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!

Tuesday Night Party Club #20

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Gallery: Morgo the Mighty

Morgo the Mighty was a pulp serial by Sean O’Larkin. You can find my essay about the novel (and download it to read) at that link. The story is fun but not a classic. It reads like the author had read enough fantasy pulp adventures to know the formula but wasn’t in love with the genre enough to go crazy. I look at the story as a not bad first draft that needs a more imaginative rewrite. Doing that rewrite is one of my many “someday” projects.

In the meantime I’ve done a few illustrations inspired by the book. Most of these are visuals for The Surrilana Depths, my imagined  “second draft”. Someday. Someday.

Story Seed #43
The New Hollow Earth

Morgo the Mighty was set in a gigantic cave system under the Himalayas. It’s part of the Hollow Earth genre of pulp fantasy. The most famous examples are probably Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne and At the Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Most examples of subterranean adventure stories follow closer to Verne’s example than Burroughs’ – they take place in caverns and tunnels. That makes sense. The earth is riddled with caverns and humans (and other critters) are good at making tunnels. Caverns and tunnels are more plausible than an actual Hollow Earth. Hell, even when Burroughs wrote At the Earth’s Core the idea of a vast, inhabitable inner Earth was considered a fantasy. That didn’t stop Burroughs from writing seven novels set in Pellucidar.

The idea of Hollow Earth filled with prehistoric survivors, lost civilizations and other weird menaces is free for anyone to use. The first two Pellucidar novels are in public domain so one could set a story there. So far as I know, existing Hollow Earth fiction and games set their stories no later than WW2. It’s easier to believe in an impossible place when the stories are period pieces. Technology was less advanced. The world seemed to have so much undiscovered space.

Imagine someone discovering the Hollow Earth in 2020. I’m less interested in how such a place could exist (Alternate dimensions? Atlantean construct? Elder Thing project? Extraterrestrial pocket universe? Intelligent dinosaur asteroid survival strategy?) than in how modern humanity would react to finding an entire world beneath their feet. Suddenly there’s a world of untapped resources available that doesn’t require space travel to reach.

Is the Hollow Earth inhabited by intelligent creatures? If not, we’re likely to have Surface nations competing for territory and resources. If there are intelligent but low tech Hollow societies they’re going to be faced with the same challenges that indigenous Surface people have dealt with for hundreds of years.

What if the Hollow Earth already has a materialist civilization using up its resources? In that case the Hollows might be looking at our surface world as a source of new materials. And workers. Slaves. Consumers.

Or perhaps the Hollows have figured out a workable civilization and contact with the Surfaces threatens to destabilize it. Or … what if discovering that our planet was inhabited by a workable, sustainable civilization caused us to (further) destabilize ours?

Does the Hollow Earth have dinosaurs? Has time stopped there? Has life followed a different evolutionary path? The Hollow Earth is empty. How would you fill it?

Recommendation

Field Notes is a newsletter by Christopher Brown. He writes about encounters with animals and nature in urban spaces. I’m fascinated by the way the rest of the inhabitants of the environment adapt to the sprawl of the human species. I consider human civilization as natural as termite mounds or ant colonies. Human civilization is toxic to much of the rest of environment because we’re better at creating it than we are at creating limitations for it. Brown describes his explorations and observations of the “wild” surviving in “civilization”.

Local News

I’ve been off work since Friday. I’m on one of my annual vacations. I’m primarily focusing on getting art done. I hadn’t made plans to travel anywhere so the shutdown hasn’t created any disappointment. I had thought about taking a road trip to see friends but I hadn’t done more than thought about it.

I had been enthusiastic about rearranging my studio so my wife could have a closer workspace but that was weeks ago. I managed some spring cleaning then, did some organizing and got rid of some things but the longer the shutdown lasts the less energy I’ve got for big changes. That feels weird because we’re less affected by the shutdown than most.

I enjoy my own company. The creative work I do is mostly a solo thing. I need a quiet space when I write. My artwork is all my own work, no inkers or colorists. But I learned a long time ago that I need to physically interact with people in order to maintain sanity and a good mood. I need to see friends. I need to be in the same physical space and to touch them. Handshakes. Hugs. High fives. Basic monkey interactions. Phone calls, emails and Facebook are, for me, just gap fillers between the real moments. The longer real moments stay unavailable the less I’m interested in phone calls, emails and Facebook, the more an isolation loop forms.

I understand part of why folks are protesting the shutdown. It’s not really haircuts or going to bars. It’s isolation. Being alone for too long can be terrifying. Have you listened to your thoughts. Culture has clogged your thinking with so much horrible crap. The best way to get it out is to interact with another person, in person. I’m lucky. I’m friends with the monsters in my head. I don’t think my thoughts are orders or that unmet desires are signs of personal failure. But, damn, I get sick of listening to my thoughts.

Hmmm. I hadn’t planned to sign off on a downer note. I do know that this is just how I’m feeling as I’m writing this. The only constant in the world is change. I’m likely to feel different in a couple of hours. So, however, you’re managing yourself in these times, I do wish you well. We live in interesting times. The best way to navigate them is by being interested and interesting.

Tuesday Night Party Club #19

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Gallery: The Unspeakable and the Inhuman

Above is my 2007 cover design/illustration for a give away CD of recordings of The Unspeakable and the Inhuman. Unspeakabe was a comedy horror podcast serial produced that year. The series was written by Derek Fetters and Sam Stewart. It’s an original, very funny take on the Cthulhu Mythos. Derek handed out the CDs to interested folks at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival that year. He and I attended the Festival a few times before life got in the way.

Derek and Sam put together nine episodes of Unspeakable before, yeah, life got in the way. Those episodes are currently being hosted at 19 Nocturne Boulevard, a site that presents original adaptations of horror stories. Download and listen!

In 2008 a friend of Derek’s designed a website for the show and asked if I could contribute some art. That website is gone but the illustrations are below.

Story Seed #42
1-800-MAKEDIE

Posted in a less prominent place on one of those community bulletin boards often found in grocery stores and coffee shops and bars, a small flyer reads:
1-800-MAKEDIE
Call anytime. Leave a name. No explanation needed.
We’ll handle the rest.

The protagonist calls the number. Perhaps as a joke. Perhaps out of morbid curiousity. Perhaps in a moment of late night drunken justification. Leaves the name of someone they hate on the recording.

Possibilities:

  1. The person named is found dead, horribly murdered. The protagonist waits in agony and guilt for the other shoe to drop. Time passes. The murder goes unsolved. The case is forgotten. The protagonist calls the number again.
  2. The person named is found dead, horribly murdered. The protagonist waits in agony and guilt for the other shoe to drop. Time passes. The murder goes unsolved. The case is forgotten. As time passes the protagonist breaks down morally and mentally.
  3. The person named is found dead, horribly murdered. The protagonist waits in disbelief and guilt for the other shoe to drop. Time passes. The murder goes unsolved. The case is forgotten. The protagonist becomes obsessed with finding out who was behind the number and who committed the crime.
  4. The person named is found dead, horribly murdered. The protagonist waits in trepidation for the other shoe to drop. Time passes. The murder goes unsolved. The case is forgotten. The protagonist has saved the flyer. When a friend laments about a horrible person in their life, the protagonist gives them the number.
  5. The person named is found dead, cause unknown. The protagonist waits in agony and guilt for the other shoe to drop. Time passes. The protagonist questions whether they were responsible for the death or if it was just a weird coincidence.
  6. The person named is found dead, horribly murdered. The police arrest the protagonist and charge them with the crime. The protagonist was at home, asleep, during the time of the murder but has no witnesses and all evidence points to their guilt.
  7. The person named comes after the protagonist with murderous intent. Their family has been kidnapped and the ransom is to kill the protagonist.
  8. ….?

Recommendation: Monster Brains

Monster Brains is a primarily visual blog from Aeron Alfrey. The blog is themed around fantasy illustration. Each post is spotlights a single subject. Sometimes it’s a run of covers from a specific publication. Sometimes it’s a collection of related images – VHS box art or book covers. Usually each post features the work of a different fantasy artist. Alfrey has been updating this blog for years so there are thousands and thousands of weird images to peruse. If you like what you see, add something to the tip jar.

Current Events 

I love how “unlimited data” becomes “we didn’t expect you to use this much data so we’re throttling your usage”. We get our cell phone service from Consumer Cellular. The Nephew spends most of his waking moments using his phone. On Friday I got a notice that we had reached the limit of our unlimited data plan. Kinda. Sorta. Consumer Cellular gives us 35G of shared data per month. “Unlimited”. Once we hit 35G we can use more data, they just throttle the speed that they provided that data. For an additional fee they will allow the data to be provided at high speed.

So Consumer Cellular has gone from being a company I’d recommend to being just another lying cell phone company. Their plans are still cheaper and easier to manage than the previous companies we’ve worked with. And if we didn’t have a Nephew our data usage would be much, much lower. I’m just not a fan of being lied to.

That I’m leading with complaints about our cell phone service tells you how exciting our life is right now.

Big Sister delivered another cooler full of wonderfulness – French Beef Burgundy Pie, Cuban Pork Ribs over Red Beans, and Thai Green Curry Chicken. We are lucky, luck people.

This week did demonstrate why I’m still more concerned about dog bites than about infectious diseases. One of my fellow carriers got her hand mauled by a dog. She’s the sixth carrier to get bitten in the last 12 months. I don’t know the exact circumstances of this bite. Like far too much news I heard about it via a post on Facebook. She included a photo of her bandaged hand. Dog bites happen more in sunny weather. Customers leave their dogs out in their yards or leave their front doors open to get some air in their house. They think that keeping their screen door closed with keep their dog in the house. And that works until the dog sees someone approaching that door.

I’ve had it happen a few times over the years. The dog leaps at the door (or window) and goes through the screen. Oftentimes the dog is surprised that the screen didn’t hold and pauses momentarily to process this new state of being. It had, after all, been throwing itself against the door (or window) on a regular basis and had never passed through it before. On a good day the dog’s owner will grab the mutt and pull it back it in. On a bad day someone gets bitten. On my route I’ve learned which houses are inadequately prepared for dog breakouts and I just don’t deliver on days when they’ve left door and windows open.

Things get trickier when delivering on other routes. You never know what ferocious beast might be lurking on the other side of a fence. Even the sweetest, friendliest dog has sharp teeth. A concientious carrier will include dog warnings for subs in their pulldowns but they can’t cover all the addresses all time. People dog sit. People have new dogs. People have dogs that the carriers don’t know about.

I end up appreciating the friendly, mellow dogs on my route even more. The ones that just look out the window at me and shrug. The ones who just don’t care. Those are my “good dogs”.

Hopefully your week has passed pleasantly. Hopefully your coming week has something worth looking forward to nestled amidst the chores and noise. Take care of yourself. Be good to your friends and family. Be kind to strangers. And if you have the opportunity to punch a Nazi be sure to wear gloves.

Tuesday Night Party Club #18

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Art Gallery: Thirty Years of the Heap

I’m a fan of swamp monsters. Over the years I’ve drawn a few versions of the first big name comic book swamp monster – The Heap. He’s a got a simple, interesting design and he’s in the public domain. It’s always more fun for me to draw my version of a public domain character than another version of some corporate possession. But, yes, one of those illustrations below does feature both Swamp Thing and Man-Thing. The final two images are swamp monster portraits I did for Jason Levine. The first is, again, yes, the Man-Thing, done in 2011. Both Jason and I love the Man-Thing’s design. The second is a pin-up I did of Jason’s character Mishmash and a random sewer monster back in 2006.

Story Seed

The Heap regains/retains Eric von Emmelman’s mind.

I have the three volume collection of the original Hillman Comics adventures of The Heap. The fact that the Heap was born from the body of Baron Eric von Emmelman, a WW1 fighter pilot, makes little difference in most of the stories. He could just as well have been born from the body of Vladmir the plumber or Olga the shopkeeper. The Heap doesn’t speak and so far as the reader knows, he doesn’r quite think. The Heap never really remembers who he was. In some stories he encounters former family members and helps them out but neither he nor they know why. In other stories he follows an American boy because the kid carries around a model biplane. Mostly he wanders the globe and acts as deux ex monstrum to take down evil doers and monsters.

Two possibilities:

  1. Stories set during WW2, the era when the original Hillman Comics were published. When the Heap rises out of that Polish swamp he awakes with the mind and memories of Eric von Emmelman. It’s 1942. How does a former German aristocrat react to the Nazis?
  2. Stories set in modern day. Perhaps the Heap regrows von Emmelman’s memories. Perhaps he is granted (or cursed with) those memories by an outside force. One hundred years have passed since his death. How does a man from 1918 deal with the world of 2020?

In both versions von Emmelman must interact with the world in the form of a huge swamp monster. Chances are he won’t be able to speak. There’s no guaranty that either version of the new Heap will be heroic. In life, von Emmelman doesn’t seem to have been a bad guy but the original comic stories are short and light on details about his character. Waking up as an inhuman pile of vegetation might have toxic effects on his attitude toward humanity.

Recommendations

Mythcreants is a website for creators of speculative fiction. It features a host of posts looking at SF cliches and tropes and suggesting ways to address or remove sid cliches and tropes. I’m a nerd. I both love SF and I love endlessly examining what makes (or doesn’t make) a good SF story so I’ve happily gotten lost for hours on this site.

Current Events

Let’s see –

My Big Sister dropped off another cooler full of amazing, ready-to-cook dinners. I think this is cooler #7. This week’s menu is:
Broccoli mushroom stir fry and shrimp/pork pot stickers with dipping sauces
Large cherry tomato, bacon, shallot, mushroom, garlic, pepper tart with fig tartlettes
Lamb tagine with couscous.
Avocado/bacon snack toast using Sea Wolf sourdough bread.

Of course she delivered the latest the day after I’d stocked up the fridge with supplies from Costco and Trader Joes and I’d baked two large lasagnas. No chance of starving this week.

I got my copy of An Inner Darkness from Golden Goblin Press. I’d backed the project on Kickstarter and then Oscar Rios commissioned me to color some of Reuben Dodd’s black and white illustrations. The work looked good on my computer screen and it looks good on the printed page. That’s not a given. Kudos to Mark Shireman for his excellent production work. I’ll be posting one or two these pieces in a future newsletter. The book is available for purchase here.

I got word from the 42 word anthology folks that my story had been accepted. I’ve no idea when that story will see print (or other form of publication). They’re still accepting new work. They also rejected my brother’s story. That says something about their taste. I don’t mean that as a dig. I think he’s a brilliant writer. Not everyone likes my stuff. Tastes vary. I just think, given their goal of 1764 stories and they are still looking for stories after almost two years, perhaps broader tastes are needed.

Work at USPS continues, same as ever. I wear a mask and gloves while sorting mail and packages in the station. I mostly don’t while I’m delivering since that part of the job is a solo affair. Mail volumes are still down. Parcel volumes are up.

I’m grateful that life is pretty much the same as last week and the week before. I’m lucky. For those of you whose lives are seriously impacted, you have my sympathy. If I can do anything to help out, please let me know.

 

 

Tuesday Night Party Club #17

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Artstuff: Scenes from Haunted Places

In 2018 I was commissioned to do a series of illustrations for the website of a horror comics writer. We’d discussed doing a dozen pieces and tossed back and forth more than a couple dozen image ideas. I finished four drawings before the writer decided to cancel the series. He liked the work but it wasn’t really related to the stories he was writing. With his permission I’m posting the work now.

Story Seed #41

Four story seeds. Pick any one of the four images above. Write a story.

Or pick them all and write a story that connects them.

Your version will be the true one. All your versions.

Send me the story. I’ll publish it in a future newsletter.

Recommended: Ink & Snow

Ink & Snow is the blog of Jamie Smith, an Alaskan cartoonist. Among other projects he does the strip Nuggets for the Fairbanks News-Miner. I was born in Alaska and lived there until I was five. I’ve still got family up there. While I prefer my current place of residence, I have a lot of affection for the state.

It’s said that if you have to explain a joke it ceases to be funny. Smith’s blog is him writing about his cartoons and showing off preliminary sketches. I enjoy seeing other artists’ processes so I appreciated the background material. And his cartoons are still funny.

Lifestuff

Sabe has been tolerating his electrolyte injections pretty well. He’s not fond of having a bigass needle jabbed in his neck skin but he hunkers down while the electrolytes go in. We’ve put the electrolyte bag in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes before we inject him and that seems to help. A nurse once told me that injections hurt less when the material being injected is at least room temperature. It’s not the needle that causes the pain so much as the cold material going into the body.

I’ve finished all the illustrations for The Mystery of April Snow, the add on scenario for The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. Work continues on the illustrations for the rest of the book.

And the mail continues to be delivered. Customers have been asking “How are you?” recently and are actually interested in the answer. It’s a little weird. I’d gotten used to “How are you?” being the equivalent of “Hi!”. Not a question, just a greeting made in passing. Lately though, folks are waiting for me to reply and asking questions. It’s nice.

I am, so far, healthy. By this time in the season I’ve usually caught my spring cold, mostly recovered and am suffering through the three weeks of coughing that follow the initial sickness. No spring cold so far. I wear a mask and gloves while sorting mail at the beginning of the day. From 9 am until I finish delivery I’m mostly by myself. When I do talk to customers we both keep our distance. Apparently precautions against C-19 work for other viruses and bacteria as well. Who knew?

I hope this finds you well, mentally and physically. If you haven’t been doing anything productive or useful – congratulations! Too much emphasis is put on us being good cogs. It’s okay to be a bad cog. There’s a machine that needs crashing and we can all play a part in bringing it down.