There’s a benefit to being able to pick out your own head and carve your own face. Sometimes the head can be bigger and smarter. Sometimes it can be taller and more distinguished. Other days an ordinary sized head is perfect. But always remember to carve a smile! You’ll start your day off right!
Happy Birthday to:
Jacky Dixon
The fish gets bigger every time he tells the story. He stopped being able to encompass the whole critter between both hands years ago. Now he just demonstrates the size of individual parts.
Happy Birthday to:
Edward Doughty
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
Steve Ahlquist’s The Electric Elephant is based on the children’s book The Wonderful Electric Elephant by Frances T. Montgomery, published in 1903. Neither the book nor Montgomery have a wikipedia entry so it’s apparently a pretty obscure volume. Montgomery’s original is fun in a blood thirsty, old timey racist sort of way. Ahlquist’s tale follows the same basic map as Montgomery’s but the new version drops the racism while expanding on and adding complexity to the original.
The book originally had illustrations by Cassius Coolidge. A gallery of those illustrations can be found here.
Also by Ahlquist on Jukepop.com are:
Lizzie the Girl Knight
Wonder Heroes 4.0
Steve Ahlquist has been one of my favorite writers to illustrate.
Number one, I enjoy reading his stories. Even the serious ones have a sense of humor, of lightness, to them. The world is serious enough. I like stories with a bit of goofiness.
Number two, his stories surprise me. I’d say how they surprise me but I wouldn’t want to spoil those surprises.
One of those stories is The Electric Elephant. It was serialized over at Jukepop.com. Unfortunately it didn’t get a lot of votes and, therefore, wasn’t profitable enough for Steve to continue past the published eight chapters. Fortunately, while there are plenty of loose ends, the last chapter does leave the protagonists in a good place. It’s worth a read. And a vote. Maybe with enough votes Steve can start writing again!
I’ve created a Morgo the Mighty page here at Skookworks. It includes all the Popular Magazine covers, the interior art, and downloads of the complete novel in both a Word doc and a PDF version.
Over at the Oz-Squad.com site, Lizzie the Girl Knight has six chapters available for your reading pleasure.
Chapter 1
The Little Matchgirl – A Dangerous Run – The Killing – A Princess – and a Strange Coincidence
Chapter 2
The Kites – The Storm – The Dragon – An Unexpected Trip – The Forest at Desert’s Edge
Chapter 3
A New World – The Orchard – The Dwarves – The Strange Door – and a Terrifying Predicament
Chapter 4
Shutting the Door – Queen Lang Li – A Hurried Departure – The Golden Bricked Road – Stalked by a Monster
Chapter 5
The Long Walk – A More Dangerous Path – Another Door – Lang Li’s Veranda – Peril!
Chapter 6
Tom and Patches Worry -Battling the Skutters – A Make-Shift Raft – The Whirlpool – The Head in the Bag
The fourth chapter of Lizzie the Girl Knight is live now. It can be read here.
If you haven’t started reading yet, or if you want to re-read the previous chapters, just follow the links below –
Chapter 1
The Little Matchgirl – A Dangerous Run – The Killing – A Princess – and a Strange Coincidence
Chapter 2
The Kites – The Storm – The Dragon – An Unexpected Trip – The Forest at Desert’s Edge
Chapter 3
A New World – The Orchard – The Dwarves – The Strange Door – and a Terrifying Predicament
Thanks to the instructions at Mamablogga I’ve transferred all the old posts from the original Skook sketchblog. I imagine that there will be some clean up to make sure that they all work for this site but that’s going to be a long term project. I’m posting larger images here than I did on the old blog so the older entries look a little puny. WordPress (which is what I use for this site) has post identifiers of both “categories” and “tags”. I’m not sure what the difference is but all my older blogspot post tags come through as categories. I’m not sure what if, anything I’ll do with that. With seven years of posts to go through, any revising done will take … more time than I want to think about. If you happen to find any posts that need fixing please post a comment or send me an email to let me know.
I’ve also been adding links over in the sidebar. I started with sites I visit regularly (that is, at least twice a month) and now I’m added sites that seem interesting. I’m open to suggestions. I tend to get stuck in patterns of subject matter and it’s refreshing to be pointed in a different direction now and then.
In physical world news I’m back in school after the Holiday break. I’m taking English Composition, Introduction to Computer Hardware and Introduction to Database Design. Without a math class (and the attendant homework) this quarter I’m expecting the work load to be lighter.
To compensate for the lighter school schedule, I’ve signed up for Codeacademy, a free online coding program. I could use extra practice writing code. I attempted the first lesson yesterday and choked up before I was able to finish. I’ll give it another try today. Practice. Practice.
Over at Oz-Squad.com we posted the first chapter of Lizzie the Girl Knight. We’ll have a new chapter for you on the first of every month. Stay tuned!
