December 25, 2005

Banjo

I don't know if other people used to do this, but I was completely fascinated with the baby book that my mother had started for me and would look through it often as a kid. It is a big white book, loosely wrapped with an odd plastic "cover" ... kind of like a library book, but a softer plastic like the bag you use to put your fruits and veggies in at the grocery store. In the front were some basic baby facts, length, weight ... the fact that I kept Mom in labour from midnight until nearly five p.m. the next day ... typical baby book stuff.

And, tucked into one of the early pages is a card of congratulations on the new baby. I don't remember the sentiment on the card, only that it was a Snoopy card and inside, there was a little red plastic banjo.

Evidently the sender of that card knew something about my personality before anyone else did ... I was enthralled with that little plastic banjo from the first time I discovered it in the card and remained fascinated by banjos my entire life.

I can recall, also, walking from the bright, bright Texas sun into the extremely dark Shakey's Pizza Parlour. There was a window that looked into the kitchen where the pizza was made, but I hardly gave the tossed dough a glance ... I could hear something around the corner and ever the kid to follow my curiosity, I headed into the main room to see a man in a red and white striped shirt, seated on a tall stool. He had one of those straw barbershop quartet hats on and he was playing a banjo.

I immediately sat on the floor in front of him and stared up as he played, utterly enthralled.

My mother, coming around the corner and expecting me to be like the other three kids in the pizza joint -- pressing my nose to the glass looking in on the kitchen, felt a moment of panic when I was not there ... panic that intensified when she realized that I was actually listening raptly to the banjo player.

My mother grew up the daughter of a cattle buyer ... they lived in Iowa, Nebraska (I think) and Oklahoma. There was nothing worse in my mother's mind than anything related to "hick" or "country."

My father grew up in Texas ... always small towns, always the wrong side of the tracks. There were six kids ... an older brother from a previous marriage, an older sister, my dad, then three more girls. He went into the army before Viet Nam, got out in time to not be called back up ... and then went into computers. He, too, avoided anything and everything that had to do with "hick" or "country" ... except for an unnatural obsession to the TV show, Hee Haw.

So my "sudden" fascination with this banjo-player in Shakey's frightened my mother beyond belief.

I was dutifully pulled away from the banjo player and ensconced in a booth, to await our pizza. I tried several times to go back to the banjo player, but Mom insisted that I stay in the booth until it was time to leave.

And, she thought, silly, silly woman, that that was the end of that.

Silly, silly woman.

A few weeks later we were at a church bazaar/carnival thing. You know, cheesy games for the kids, crappy arts & crafts projects being sold to adults? The prize for one of the games was this plastic, orange banjo and I was determined that I would win it before we left. I used every ticket I had on a game I can no longer remember. Went back to Mom and asked for more tickets. Back to the game.

Mom found me there a while later and tried to get me to go do something else. She pointed out carefully that the orange banjo would not sound even remotely like the banjo in the pizza parlour. I was having none of it. I would have that banjo. It would make pretty music.

I don't remember the game itself or how long it actually took me to win that banjo, but I do recall walking back to the car, clutching this orange banjo shrink-wrapped onto a piece of white cardboard.

Of course, its plastic strings sounded NOTHING like a real banjo. I tried moving the tuning keys, but had no idea what "in tune" was for a banjo.

Fast forward to today ... I've been watching banjos on eBay off and on for about a year now. Have bid on a few, but always get outbid in the end ... which is fine, my bids have been rather low as I'm not convinced that I want to spend a lot on a used banjo I've not held in my hands.

But I did go ahead and put a banjo on my Amazon wish list this year ... unfortunately, the supplier ran out of the banjo starter kit early on. No banjo for the Red Monkey this year. Of course ....

There's always the tax return money to use on a special treat ... maybe this "carrot" will mean that I get my taxes done in January so I can order this new toy.

Meanwhile, I'll just have to sit and think about that old orange, plastic banjo and content myself with my guitars instead.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:06 PM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

December 21, 2005

Flicker

So, yesterday, I was sitting on the futon, working on a delightful project (sound and graphics ... hopefully I can post it here soon) when I heard an odd noise somewhere next to me. Looked up, looked around, nothing. Went back to work.

Again. And then, the cats flock to the fireplace, followed by the older dog.

Yep. There's a little flicker in the fireplace and she's pissed off. She was hanging off the screen and was pecking at it, making the screen bang against the glass door as if she were knocking to come in. And when I say she was pissed off, I mean PISSED OFF. After about an hour of pecking for five minutes and silence for five minutes ... as well as being stared at intently by the dog and two of the cats, she quieted down ... and so did Scrappy. Here he is attempting to watch the bird in the fireplace (animal-cable, we call it):

And then ... after the bird quieted down:

This morning, still a flicker in the fireplace. This afternoon after work? Blessed, blessed silence!

Turns out the wind or the flicker managed to knock the flue "door" off its track which is why the room felt drafty and how the bird got into the fireplace to begin with.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:21 AM | Comments (3) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

October 30, 2005

A Halloween Ghost Story

If you're looking for some scary stories, I have a few scattered through out the last six weeks. Here's the links for you:

Bad Water
The Graveyard
The Haunted House
Haunted

And now for your halloween ghost story ....

In the Haunted story, I talked about a ghost that haunted the sub shop I worked in during college. As John and I discussed the possibility of a ghost running the juke box and occasionally making things fly around, he eventually told me that these things just tended to happen to him. If you're into the paranormal, you might call John a sensitive or a medium. Ghosts just tend to like him.

His first experience with a ghost was at seven.

John went to spend the night at a friend's house. His family lived waaay out in the country at a small gentleman's farm and they had just moved in about a month before. John met Kyle at school and the two fast became inseperable.

The two boys ran around the farm and played for hours and when it was time to come in, they played board games. Including ... well, what Halloween story would be complete without the Ouija board?

At first the boys played with it like most kids play with the Ouija board, making it say things and being silly. Then, for whatever reason, the little plastic piece begins moving on its own. John gave Kyle a look and Kyle snatched his hand off the toy. It was still moving. Half-convinced that John was just messing with him, Kyle began asking questions.

"Who are you?"

The board spelled out J - O - N.

Kyle laughed. "You can't even spell your own name right."

"I didn't do it," John told him.

Kyle laughed and put his hand back on the toy. "Right, John, right." He looked back at the Ouija board. "Where are you?"

R-I-G-H-T H-E-R-E

"No, I mean where do you live?"

H-E-R-E

M-Y B-R-O-T-H-E-R I-S S-C-A-R-E-D

"Why?"

D-A-D

"This is dumb, John, make it say something good."

"I told you, I'm not doing anything."

"I wanna talk to something good and scary."

"I don't wanna play this anymore, Kyle. I don't like it." John took his hand off the plastic toy.

With both boys' hands off the toy, it began flying across the board.

"What's doing that?"

I A-M J-A-M-E-S
Y-O-U A-R-E B-A-D

"Kyle? Make it stop. How are you doing that?"

Y-O-U-V-E G-O-T T-O B-E

John picked up the board and tossed it across the room. Kyle was white as a ghost.

At seven, of course, they did what any sane seven-year-olds would do -- they ran out to the living room for Kyle's mom.

Of course, Kyle's mom figured the boys had been telling scary stories and had just frightened each other. She gave them a snack and sent them back to Kyle's room and told them to go to sleep and not tell anymore scary stories.

After kicking the game under one of the beds, the boys wrestled and played until Kyle's dad came in and told them to knock it off and go to bed. So they did.

A few hours later, Kyle's mom woke up to all sorts of noise coming from Kyle's room. Convinced the boys were playing, she opened the door only to find everything in Kyle's room flying around in a circle. His clothes, his toys, everything. Completely unable to believe what she was seeing, she was convinced that she was merely dreaming and walked back to bed.

The next morning, Kyle's dad went out to the barn to muck out the horses' stalls and finally stormed back into the house. "Were those boys out in the barn yesterday?" he asked his wife.

"Of course, they were playing out in the loose hay."

"I have told Kyle a million times that pitchfork is not a toy." And his dad stormed off for the boys' room.

Every toy and piece of clothing Kyle owned was scattered around the room.

"KYLE!"

Neither boy moved. His dad, completely disgusted, turned around, surveying the "damage" of Kyle's playtime the night before. The door to Kyle's closet was open, the light was on and there was nothing in the closet. Every piece of clothing, every toy, jigsaw puzzle, everything was in the middle of Kyle's room.

Except the pitchfork, leaning against the back wall of the closet.

Kyle's dad snapped. He'd had it with his irresponsible son who just didn't seem to understand that the farm tools were not toys. This was the first time he'd found one of the tools in the house, but not the first time that Kyle had wandered off with one hand tool or another. Furious, he grabbed the pitchfork from the closet and began hollering at his son.

The two boys woke up to Kyle's furious father screaming and coming toward them, pitchfork in hand.

His mom walked into the room and screamed - partly at the total mess in the room (and remembering her "dream" of the night before) and partly at the sight of her husband wielding the pitchfork at the boys. Surely it was just to emphasize his anger, but still ....

Kyle's parents left the room and calmed down, got rid of the pitchfork and then came back in to talk to the now terrified young boys. They explained that the boys shouldn't have trashed the bedroom or taken the pitchfork into the house -- shouldn't have played with the pitchfork at all.

Of course, they both protested and insisted they had done no such thing. And of course, Kyle's parents assumed the boys were lying. His mom was somewhat disturbed by the odd dream she'd had the night before, but it had to have been a dream.

So, the boys' first sleepover was a bit of a disaster and John was in trouble again when he got home for not behaving properly as a guest.

But, a few weeks later, John's parents called and asked to come over with Kyle. Not sure what was going on, but responding to the tense voice of Kyle's mother, they agreed.

They sat around the kitchen table ... both sets of parents and both boys.

"I know this is going to sound strange, but I need to ask John a very serious question," Kyle's mom started. "What happened when you and Kyle were playing with the Ouija board?"

John blinked a few times and then told them. "At first me and Kyle were just making it move around and being silly. But then it started to move on its own."

"John!" his mother was shocked at this bald-faced lie.

"Vivian, wait, please. John, what did it say?"

He told them that it said its name was Jon, it lived "here" and that his brother was scared. Kyle's parents blanched.

"I told you!" Kyle said. "I told you!"

"Then what happened, John?"

"Well, Kyle thought I was doing it and he thought I was being stupid so he said he umm, that he wanted something scary."

"And then? This is really important, John. What did the board say next?"

"This is ridiculous," John's father said. "What are you getting at? The boys were playing silly games and they acted up."

"It's more than that. We've done a little research." Kyle's dad turned back to John. "What did the board say next?"

"It said we were bad. And it was gonna do something, but we stopped playing."

"Anything else?"

John thought for a moment. "James. It said its name was James."

Kyle's mother blanched.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Boys, you go on up to John's room and play," Kyle's father said.

The boys, of course, scurried around the corner and eavesdropped on the adults.

As it turned out, John and Kyle discovered that about 20-30 years before, James and Madeline Winchester and their two sons, Kyle and Jonathon had lived in the farmhouse. Not more than a few months after moving in, however, James had completely lost his mind and murdered the two boys in their bed with his pitchfork.

After the third time the pitchfork found its way into Kyle's closet, his mother couldn't stop thinking about the "dream" that she'd had when John had stayed over and began asking around the town about the house. The local librarian helped her research the house and discovered the story of the Wincehester family.

Of course, John's parents took far more convincing than the boys did, but as it turns out, Kyle's folks just wanted to confirm with John what Kyle had already told them. The final straw for John's parents was the news that they had already talked to the local priest and scheduled a cleansing of the house which was to be followed up by something resembling an exorcism for the house itself.

At the very least, John's parents realized that Kyle's folks were taking this seriously. They went on to explain what Kyle's mother had seen that night and other things that the boys had not yet heard.

Of course, John's parents didn't want John spending any more time at Kyle's house ... and he was fine with that. He'd had the crap scared out of him waking up to Kyle's father and the pitchfork. Particularly when Kyle told him why his parents had begun researching the house. Kyle was now terrified to go to sleep in the house, and had, in fact, been sleeping with his mother in a motel for the past week.

His father had been caught sleepwalking several times, each time found either in Kyle's room or on his way down the hall to Kyle's room, pitchfork in hand.

A few weeks later, the "exorcism" of the house was ... well, not particularly successful. The priest insisted that the entire family needed to be present at the home. Kyle refused to tell John what had happened, but the family moved into a motel immediately thereafter and quickly moved to another town. John never saw him again.

And, of course, in the true tradition of all haunted houses like that, no one ever bought the farmhouse. By the time John left home and moved away to college, he said the farmhouse had begun falling down. The town had talked about having the house bulldozed in an effort to make the property saleable ... but it hadn't happened by the time John left.

Happy Halloween!!

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:55 PM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 25, 2005

Bad Water

Halloween is creeping closer, so I thought I'd tell another creepy story. No ghosts ... I think ... it gets kind of confusing to tell at one point ... but it's a good creepy story.

I've changed some details and most names just because I think it's probably a good idea. You'll see.

(The beginning of this story does involve relating a bit of child abuse. I've tried to keep this non-graphic and sketchy, but it is important to the story.)

I have a friend who has lived just outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan for most of his life. His mom was the "hands-off" type which sounds cool to a kid until you realize that means you're completely alone. By the age of ten, he was "dating," if you want to call it that, a twenty-year-old woman who worked for the volunteer fire department in one of the little towns that are scattered around Kalamazoo and Battle Creek (home of Kellogg's).

Now Mike is a pretty cool guy, but that early relationship and the neglect of his folks really screwed him up a bit. Not only did his dad once say, "Well, I didn't like him dating so early, but what could I do about it?" but he never gave Mike any curfew or rules or anything. In fact, there were times when he didn't come home for two or three days and nothing was really said.

What Mike's folks didn't bother to find out about the relationship with Tina could fill several novels, but this is a blog and I'm trying to keep this to just one entry, so I'll cut to the chase. Besides having a sexual relationship with a ten-year-old boy, the relationship was abusive in other ways as well. After earning Mike's trust and the ten-year-old's version of love and adoration, Tina introduced Mike to her other passion: the occult.

Again, I don't know if these folks were serious about the occult or just messing around with younger kids' heads and I'm not sure it really matters. The truth of it is that Tina and some of her friends had a little group of twenty-somethings several of whom had a younger kid as a "partner." These folks bonded together in the firehouse and would use their little tight-knit group for orgies (including the kids). They'd also light black candles and say spooky things and scare the crap out of the kids.

One of the stories Tina used to tell Mike was about the old mental hospital and how one day Tina would take him there and chain him to the walls and leave him to die.

Naturally, Mike was terrified of Tina.

Fast forward to Mike's early 20s, when I met him. I'd go up to Kalamazoo and visit him and we'd wander around town. There's one building in the downtown area which just gave me the creeps and I still don't know why. It's just an old "skyscraper" (from back in the day when skyscrapers were only 20-30 stories high) with Kalamazoo something or another painted on the side ... just a typical painted-on sign that you see on a lot of old buildings. It's not even a creepy font, just a basic Times/Times New Roman style font.

I mention this in passing to Mike one day and he tells me it's because Kalamazoo is evil. Now, knowing his history a bit, I blow him off. Of course he's going to overreact to such things. That kinda thing will seriously mess you up.

"Anyway, it's the whole town," he continues. "The local tribe's word for Kalamazoo meant 'bad water,' and they didn't just mean this nasty river."

"What do you mean? Why'd they think the water was bad?"

As it turns out, the area made people go crazy.

Don't believe me? Look up the history of mental health in the United States. The first mental hospital in Michigan was in Kalamazoo and it was one of the first mental hospitals in the United States.
There's a reason for that.

Just from local lore, there seem to be an improbably large number of stories about people going stark-raving mad.

As we're wandering through town in the huge cargo van -- there are about six of us including Mike and I -- we pass by one of the large, old graveyards. We decide to get out and wander around for a while, looking for old gravestones to rub. We spend about an hour telling each other creepy things and looking at the truncated rock slabs that supposedly tell our stories after we're gone. Dates and a short verse from the Bible somehow don't seem to tell enough of the story.

Or maybe I'm just long-winded.

At any rate, almost as one, the six of us look up at the building on the hill above us. It's more hidden than visible, to tell the truth. You have to search through the summer trees to find it and you have to really be looking through the winter trees to see it, too.

A little odd that we all decided to look that way at once.

"What's that?" Dave asked. There was an instant chorus of discussion.

"The old asylum," Mike said. Everyone there got quiet for a minute. I think we all knew at least that much of Mike's history.

You know what we used to do with the really crazy people back in the 1850s and up through at least 1900? The really, really, dangerous crazy ones? They'd put those folks down in the "basement." Only it was generally more like a kind of roughed out dirt basement. Or one carved into the bedrock below. A very primitive kind of basement.

And in some of the old hospitals that had that type of system, they'd toss those dangerous folks who seemed to have no grasp of reality at all anymore down those holes. There'd be a barred trap door that the orderlies would just toss food and water down without opening the door up.

And of course, Tina had embellished these stories when telling them to Mike when she'd dated him. She'd told him how there was an underground hallway where there were chains still hanging from the walls ... from where they had chained some poor creatures by their wrists and their ankles to the wall. And Tina told Mike that if he ever told anyone, she'd take him back to that hallway and chain him to the walls. And she'd kill him.

Naturally, Mike was terrified. Even now as we're all standing around the graveyard, he knows we all want to go up there.

Without a word, we all file back into the van. Mike takes the wheel and begins trying to find the right road to get us back up to the old asylum. My knee is bouncing up and down in a rapidfire tattoo of anticipation. Dave hasn't stopped cracking his knuckles. Michelle is utterly white-faced, but corrects Mike once as he almost turns away from the hospital.

We were all completely in the thrall of this ancient building. When we finally pull up to the parking lot, Mike stops the van and rests his hands on the keys. "Do we have to?" is all that he says.

The rest of us are out of the van already. This is not normal behaviour for any of us. Mike is very gung-ho about facing his fears. Michelle is a fraidy-cat who we could barely get to go to a graveyard, much less this creepy place. I'm usually more sensitive to how other people feel -- I mean, this has got to practically be hell for Mike.

And yet I'm the first one heading for the gate.

"There's cameras."

We look around and spot more of the security cameras.

"They really on?"

Kimball nods. "Yeah, yeah they are. My sister works for the security place that monitors them."

I have walked completely away from the group at this point. I am standing at the gate and looking into the trees off to my left. I am certain we can get in without getting into any trouble.

This is really not like me. I am paranoid about doing "bad" things and trespassing is definitely a bad thing.

"There's a way in over here," I call out softly. I don't wait for the others, but begin walking into the underbrush.

Finally, Michelle and Kimball both start to panic.

"We have to leave now," Kimball says.

Now you have to understand, Kimball is a big football playing dude. As in he played for Michigan State, big. He was white as a ghost and heading toward me. He'd literally grabbed my arm before I even realized what he meant to do.

He had to drag myself and Dave back to the van. Everyone else came on their own, more or less reluctantly.

And for whatever reason that was causing him to act, he made Mike hand me the keys and told me to drive the hell away from this town. I looked at him like he was crazy, but before I could open my mouth, Mike took the keys back and started the engine.

"Aww, come on, guys, I never do stuff like this," I said as we started to slowly go back across the parking lot. I had the van door open and was ready to hop out whether Mike stopped or not when Kimball's hands grabbed my shoulders and hauled me back in. Dave shut the door.

Five or ten minutes later ... and finally out of sight of the hospital, Mike pulled over. "I can't drive anymore." He sat next to Michelle and kept telling her over and over, "I just wanna go back there. Why? Why would I want to?"

I got behind the wheel and Kimball, who hated driving the van, just kept a hand on my shoulder until I was on the highway and pointed out of town.

Ten minutes passed. Fifteen.

And I could feel something "snap."

"What the hell?" Michelle asked.

I pulled over on the highway shoulder. "So I'm not the only one who just felt that?" I was physically shaking -- not from fear, because I wasn't scared. It was more like the tremors you get after a heavy exercise ... quivering muscles from over-use.

Dave, Kimball, Mike, Michelle and Donna all shook their heads.

"Until just now I was gonna go back there by myself tonight," Dave muttered.

"Me, too."

Kimball just shook his head. "Ain't none of us ever going back there again. There's something not right there."

"Well I frigging TOLD you THAT!" Mike yelled. "I told you that place was messed up and you didn't believe me, you just thought it was old Mike going off again."

There was a chorus of heart-felt apologies at that.

I don't know if it was just the power of suggestion ... after all, we all knew Mike's story and we had just been in a graveyard. And we did all know the basics of how early mental health patients were treated. Did we all just work ourselves up into a frenzy over nothing?

I would think so except for a couple of things. We all turned and looked at the building at the same time. Every one of us. Like we'd all heard a loud noise, not the staggered one person looks up and the next person tries to see what the first one is looking at.
And two, the same time I felt something give way was the same time that Michelle exclaimed. And nobody asked her what she was talking about.

Since then I've done some digging via the internet, trying to find out more about the hospital. I keep intending that one day I'll do some serious research into the Kalamazoo area and maybe do a good scary novel based on that. Supposedly gangsters and murderers were also tossed in this particular "loony bin," certainly the types of folks that you might expect would leave around an evil ghost or creepy-crawly.

But I also found out that the building hidden in the trees atop the highest hill in Kalamazoo ... was the Tuberculosis Sanitarioum, not the mental hospital. Of course, the first buildings of the mental hospital were torn down long, long ago. The currently standing buildings were built later on the Kirkbird model.

Of course sanitarioum patients weren't always treated well, either, but still.

What was it about that building that called to us? And what was it that kept its grip on us for so very long?

Bad water .... I know the joke is that when going into a foreign country, don't drink the water ... but now ... now I gotta wonder if it's safe to drink the water in Kalamazoo, too.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:18 PM | Comments (7) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 24, 2005

Hi, I'm a Binge Writer

So, I decided to try National Novel Writing Month again this year. I tried this a few years back in an effort to kick start myself into writing more fiction again, but ... well ... let's just say it didn't last long at all.

I used to write stories all the time. From about fifth grade on, I always had some short story or novel that I was working on in my big spiral notebooks. (This was even before the Commodore-64 "computer," kiddos.) Even at that time, those short stories which didn't start out as creative writing assignments in language arts class, started out as my exploring some weird dream that I'd had. The first novel I finished all the way through (in high school) was based on a dream that I had. I was bored babysitting the night after I'd had the dream, so I started to try to write down this intriguing dream that I'd had.

I still have those 40 sheets of light blue paper (the only paper I could find in the kids' craft supplies) and they are filled with my teeny-tiny writing in .3mm pencil. When I started typing those 40 pages up in the Commodore-64, it turned out to be well over a hundred pages -- and that was just a first draft skeleton of the story.

I spent the next several weeks writing almost non-stop during school hours. I stopped paying attention in American History and English so I could spend more time writing -- besides, the teachers couldn't tell the difference between my writing a story and my taking notes.

Or so I thought. But at least one of them commented on my improved study habits ....

I probably had that first draft done in about two or three weeks. And then I began typing it into the decrepit computer and then re-writing those pages in class again.

I wrote short stories and the beginnings of many more novels during the next few years. I finally finished my second novel my last year in college. I went on to graduate school in creative writing and used the next two years to refine and polish the story.

By then, I was teaching. I wrote one short story in 1996 or so. I haven't really written anything since, until the short story I posted here a few weeks ago.

My high school creative writing teacher, like many writers and writer-wannabes, said repeatedly, "good writers write every day. You have to carve out the time to work on the stories every day or you'll never be a writer."

My answer was always, "I'm a binge writer." I might not write for a few weeks or even a month, but I always come up with another story, get excited and then write in every spare moment possible until that story is done. But trying to force myself to write when I'm not "in the mood" is a generally painful experience. I've done it a time or two, but it sounds forced.

Is the advice to write every day good advice? Yeah, to a point. You should force yourself to set aside some creative time every day. But you might not really get creative work done every day -- at least not the creative work that you can concretely measure for the world to see. Might just be that you need to spend a day or two listening to the nuances of a new CD and letting your brain float, recharge those creative batteries a bit.

And that, I think, is why I didn't really write from '96 until 2005. I wasn't really taking care of my creative batteries. It gets harder, for me anyway, once I was not going to school and working. Seems like I should have had more time to write, right? After all, I had been working 35 hours (or more) a week and taking 9 credits a semester. I suppose because I started teaching right away, I just didn't have that time. I taught the class everyone hates: freshman English. Now, I'll tell you, I did not have 150 people in a class. I had 20. And I only taught 2 or 3 classes a semester. But ask any freshman writing teacher how much time it takes to help students by commenting on the first draft, second draft and third draft of three major essays. Plus, of course, some miscellaneous other assignments. We're not talking grammar worksheets, either.

By the time I got home from work, I just didn't feel like writing anything for myself. And, eventually, the ideas stopped coming around so much.

But since I was told Notre Dame students don't fail in the spring of 2004, I've been trying to re-vitalize those batteries again and I can feel ideas starting to shake loose and attempt to find flight.

I'm just hoping that NaNoWriMo is the ticket I need to get rolling again.

I pulled out one of the novels I was working on in high school. I think that's going to be completely recast as a SF novel instead of a regular fiction story. And we'll see where it goes.

50,000 words in a month. I think I can do that.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:12 AM | Comments (3) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

October 21, 2005

The Quest for the Bagthorpe Triangle

About 1979 or so, I discovered a marvelous book. Called Ordinary Jack, it was the story of a normal kid living in a family of self-proclaimed geniuses. Poor Jack attempts to make himself more interesting by posing as a seer. The resulting attempts of this kid to gain the attention of his family could be rather depressing, but Cresswell made it hysterically funny. I devoured the book then and went on to read as many Cresswell books as I could find.

At one point, the dog becomes famous (and poor Jack get attention by default as the owner of the dog). Before that, the entire family begins entering every newspaper and magazine contest they can find and then re-gift each other for Christmas with the unwanted winnings. Their trip to Wales and confusion over the seemingly millions of people surnamed Jones was almost more hysterical than the wretched search for a ghost at their "haunted" cabin.

Unfortunately for me, Cresswell was a British author and finding British children's books isn't always easy. Since then I've managed to purchase Ordinary Jack, Less Than Zero, Bagthorpes Unlimited, Bagthorpes Vs. the World, Bagthorpes Haunted, Bagthorpes Liberated and Bagthorpes Besieged. Bagthorpes Abroad and Bagthorpes Battered are on the way from Amazon.UK and eBay.

But I can't find The Bagthorpe Triangle. I have searched, I have asked folks in Australia, New Zealand and the UK to keep an eye out. Nada. Looked through book services. Zilch. The only thing I can find is the audiobook and I want a real book, not a performance.

It seems that The Bagthorpe Triangle has indeed disappeared into that triangular zone where great children's books often disappear.

Next quest: locate the BBC television series ....

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:42 AM | Comments (3) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble