recommendations

This week I’m going to recommend avoiding Facebook. Plenty of other folks have made this suggestion. The thing is designed to keep you scrolling and I find that my attention span gets shorter the longer I’m visiting it. Last week, rather than jumping on FB first thing in the morning while my coffee woke me up, I read one or two of the newsletters that I’ve been recommending. More focused. A longer read. And, once I’d finished a newsletter, it was easier to write or work on art until I had to make breakfast.

This Week

My union has won arbitration on management’s “Consolidated Casing Initiative”. All 61 stations that have tried to implement this terrible plan are going to reconvert to regular casing and delivery. My station was on the list to join this “experiment” and I’m feeling nothing but relief.

I can think of a number of ways to improve our office and street times but, in my observation, management doesn’t ask the carriers how we could improve service. So we do the best we can.

The week has been mostly uneventful personally. The cat that was chewing on the base of his tail got a shot of steroids and antibiotics and a medicated cream that we applied on the spot for a week. The raw spots have healed and his fur is growing back. The cat that needs electrolyte infusions continues to tolerate them. He doesn’t seem to love us any less afterward.

The protests and curfews slowed down the care packages from my Big Sister this week but she did bring us salmon cakes and a chicken mushroom new potato pie. On Sunday I made up a stir fry to go with the cakes. I’m looking forward to having the pie tonight.

Nationally it’s been a mess. If you’re paying attention you know what I mean. I hope that there are positive results from all this. I don’t dislike the police in general but I also don’t trust them in general. The few times I’ve been pulled over here in Seattle the cops have been polite and easy going. But I’m an older white guy. I know my experience isn’t the experience of others. I had different experiences when I was in my teens and twenties in small towns in California. My friends and I often wandered the streets at night and occasionally got stopped. I was never arrested but the cops were often confrontational, unnecessarily so. I got lucky.

If you’re out there protesting, thank you for your service. Change is inevitable, positive change requires positive intention. Constant positive intention. Stay safe. Look out for each other. The monsters win until they lose. And they always lose.

Tuesday Night Party Club #22

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Gallery: Three Decades in the Past

I was sorting stacks of art a few weeks ago and I came across this image. It’s from 1991, soon after I’d started attending figure drawing classes. It’s a long way from perfect but it’s definitely an improvement over the work I’d done just the previous year. I don’t remember having posted it before. It’s a fairly large image and I haven’t had a scanner that can handle large images for long.

This was a promo illustration for a proposed miniseries about a couple of “crazy” people who can see the supernatural menaces that are invisible to the rest of us.

Local News 

i’m writing this on Tuesday morning. I’m hoping to be away from my computer most of the day.

No Story Seeds or Recommendations this week. Every time I came online here to write I made the mistake of checking news sites or Facebook first and fell into the black hole of human stupidity. God, that’s exhausting. I did have one morning when I couldn’t access the internet because someone had cut our cable. That was peaceful. I got more artwork done that morning than any four other mornings put together. If I were smart I’d unplug my ethernet cable before I went to bed and only plug it in again in the morning after I’d accomplished something.

If I were smart.

I went back to work on Tuesday, May 26th and worked a 12 hour day. The day after a holiday is usually a heavy one mailwise. Some Congressmen have proposed suspending mail delivery on Saturdays. Clearly none of those folks have worked a delivery job. Mail and parcels keep coming even when they aren’t delivered. That day was unusual. Parcel volumes have continued to be high. I worked all those hours on my own route. Fortunately there were few sick calls that day and so few routes had to be delivered as extra. I know some carriers were out much later than I was.

I had some overtime every day the rest of the week. Mostly it was less than an hour. All of that was because of parcel volumes.

On Thursday we heard that one of our recent retirees had passed away. She’d only retired within the last couple of years.

On Friday we celebrated the retirement of another carrier. He’d been on the job for 33 years. It’s hard for me to imagine having the same job for that long. Out in the private sector, at least these days, it’s rare to work at the same company for more than 5 years. I’ve tended to stay at jobs for a while but the most I’ve managed was 10 years.

Yesterday, June 1st, I put in overtime carriyng both my own route and part of another route. We had a lot of sick calls. I took myself off the Overtime Desired List last year in order to have more time to do art and, well, just breathe, but I don’t mind carrying another route occasionally. It’s pleasant to see another part of town.

Last week I got news of the passing of a couple of acquaintances.

I knew Nick Roberts when we were both kids in Sebastopol in the Seventies and Eighties. He lived a couple of blocks away. My brother and I would hang out with him occasionally. I’d lost touch with him after I moved to Santa Rosa and beyond. His obituary doesn’t say why he passed but I don’t suppose that’s important.

I knew Noel Franklin as part of the Seattle comics scene. She stayed with us for a few weeks a few years ago. We provided her with place to land when she left an abusive relationship. As another acquaintance has said, Noel was battling demons. She passed on Friday. Accidental overdose apparently.

Hearing of Nick’s passing didn’t hurt. Enough time had passed since I’d seen him. Mostly I was glad to read that he’d been married for 26 years and had kids. The news of Noel’s passing was a harder hit in large part because I was still connected with her via FB and she’d seemed to be doing well, even with the current isolation.

On Saturday afternoon my phone did the emergency klaxon buzz. Protests over the murder of George Floyd and become riots and a curfew was being called down. I had no idea that there were protests going on here in Seattle. I’d been delivering mail in a downpour a good part of the day. I’d checked Facebook on breaks but hadn’t seen any protest notices. Just another reminder that FB is not a good place to get news.

Curfews were announced on both Sunday and Monday evenings.

I spent a good part of Sunday moring cooking. I chopped up the last of the ham from Big Sister’s last care package and make a ham and bean stew in the crock pot. I also make a spaghetti squash cassarole that I’d intended to share that afternoon. We’d planned to visit a friend across town who has a big back yard. The plan was hang out together at a safe distance. We bought some individually packaged mini cheese cakes and I’d cooked two casssaroles so we could avoid sharing space as much as possible.

Saturday’s rain continued into Sunday and we had to cancel. We tentatively rescheduled for yesterday afternoon but our friend had to cancel due to food poisoning. Given that I had to work overtime I suppose it was just as well.

Today is my day off. I’m taking one of the cats (Chemo) into the vet for a check up and getting more electrolytes for Sabe. Then Costco. Then a phone call with a guy who needs me to do production work on a comic he’s writing. Then I’ll make more progress on the Lovecraft Country Holidays illustrations. I’m working on the art for the last scenario.

Take care. Be well. Be safe. Be angry but pick your targets with compassion. And proper focus. Stabbing up is always best. See you next week!

 

Tuesday Night Party Club #21

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Gallery – Frankenstein Process GIF

When I want to try new techniques (or practice old ones) I tend to use familiar characters for the images. Frankenstein’s Monster is an old friend for these. The gif below is a recent experiment in color illustration. My art, especially my color art, tends to be a mix of physical drawing with digital effects. I’m constantly trying to find ways to speed up and simplify the process of producing color work. I find that the more of a drawing that I finish on paper the less noodling I’m tempted to do on the computer. I like the results here.

Story Seed #44
Building a Better Dark Universe

A few years ago Universal Pictures got the idea of creating a shared universe film franchise of their “Universal Monsters”. Their first official entry, The Mummy, flopped and they shelved the concept. I haven’t seen The Mummy so I can’t comment on its quality but having Frankenstein in the gallery above has me thinking about why I didn’t see the film and what I would find appealing in a shared “Universal Monsters” film setting.

Why didn’t I see the film?

Partly it’s because I don’t go see many movies in the theatre anymore. Time and price have a lot to do with it. I like the experience of seeing a movie in a theatre. I don’t feel like I’ve got a lot of time to spend doing it these days. It’s an event for us – travel time, theatre time, after-the-movie-meal-to-talk-about-the-movie time, travel home time. I generally only watch an hour of television a day. Going to the theatre eats up 5 to 6 hours. But that’s what keeps me from seeing a lot movies that I think I might enjoy.

The things that turned me off were the preview and the basic idea of a Univeral Monsters franchise. Let’s start with the preview –


There’s a spectacular plane crash. Then there are a lot of explosions and Tom Cruise running. I like spectacular plane crashes and explosions. I’ve enjoyed most of the Tom Cruise movies I’ve seen. But the original 1932 Mummy is a horror movie. The 1999 remake is a supernatural adventure movie set in the 1930s. The preview seemed to be trying to trying to sell me a big budget action movie set in the present day. The supernatural threat takes a backseat to the spectacle. And, honestly, I’m kind of tired of spectacle. We’re had a couple of decades of CGI apocalypses. Some have been great. Some have been terrible. There have been enough of them that they’re no longer interesting simply for being there. Both the 1932 and 1999 versions, while very different in tone, feature villains (the Mummies) who want something most of us can sympathize with – they want their lost loves. Based on the preview, the 2017 Mummy wants to rule the world. I’m as tired of wannabe world conquerors as I am tired of CGI apocalypses. So the preview unsold me on the movie.

Rather, it finished the job of unselling me that earlier marketing material had already started. But I’ll get back to that.

I have a lot of thinking time while delivering mail. Since the job is basically the same every day, once a thought gets stuck in my head it tends to cycle for hours. Last week my brain spent a few hours working out a plot for a first “Universal Monsters” movie.

The character who started the mashups and met the most other monsters in the original series (ignoring the Abbott and Costello Meet comedies) was Larry Talbot, the Wolfman. Out of all the original monsters, Talbot is the only one who really maintained a personality. The rest of them might start out as interesting fellows in the first film but would usually become lurching zombies in later entries.

So …

Dark of the Moon

Elevator pitch –

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Meets the Wolf Man! Mad science vs ancient curses!

Plot summary –
Larry Talbot, architect and current alcoholic, shows up at his soon-to-be-ex wife’s house. Her (surprisingly understanding, police detective) boyfriend is there. They argue. Larry is trying to apologize for being a drunk and wish them well but they’d rather he sobered up. They take his car keys and call an Uber for him. He’s outside, still waiting on the ride when he hears screaming and gunfire. He’s stealing himself to investigate when the boyfriend’s disembodied head lands at his feet. He looks up to see a blood covered man griinning at him through the broken window of the house. He can’t focus on the man’s face. He runs, calling 911 on the way. 

The police arrive. He’s interrogated but let go. He starts having nightmares and drinking more heavily. He’s pulled over for a DUI and sentenced to AA. His first meeting is led by Dr. Henry Edwards. Edwards’ family was killed two years before in a home invasion. Edwards sympathizes with Talbot and agrees to be his sponsor. 

Since his divorce wasn’t finalized Talbot still has access to his wife’s house. He designed it and knows some secret hiding spots. He searches it and find files secreted by the detective boyfriend. He reads some of the files before getting spooked and feeling like someone is watching him. The boyfriend was investigating a criminal network run by a man named Eddie Hyde. Hyde is distributing some kind of designer drug called “JKL”. He brings the files to Gwen Conliffe, the detective in charge of the investigation. She thanks him and chastises him for moving evidence instead of calling her in. 

Larry gets back to his apartment to find that someone has broken in and is searching the place. He calls Detective Conliffe. He is pursued by a grinning man whose face he just can’t focus on. Conliffe arrives with some beat cops. Barehanded, the pursuer kills the cops before Conliffe and Talbot can escape. 

Talbot gets more paranoid. He call Edwards from a bar. Edwards comes to pick him up but Talbot’s stories of the grinning man freak Edwards out. Talbot’s stories trigger Edwards’ memories of his family’s murder. Edwards calls his sponsor, a woman named Maleva Ouspenskaya. Ouspenskaya arrives but Edwards has gone missing. Ouspenskaya takes Talbot to her home to sober him up. She’s shares the home with a group of women who freely admit to being witches. 

A group of shadowy men try to break in. The witches perform a ceremony that seems to drive them away. Talbot is even more freaked out. He’s unable to sleep that night. He wants to drink but Ouspenskaya is able to talk him out of it. 

Conliffe calls to arrange a meeting. The files have disappeared and she wants to know what he remembers about them. “JKL” is supposed to be some kind of psychedelic, a drug that temporarily changes a person into someone else both mentally and physically. Conliffe is pissed off. That’s nonsense. 

Talbot is more freaked out. He’s at a bar, ready to drink. He calls Edwards. No answer. He calls Ouspenskaya. She’s on the way to the hospital. Someone attacked one of her housemates. She picks up Talbot. Her housemate is severely injured and tells of being attacked by a grinning man with a blurry face. The rest of the witches are at the hospital. They tell Talbot that since he brought the problem on them, he’s going to help them fix it. 

They perform a ritual, injecting a wolf spirit into Talbot. They demand that he put himself between them and the shadowy men. Surprising himself, Talbot agrees. 

Talbot begins to investigate. His senses are now heightened. He follows scents from the witches’ house across town to a wealthy neighborhood. He sneaks into a mansion and eavesdrops on a group of people discussing the problem of the witches and Conliffe’s investigation, about the need to make more JKL. The people are all wealthy types but leading the meeting is Eddie Hyde. Talbot can’t focus on Hyde’s face. Hyde spends  part of the meeting discussing business with a Dr. Pretorius. Talbot’s presence is revealed but he manages to escaped using new, enhanced physical abilities. 

He returns to the witches’ house to find it empty. A recording from Ouspenskaya tells him that they will find him when he is done. Until then, beware the moon. He may lose control under the light of a full moon. That’s in two days. He meets with Conliffe to tell his story. She thinks he’s on drugs. His story is insane and he’s too cocky and energetic. He’s not the coward he was.

He returns to his wife’s house. He recognizes a scent from the mansion. He tracks the scent to the mansion of a wealthy record producer. He confronts the man. The man laughs. Talbot can’t prove anything. JKL physically transforms them. They leave no evidence that can be traced to their normal selves. Conliffe has followed him and interrupts just as the producer is transforming. Talbot and the transformed producer fight. Talbot kills him but is severely injured. 

Conliffe and Talbot go into hiding. Conliffe has investigated Eddie Hyde. She hasn’t been able to find out much. The people she has spoken to are terrified of him. Talbot is healing quickly. 

Edwards calls him. He asks to meet. Ouspenskaya is gone and he needs to be talked down. Edwards and Talbot meet in a park with Conliffe shadowing them. Talbot recognizes Edwards’ scent as Hyde’s. He confronts Edwards. Edwards thinks he’s insane. Edwards flees. Talbot and Conliffe pursue but Edwards is snatched up by a group of shadowy men. The men pursue Talbot and Conliffe. Conliffe is snatched. Talbot kills a couple of the men but the rest escape with Conliffe. 

Talbot searches the city using his new senses. He’s almost fully healed. Hyde calls him. He admits to having once been Edwards until he created JKL and freed himself from the petty life of ordinary men. Hyde has a separate life from Edwards. Edwards killed his family as Hyde to free himself from distraction. Hyde is wealthy and powerful. He only keeps Edwards around out of sentimentality. Hyde says he will exchange Conliffe for Talbot. Talbot has a magic that Hyde wants to study. Hyde summons Talbot to his offices in a downtown skyscraper. 

The story climaxes as Talbot, now a full fledged werewolf, fights Hyde and his minions in the skyscraper. Conliffe is freed and calls in SWAT. Talbot no longer thinks like a man and fights SWAT with as much violence as the Hydes, killing and wounding many. Talbot and Hyde are the last “men” standing. They fight. Talbot kills Hyde. As he dies he transforms back into Edwards. 

Conliffe and Talbot face each other. Talbot tries to control his bloodlust but fails. He charges Conliffe and she’s forced to shoot him with an assault rifle. He falls out a window and into the river below. 

Roll credits. 

Mid credit sequence – Dr. Pretorius meets an associate at the airport. He says that this project has gone south. It’s time for him to get back to his main interests. 

“How is Frankenstein faring?”

End credit sequence – The river, far downstream. Larry Talbot, bloody but alive, drags himself out of the water. Ouspenskaya is waiting for him. She says that she will wait for him to heal but, when he is well,  they have much to do.  

Cast Tom Cruise as Talbot. If he’s not into going full Wolf Man then streamline the makeup Werewolf of London style. It worked for Nicholson in Wolf. Russell Crowe was Jekyll in The Mummy. He’d make a fine Edwards/Hyde here.

Or not.

I mentioned that early marketing for the “Dark Universe” had turned me off to the “Dark Universe”. It was obvious that Universal used The Mummy to launch this franchise not because it was a good organic starting point but because the 1999 Mummy had been the last iteration of their characters that had been a financial success. The Univeral Monsters well of characters isn’t a deep one. Dracula. Frankenstein. Bride of Frankenstein. The Wolfman. The Mummy. The Invisible Man. Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. The Phantom of the Opera. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. A Hunchback. Less than a dozen recognizable characters. All of those characters, except for the Creature, are in the public domain. Universal doesn’t own them. Universal owns the copyrights and trademarks to their visual appearance in the Universal movies but anyone who wanted to could make their own monster mashs as long as they didn’t duplicate the Frank Pierce’s make-up designs.

Cast someone other than a superstar and keep the budget under $75 million. My ideas can easlly be used by simply changing the names and the physical appearance of a few characters. No one has done it in film yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s fan fiction covering the same territory.

Next week: Dark Bride

Recommended

So, I’ve just spent many words about how one could do a mash-up of classic monsters and (maybe) make it work. Quite a few entertaining mash-ups already exist. If such stories appeal to you you might try –

Mad Monster Party

Here’s where I admit that I still haven’t seen this. I missed it when it was originally broadcast when I was a kid. It’s on the list of the many many things I’ve missed that I’d like to see someday but probably won’t because I don’t think I can find the time.

The Monster Squad

This was fun.

Van Helsing

I remember enjoying this when I saw it in the theatre. Watching this preview now I wonder how accurately I’m remembering.

Penny Dreadful

I loved this series. A big part of my love was its portrayal of Frankenstein’s Monster – romantic, articulate, lonely. The Creature isn’t as physically imposing as the novel’s version but, so far, no filmed version has been. I’ll appreciate what I can get. The series kinda sorta wrapped up but still left enough plot threads dangling for a 4th season that will never come.

The Adventures of the Athena Club
by Theodora Goss

This trilogy of novels is an expansion on The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, a short story originally published in Strange Horizons, an online SF magazine. I love the short story and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the “classic” monsters. The trilogy is a different beast. It’s more of a penny dreadful/pulp serial sort of thing without being either very suspenseful or very shocking. I enjoyed it but, at over 1200 pages it’s farther down my list of recommendations. The series was optioned for developement as a TV show back in 2018. I think it would adapt well to that medium.

Local News

I’m writing this on Monday morning. I’ve had the last week off from USPS. It was a planned vacation; the time set aside back in January when most of us had no idea what 2020 might have in store. The coronapocalypse didn’t throw off any carefully laid plans. My plans were vague. I wanted to get some art done and I wanted to move my studio into another room.

Art got done – a long delayed book cover and some sketching for the fun-and-practice of it. Other art got delayed as I just ran out of steam. My life may not have been as affected by Washington’s quarantine as other folks’ but I’ve still felt the psychic disturbance of it all. I say that as someone who is both psychically untalented and doesn’t believe in psychic phenomena. I made it to Wednesday and then just stopped.

I managed to get myself heading back on track artwise by setting the timer and just working on sketches no matter how crappy they looked and being willing to redraw them when necessary.

Furniture has not gotten moved. My studio remains in place.

I had a birthday on Saturday. I prefer to ignore the actual number of the birthday. I find that thinking I’m “over 25” is enough. I’m an adult with responsibilities to other adults and a few cats. Thinking of myself as a specific age calls up too many cultural expectations for people of that age. I had three phone conversations – one with a friend of over 30 years, one with a friend of over 40 years and one with my younger brother. He’s been a friend for over 50 years. I’m going to ignore these sentences now. They have framed my age too well.

Other than the phone conversations, celebrating the day mostly consisted of thanking Facebook folks for sending birthday wishes and appreciating my Big Sister’s latest culinary care package. This time she delivered: a savory bacon, artichoke, leek, comte cheese tart; two kinds of chicken samosas with a cilantro yogurt sauce and a fruit ginger mint sauce; and a kurobuto baked ham with gravy, roast veggies and brussel sprouts. And a bottle of Champagne. The tart and the samosas were delicious and have been swallowed up. We’ll have the ham tonight.

This was a long newsletter. Thank you for making your way through it. Hopefully it was entertaining. I appreciate your time. I hope the rest of your day is as restful or as exciting as you need it to be and no more. Take care!