Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 141
February 25, 2019
Katy thinks my bedtime reading is annoying
Katy and her spooky reflection
Katy is a giant Calico cat.
She becomes annoyed if things run behind schedule. One thing, in particular, is how long I read in bed before turning off the light. I read for about twenty minutes. That’s all. Katy is there, of course, griping if I pay her no attention. She is leaning against me while I read, sometimes pushing on the book on my lap, sometimes learning her head against my hand, sometimes stalking around the bed in disgust when I read longer than “necessary.”
What she wants is for me to turn out the light and go to sleep. That means she can lie on top of my legs and go to sleep. I have no idea why she thinks that’s a comfortable place for her to be.
The odd thing is, if I’m tired and skip the reading and turn off the light immediately, she doesn’t know what to do. She prowls around the bed, walking back and forth across me like I’m part of the covers, leaves the room, comes back, and finally settles down. It’s much better for me to fake reading a book for five minutes than to put up with all that.
I’ve tried to teach Katy how to read, but she doesn’t grok the concept. I’ve tried to explain to her that when I’m reading about a bunch of good guys who are about to walk into an ambush, I need a few more minutes to see what happens.
Her response is usually, “I don’t give a shit.”
I don’t think that’s very friendly, but then I guess she learned her profanity from my wife and me during times when we were ticked off about something on the news. So now, as I write this, it’s suddenly 4 pm, and Katy and her sidekick Marlo are acting totally aggrieved because I’m one minute late with their 4 p.m snack.
Gosh, who’s in charge here, anyway.
We were warned early on when we adopted these cats that Calico cats are filled with attitude. “How bad could it be?” we asked. Now we know.
–Malcolm
Some people wonder why the main character in my Florida Folk Magic series of novels is a cat. If you have to ask that question, you don’t know how pushy cats can be.
February 24, 2019
The OSCARS risk becoming irrelevant
Once upon a time, I watched the Academy Awards on TV without fail. I loved the movies and everything about them. But not anymore.
What’s changed?
On a practical note, I’m too hard of hearing to go to movies. I don’t see them until months after their release dates when they finally appear on TV with closed captions. So, as of OSCAR night, I have seen none of the nominated films and, other than a few news stories and trailers, have no clue what they’re about. That pretty much kills my interest in the broadcast.
But even if my hearing were fine and I had seen a fair number of the nominated films, I wouldn’t watch. Yes, I might care about the winners, but I’d learn about that the following day on the news.
I am tired of actors and actresses using the OSCAR broadcast as a political pulpit. Like most viewers (I hope), I see the broadcast as being about the movies, not poltical statements in opening monologues, sketches, and acceptance speeches. I get more than enough of this from the news and social media day in and day out and think it’s out of place on an awards program.
Hollywood stars have just as much right as anyone else to express their opinions. Nonetheless, the Academy Awards broadcast is not the forum for that.
When they speak of politics during the broadcast, they appear to be stumbling over each other to prove that they are the most liberal, the most intelligent, and the most politically correct person in the theater. Do they not realize that everyday people see them as members of the so-called filthy rich? I want to shout, how dare you lecture me on politics when you earn more in a year than I do in a lifetime and own multiple homes, each of which is worth more than my entire neighborhood.
You, dear actors and actresses, who can afford the taxes that you might be forced to pay if your left-leaning social programs were implemented, fail to realize that the rest of us cannot afford a government that looks like an unlimited charity. Sure, we support many of the same ideas, but you go too far because you can afford to go too far. You stand on that stage in clothes worth more than my annual income and–with a knowing wink and nod to the audience–advocate programs that will raise my taxes to the point where I cannot afford to live in this country.
Of course you believe you can do this because believe you are America’s royalty, right? We wish we were you, right? We wish we could sit for a few moments in your presence, right? We go to your movies because we love you and know that you care about all of us, right?
Frankly, I would be embarrassed to be you.
So you are turning the OSCARS into a PAC, so to speak, that’s out of sync with most of the country. That’s why, one day soon, we’ll stop caring about you and your awards program. You want us to think OSCAR night is about the movies. But that’s not true, is it?
–Malcolm
February 23, 2019
Review: ‘ The Lost Girls of Paris’ by Pam Jenoff
The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jenoff has written a compelling novel about female British agents serving in occupied France during World War II. In many ways, it’s a heartbreaking novel since we learn early on that the odds are against many of the agents lasting long in the field before they’re captured and executed.
The novel is easy to follow since it focuses three characters, albeit with a good supporting cast: Eleanor, who works for the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) and champions and then trains and manages female agents in the field; Marie, whom Eleanor recruits due her flawless French; and Grace, who finds an abandoned suitcase in a New York train station after the war and becomes interested in a packet of the agents’ pictures.
The novel moves well, giving readers a sense of what it might have been like for these women to suddenly leave the country without telling anyone where they were going and, after arduous training, finding themselves in harm’s way. Fans of black ops novels might wish that more of the novel concentrated on the field work itself rather than the worries and intrigues at SOE headquarters. However, the girls’ work in the field is well researched and authentic.
The problematic character in the novel is Grace. After stumbling upon the pictures, she feels compelled to learn more about the SOE, Eleanor, and the girls in the packet of photographs. While Grace is a realistic character, inserting her life and her problems into this story takes away from the primary focus of the novel. She is more or less a device the author has used to help convey the story to the readers. While Grace “works” as a character, the novel might well have been stronger if she hadn’t been included.
Taking the story as it is with Grace in the mix, the material is well presented and interesting. Goodness knows the story in “real life” could have happened this way with an unconnected person stumbling upon it and trying to learn more. That said, the novel is well worth the reader’s time.
February 22, 2019
Here be dragons, yeah, right
Here’s the thing. About 100000 times a year, I read that old maps used to place the words HERE BE DRAGONS in areas that nobody knew anything about. The odd thing is, nobody has ever found an old map with those words on it.
It’s quite possible that I was a cartographer in a previous lifetime, though I’ll claim that I misspoke if I’m ever asked any questions about that by a Congressional committee.
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Florida Photographic Collection
Maps fascinate me. Always have. Maybe this character flaw began when I was growing up and got bored between stops on long family vacations. We always went by car. After a while, the landscape outside the windows got repetitive, so I’d turn my attention to the service station maps we carried and made a game out of predicting when we would arrive at various locations down the road. Now, our cell phones do all this for us. But then it was fun.
In those days, I could predict within a few minutes when we’d pass the cities limits sign of every town down the road. Now I spend time trying to figure such things out when my stories involve people traveling. If a character is walking, riding a horse, on a train, in a car, or flying, when will they arrive where they’re going? I find myself looking up lengths of stride, terrain, and all sorts of things so that a hike in my story takes the same amount of time as the hike would take in real life.
In one recent short story, a father and his daughter were driving from Tallahassee, Florida to St. Marks, Florida while listening to a Scott Joplin recording. I kid you not, I timed out the lengths of the songs with the mileage so I could say stuff like “as they passed through Woodville, such and such a song was playing.”
When I was working on my two Glacier Park novels, The Sun Singer and Sarabande, I had a hiking map on my desk. Since I had hiked most of the trails in the section of the park where my stories were set, I knew how long it took to get from one place to another if one walked at a steady pace. Along with the map, I had a trail guide. That reminded me what the landscape looked like at each fraction of a mile along the trail.
While many authors look at me like I’m crazy when I mention such things, I don’t think I’m the only author who does this. I read a lot of novels set in a lot of cities and many of them are very specific about what a character can see while walking down one named street or another.
I guess it comes down to wanting to orient my characters in the places where they are just as I have always liked feeling oriented in the places where I am. If you have a compass and a map, but don’t know where you are, you can take sitings of recognizable landmarks and find the answer. I’ve always done this. So now, I’ve passed that trait along to my characters and maybe a few readers. And, if I’m lucky, maybe a dragon or two.
–Malcolm
[image error]Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the recently released collection of short stories called “Widely Scattered Ghosts.” You won’t be surprised to hear that it includes a story named “Map Maker.”
February 21, 2019
Magnolia Florida, long gone and almost forgotten
“Magnolia, Florida was a thriving river port town in southern Wakulla County, Florida (until 1843, Leon County, Florida), established in the 1820s and is classified as an “extinct city” by the State Library and Archives of Florida. All that remains of the city is the rundown cemetery – the last known burial was in 1859.[1] The cemetery is on land now owned by the St. Joe Paper Company. The town was located near the small city of St. Marks, Florida.” – Wikipedia
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People Playing Croquet in Magnolia – Florida Memory Project photo
When I was little, the old-timers in Tallahassee, Florida spoke of the extinct town of Magnolia, south of town on the St. Marks River, that developers once hoped would be a port city for cotton and other products.
There was nothing left of the town but a small cemetery that local ghost enthusiasts claimed was haunted. If you live in Tallahassee now and have been around for a while, you might recall that between 1963 and 1977, Elizabeth F. Smith captured the spirit of the area in her publication “The Magnolia Monthly” out of Crawfordville, Florida.
Magnolia–not to be confused with Magnolia Springs in Florida’s Clay county–was well-planned, but failed because the Railroad needed for its survival bypassed it and went to St. Marks instead. The town was founded by the Ladd family which you can learn more about here.
The remains of that railroad came up for sale when I was younger, and I thought then that it would make a nice tourist attraction. Never happened, for better or worse, though it might have improved the financial status of Wakulla County.
But my fascination for the town, the river, and the slash pine forests owned by the paper company stayed with me. I mention the town in my short story “Sweetbay Magnolia” in my new short story collection Widely Scattered Ghosts. In fact, the grandmother in the story had a house in Magnolia and the sweetbay magnolia in her back yard reminds her of old days and old loves.
As always, it’s the real places that get my attention.
–Malcolm
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All that remains of the town. Florida Memory Project photo.
February 20, 2019
A broken man lives on my street
Years ago, he made a mistake in the name of love. He still remembers when he was the sun and she was the moon. Now he reads the news reports about global warming and believes down to his marrow that Earth’s problems are his fault.
He told me not to reveal his name because people would say, “Well, that old man is full of himself, thinking he has or ever had the power to play a role in climate change.” Naturally, a few people would believe him and they’d kill him or put him in a home (he’s not sure which of those fates is the worst.)
[image error]The year it began, there was a war on. People were crazy, wild, prepared to live on the edge before they were sent to the front. So, he met a girl who claimed beneath the starry sky on an October night that her true name was Mother Nature. He didn’t believe her then because Mother Nature was a figure of speech and if she wasn’t a figure of speech, why would she want him when there were plenty of kings and queens and Hollywood celebrities available?
“You have a heart of gold,” she told him. She must have known he had always wanted a heart of gold or that he was otherwise susceptible to the feminine wiles of any lady who noticed the guy with the Coke bottle glasses who had never been on a date.
They became lovers. He told me that she taught him everything he knows about love and sex but that now he’s too old to use any of that information. Their daughters were hurricanes and their arguments were droughts, but heaven help him, he was addicted to her charms and her power.
Their liaisons were secret. They met in sheltered rooms and other uncertain places. While both of them wanted to go dancing, have wonderful meals at fine restaurants, partake of Broadway plays and theme parks, her power and beauty attracted too much attention. So they hid in the backs of rental cars and met behind abandoned buildings.
“She was my heroin,” he told me, “but I didn’t care until I finally understood that she was not truly a human woman and that she was transforming me (without malice) into an inhuman man. No man can sleep with a goddess and remain unscathed. If you read mythology, you know that.”
So he broke it off.
She went after him with global warming inasmuch as she wasn’t used to men turning her away before they died in her bed. Today he looks out the window at the endless rain and wonders what any sane man would have done in his shoes even though he feels certain he’s too broken to be sane. He’s thinking about going back to her since that’s the only thing he knows that will stop her fury.
“If I could turn the clock back to the day we met,” he said, “I wouldn’t change a thing. That proves I’m just as crazy as everyone else who looks back on the stupid things they did when they were young and knows they’d do it all again if they could.”
The last time I drove by his house on the way to town, I saw him sitting on his front porch with a cigarette and a Mason jar of moonshine. He was waiting for her even though he knew she would be the death of him.
Most of us would be, wouldn’t we? Our mistakes have become our fondest memories.
–Malcolm
[image error]Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism novels and short stories, including the recently released “Widely Scattered Ghosts.”
February 19, 2019
All that inspiration for just a few dollars
When I walk out of a theater after watching a wonderful movie where good and love triumph, I feel inspired. Perhaps it’s simply the story, whether derring-do or comedy or noir. Or music. Or the cinematography. Often it’s the acting. When I was young, I’d walk down the street after seeing such a movie and think I can do those things. I’d imagine myself beating up the bad guys, taking a hill with a company of marines, finding the magic in the secret cave.
Now I walk out of such movies thinking that I can do my things, whatever my goals may be.
[image error]I feel that way when I finish well-written books. Somehow the book or the movie works as a spell and unlocks dreams and abilities and willpower I didn’t know I had. (Or that had gone dormant.) Sometimes they work more like a confidence potion or maybe an angel’s gift. At some level, I suppose, it’s all just a fantasy. There are times, though, when I see differences in my life. Usually, an infusion of energy or a renewed devotion to a long-time project.
I often wonder how many others feel this way after seeing a movie or reading a book. Reading gurus have many theories about the impact of a good story. I don’t have any theories that I know of because having them seems to jinx the whole business. If your theory is that watching a certain movie or reading a certain book is going to turn you into a god or an avatar, then forget it. But, if you don’t think that, you may well be transformed.
As I read this week about a religious pilgrimage that occurred many years ago in the kingdom of Sikkim (now part of India) I find myself thinking more positively about myself and the world than usual even though I have no desire to go there and follow the seeker’s paths. For one thing, I don’t have the patience to spend hours in meditation. I never have. I know I should do it, but I don’t. All that seems so cumbersome to me. But reading about the journey and the seeker’s devotion seems to change me for the better.
And, the book and the movie only cost a few dollars. What a bargain!
Subconsciously, maybe all of us know that in addition to the escapist fun of reading a great novel or seeing a wonderful movie, we will be changed for the better by the experience. I read for the fun of it, not as a spiritual practice. But when I put the book down, I realize I’m a different person than the one who picked up the book.
Perhaps this happens to you as well.
–Malcolm
[image error]Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Widely Scattered Ghosts,” a new collection of short stories from Thomas-Jacob Publishing.
February 18, 2019
Short Story Collection Released Today (careful, it’s about ghosts)
[image error]A readers’ advisory for this collection of nine stories forecasts widely scattered ghosts with a chance of rain. Caution is urged at the following uncertain places: an abandoned mental hospital, the woods behind a pleasant subdivision, a small fishing village, a mountain lake, a long-closed theater undergoing restoration, a feared bridge over a swampy river, a historic district street at dusk, the bedroom of a girl who waited until the last minute to write her book report from an allegedly dead author, and the woods near a conjure woman’s house.
In effect from the words “light of the harvest moon was brilliant” until the last phrase “forever rest in peace,” this advisory includes—but may not be limited to—the Florida Panhandle, northwest Montana, central Illinois, and eastern Missouri.
Widely Scattered Ghosts is available in paperback and e-book at online booksellers and leading bookstores. (If your favorite store doesn’t have it, tell them they can order it from their Ingram catalogue.)
You can learn more about the stories’ location settings on the spotlight page of my website.
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Before it was torn down some years ago, this old Florida building was a favorite of ghost hunters. I was in the building when it was a clean and functioning facility.
Buy the Book Here
February 17, 2019
Two Free Books on Presidents Day
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Two Free Books – 2/18 and 2/19
The Sun Singer
[image error]Robert Adams is a normal teenager who raises tropical fish, makes money shoveling snow off his neighbors’ sidewalks, gets stuck washing the breakfast dishes, dreads trying to ask girls out on dates and enjoys listening to his grandfather’s tall tales about magic and the western mountains. Yet, Robert is cursed by a raw talent his parents refuse to talk to him about: his dreams show him what others cannot see.
When the family plans a vacation to the Montana high country, Grandfather Elliott tells Robert there’s more to the trip than his parents’ suspect. The mountains hide a hidden world where people the ailing old man no longer remembers need help and dangerous tasks remain unfinished. Thinking that he and his grandfather will visit that world together, Robert promises to help.
On the shore of a mountain lake, Robert steps alone through a doorway into a world at war where magic runs deeper than the glacier-fed rivers. Grandfather Elliott meant to return to this world before his health failed him and now Robert must resurrect a long-suppressed gift to fulfill his promises, uncover old secrets, undo the deeds of his grandfather’s foul betrayer, subdue brutal enemy soldiers in battle, and survive the trip home.
Malcolm’s Comment: As a Florida boy, I was in awe of the mountains of Montana’s Glacier National Park when I worked there as a hotel bellman two summers. I’ve been back many times. I couldn’t think of a better place for my derring-do, hero’s journey novel. If you’ve been to Many Glacier Valley, you’ll recognize the settings.
Waking Plain
[image error]The exact opposite of “Sleeping Beauty,” this tale involves a dull-as-dishwater prince, a century-long sleeping enchantment, and beautiful queens who have the power to wake the rich sleeper with a kiss–if only he weren’t so plain.
He sleeps because the king and queen inadvertently slighted the eldest faerie on the prince’s naming day. She curses him with foul words that are mitigated from a quick death to a long sleep. Will any of the eligible queens wake a man so plain as he?
Malcolm’s Comment: One of my favorite parts of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle TV show was a segment called “Fractured Fairy Tales”. Let’s just say, they were twisted up and funny. In the same vein, I was also drawn to Richard Armour’s “Twisted Tales from Shakespeare” and the equally hilarious “It all Started With Columbus.” So, it was just a matter of time before I turned my sarcastic author’s eyes on “Sleeping Beauty” and thought, this story really needs to be twisted into the very opposite of what it is. I’m sure it was wrong to do this, but I couldn’t help it.
February 16, 2019
I’ve seen ghosts from both sides now
When I was a kid, I read every psychic book I could get my hands on. Some were secular, some were based on religions where mystics were still honored, and others were spiritual in a much different sense than what I saw at church. Somewhere I read that if a person read what I was reading, they’d open themselves up to ghosts and other spirits, precognitive dreams, and waking visions. Well, all that was true enough.
Early on, I noticed a big difference between real shamans, witches, psychics, and mystics and the way all of these folks were portrayed by the organized church all the way back to the inquisition and such purges as the Cathar Crusade (1209-1229). The church saw these folks as heretics and, strangely, as devil worshippers, even though Satan was, more or less, a Jewish/Christian concept and had nothing to do with the spiritual people in the church’s gunsights. Yet, it served the church’s needs to paint everyone who was different as evil incarnate, a point of view that got picked up by Hollywood’s occult movie producers and writers. I’m always on the warpath when it comes to books and movies that turn ghosts, mystics, shamans, and witches into whatever untrue nastiness the writer or producer can imagine and then proceed to kill them in order to save humanity.
In “real life,” it’s still somewhat dangerous to speak out against these lies. Yes, every once in a while, somebody will say so and so is a witch and then look at me awaiting a wink and a nod of agreement. My response is, “So what?” This throws people for a loop, but they usually will tell me that so and so and so worships the devil. “She doesn’t believe in the devil,” I say. “Well, maybe not,” they respond. Okay, that conversation never goes anywhere good and it tends to get me shunned by a lot of people who think maybe I need to be watched carefully.
Fortunately, most people who read ghost stories–or even that phony occult crap–don’t think the authors are practitioners. And, we’re not. I’m not a conjurer, witch, or shaman. I don’t have an altar in my house covered with herbs, candles, pictures, and other arcane supplies. That’s all in my imagination. What I believe an author should do is tell the stories truly. That is, we can tell stories that fit what actual conjurers, witches, and shamans say and do rather than giving them the powers of, say, Voldemort out of the Harry Potter series along a boatload of evil motives.
Magical realism has given me a genre that works because it shows readers the everyday reality they’re used to seeing and then adds conjurers, witches, and shamans in their “natural habitats” rather than in some highly charged occult setting. My “Florida Folk Magic” series of novels is an example of this. On Monday, my publisher Thomas-Jacob will release Widely Scattered Ghosts,” my new collection of ghost stories. Most of these have something in common with my personal experiences, though my imagination may have strayed a bit.
When compared to the ghosts of horror/occult authors, these stories are very gentle even though you will find sadness and confusion in them along with a bit of humor. They’re not for kids. No, it’s not because of devil worship and gore, but from the psychological themes. Above all, I wanted the stories to be as true as fiction allows, and those of you who’ve tolerated this blog for years will know that I believe fiction is allowed to portray realities that facts cannot touch.
–Malcolm
Coming February 18th:
