The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets have a new video for their song Twenty Minutes of Oxygen. It's great that the budget to do these sorts of things exists now.
Love the frog stamps on the astronaut's shoulder.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Folk Devil Prologue Draft
He was digging where he buried the body.
He'd been at the thick, black mud for maybe four hours now, switching from shovel to trowel, chopping away an odd root or two with his axe. He'd wondered for awhile if there had been enough time for roots to grow over it, but he wasn't sure, now. He wasn't sure of much of anything, his eyes clouded as they were by tears and rain. Every hole he dug, every time he got six feet down, every time it wasn't there, he'd panic, the trowel would go into the four inches of water and mud at the bottom, and he'd frantically push around his hands in the soil, finding nothing.
That wasn't to say he hadn't found anything at all. An old necklace, a lost ring, coins, even a maize-cutter's mouth knife. That one had worried him; he hoped that they hadn't come and found the body. He heard they eat corpses, but he'd also heard they could walk through walls and smell hatred. Even so, he'd been on the lookout for them, watching for those distinctive two and a half toed footprints or the cut marks on the trees where they'd been climbing or leaving messages to each other.
Of course, the rain had to kick up then, coming down in horrible, blinding, sideways sheets, kicking off the rainy season. That was a good thing; it meant any investigations in town would be slow, or at least they wouldn't send any teams from the government. There wouldn't be any roads for some time, and they wouldn't risk sending an airship through those winds and these kinds of storms. Even so, he cursed his current near-blindness.
His hands struck something, and he jumped, fishing through the water only to find a curved bit of stone and not the pelvis he thought he'd run across. He took in a sharp breath between his teeth, then spat as bitter water cleared its way across his tongue. Collapsing against the wall, he fished around in the mud again for his trowel and shovel, and threw them over the edge of the pit, using roots and slick handholds to pull himself back out.
He fell into leaves and sticks covered in dirt, and started to crawl halfway again, and a hand gripped his wrist, tightly enough he almost felt bruised, and pulled. Suddenly afraid, but not wanting to draw suspicion, though a man digging what looked like a grave out in the jungle certainly was, he allowed himself to be helped partially up, and he rolled to a position on all fours before looking.
She was crouched like a vulture, smiling gently like a jungle hunter, waiting like cattle on the chopping block, her face wet in the rain, and she had her hair all up in an old chongo hairstyle, with thick feathers now soggy folded down over her forehead, wide rings and necklaces of white bone and gold teeth hanging from her neck and shoulders, and a heavy corn silk cloak over her body, with a white raven sitting on her shoulder, its head and beak pressed up against her ear. He thought for a moment he could hear it yammering on, but in the rain, he couldn't tell much. Her hands couldn't be seen, and for the most part, she was just a cloak in yellow with black diamond sewed into it with a face. She looked left at his pile of findings and the three or four other holes he'd dug, and right at the six over there, and back at him, all very slowly, and the sounds of the rain and even the flashing lightning stopped entirely, as if to allow her to speak clearly.
“Find anything interesting?” she asked.
He'd been at the thick, black mud for maybe four hours now, switching from shovel to trowel, chopping away an odd root or two with his axe. He'd wondered for awhile if there had been enough time for roots to grow over it, but he wasn't sure, now. He wasn't sure of much of anything, his eyes clouded as they were by tears and rain. Every hole he dug, every time he got six feet down, every time it wasn't there, he'd panic, the trowel would go into the four inches of water and mud at the bottom, and he'd frantically push around his hands in the soil, finding nothing.
That wasn't to say he hadn't found anything at all. An old necklace, a lost ring, coins, even a maize-cutter's mouth knife. That one had worried him; he hoped that they hadn't come and found the body. He heard they eat corpses, but he'd also heard they could walk through walls and smell hatred. Even so, he'd been on the lookout for them, watching for those distinctive two and a half toed footprints or the cut marks on the trees where they'd been climbing or leaving messages to each other.
Of course, the rain had to kick up then, coming down in horrible, blinding, sideways sheets, kicking off the rainy season. That was a good thing; it meant any investigations in town would be slow, or at least they wouldn't send any teams from the government. There wouldn't be any roads for some time, and they wouldn't risk sending an airship through those winds and these kinds of storms. Even so, he cursed his current near-blindness.
His hands struck something, and he jumped, fishing through the water only to find a curved bit of stone and not the pelvis he thought he'd run across. He took in a sharp breath between his teeth, then spat as bitter water cleared its way across his tongue. Collapsing against the wall, he fished around in the mud again for his trowel and shovel, and threw them over the edge of the pit, using roots and slick handholds to pull himself back out.
He fell into leaves and sticks covered in dirt, and started to crawl halfway again, and a hand gripped his wrist, tightly enough he almost felt bruised, and pulled. Suddenly afraid, but not wanting to draw suspicion, though a man digging what looked like a grave out in the jungle certainly was, he allowed himself to be helped partially up, and he rolled to a position on all fours before looking.
She was crouched like a vulture, smiling gently like a jungle hunter, waiting like cattle on the chopping block, her face wet in the rain, and she had her hair all up in an old chongo hairstyle, with thick feathers now soggy folded down over her forehead, wide rings and necklaces of white bone and gold teeth hanging from her neck and shoulders, and a heavy corn silk cloak over her body, with a white raven sitting on her shoulder, its head and beak pressed up against her ear. He thought for a moment he could hear it yammering on, but in the rain, he couldn't tell much. Her hands couldn't be seen, and for the most part, she was just a cloak in yellow with black diamond sewed into it with a face. She looked left at his pile of findings and the three or four other holes he'd dug, and right at the six over there, and back at him, all very slowly, and the sounds of the rain and even the flashing lightning stopped entirely, as if to allow her to speak clearly.
“Find anything interesting?” she asked.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Bracing for It
I've had a pretty good week, despite the fact that I've had barely any time to do anything, or any time for myself. On the plus side, I have a name for the Ten-Ghost sequel. It's Folk Devil, and I think the name sums up the content quite nicely, or at least, the self-perceived content. I've dug out my draft papers and gone over them with Opabinia, who likes it very much. I also got to meet with the cover artist today, who is agush with how awesome his work looks in print.
Anyway, this decision. It was a painful one to make, and it still is. Continuing, however, was a lot more painful. I reach a point in almost anything I write where I spend months on end antagonizing over every detail to the point where I find myself sobbing in a corner holding shredded pieces of paper. After trying several times to start this next chapter and suffering a complete mental breakdown each time, I'm taking a break. I will be back, probably after the summer, depending on how far I get with the next novel (and whether or not I actually take some art classes in the meantime), and I will still be updating this space with my mental and physical progress.
Anyway, this decision. It was a painful one to make, and it still is. Continuing, however, was a lot more painful. I reach a point in almost anything I write where I spend months on end antagonizing over every detail to the point where I find myself sobbing in a corner holding shredded pieces of paper. After trying several times to start this next chapter and suffering a complete mental breakdown each time, I'm taking a break. I will be back, probably after the summer, depending on how far I get with the next novel (and whether or not I actually take some art classes in the meantime), and I will still be updating this space with my mental and physical progress.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida
I have a friend who stops by on the weekends to hang out with myself and my roommate (also we drive across town and pretend to hate on elves or else run away from cyclopean monstrosities). He's a laser technician, which fits right in with our fantasy writer and helicopter pilot/five star chef/martial artist/son of a Hawaiian stripper ninja princess (I'm not freaking kidding; my roommate is nuts). Anyway, it so happens that said friend sometimes gets a horrible hankering for steak. I am not a steak fan. In fact, I am not a beef fan, but hey, some people like that sort of thing and more power to them. I prefer to keep my Thaxtonian colon as intact as I can in preparation for its eventual attempts to strangulate me with misshapen clumps of cancerous cells.
This particular evening, he wants steak. Not having any, we proceed to hit every steak restaurant in town. We traveled to about four, all of whom were out of steak, before I started to have a panic attack. They're also all full up on a forty minute wait at most, and I can't wait in a restaurant. I've got horrible autism issues in regards to that sort of thing (you should see what happens when I have to go to a gas station I've never been to before). He motions with his hand and says it's find, we'll go out tomorrow, but no. In my autistic brain, I promised steak, and that means a fucking steak place. I run through the roster and suddenly remember one (Do not be fooled by the photography).
I head down towards the 417 and past the junk dealer, beyond the warehouse church, and instead of diving towards Oviedo, I veer off the road to a place where street lights do not shine. In the deep shadows I cruise, my car clattering with the sound of insects off the windshield and the roar of loose dirt beneath it. Both of my passengers begin to get worried. It's been ten years, but I still remember the way. We pass by trailers and decaying orange groves, flashing through a tunnel of swirling Spanish moss so thick it resembles bleak polyps in the depths of some ancient terror's digestive tract.
I turn at the airboat ride sign and plunge into a parking lot half buried in swamp. The dim light of the restaurant cuts through the night. We get out, and there is a lake off to the side, and what surrounds us is the very depth of Florida. He's got to get out carefully, but gets pushed out by my roommate. He staggers around for a moment, almost in awe and rage.
“This is it!” he shouts, waving his arms, “This is the end!”
“The end of what?” my roommate asks.
“The end of Florida! You've taken me to the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida,” he screams again, and motions to the lake, “that is the edge of reality, the end of civilization. Over that way, right there, on the map, they'll have written 'Here Be Dragons!'”
I turn my head around. He's pointing at the gator pen, which he can't see from where he's at.
“You're gesturing at the gator pen, you know,” I respond.
“And that's my point!” he shouts again.
I want to tell him that this isn't the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida, since that honor belongs to the Miccosukee restaurant, but we approach the entrance anyway. There's a brief moment of fear, since the glass windows are covered in so many midges it looks like gray carpet curtains from a distance, and the porch functions like an airlock to keep them out. We get inside, sit down, and wait for twenty minutes for the server. They have no steak, either. They ran out five minutes ago, in fact.
He screams. I bought a grill on Sunday.
This particular evening, he wants steak. Not having any, we proceed to hit every steak restaurant in town. We traveled to about four, all of whom were out of steak, before I started to have a panic attack. They're also all full up on a forty minute wait at most, and I can't wait in a restaurant. I've got horrible autism issues in regards to that sort of thing (you should see what happens when I have to go to a gas station I've never been to before). He motions with his hand and says it's find, we'll go out tomorrow, but no. In my autistic brain, I promised steak, and that means a fucking steak place. I run through the roster and suddenly remember one (Do not be fooled by the photography).
I head down towards the 417 and past the junk dealer, beyond the warehouse church, and instead of diving towards Oviedo, I veer off the road to a place where street lights do not shine. In the deep shadows I cruise, my car clattering with the sound of insects off the windshield and the roar of loose dirt beneath it. Both of my passengers begin to get worried. It's been ten years, but I still remember the way. We pass by trailers and decaying orange groves, flashing through a tunnel of swirling Spanish moss so thick it resembles bleak polyps in the depths of some ancient terror's digestive tract.
I turn at the airboat ride sign and plunge into a parking lot half buried in swamp. The dim light of the restaurant cuts through the night. We get out, and there is a lake off to the side, and what surrounds us is the very depth of Florida. He's got to get out carefully, but gets pushed out by my roommate. He staggers around for a moment, almost in awe and rage.
“This is it!” he shouts, waving his arms, “This is the end!”
“The end of what?” my roommate asks.
“The end of Florida! You've taken me to the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida,” he screams again, and motions to the lake, “that is the edge of reality, the end of civilization. Over that way, right there, on the map, they'll have written 'Here Be Dragons!'”
I turn my head around. He's pointing at the gator pen, which he can't see from where he's at.
“You're gesturing at the gator pen, you know,” I respond.
“And that's my point!” he shouts again.
I want to tell him that this isn't the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida, since that honor belongs to the Miccosukee restaurant, but we approach the entrance anyway. There's a brief moment of fear, since the glass windows are covered in so many midges it looks like gray carpet curtains from a distance, and the porch functions like an airlock to keep them out. We get inside, sit down, and wait for twenty minutes for the server. They have no steak, either. They ran out five minutes ago, in fact.
He screams. I bought a grill on Sunday.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Book Status
I have gotten my hands on the final copy of Ten-Ghost. It looks good, I approve, and am going to be getting thirty more copies of my own. This means that in about six weeks, it'll show up on Amazon as available. Everything is awesome, though I've been told my name is suited more for hard SF than fantasy.
I do have a few places I'm going to be sending one of the thirty copies I'm getting; otherwise, I'm not sure what to do with the rest.
Any ideas?
I do have a few places I'm going to be sending one of the thirty copies I'm getting; otherwise, I'm not sure what to do with the rest.
Any ideas?
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
I Get Fanart
So, this fella on DevArt sent me some fanarts. It's a pretty awesome shoggoth kid.
He's got some cool nature photos up there, too, and some drawings of a really neat ooze headed character.
This current chapter's been a fight. A lot of things happened in rapid sequence that prevented me from doing full work on it, and so I'm only just wrapping up the art for it now. There's only a couple weeks of comics left before I absolutely have to work every day. Which is a shame, but I'm doing about two a day right now in the hopes that I can build it back up.
He's got some cool nature photos up there, too, and some drawings of a really neat ooze headed character.
This current chapter's been a fight. A lot of things happened in rapid sequence that prevented me from doing full work on it, and so I'm only just wrapping up the art for it now. There's only a couple weeks of comics left before I absolutely have to work every day. Which is a shame, but I'm doing about two a day right now in the hopes that I can build it back up.
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