Frank Tuttle's Blog, page 13

Five Reasons for The Five Faces

Today is release day! The book is now on sale at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Samhain, everywhere!
THE TOP FIVE REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY THE FIVE FACES:
5. It's less than five bucks. Seriously. I paid twice that to see Pacific Rim, and it was just Independence Day shot with stompy robots. I promise you that at no time during your reading of The Five Faces will you feel led to stand up and shout 'This is freaking STUPID' in a movie theater, partly because it's too dark to read in movie theaters but mainly because my editor won't allow stupid bits in our books. 
4) I used every letter of the alphabet. I'm not one of those lazy authors who can't be bothered to reach all the way up to the top row of keys. No, due to my strict workout regime and meticulous pre-writing stretch sessions, I am equally adept at hitting QWERTYUIOP as I am the other rows. I've even received high praise for my stylistic choices involving T and W, which were once described as 'Coffee is on aisle 9' and 'Sir, you can't park in the drive-thru.' So there's that.
3) My hero, Markhat, is real, and can see you through the pages.  Hard to believe, but it's true. Fans of the series describe brief meetings with Markhat himself, who sometimes appears as a sports team mascot or a bookstore advertising standee before dispensing nuggets of wisdom, encouragement, or household cleaning agents. "Markhat appeared in my kitchen, made himself a sandwich, and got me free HBO," reports one fan. "I turned around to thank him, and he was gone, leaving behind a tattered paperback copy of The Banshee's Walk and an outstanding balance at a rent-to-own place, which he still hasn't paid." 
2) My muse, the short-tempered and plain-spoken Visavarevagsitaga, is ready to quit and install a marmot in her place.  "Look," she said in her last email to me. "You're nice enough for a no-talent hack with delusions of grandeur and a skill-set better suited to a sled dog, but unless this book gets some numbers, kid, I'm putting you on the Small Mammal Circuit, nothing personal, I hear they like peanuts." 
1) Due to a complex series of unlikely events and activities which might not be what most Grand Juries would label 'legal,' the Russian Mob warned me that unless The Five Faces breaks the Amazon Top 500 within a week of release a series of even more complex and unlikely events will befall me, many of which involve farm implements and antique firearms. There's a lesson is this -- mainly, don't steal 45 million in Bitcoins from people named Vladimir -- but that aside, good sales numbers mean an author (me, for instance) can keep writing books in a series, and readers (you, let's say) can keep reading that series. Too, the way Vlad described the use of the anvil and the plow still gives me nightmares. So buy a book? Please?
'Nuff said. Here's are links!
The Five Faces on Amazon
The Five Faces on Barnes&Noble
The Five Faces from Samhain

Things That Go Bump 2014 Issue #2, and BOOK RELEASE!

Pictured above is the improved Tesla Radio featured in last week's entry. Note the pair of sadly unadorned black boxes on the right and left sides of the receiver chassis -- the box on the left houses a simple single-transistor pre-amp circuit, while the box on the right contains a basic LM386 amplifier chip with all the trimmings and a speaker large enough to easily be heard.

As you may recall, last week I hooked the receiver directly into my PC's sound card and recorded its output for later playback. That's all well and good, if one is willing to drag around a heavy tower PC, a monitor, a power supply, and of course a desk to put everything on. One will look awfully silly setting that up in a graveyard, so I built some amps.



The idea here is to put my portable microphone next to the LM386 speaker. That way I can conduct EVP sessions simply by speaking, and have the mic record both the Tesla radio's output and the sounds in the area.

That does mean walking around in cemeteries and haunted houses with some odd-looking machinery, but ghost hunting is itself a rather odd hobby.


With the solder-joints on the new amp still warm, I headed up to the big cemetery in Oxford yesterday. I've captured several EVP voices there before, and I was hoping the Tesla might catch a plaintive ghostly moan or two as well.


In case anyone is curious, below are the plans for my LM386 amp. The plans for the little pre-amp don't exist; it's just a single NPN transistor, a 9 volt battery, a couple of resistors and a capacitor or two. You can find that circuit all over the web. There's nothing special about any of this gear.


I use 1/8 inch mono cables and mono jacks to connect everything.

So, what mysterious and phantasmagorical sounds did I capture, armed with such fancy equipment?

Um. Well. That is to say, er, nothing. Okay, around ten minutes and 43 seconds in, there is what might be a very faint whisper. A whisper which says, after nearly 30 dB of amplification is added, I hate your horse. 

But anything you have to amplify to that degree is almost certainly just noise, so I'm not even going to post the sample.

Look, we're just not in the mood today.
I will put up a link to the entire session, which runs a little over 15 minutes. I was planning to go longer, but both my Zoom mic and my camera batteries died at the very same moment, and I was starving, so Science was defeated by Supper and I headed for home.
Here's the entire session, including bird songs, hoarse radio preachers, and one exuberant drunk, who yelled HEY MELANIE from his window a number of times while the unfortunate Melanie walked briskly away.

St. Peter's Cemetery Full EVP Session Here


I'll head back again soon, this time with plenty of spare batteries and a bucket of BBQ ribs. In the interest of Science, of course. Science!

Tuesday Book Release!As I may have mentioned here before some eleventy-seven zillion times, the new Markhat book The Five Faces goes on sale this Tuesday, June the 17th. 

Just look at that gorgeous cover, courtesy of artist KaNaXa. Note the fierce determination on Markhat's chiseled face! See the courage in the set of his manly jaw! 
He's sure, you see, that this book is the one that catapults the series to heights of fame never before experienced by yours truly. In fact, the image above depicts him striding resolutely toward the nearest bank, the better to deposit his sudden windfall and just possibly purchase a new pair of shoes. 
THE TOP FIVE REASONS YOU SHOULD BUY THE FIVE FACES:
5. It's less than five bucks. Seriously. I paid twice that to see Pacific Rim, and it was just Independence Day shot with stompy robots. I promise you that at no time will you feel led to stand up and shout 'This is freaking STUPID' in a movie theater, partly because it's too dark to read in movie theaters but mainly because my editor won't allow stupid bits in our books. 
4) I used every letter of the alphabet. I'm not one of those lazy authors who can't be bothered to reach all the way up to the top row of keys. No, due to my strict workout regime and meticulous pre-writing stretch sessions, I am equally adept at hitting QWERTYUIOP as I am the other rows. I've even received high praise for my stylistic choices involving T and W, which were once described as 'Coffee is on aisle 9' and 'Sir, you can't park in the drive-thru.' So there's that.
3) My hero, Markhat, is real, and can see you through the pages.  Hard to believe, but it's true. Fans of the series describe brief meetings with Markhat himself, who sometimes appears as a sports team mascot or a bookstore advertising standee before dispensing nuggets of wisdom, encouragement, or household cleaning agents. "Markhat appeared in my kitchen, made himself a sandwich, and got me free HBO," reports one fan. "I turned around to thank him, and he was gone, leaving behind a tattered paperback copy of The Banshee's Walk and an outstanding balance at a rent-to-own place, which he still hasn't paid." 
2) My muse, the short-tempered and plain-spoken Visavarevagsitaga, is ready to quit and install a marmot in her place.  "Look," she said in her last email to me. "You're nice enough for a no-talent hack with delusions of grandeur and a skill-set better suited to a sled dog, but unless this book gets some numbers, kid, I'm putting you on the Small Mammal Circuit, nothing personal, I hear they like peanuts." 
1) Due to a complex series of unlikely events and activities which might not be what most Grand Juries would label 'legal,' the Russian Mob warned me that unless The Five Faces breaks the Amazon Top 500 within a week of release a series of even more complex and unlikely events will befall me, many of which involve farm implements and antique firearms. There's a lesson is this -- mainly, don't steal 45 million in Bitcoins from people named Vladimir -- but that aside, good sales numbers mean an author (me, for instance) can keep writing books in a series, and readers (you, let's say) can keep reading that series. Too, the way Vlad described the use of the anvil and the plow still gives me nightmares. So buy a book? Please?
'Nuff said. Here's the link again:
The Five Faces on Amazon
The Five Faces on Barnes&Noble
DO NOT CLICK This LinkDon't even think about clicking the link below, or sending it to your friends, or Tweeting it, of Book-facing it or whatever it is you crazy kids do out there on the Interwebz these days. Seriously, don't. Just close the browser. CLOSE IT NOW.
The Link Which Dare Not Be Clicked

Mad Science: Tesla's Radio

They said I was mad! Mad, I tell you! But soon I shall show them all, bwahahahaha!The weird looking contraption in the picture above? I built it, and it works, and you can listen to it a few paragraphs down. But first, some backstory!

There's a good chance you were taught that a man named Marconi invented the device we call the radio, and that his patent was issued in 1904, ushering in the age of the wireless and kicking off the gadget-happy 20th century in grand style.

It's a good story, but it's also a big fat lie. The truth is this -- Marconi's financial backers, Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie, slipped the American Patent Office an undisclosed sum of cash, and the owners of the original radio patent found their patent revoked. I can only assume these unfortunate fellows were notified via mail, in a letter which stated 'Sorry, but wow that was a LOT of money.'

But if you dig a little deeper, you'll find that a Serbian genius named Nikola Tesla had the whole lot of radio experimenters beat, because he was sitting up late nights in his laboratory near Pike's Peak and freaking himself out with the radio he built before the rest of the gang ever gazed longingly at a chunk of germanium and wondered if they could drag voices from  it.

Rocking that 'stache like a boss.Let's set the scene in Tesla's laboratory, which did indeed look like the set from the original Frankenstein movie. The place was littered with massive Tesla coils, some of which could throw sparks over a hundred feet. There were electric motors spinning and sparking, AC transformers humming, gears and pulleys turning away. If you think I'm exaggerating, consider this -- residents of the nearby town knew when Tesla was at work when sparks reached from the soles of their shoes down to the street every time they took a step. The blue glow that surrounded Tesla's tower was visible from town.

Nikola Tesla wasn't screwing around. He invented the electric motors still in use today. AC power? That's his. So are a dozen other commonplace bits of technical wizardry. The man would build machines in his head, watch them fail, make mental improvements until he'd worked the bugs out. Only then would be set about constructing the actual device. He was that good.

So, late one night in 1893, he fired up the radio set he casually conceived and listened, curious as to what he might hear.

What he heard astounded him. Frightened him, even. He became convinced that he was picking up some form of communication between entities unknown.

You can read his own recounting of his first exposure to radio in this 1901 article Tesla wrote for Collier's Magazine.

Talking With the Planets by Nikola Tesla

In the article, Tesla (correctly) decides radio is the best way to communicate over long distances. I doubt he foresaw radio's use as a way to sell laundry detergent, but nobody's perfect.

Of his first experiences with radio, Tesla says this:

"I can never forget the first sensations I experienced when it dawned upon me that I had observed something possibly of incalculable consequences to mankind. I felt as though I were present at the birth of a new knowledge or the revelation of a great truth. Even now, at times, I can vividly recall the incident, and see my apparatus as though it were actually before me. My first observations positively terrified me, as there was present in them something mysterious, not to say supernatural, and I was alone in my laboratory at night; but at that time the idea of these disturbances being intelligently controlled signals did not yet present itself to me."

--Collier's Weekly, February 19, 1901

All of which begs the question -- what did Nikola Tesla hear, that night so long ago?

He couldn't have heard commercial radio signals, because there weren't any. Distant lightning, sure, as a burst of static. The usual hissing of the cosmos, which extends all the way down to the AM band.

But nothing I could think of would present itself as voices, or attempts at communication.

Given the materials Tesla had on hand at the time, his radio set was almost certainly a chunk of germanium (or a similar crystalline mineral) and a crude arrangements of inductors, resistors, and capacitors.

Luckily, all those things are easily obtained today. What Tesla was listening to was what we call, with a hint of nostalgia, a crystal radio set. It uses no power, save for the tiny amount collected by the antenna itself. At the heart of the radio set is a tiny hunk of germanium, which is found in the center of a thing called a 'germanium diode' which runs you a whopping 49 cents from most electronic suppliers.

I built my Tesla radio based on the set found at the end of this link:

Spooky Telsa Radio on Instructables

As you can see, his radio set is prettier than mine, but mine is a better card player, so there.

If you listen to the audio samples from the Instructables page, you'll find that lightning strikes sound just like thunder. Keep in mind the output of the Instructables set is being modified with audio processing software before you hear it -- reverb and other effects are being added to make it sound cool. Which is fine, but I prefer to record nothing but the raw audio.

Why?

Well, listen to the very brief audio sample below.

CTHULHU SPEAKS

Scary, right? Sounded like something out of Satan's own closet of nightmares, didn't it?

That was me, reciting 'Mary Had a Little Lamb.' It took me six mouse clicks in Audacity to render the harmless nursery rhyme into something sinister.

Since Tesla didn't have access to my computer, I won't be adding sound effects to the recordings.

Building the RadioIf you have a mind to build your own crystal radio set, I'll include my own drawings and parts suppliers here. It's really not hard. Or you can buy pre-wired sets from various places around the web.
The Instructables site includes a complete parts list and schematic. I'm including mine because I made a few changes. Also, I didn't draw it out in schematic form, but depicted each component and where the leads should actually connect, in case anyone without electronics experience wants to give this a try.

I got a 1/8 inch mono plug to act as the output. I chose 1/8 inch because I have an old-school high-impedance earpiece with an 1/8 inch plug; I can use that listen to the radio, and a 1/8 inch mono cable to plug the radio into my PC's mic input so I can record the sounds. More about that later.
You can build your rig any way you want to, as long as the proper connections are made. Soldering is involved, but that's easy to learn and soldering irons are cheap. The only thing you need to be careful about is soldering the diode; they're fragile, and heat can quickly destroy them, so don't leave the iron on the leads too long.
I got D1, VC1, L1, R1, and C1 pictured above from the nice people at Scott's Electronic Parts. Below are the parts numbers from Scott's:
D1 - #1N34A-1VC1 - #Var141-1L1 - #FACC1 - #Cap.001uf-4R1 - I had a 47K ohm resistor already. The Radio Shack part number is 271-1342Earpiece - #CerEar-1Mono plug for 1/8 inch mono cable: Radio Shack part number  274-251The small amplifier shown in the photos is a Radio Shack part number 277-1008, cost $14.
I had a scrap of oak to use for the base. I got a five by six inch piece of 1/8 clear plexiglass to use as a component mounting board. Four bolts hold the whole thing together.



I wound my hilariously un-circular spiral antennas from 14 gauge copper wire. I would up attaching each spiral to a small sheet of clear plexi because the coils kept flopping around and shorting out. 
Why spiral antennas? Because Tesla's drawing and notes are littered with spirals. The man loved a spiral or two. That's a bit of homage to him, it was a shape I could easily create with six feet of copper wire, and since this project is as much about fun and art as it is about anything else, why not a spiral?
The antennas plug into banana jacks, easily gotten from Radio Shack, and the whole works cost around 30 bucks.



So, the radio was finished. I could hear sounds and voices in my earpiece. It was time to plug one end of the mono cable into the radio, and the other end into my PC's mic input. Which I did. I then fired up Audacity, selected the mic input, and hit record.
Nothing happened. Nothing at all. I was monitoring the input levels, and they were stuck at zero.
I plugged my earpiece in, and heard voices. 
What did that mean?
It meant the radio's output was far to weak to reach mic-level ranges, which start around 0.3 volts. I made a sad face, cranked the gain up within Audacity to ludicrous and stupid levels, and still got nothing.
I asked myself 'What would Tesla do?' and rummaged through my ghost-hunting gear until I found a small portable audio amplifier. I hooked it up to the radio, and it started mumbling in loud angry Spanish, so I knew I was onto something. The little amp has an auxiliary output, so I plugged that into my PC, and like magic, the voices began to speak.


Now, Frank, shut up and tell us how it sounds!
Listening to the Spooky Voices of the PlanetsThe little radio fired right up, filling my earpiece with a mixture of static, faint voices, and the ever-present 60-cycle hum of modern house wiring. 
By gently turning the knob on the variable capacitor, you can (sort of) tune in on different signals. Now, keep in mind this isn't a commercial radio set. It doesn't actually have what even the cheapest Wal-Mart radio would call a 'tuner section.' Stations come and go, fade in and fade out, pretty much at random. One minute you're getting the local NPR station, the next it's an agitated gentleman speaking in rapid-fire Spanish, and then that gives way to garbled music and what sounds very much like goats bleating.



And that's just during the day. At night, when the ionosphere bounces AM radio signals around like so many meth-crazed tennis balls, things do get weird.
But hey, you've read this long, here's a sample, torn right off the late-night airwaves!
AUDIO SAMPLE 1
Gotta love that whole Children of the Corn vibe the preacher was giving off. The late-night airwaves of today are a static-flooded wasteland of AM sermonizers, each stranger than the last. I heard one such worthy exhorting the many miraculous blessings of the Magic Hand, which was quick to bestow upon its owners good fortune, improved health, and a joyous love life, Mastercard and VISA gladly accepted for orders, quantities limited, get yours today!
AUDIO SAMPLE 2
All of which is amusing enough, but what about the sounds that caused a genius such as Nikola Tesla to determine, well before anyone else, that radio would one day be the link between Mars and Earth?
Well, in that regard, I must report my brief explorations have thus far returned nothing. Attempts to 'tune' between active stations are almost impossible -- there are a LOT more AM stations broadcasting than I thought. Too, the range of such stations can vary wildly. I routinely pick up brief transmissions from South America and Mexico, even on this little rig.
AUDIO SAMPLE 3
The 60-cycle hum is truly annoying. My next recording session will be held outdoors, far from the house, recorded on my ancient Dell netbook. I hope doing so will make any faint signals easier to detect.
So What Did Tesla Hear?To put my conclusions in esoteric scientific terms, man, I have no idea.
Aside from static in one form or another, I can't image the radio environment of 1893 being very rich in anything but white noise and brief loud cracks of lightning. Was Tesla hearing the workings of his own machines? Was his radio set somehow creating weird sounds as part of a technical malfunction? Was Tesla just pulling our legs because articles about boring old static don't sell many stories to Collier's Magazine?
We may never know. I will keep playing with this radio, though, and if I manage to get Mars on the horn, you'll be the first to hear it!
Writing NewsThe big event, naturally, the new Markhat release! The new book THE FIVE FACES goes on sale June 17. 

I can tell more than a few people have already put in pre-orders, and for that I thank you!

The Perfect Face for Radio

I'm going to be on the radio this week, live from the KWAM 990 studios in Memphis, Tennessee, courtesy of The Steve Bradshaw Show! You can either listen at 8:00 AM on Tuesday June 3 by tuning to 990 on the AM dial, or you can fire up a web browser and click your way to the live show feed. Remember, that's Tuesday morning at 8:00 AM Central Standard Time.

We'll talk about a lot of things. I seem to recall that someone I know, possibly me, has a book coming out on June 17. We may also discuss Bigfoot, ghost hunting, parapsychology, and why I'm still wearing my pajamas in the studio. It should be a lot of fun.

Now, those of you who know me also know that my usual pre-noon vocabulary consists of the following phrases:
Huh?Ugh.Grr.Look, officer, I'm sure my pants are around here somewhere.But don't worry. I've constructed an unholy hybrid machine consisting of a twelve-cup Keurig coffee machine and a forced-dose IV system, which will keep hi-octane Columbian bean coursing through my veins all the way to Memphis early Tuesday morning. I should arrive at the studio alert, verbose, and, possibly, resembling the Tasmanian Devil from the old Looney Tunes cartoons.

I'm ready for my radio spot, Steve.So if you're near Memphis at 8:00 AM Tuesday, tune in and mock my accent. If you're not anywhere near Memphis, pull down a sneaky browser tab set for here and listen in at work.

Meralda and Mug UpdateThe new Mug and Meralda book, All the Turns of Light, is still in the edit stage. I expected to finish that up last week. Alas, sometimes Life not only intrudes on my writing, but also assaults, attacks, and/or engages in vicious acts of bludgeonry. Yes, I know bludgeon is a real word and bludgeonry is something I just made up, but it fits and I'm hoping it catches on.
I will say this -- I've seen a mock-up of the cover that will shortly grace All the Turns of Light, and it's beautiful!
The Obligatory Book PitchAs I may have mentioned some forty-seven times already, the new Markhat book goes on sale June 17. It's called The Five Faces, and below is the cover and a link.

I'm eager to see the reactions to this entry in the series. It's probably the grittiest, most unflinching book of them all -- poor Markhat really gets in deep, this time around. This book is set in Rannit, the whole gang is back, and I really hope you like it.
The next book in the series, The Darker Carnival, is still under consideration at Samhain. 
That's it for this week! Wish me luck and my radio appearance, and listen in if you can!

Water, water everywhere...

I don't think I've posted this map before. It's the hand-drawn map of the Realms I use as a reference when working on the Mug and Meralda books. For the last couple of weeks, I've been deep in edits on the new one, All the Turns of Light. I'm hoping to be done with that in a week or two!

The Realms are a very small part of Meralda's world. The Great Sea stretches twenty-five thousand miles in the shortest direction to the world's other land mass, a much larger continent that is home to the Hang. Which makes the world of the Realms several times larger than Earth. 
I did that intentionally. Why?
Ha. I won't tell. Not until around the end of Book 3, anyway.
This new book will have seen the most extensive re-writing I've ever done. But it's going to be a really good book, so it's well worth the effort!Other Authors at Work
I took this photo inside novelist William Faulkner's home. He famously wrote out the entire outline for A Fable on his walls. He later won a Pulitzer for A Fable, and even wrote the outline on the walls a second time after Mrs. Faulkner had the walls repainted.

I post this image because I'm envious of Faulkner's talent. Let's conduct a thought experiment -- Frank Tuttle partakes of a respectable volume of good whiskey, outlines a book on his wall, and churns out a novel. Does Frank Tuttle win a Pulitzer, get a Historical Society marker erected in front of his house, and then go on to win a Nobel Prize for literature?

Not so much. Frank Tuttle sheepishly repaints the wall and nurses a hangover.

I'll always regret ignoring Step 1 on my Master Plan to be Rich and Famous. What was Step 1, you ask?

Step 1: Be born William Faulkner.

Man, you just can't skip steps.

Faulkner's desk and PC. Bet it runs XP.Lou Ann Says Hello
Lou and I, on an expedition to replace the memory card in the trail camera earlier today. Taking pictures of Lou is challenging, because she rarely stands still. She has just emerged from a cooling dip in the pond, and is considering a return because she doesn't smell quite strongly enough of mud and algae. Mud composed of rotting vegetation and a thick scum of algae is, of course, Chanel No. 5 to dogs, and is to be applied liberally and often. She's at my side now, exuding an aroma only Swamp Thing could love.

Upcoming Markhat Release
A reminder -- the new Markhat book hits the shelves on June 17!
Here's the Amazon link:
The Five Faces
You can pre-order if you haven't already!
Here's an excerpt from THE FIVE FACES, in case you haven't read any Markhat books and would like a sample before diving in.
From THE FIVE FACES:
My new client’s name was Saffy, short for Saffron, and her big brother’s name was Ted, short for Ted. They were hesitant to offer up their surname, as most Orthodox Rannites are, so I didn’t push.
Saffy and Ted lived in an attic flat with their grandparents in the jumble of old alleys that run north of Camptown. Put the kids together and they’d still be outweighed by a sack of moth-wings, which is why I left them in my office and fetched Mama Hog.
Mama has her faults—and then some—but put a hungry child in her vicinity and she’s a one-woman charity kitchen. She took a single look at Saffy and Ted and vanished with a squawk, only to reappear moments later with a basket stuffed with biscuits and big thick slices of salted ham.
She left after delivering her feast, and by the time my new clients and I got down to business, I could smell Mama’s soup-pot boil as she brewed up something hot and savory.
Ted choked down the last bite of his fourth biscuit and wiped his chin on his sleeve.
“Mister, I’m much obliged for the biscuits, but I’m telling you straight—right now—we ain’t got a penny between us.”
Saffy nodded. She was on biscuit five, herself.
“I don’t know much about finders,” added Ted, “but I know nobody does nothin’ for free. So tell me this—why did you tell Saffy you would find Cornbread? We got no coin. And you ain’t havin’ nothing else, neither, if you get my point.”
I nodded. I liked the way the kid looked me in the eyes when he spoke. I liked the way he didn’t brag or threaten or bluster.
“I was a dog handler, during the War,” I said.
He returned my curt nod.
“So you know dogs.”
“Know them and like them. Cornbread—he help your sister get around?”
“I don’t need any damned help, mister,” said Saffy through a mouthful of biscuit.
Ted nodded silently. “Cornbread’s the smartest dog I’ve ever seen,” he said. “We raised him from a pup. He’s been with Saffy all his life, and she’s been with him all hers. We want him back, mister. But I can’t pay you. Not right now, anyways.”
I leaned back in my chair and pretended to ponder the matter. “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ve got a house on Middling Lane. Summer’s coming. My wife likes a neat lawn, and I like a lazy afternoon and a cold beer. What do you say to this—I try to find Cornbread. You give me a summer of yard work as payment if I find him. If I don’t, you still work for me for two months.”
Ted eyed me with mild suspicion. “That’s it? No funny stuff?”
“That’s it. No funny stuff. Meals thrown in by Mama Hog. Deal?”
Saffy grabbed his elbow, whispered something in his ear.
“She wants to know if you’re any good,” he said, giving me that same flat, hard look. “Like I said, I don’t know anything about finders. So, are you? Any good?”
I opened my desk drawer and got out my writing pad and my good ink pen.
“I guess we’ll see. So tell me. What happened today at the Park?”
Saffy swallowed and coughed. “A man came up and asked me what kind of doggy I had. I heard him get on his knees, and I thought he meant to pet Cornbread, but the leash jerked and Cornbread barked and the man took him—”
I spoke before she could start crying again.
“The man. Did you know his voice?”
“No. He talked funny.”
“Funny how?”
She knotted her dirty brow in concentration.
“What keend of a doogie is that, lass?” she said, aping a deep baritone and a thick accent I couldn’t place. “What a wee leetle doogie he is!”
“He sounded like that?”
“Just like that.” She hesitated. “He smelled funny. Perfumy, like a fancy lady. And he had a big hat.”
I raised an eyebrow. Blind she might be, but she sensed my unspoken question somehow.
“His shadow was too big. I could feel it when he blocked out the sun. He had a big hat, mister.”
I scribbled on my pad. Fancy toilet water, wide-brimmed hat, strong accent.
“And you,” I said to Ted. “Where were you?”
He didn’t blink or look away. “I was watching the birds,” he said. As he spoke, he made a rapid reach and grab motion with his hands. “I lost sight of Saffy, just for a minute.”
Pickpocket, I added to my list. Mind your coin.
When I didn’t spill the beans to Saffy, Ted actually showed me a brief, narrow smile.
“So you never saw the man who took Cornbread?”
“No. I’d have gutted the bastard if I had.”
I didn’t doubt that for a moment. Life doesn’t breed any gentle children of leisure in Camptown.
Mama Hog pounded at my door. “Boy,” she shouted. “Let me in. Got some stew I needs to get rid of.”I rose and let her in. Her basket was full of bowls and spoons and a pot with a lid and half a loaf of hard-crust bread.
“Reckon you young-uns got room for a bite of stew?”
They were face-down in the bowls and sopping up stew before Mama could hand out spoons.Mama grinned, showing off her remaining front tooth.
“So, what are these here urchins hiring a finder for, pray tell?”
“Someone snatched their dog. Cut the leash and took him in the park.”
Mama’s grin vanished. “You’d best find them another dog,” she said. “I reckon them what took it has intentions of using it as a bait dog.”
Saffy swallowed hard and cleared her throat. I made frantic shushing motions at Mama.
“We don’t know that,” I said. “Her dog’s name is Cornbread. Saffy. Tell Mama here how the bad man talked.”
Saffy repeated the man’s words, complete with accent.
“Mama, that accent sound like anybody you know?”
She shook her shaggy head. “I reckon not. Though there’s all kinds of foreigners coming out of Prince these days. Some of them talks outlandish, I hears.”
Dogfighting is illegal in Rannit. And not much practiced. Too many War vets came home alive because a dog warned them Trolls were closing in. Anybody caught fighting dogs for sport tended to meet with the kind of displeasure that takes months to heal, if one survives it at all.
Maybe they didn’t think that way in Prince.
Mama leaned against my desk and watched my new clients eat.
“Reckon it must be nice, bein’ able to give away work for free,” she muttered. “‘Course, now that you got Gertriss bearing most of the load, you can afford to be all charitable, can’t ye?”
Mama’s great-niece Gertriss is now my junior partner. Since Mama brought Gertriss to Rannit to be trained up in the card-and-potion trade, Gertriss’s defection to the noble art of Finding has been a sore spot with Mama of late.
“I certainly can,” I replied with a big grin. “I’ve even got time to help you run your business, Mama. Set me up a table, and I’ll start reading the cards this afternoon. Can’t be much to it. The card with the skulls means death, right? And the one with the swords means conflict?”
By then I was talking to Mama’s back as she stomped out of my office muttering about ingrates and the poor upbringing of those who failed to respect their elders.
Ted looked up at me, stew leaving greasy trails in the soot on his chin. “You got a mouth on you, Mister.”
“So I’m told.” I noted his observation on my pad in a show of attention to detail. “Finish the stew. You two need to run along home and I need to start looking for Cornbread.” I pointed at the address I’d scribbled on my pad. “I can find you here?”
Ted nodded. “First door on the right, second story. Grandpa’s deaf. Grandma can hear but not speak. She’ll know your name.”
“Fine. Scoot.”
They drained their bowls. I fussed with my notes and pretended not to see the loaf of bread or both Mama’s spoons find their way into any shabby little pockets.
When they were gone, I put the empty bowls back in Mama’s basket and swept the few crumbs that had escaped off my desk.
I put the basket by Mama’s door when she refused to answer my knock. “Got a few hours before Curfew,” I said, loud enough for Mama to hear. “I’m heading down to the docks to ask around about newcomers from Prince. Darla will worry unless somebody sends a kid to my house with a note telling her I’ll be late, but that can’t be helped, since Mama isn’t home and I’m pressed for time. Woe is me, alas, and etcetera.”
With that, I hailed a passing cab and bade the driver to head for the docks.
He jokingly asked if I was looking for trouble, heading for the docks this late in the day, and I jokingly replied I was, and where better to look?
I tossed him a coin, and off we went, toward the setting sun.
END EXCERPT
So it all starts with a blind kid's missing dog, and winds up -- well. Let's just say things get complicated and dangerous for our hero, wise-cracking Markhat.
I mentioned editing earlier, and I have a lot left to do, so that's all for this week. Take care, folks!

Mad Science: Optical Shenanigans

The image above is an actual picture. It's not digitally manipulated, and it was taken on my worktable a few minutes ago.

The subject is a piece of jewelry from The Noble Collection. And no, I didn't fill a room with candles and jewels -- the picture was taken inside an infinity box, and there are a lot more pictures below.

What's an infinity box?

Some ghost hunters claim spirits can be 'captured' inside a box lined with mirrors. Such a thing is sometimes called a 'Devil's Toybox,' and while I don't believe ghosts, if they exist, can be trapped inside nine dollars' worth of Home Depot mirror tiles and twelve bucks worth of MDF, I did wonder -- what would happen if you built such a box, and put a camera inside it?

So off I went. Building a cube with each face measuring 12 and one-quarter inches took me about an hour. I thought myself a clever lad, because I remembered to account for the thickness of each mirror face. I did forget to account for the dimensions of the glue that holds each mirror in place, and had a few moments of high drama getting the glass panes to slide inside, but got lucky and didn't break anything.

Total cost; 37 dollars, when all was said and done.

I found that four small candles provided enough light to keep the camera's flash from activating. Focusing in the box is largely a matter of sheer blind luck. As soon as I close the lid, I can hear my poor little Fuji Finepix S1000fd start cussing in Japanese, because autofocusing in the optical equivalent of a circus funhouse isn't any fun. I used the S1000fd because it's the smallest camera I've got. My new one has an enormous snout of an optical zoom, but I may try it later too, just to see how its updated hardware deals with the reflective environment.

I'm putting the best of my images below. I hope you enjoy them!


Candles and a crystal ball (yes, I have a crystal ball, and it shows me episodes of The Walking Dead two weeks in advance, nyah nyah na nyah na).


You just can't find ceilings like this outside of Vegas...


Markhat's Mark IV vampire-built revolver. Loved the way the copper color was scattered.


Got this effect by skewing the camera on its little tripod. I've also gotten this effect before without a camera, with a quart of Old Overcoat malt whiskey, but I much prefer this method because my ears don't bleed afterward.


SpongeBob discovers LSD.


Who doesn't have a private horde of precious gems?


Look, Ma, no tripod!


Everybody needs a Treasure Room.


Bikini Bottom, Saturday night.


A herd of dinosaur.


Meralda's favorite latching wand.


Seven million candles.


So that's where I left all my rubies.


I like this one because it suggests a row of dragons, ready for battle. Or the Grand Opening of a new Subway sandwich shop, depending on your level of militarism.


Finally, gargoyles, because nothing keeps your treasure horde safer than an infinite number of highly-motivated gargoyles.

I'll be playing with the Infinity Box this week, trying different cameras and contents. If you've got a suggestion for a subject, let me know! Keep in mind it needs to be smaller than a foot across in every dimension.

No ghosts were trapped, harmed, or even mildly annoyed in the construction of this project.

In writing news, the new Mug and Meralda is still in edits, and the new Wistril is chugging along. The new Markhat is under consideration at Samhain, but I don't expect any word on it for six weeks or so. I will keep you all informed, though!

Okay, back to my edits. I hope you enjoyed the photographs. If anyone is interested in the actual plans I drew up before building this, let me know and I'll scan the paper and email it to you. It's not a difficult build.

Take care all!

Remember, The Five Faces goes on sale June the 17th, but you can pre-order now.

Undressing Meralda

One of the rare pleasures of writing is seeing your characters come to life on a book cover.

Markhat and I could be twins!After all, you live with your heroes and heroines while you write about them. You hear their voice in every line of dialog, see their face each time you describe an expression. You conceive them, raise them, educate them, shape their personalities. You give them their talents and their flaws, their good and and their bad sides. You dress them, and wake them. You put them to bed. Sometimes, you even kill them.

But unless you remove random faces from magazines or use this new-fangled thing the kids call 'the interwebs' to cut and paste images, you never really see your protagonist, except in your mind's eye, until the book's cover proof arrives.

I'm speaking of Meralda, since I just finished editing the first draft of her new book. With any luck, one day in the not so distant future the book will be published, and the very first thing you'll see on this published book is a cover.

And on that cover, you will probably find Meralda depicted. She's earned top billing as the heroine, after all, and her presence on the cover is well-nigh mandatory.

Before I say anything else, let me say this -- don't panic. Because I will have nothing to do with making the cover. I know my limits, and such a task lies well beyond them.

That said, I wondered if I might find an image somewhere that captured Meralda's look sufficiently well to merit passing the image along to the cover artist one day. Armed with Google, and caught between tasks in a moment of boredom, I searched for images tagged 'fantasy woman.'

Google dutifully returned hundreds of images. Most were stunning, since fantasy art is a rich, well-established field. But very few of the images evoked my Meralda. Why?

Well, it seems that most fantasy realms are plagued by winds of sufficient velocity to make keeping oneself fully clothed nearly impossible. Undergarments tended to remain, although in various states of disarray.

Don't even THINK about it, quoth Meralda.Look, I'm no prude. Seriously, I'm not. But upon seeing the images, Meralda, who was looking over my shoulder, raised her right eyebrow and announced in no uncertain terms that if she were to be clothed in a handkerchief and a bit of string she would be very, very unhappy, and would likely remain so for the next three hundred thousand words. 

At a minimum.

It's one thing when ordinary people say that. It's another when your protagonist -- the star of the show, so to speak -- says it.

Which led me to wonder: Why did Meralda feel so strongly about this?

I suppose the answer is obvious. I wrote her as a bookish, intense person. An introvert. She'd be perfectly happy spending the rest of her life behind the closed doors of the Laboratory, as long as coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches were delivered at regular intervals. Yes, she does have a gentleman friend in this book, but he understands all this, and is happy to accept her as she is.

I remember wondering, when the first book was published, if readers would be able to connect with such a withdrawn protagonist. Meralda sounds a bit dull, to be honest, if all I had to go on was the paragraph above.

But she's proven to be popular. And she's fun to write -- dragging her, kicking and screaming, out of the Laboratory and then out of Tirlin altogether in this new book was quite an experience.

I suppose the best thing one can do when writing a character is to let the character start writing themselves. So, Meralda, don't worry about being handed a micro-mini-skirt, a bustier, and thigh-high leather boots for the cover shoot. Not going to happen. I have nothing against such covers, but to thine own self be true, and all that.

Is there a timeline for the release of the new book? No, nothing specific yet, although I will say it will be this year, and it won't be too cold. Vague enough?

Things To ComeSince the new Markhat is off to the publisher and the new Mug and Meralda is in the capable hands of my fearless beta reader, it's time to start something new.

I'm determined to start and finish a new Wistril story. If you're unfamiliar with Wistril the White Chair wizard and his wise-cracking apprentice Kern, you can read their first three exploits in the anthology below.

Wistril Compleat
The new Wistril, which will end up somewhere between a long novella and a full novel, will be entitled Wistril Ascendant. I haven't visited Wistril and Kern since 2007, and this seems like an excellent time to drop by Castle Kauph and see what the boys have been doing.

I'll be posting regular progress reports here, every Sunday, so stay tuned!

One Away, One on the Launch Pad

Fig. 1, the gun my Muse keeps pointed at my head.I'll say this much for the year 2014 -- despite the usual (and a few unusual) external pressures, I've been able to get some writing done.

The new Markhat novel, The Darker Carnival, is in the hands of Samhain Publishing. I'll probably have a yes (yay!) or a no (no!) in about eight weeks. That's the first book I wrote this year.

The second book, All the Turns of Light, is now undergoing the brutal process of first-draft revision. So far, it's been a relatively painless process, but I'm only about ten percent into the book, so anything could happen.

All the Turns of Light is the second book I've written this year. It's only May. If I can maintain this 2000 word a day pace, I might manage another pair of books before 2014 closes.

I don't say this to brag. But if you're out there, like I was last year and all the years before that, thinking 'I'll never be one of those writers who can turn out ten pages a day,' please think again. You can do it.

Look. I'm inherently lazy. There are sea sponges with more vim, vigor, and get-up-and-go than me. I believe hard work is best performed by other people, preferably at a location so far away the sounds of their determined industry don't interfere with my napping. If work truly builds character, thanks, I've got enough character already and anyway it's time for Supernatural.

So how did I defeat my powerful inner sloth, and actually get a respectable amount of work done?

I trumped my inner sloth with my inner OCD freak. Every morning, I make a list on a little card of the things I need to do that day. On that list is the entry 'Write 2K words.'

I cross things off the list as they get done. Now, my sloth would gleefully eat the list, or wander away from it to find a nice patch of cool shade, but my inner OCD guy cannot abide the sight of an incomplete item.

Yeah. It really was that simple.

I am using my own mental defects against myself. There's probably a clinical term for that, but if you know it don't tell me.

Motorcycle UpdateMy mighty Honda is back! Putting everything back together took several hours, but when I turned the key and hit the starter, she cranked. 


Honestly, I couldn't believe it. I was fully prepared to hear the engine sputter and fail. I wasn't even going to employ bad language at the realization I'd have to start all over. I nearly fell off the bike when she started, as though nothing had ever been wrong.
I got the book below, and followed the instructions, and avoided a trip to the shop. Books rule!

Final Words Like I said, the new Mug and Meralda is only about 10 percent done with the first editing pass, so I'd better get back to work. Have a good week people!
And don't forget -- the new Markhat The Five Faces goes on sale June 17! But you can pre-order now, wink wink nudge nudge...

Knee Deep in the Alligators of Editing

We hear you're editing, and we came to help.As I mentioned last week, I'm making a deep editing pass through the new Markhat book, The Darker Carnival.

Writing a book is one thing. I've found that my best way to write is to just dive in and keep going, letting nothing (except snakes or large hail) slow me down. Can't remember what I named the doorman in Chapter 3, when we see him again briefly in Chapter 6? I type  **** and keep moving, knowing that I'll come back later and look up the name and fix that.
Which brings us to the edit phase, when all those **** entries have to be fleshed out and made whole.
That's the first and easiest part of editing, at least for me. I took care of all that in an hour. The next pass saw me searching for grammar mistakes, omitted words, or transposed letters. Those are quick fixes too, as long as you spot them. 
Now I'm reading through the corrected manuscript as I imagine a reader will, and my main mission is to spot passages that invite the reader to close the book. Those are the passages that must be re-written, and that can take a lot of work, depending on the nature of the text.
The author, upon confronting the horror that is Chapter Nine.So far I've used the scalpel, but not the machete, and that's great news. Snipping a paragraph here and there requires the literary equivalent of a few stitches, and no more. But when that awful realization that an entire chapter or subplot just isn't working engulfs you, you know you've got a mountain of work to do just to get things back on track.
With any luck I'll get The Darker Carnival submitted this week. Then I'll return to the Meralda and Mug book and give it the very same series of re-reads.
Isn't the writing life glamorous?
Below, for no apparent reason, is a short sample of the new book.
Excerpt from The Darker Carnival:(Not taken from the beginning of the book. Markhat is posing as a newspaper man to poke around Dark's Diverse Delights, a traveling carnival encamped outside Rannit).
I learned a lot about circus folk, that day.
First of all, they drink, and drink hard. Especially the side-show wonders. I met the Man of Bones when he stumbled out of his tent, went down on all fours at my feet, and vomited between my boots. I was amazed at the volume of liquid he expelled, given the emaciated state of his spindly frame.
The circus master kicked the Man of Bones unceremoniously in his gut. "And here we find the Man of Bones, who has terrified audiences from the Sea to the Wastes," said Thorkel, as he sent the scuttling wretch away with a kick to his backside. "A living skeleton, whose grinning skull will haunt your dreams forever."
I nodded and scribbled in my notebook. It didn't seem polite to point out that the Man of Bones was entirely covered in skin.
We met the Queen of the Elves next. She wore a moth-eaten flannel gown she hadn't bothered to fasten with a belt. A pair of mis-matched work boots adorned her dainty feet. She puffed on an enormous cigar between swigs of dark brown liquid gulped from a dirty jar.
"Say hello to Mr. Bustman," said Thorkel, to her.
"Go to Hell," she opined, before sprawling lengthwise on a bench. 
"Men have traveled the world to pay homage to the Queen of the Elves," said Thorkel. The Queen responded with a raised middle finger. "Her beauty and charm are unmatched in all the mortal world."
"She wears flannel as only an Elf could," I added. Thorkel's brow furrowed beneath his immaculate top-hat. 
"That is to say, her ethereal beauty blinds, so dazzling is she to gaze upon," I said, quickly. Thorkel rewarded me with a  jackal's quick grin.
I love the book so much I suspect someone with more talent than me is sneaking out here at night, erasing what I've written, and replacing it with tight, colorful prose. 
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceI don't have that book. One day soon I should get a copy, because I do a lot of motorcycle maintenance lately.

My faithful Honda, after hibernating all winter, can't quite wake up even though spring has sprung. She tries to crank, but doesn't, which led to a choice -- either take her to the nearest bike repair shop (in Batesville, a forty-mile round trip) or take up my wrenches and attempt the repair myself.
The 83 dollar-per-hour shop rate made that decision for me. So I bought a book detailing the viscera of my model of bike and started taking her apart.
The carburetor, between the warp core and the shield emitter array.The problem lies with the carburetor, which is a twisty metal thing composed of floats, urchin barometers, and hemorrhoids. It mixes fuel with air or air with better air or, possibly, does nothing at all except keep the gas tank and the air cleaner from banging together. I wouldn't really know. What I do know is that my carburetor didn't look like the ones featured in the book so I took it all apart and scrubbed the pieces with gasoline until they gleamed. 
Who knew gasoline has such potent cleaning properties? But it only works on metal things. My dress shirts didn't fare too well, and my black dress socks simply dissolved. I wish I hadn't been wearing them at the time, but I'm told toenails grow back.

Fig. 1, a carburetor. Or maybe that's a pasta maker. Frankly, we're not sure, but if the bike emits perfect angel hair pasta instead of exhaust we'll know why.The book I bought is a Kindle book, and at first I was apprehensive about using it around oil, gas, and tools. But now that I've done it, I find that having good clear photos I can enlarge and clickable hyperlinks and a working TOC makes repairs much easier than trying to leaf through a dog-eared printed manual. 
I wasn't able to clean my idle jet (see how I toss around mechanical terms as though I've been doing this for years), so I ordered a new one. Total cost of repairs: $23. I haven't put the bike back together yet, but if she cranks I'll have spent about six hours repairing it and less than twenty-five dollars in parts. Not bad, as opposed to the $300 or $400 bucks a shop would have charged.


Obligatory Plea for ReviewsHey, not to be a pest (okay, I'm being a pest, might as well own it), but if you've read any of my books and liked them but haven't had a chance to leave a review on Amazon, now would be a great time!
Brown River Queen could use a few more reviews.

The new Markhat book, The Five Faces, goes on sale in a few weeks, on June 17. 

Okay, the alligators are getting restless, so it's back to work for me. Take care all, and see you next week!

Bugs, Poems, and Waxings, Though Not In That Order.

Fig. 1: The author's new haircut. Does it make my thorax look fat?First things first -- the new Mug and Meralda book, All the Turns of Light, is done. No more pronouncements of 'nearly done' or 'almost finished' or 'surely this week, it will wind up.' The first draft is in the can. The new book weighs in at eighty thousand words, which is a perfect length for a novel as long as most of those 80,000 words are the right words. But only time, a couple of editors, and readers can determine that.

Now that All the The Turns of Light is done, I've picked up the new Markhat book I finished a few months ago. I'll give The Darker Carnival another long hard look, and when it's ready to strike out on its own I'll send it on the good folks at Samhain Publishing, who will then decide whether A) it's a worthy addition to the series or B) Frank has finally jumped the shark and needs to take up knitting. 
I hope to have The Darker Carnival out in a couple of weeks. Then I'll give All the Turns of Light its turn under the harsh, unforgiving light of editorial scrutiny, and then it'll be shipped off to my beta readers, who will return their own judgment regarding sharks, jumping of, or going on to the next step.
Then, it will be time to start a new book -- either the next Markhat, or a new Wistril the Wizard, I haven't decided which yet. Those are my next two books. Just not sure of the order at the moment.
The image at the top of the page is a bug. I took it through my new microscope a few minutes ago, because who among us doesn't love magnified views of big bug heads? Oh? Really? That many?
Sorry. You'll be happy to know he's a nice bug, and that I put him under some bark after I made his portraits. 

I wasn't the least bit surprised to find him coated in pollen. Everything is coated in pollen around here. Most particularly my nostrils, but don't worry, I will not be posting any images of those.
Below is a thistle, which blew away before I completed half a dozen photos. Even the flying thistle-bits have pollen all over them.

Nature is, if I'm any judge, far too amused with pollen.

In Which I Wax PoeticSomeone asked me recently if I wrote poetry.
Nay, quoth I, for poetry is the language of the soul, filled with, er, what are those things called? Feels? You know, the source of tearful eyes and quivering lips -- emotions, yes, feelings, those sorts of things, and I don't have any, so there.
But it later occurred to me that I have in fact written the odd bit of doggerel, strictly in the service of a story. 
For instance, here are the opening lines from The Harper's Lament, sung by Jere the castaway harper at the opening of my short story The Harper at Sea.
I am a luckless vagabond,bereft of land or country,Unchained, unbound by love or law,unhomed till death does take me.
Jere was a recurring character back in my early short-story days. I think my favorite story of his was The Truth About Arphon and The Apple Farmer's Daughter. Without giving too much away, Jere finds himself trapped in a shadow world, with only a numberless horde of ravenous ghosts for company. He remembers a tale told by the legendary harper Arphon, who claims he held a mob of ghosts at bay with wholesome, cheerful songs of summer and daylight. Naturally, Jere tries this approach, beginning with a merry dance tune, Vival's Dance. 
I wander fields, I wander woods,I wander sky and sea,I wander lone beneath the starsCome wander, lass, with me.
The ghosts are not impressed. Neither do they appear amused by any of the other songs Jere plays. Despairing, and nearly frozen solid by the press of the ghosts and their frosty exhalations, Jere's magical harp moves its own strings, and Jere sings along, not realizing at first just what song it is he's beginning to sing...
The apple farmer's daughterwas all alone one day,When Og the mighty hunter happened by the way...
As the song progresses, Jere sings along, horrified but unable to silence his harp. 
Mighty Og spied lovely daughter,and his blood did right quick boil...
I'm not going to post the whole thing here, because Jere and I share a similar respect for decorum.
The daughter grinned and fanned her skirts, and mighty Og did shout....
At this point, Jere begins to suspect the legendary Arphon lied about a thing or two concerning his encounter with ghosts.
Mighty Og began to weep, and lovely daughter laughed,I'll not be shamed, the hunter roared, one boot upon one foot...
As the last note of the infamous Apple Farmer's Daughter song dies, his harp selects even worse songs, including Queen Mavan Tames the Dragon, The Happy Donkey Song, and, worst of all, Lords Love Ladies. 
I won't tell you how the story ends. If you're curious, it's here in my The Far Corners anthology.


I believe there's a single nursery rhyme in All the Paths of Shadow, a rhyme that sticks in heroine Meralda's head as she winds her way up the Tower's long, dark stairs. It went like this:
The old, old wizard goes round and round the stair,The old, old wizard goes sneaking everywhere,The old, old wizard goes where you cannot see,The old, old wizard is sneaking up on me!

The Markhat books also feature songs, now and then. Brown River Queen is set aboard a lavish gambling riverboat, and part of the floor show includes a black blues singer named Miss Rondalee. Miss Rondalee, like Mama Hog, commands a magic uniquely her own, in that Miss Rondalee's songs are touched with power. For instance, no two people will hear them quite the same way, because no two people need to hear the very same song. Here's an excerpt from Brown River Queen, in which Miss Rondalee's lyrics foreshadow things to come...
From Brown River Queen:The music faded away, and the spotlight flared to life, and a tall black woman in a long white gown took the stage as the musicians tapped out a rhythm and began to play. 
The Queen lurched—just a bit, but enough to cause the remaining pair of formal dancers to stumble and lose their place. The lights even flickered.
And then it was over. The sounds of dice clattering and wheels spinning and gamblers shouting and cheering never faltered, not even for an instant.
“Did you see that?”
“I did.” I felt Darla’s heart beat faster. “Trouble?”
“Don’t know.” We kept dancing. The black lady introduced herself as Lady Rondalee of Bel Loit and dedicated her first song to ‘all the lovers out there.’
“Trouble,” she sang. “Trouble, bad trouble, been dogging me all my days...”
“Well that’s comforting,” whispered Darla. 
“Ain’t no comfort, ain’t no comfort, no comfort ever comin’ my ways...”
“I think she can hear you,” I said. 
“I hear you, I hear you sayin’, sayin’ I needs to be changin’ my ways...”
Darla stopped swaying. “You don’t think—”
“I don’t. Coincidence. We’re on edge, that’s all. It’s just a song.”
A waiter pushed his way through the crowd. His starched white shirt was stretched to near bursting by his muscular physique. A scar ran all the way down the right side of his face. Something under his black dinner jacket bulged, and I didn't think it was a salt shaker.
He bore down on us, mindful to keep his hands visible and open, palms toward me.
He stopped a few paces short of us, and waited until I gently disengaged from Darla and moved to stand in front of her.
He nodded, reached slowly in his jacket, and came out with a note. He held it up and I took it from him, and he vanished into the crowd—doubtlessly to employ those muscles in the precise pouring of any one of Rannit's finer wines.
I unfolded the note, just halfway, to make sure it didn't bear hex signs. Instead, I recognized Gertriss's tall plain hand, and I opened it all the way.
BOSS, it read. BY THE PORT STAIR. COME QUICK. IT’S BAD.
Darla gasped, reading over my shoulder.
“Don’t suppose I could convince you to wait here?” I said.
“Waste of time trying, dear.” 
And we were off, weaving through the dancers, plowing through the drunks and the gamblers and their noisy entourages.
I caught one more stanza of Lady Rondalee’s song, before the din drowned her out.
“One day soon, one day soon, trouble gonna be the death of me...”
“Not tonight, I hope,” I muttered. Darla didn't hear.
I put my shoulder to the mob and charged toward the stairs.
Brown River Queen, available now!
Is Miss Rondalee due to make a second appearance in the Markhat series?
Yes she is, because she's a powerful lady with a fascinating talent. I suspect Miss Rondalee and Mama Hog will be up to shenanigans, at the very least. Oh, and by the way -- Markhat's hometown of Rannit is based (loosely) on Memphis, Tennessee. Just south of Rannit, down the Brown River, lies Bel Loit, Miss Rondalee's home. Bel Loit is my version of New Orleans.
Final Words: Did Something Actually Go Bump?I lack a clever segue for this segment of the post, so I'll just be blunt -- for the first time ever, I got absolutely spooked at a graveyard yesterday as I attempted to capture another EVP sample.
Eerie headstone pic of gentleman who is an ancestor of mine. Note epic 'stache.


Yesterday, I returned to Midway Cemetery, where I've actually collected a few good EVP recordings.

It was a bright, warm day. Hardly a cloud in the sky. Seventy-nine degrees. In short, the day couldn't have been less conducive to spookiness had it been accompanied by a brass band and a parade.
I've been to Midway Cemetery dozens of times. Half of the plots are occupied by relatives. I have no fear of the place, or its denizens.
But when I pulled up to the cemetery gates yesterday, for an instant I was sure a man was standing at the very back, at the edge of the trees.
Let me set the scene. Midway lies at the dead (ha) end of a gravel road traveled only by cemetery workers digging the once-a-decade grave, family members going to lay out flowers and pay their respects, and mildly-deranged ghost hunters intent of waving mics about in the hopes of recording a spectral word or two.
On the way there, I saw no tell-tell traces of recent traffic ahead of me. There is no parking lot. The road simply ends at the gate. No other vehicles were in sight.
But for a split second, I was sure I saw an upright figure, featureless and dark, standing at the very rear of the cemetery. I blinked, and it was gone.
Below is a picture noting the approximate location of the figure I probably didn't see:

Part of me was suddenly reminded of pressing appointments elsewhere, and moved to table the EVP session, citing an urgent need to watch re-runs of 'Stargate SG1' at a location many miles from the cemetery.
But I made of sterner stuff (mostly sausage, cakes, and steak) so I entered the cemetery and conducted my EVP session as planned.
I wish I could report I captured half a dozen ghostly voices imparting mystical wisdom, but the truth is that I got nothing. Not a faint whisper, not a muttered monosyllable, not s single anomalous exhalation.
I walked through the headstones and stood in the very spot I didn't see whatever it was that wasn't there. Again, no EVP hits.
I took about 60 photos while I was there. Two of them show what I'm pretty sure is blurring caused by wind-induced leaf motion. It is odd that only two photos were thus affected, and both of them were taken in the spot my dark figure (aka Mr. Trick of the Light) made his brief and undoubtedly imaginary appearance.
But here are the photos, for your amusement.

The blur effect is hard to see in reduced-sized images. It's plain when I inspect the full-sized pics on my big monitor. 
In the first image, start at the lower left corner of the pic and travel about a third of the way to the right. Then look up, about three-quarters of the way to the top. Subtle but weird blur. Wind? Yeah, probably.
In the second picture, just find the tallest grave marker (can't miss it, right side, little bell-shaped thing on top) and look left of the bell-shaped ornament. 
Like I said, probably wind. I spooked myself so naturally I'm seeing things that aren't really there.
Back to Work!Okay, it's time to get editing. Have a good week people!