Chris Howard's Writing Blog

When the Seaborn drive cars...

...you'll start seeing bumper stickers like this.  They're as prone to petty parental competitiveness as the rest of us. And they're crazy about their pets.

Buy an actual waterproof bumper sticker from ZAZZLE:

http://www.zazzle.com/giant_squid_bumper_sticker_bumpersticker-128253530269414100

Here's a vertical badge for your blog.  Paste this HTML into a post or the sidebar of your blog or web site  (Example on the right sidebar):

<p><a href="http://www.saltwaterwitch.com"> <img height="398" border="0" width="113"  src="http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/the0phrastus/images/2008/06/30/giantsquidbadge.png"> </a></p>

Here's a 300 DPI PNG image of the above if you just want to print it out yourself:

http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/files/GiantSquidBumperSticker.png

More about my novel Seaborn here: http://www.saltwaterwitch.com

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Little Mermaid

Digging through a box of old photos and found this one from a 1998 trip to Disneyland.  So, here are our kids, Chloe who's now almost 14, and Christopher who's now 12.  Chloe's looking doubtful: I'm willing to go along with the charade, but are you sure this is the real Arial?  I mean, that's a total wig.  Christopher's expression with the one raised eyebrow says it all.

An interesting point: unlike all the other characters the kids met--Winnie the Pooh, the Genie, Snow White, a bunch of others--where the lines were full of little kids, Arial's line was half kids / half groups of college guys waiting to get their picture taken with a mermaid.

Author photos

I just sent off 300dpi author photos for the Seaborn cover, one black and white, one color shot. 

Here's an old one of me and my daughter Chloe doing a serious David Foster Wallace shot:

Nice Vampire Phenomenon

My own opinion is that NVP isn't anywhere near full swing yet--not with Twilight hitting theaters in December, and the next in the series Breaking Dawn, out in August.  This is just the start.  Saw this today on CafePress while looking for something completely different:

If you heart Edward Cullen, too, then go buy yours here: http://www.cafepress.com/bae/3236924  (Edward's a nice enough guy, but I have a thing for Alice).

Happy Holidays!

This year I have two paintings...Happy Holidays everyone.  <raises coffee mug> Here's to a great 2008!

Click the pics to see then larger.

Everyone's doing it...

I've seen it on ten blogs today. I'm also fond of,

If music be the the0phrastus of love, play on.

and

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst the0phrastus.

...

He jests at scars that never felt a the0phrastus.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

Of course...

I took the Which Peanuts Character are You? quiz, and of course, I'm Schroeder.

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Make him squeal

Okay, we've had this presidential squeaky toy for a while, George Bush in a black suit, red tie, a bit greyer than he was when Alice's brother sent it to Penny for Christmas.  What's funny is that Penny (Jack Russell Terrier / Australian Herder mix) never cared for George, always singling out the pink squeaky moose, orange hippo, or one of her rope toys.  (And let's not forget the very squeaky green alien which we lost late in the autumn one year and didn't recover him until next spring--after all the snow was gone).

Well Penny has recently taken a rather keen interest in George.  Maybe it's dissatisfaction with Iraq, the Gonzales thing.  Maybe it's because we don't happen to have a Cheney squeaky.  Who knows?  Whatever it is, Penny's all about making the prez squeal now.  He's like her favorite squeaky.

(Here's another great inside Penny post.  Best dog in the whole world).

Click to enlarge:

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I can't for the life of me remember...

...where I made this.  That's my horseshoe crab photo, but there's this online service that creates the frame and museum-goers for any pic you upload.  Can someone find me the site?

Caffeine Cookies

I'm an experimental baker.  I don't follow directions well--not that I have trouble with them--but I like to strike off in unknown directions like ultra-sourdough or making cookies with as much caffeine as two cups of coffee. 

As you may know, stepping off the path in baking usually leads to trouble--i.e., bad bread.  Picture Belle's father in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.  He tinkers, he builds things like automated steam-powered log chopping robots that end up going berserk and tearing sh*t up.  (Hold up there.  I have a question.  Is the Disney movie, Beauty and Beast Steampunk?)  You've pictured the old fellow?  Well, that's me in the kitchen with flour and yeast--but without the grey hair or silly chuckle.  I've turned out bread that's done just about everything: flattened into mushy disks, tasted funny, played dead (and then ambushed me when I tried to throw it in the composter). 

Anyway, I made some cookies tonight.  First Chloe made some normal chocolate chip cookies--and when I say normal, I mean nothing crazier than doubling the number of chips in the recipe.  Normal.  Then I made a couple dozen super-wicked oatmeal coffee chocolate chip cookies. 

Yes.  They deserve that name; they are that good.  I'm typing about twice my normal rate.  I ate four of the cookies, and...yes I ate four, but it's more like I'm on them--as in "What are you on?"...uh, nothing officer.  Maybe I had just one...okay, maybe two cookies.  That's all.

Being an experimenter, I don't write anything down, but here's the basic formula for super-wicked oatmeal coffee chocolate chip cookies:  Take your normal oatmeal cookie recipe, and if it calls for liquid (some do) put in some very strong coffee.  Then grind some really good medium roast coffee beans into powder, adding at least two tablespoons to your dry ingredients.  That's it.

Remember my motto:

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Bring me the head of Harry Potter...

The kids and I sat around for an hour talking about Halloween costumes.  I'm trying to convince Chloe to go as Bellatrix Lestrange (from Harry Potter).  She doesn't even need to buy a special costume for Bella.  She has this gothy long black skirt.  She has the hair--it just needs to be pinned up and made a little crazy.  (Okay, crazier). She can put on a bunch of pasty white make up...and, well, she's got the insane thing down already.   

So, while we're talking I did a quick Bellatrix Lestrange fashion sketch.  Here you go.

Click the pic to see it larger.

Links:
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Bellatrix_Lestrange
http://www.jkrowling.com/
http://www.mugglenet.com/
http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/

IF: alphabets

I'm in the middle of a bunch of other stuff, most importantly Alice's birthday.  Also writing and doing what I think is a cool sktech of Kassandra--yeah, another one.  (YAKS).  Here's a doodle for today's topic: alphabets, while I was thinking about the kinds of toys mermaid children have...mer-children?

Click the pic to see it larger.

scrumptious centipedes

While in Littleton, New Hampshire at a candy store called Chutters, I found out that I have a taste for Gummi Centipedes--along with several other buy-it-by-the-pound candies.  Yeah, it's a bit creepy.

http://www.chutters.com/

Main Jane

I don't usually go for the what-are-you? quizzes, but come on, I had to find out which Plain Jane I am.

Which PLAIN Jane Are You? Main Jane

As the leader of the pack, you are always looking out for your friends and working to make your group pretty tight knit.

Take This Quiz

Ask Me About Stamps

Check out the Discworld stamps:

http://www.joerg-neidig.de/stamps/index.html

http://www.discworldemporium.com/catalog.php?category=2

Where are your characters from?

You know how everyone seems to have one of those white oval stickers with the initials of their home towns?  Some are more popular than others.  I see a lot of "PI" on I-95 every morning, as if the citizens of beautiful Plum Island must tell every driver they pass how unlucky they are not to live right on the Atlantic.  Either that or PI hands them out to every resident.  Maybe they double as parking stickers?  Interesting idea.

Anyway, I picked up an SEA sticker in Seattle because it also spells "Sea."  Here's my photoshopped version for Kassandra's vehicle.

Do you think of merchandising when you're writing?

And what about after?

Frank Herbert's Dune is one of those early-on influencers that I haven't read in years.  Nevertheless I have managed to make references to Dune in a couple stories--and not really on purpose, and only one was direct.  The other involved a girl with deep cuts in her shoulders and the medic thinking that they reminded him of something he'd read about drowned fishermen with similar claw marks (You know, one fisherman saved himself by standing with his claw boots on the shoulders of the less fortunate fellow).

Anyway, there are pieces of culture, old stories, folklore, and other interesting bits of information floating around my head--along with all the other crap--when I have my fingers on the keyboard, and some of them manage to surface at just the right time--just in time to make the perfect connection with the words that happen to be running through my fingertips. 

Sometimes it's on purpose.  I think to myself, I need to make a reference to Aristotle somewhere in here, or Boston, or how different army posts are from the houses and streets right on the other side of the fence.  And there's a purpose to this.

I have given my characters t-shirts with something written on them, something I picked up somewhere, thought cool, worth telling--or retelling.  (Surf New Hampshire!)

So, I'm wondering if anyone has ever taken advantage of this?  Have you thought of purposefully showing--writing in--one of your characters wearing a t-shirt with something cool on it--tough girl wearing a shirt with "I HIT LIKE A GIRL" (with the obvious implication that you don't want to know what that feels like)--or your book title, or some reference to your story or characters?

And then making t-shirts and giving them away for publicity?

The thing about t-shirts is that people wear them over and over.  And people read what's on them.  There are blogs dedicated to critiquing t-shirts.  There are t-shirt companies that produce form-fitting cotton versions of sandwich boards (Reactee).

Okay, even if you don't think of it when you're writing (I have to say, I don't), what about putting a little something in after the fact.  A couple words, a phrase, something short enough to put in big letters on a shirt...

Links:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)
• http://reactee.com/
• http://tcritic.com/

What's your rating?

I found this interesting:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• knife (3x)
• sex (1x)

What's weird is that I can't remember ever using the word "knife" in a post.  Three times?  It's not that I have anything against knives.  I'm just not a knife sort of fellow.

(Saw this on Cocktail Party Physics). Get your own blog rating here:  http://mingle2.com/blog-rating

Why do you love NYC?

A great post of pics with commentary by Scott Westerfeld:

NY's Bravest

Although it has no connection, I want to point out that today's Word is, carrageen.
"An edible seaweed, usually purplish, found on the Atlantic coast of Europe and North America..."

Doggies gone wild

Here's Penny (Jack Russell/Australian Herder mix) kicking it up with her neighbor, Bertie Birdy (Dachshund pup).  (Click the pics to see them larger).

Do I even know eight people?

Sorry I didn't get to this earlier, Lee, but it took me this long to come up with something remotely clever (could also be really lame).  Lee tagged me a few days ago with an eight random things about me meme.  Wait a minute.  Do I even know eight people?

So, here are the rules:

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their 8 things and post these rules.
3. At the end choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and to read your blog.

Here goes.  Eight random things about me.  (Click the pics to see them a bit larger)

1. Here's my motto:

2. Here's my dog, Penny, tearing sh*t up (Half Jack Russell-half Australian Herder. She has one blue eye, one brown eye, and scares the F out of coyotes.  Really).

3. Here's a face I wish I could make, but don't have enough guitar strings to pull it off.

Here's my favorite house on earth--but it's really close to the ocean (Right at the end of Atlantic Avenue in North Hampton).

I love cities

I love going places (Pic I took in Rhodes)

Here's my love Alice (with Chloe hopping into the pic behind us and Christopher on the camera)

Here's my vehicle--a 2003 Honda Element  (Cthulhu himself taking the shot).  Yes, I was driving an Element in the States back when people stopped in the middle of the street with clear WTF looks on their faces.  I had a someone ask me--while I was pumping gas at the station--if it was an electric car.

Okay, now the hard part.  Who to tag...

Skott, Jeff, Amy, Con, Neil, Dave, Jeff, Craig

I'm suing a god

I'm going after the god Helios, the Sun, for infringing on my Greek Key design copyright.  It looks exactly like this one except it's not scrawled across my own ceiling in sunlight reflected off the barbecue on the back deck.  I think he's mocking me.  Time for treble damages!  Wait a minute, Mithra's a sun god also.  No astral deity is safe!  Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

Pyr books' new romance imprint: Molten

That's right, Pyr's (Prometheus) new SF romance imprint, "Molten" will be ready to launch end of Q4 2007… I'm kidding.   You should see the submission guidelines…Stop it! 

Here's a fun piece I…uh…cooked up last night and finished this morning.  I began with the idea of a woman dancing in a volcano, maybe doing a bit of fire magic, and ended up here:  an inferno-juggling tart in a low-cut dress.  (Pele forgive me.  Lou Anders forgive me). 

Click the pics to see larger versions.    For more of my artwork, see the "sketching" or "art" categories for the blog or my portfolio

Full image (Click it)

Here's the Pyr Blog and here's Lou Anders' blog.

Who am I?

I am: Cordwainer Smith (Paul M.A. Linebarger) This inimitably unique storyteller created a future with so many deep layers of history that all the world we know is practically lost in it.

Which science fiction writer are you?

While I'm at it, which Kiki Strike character am I?

What do you know, I'm Kiki--and I have the buddy icon to prove it!Must have been my affinity for coffee and that question about night-vision goggles being the ideal birthday present that tipped the scales.

Snapshot snow snout

My son, Christopher and I just made up an interesting game.  Now, it could have been interesting because we were goofing with the dictionary and finding crazy word combinations while he was supposed to be doing homework.  Either way, we had a few good laughs coming up with the silliest strings of words:

Parson's Nose particularity Paso Doble.

The rules are simple.  Open the dictionary and select three or four words from the two facing pages that seem to work together but only in a goofy, silly, childish way. For instance,

Guacamole guerilla guide dog guesswork.

Or my favorite:

Frowning fruit salad fugue fulcrum

Aiding and abetting Goths

I know. I know.  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  We were perfectly happy with Chloe painting her fingernails black for the Halloween party Friday, but it looks like they'll be painted black for a while.  I know it's popular, but this is exactly how it started with the Romans.   A little innocent black fingernail polish, and the next thing you know it's Goths south of the Rubicon and Rome is burning. 2006…It's like 476 all over again.  2010...It'll be like 410 all over again--but with more fire!  (New slogan: Who's got the kindling?)

Cthulhu in '08 update

Here's my sticker to show where my vote is going:

Get yours at http://www.pandemoniumbooks.com/

It's either a really crappy wanna-be-indie Hawaii-Five-O remake…

…or it's me goofing with VirtualDub and MS MovieMaker 2.  Throw in some video I shot a month ago in the Gulf of Maine, dial up some lame effects, add a hypnotic beat, and this is what you get:

Download OverTheWaves3.wmv  (653MB)

Okay, just this once:  Book 'em Danno!

This Just In...

Pink's Stupid Girls Even Stupider Than Garbage's

Researchers from the Institut d’Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie (IEMN) in Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, France, and the Department of Chemistry, University of Arizona, have demonstrated through analysis of lyrical content and emotional tone, that the "stupid girls" referred to in Pink's popular song of the same title, are in fact, less likely to use their cognitive faculties than the "stupid girl" referred to in the song by Garbage.  Garbage's Stupid Girl (GSG) expresses a purposeful denial of the belief in fear, love, hate and faith--going so far as rejecting belief "in anyone you can't tame."  Senior research fellow, Fabien Ivarsson, stated that "taming and the ability to 'fake it' require a relatively sophisticated level of cerebration," while it was clear to the research group and study participants that Pink's Stupid Girls (PSG) expressed a compulsive desire to be perceived as unintelligent, e.g., "flipping my blond hair back," and "Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back," and that in PSG there was evidence for deterioration in prelexical phonemic processing and irreversible damage to the PSG test subjects' orbitofrontal cortex.  "We need more research in this area," said Iversson, "but clearly something awful is going on."

Use it in a conversation

Here's the challenge:  take the current word of the day at Wordsmoth.Org and use it in conversation before midnight.  (Get the RSS feed).

Today's word: vitreous  (The clear, glassy, sticky inner substance of the eye).

That's going to be a tough one to work in.  It's not always this difficult. Yesterday's word was:

iris (EYE-ris) noun, plural irises, irides
1. The pigmented tissue of the eye in the center of which is the opening called the pupil.

Three Geese

I pull my vehicle into a distant space at the office.  I tell myself that the trek into the building, about a hundred yards, can be considered exercise, but that's another story.  I get out, come around to the passenger side, get my coffee and backpack loaded down with computer hardware, and shut the door.  I lock the car and shove the keys in my pocket.

And then I see them:  Three geese in a line evenly spaced apart all looking off into the forest where birds and what sounds like prehistoric predators are making a lot of noise, chattering, chirping and squawking.  I picture the predators moving like ghosts through the trees, squads of them signaling to each other with big glassy reptilian eyes, looking for bird's nests and saying--with drool from of the sides of their mouths--"eggs" but with a lisp so it sounds like "eggth."

The sky is a cloudy humid mass.  There are a couple blue patches with sunlight coming through, but it's a weird diffused yellow.  There is something Jurassically ancient about the weather this morning, and I think, what if there's a function really deep in the brains of these geese that takes them back on days like this?  Maybe they're all pondering the question, "How can we really be sure all Velociraptors are extinct?"  The first goose looks a bit stately--statelier than the other two, and you know he's already coined "velociraptoresque" and has begun using it in normal conversation.

I take a sip of coffee.

There's something about the experience that's like walking down a sidewalk on a city street and three people are standing in your way all looking up.  What else can you do?  You must look up as well.  So, I give the geese a nod, and then my eyes wander off to the line of noisy trees.  "What are you guys looking at?"   

One continues to keep an eye on the forest and one on me, the other two turn their beaks in my direction.  We're all silent; the tension in the air is thick.  What else can you do?  I pull out my phone and take a blurry picture of the scene, tip my head to the geese, and walk into the office.  "Have a nice day, gentleman.  Keep safe."

Spatial

I've been reading JA Konrath's blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, for a while, and always enjoy his posts on publishing, writing, blogging, publicity and, of course, guns, but I rarely drop everything I'm doing and go with whatever he's recommending.  Today, however, is one of those days.  I signed up at My Space, and he's right--as are most of his commenters: it is the hot new trend, it is kind of creepy, it's a great way to expose the fact that I have no friends, or--at best--will only be able to attract weirdos.  I'm just starting out and so far, Tom, the DMSF (Default My Space Friend) is my only friend.  I can't even add myself as a friend.

http://www.myspace.com/the0phrastus

I like the way it tells me "Chris has 1 friends"

Forest Magic

The kids and I walked around the forest this afternoon, inventing stories about things that live deep in the woods.  Chloe came up with a whole society of forest faeries who live in dens and work in the trees, their extraordinary weaving skills, creative uses of woodland materials, and, of course, their use of magic. 

I told the kids about the "forest boy" who lives under the ground and the door to his house is through an old willow tree.  He's lived there for as long as anyone can remember.  The first English settlers told stories of him, "a boy of fifteen, dressed in deerskins with branches and leaves twisted in his pale greenish-gold hair."  The Native Americans told stories of the "forest king" who never aged, controlled the animals, made the moss creep, the brooks and streams turn and flow backward, who befriended the trees, spoke to them, and through their roots and crown, could control the earth and the weather.

We finished up by taking some white birch bark peelings and using them--appropriately-- as the material on which to write forest spells.  We made up a squiggly forest language, which must be used if you are to request any service of the woods.

Here's figure 112, an ancient "control the forest" spell in superb condition.  (If only I could read it).

D&D with the kids

I've spent the last two nights playing Dungeons & Dragons with the kids, and it's been a blast.  We're using the "Basic Set" that comes with a bunch of miniatures, nicely drawn dungeon boards, and a really slimmed down version of the rules.  We're talking first level characters here who get to beat up on kobolds.  Chloe and Christopher know RPGs on the computer (Neverwinter Nights) and PS2, but this is a fairly new thing to them.  It's been years since I've really played, and I've forgotten how different it is role-playing, instead of just wandering around, caving in skulls in a pseudo three-dimensional world projected onto 2D space.  Computer games are extremely cool, but they lack some real dimension of play that shouting across the dining room table seems to supply.

The last time I was really into gaming, I'd spent months developing a world using GURPS, and then abandoned everything because of work.  I just dug my old GURPS stuff out of a box in the basement, and have been browsing.  (Yup.  I'm a packrat.  Can't throw anything out).

My goal is to get the kids to play more games where they need to read many 300-page $30 books.  I remember, as a kid, staying up half the night scouring the Player and DM guides, Chivalry and Sorcery, GURPS, Traveller.  Just think of all the useful information that got pushed into various corners of my brain:  which demons came from which planes and why it takes an extra turn to reload your crossbow.

Chloe and Christopher are digging it now, but we'll see how it goes.

Workspace

Here's where I do a lot of my writing, painting, and now, recording.  The most noticeable thing on my desk is the Toad King in the left corner (See detail).  He's the one, glaring constantly, a thick tome under one arm, who says--especially during NaNoWriMo--"Get your ass back in that chair.  Fingers on the keyboard!  Write, damn you!"

Detail:

A couple more pics. Yes, I like books, lots of them.  (Click on the images to see the larger version).

Unusual collections

In the past I've collected stamps, coins, military medals and patches.  My longest running interest and collection is in anything about Aristotle.  I've been collecting books on, by or about Aristotle for twenty years, and I can say with some confidence that I have a better Aristotle selection than many university libraries--and that includes their "special collections."  I must have close to 300 books, including a nice 19th century bunch and a handful that go back to the early 1500's.  (My oldest is a Latin trans of the Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Oeconomica, and a spurious work, the Physiognomia, in one volume printed in Venice in June, 1516).

That's not what this post is about.

Do you collect anything...unusual?  Okay, I'll be blunt and ask, do you collect anything you'd be embarrassed to tell others?

It's painful but I'll admit it: I have started collecting those really bad books on Atlantis printed in the '60s and '70s.  I have three of them so far, and every time I find myself in a used bookstore, I have to check the Mystical/Alternative/Wacko shelves for my new interest.  Scarily, I sometimes find them in the History section. 

Fess up!  What do you collect?  (I'll take your silence as clear evidence that you collect something so upsetting, scandalous or monstrous that you cannot leave your words here without facing criminal charges).  Anonymous comments allowed.

Silly Author Pics

There have been several recent blog posts about author pictures, agent 007, a piece in the Guardian, Bibliobibuli, and others.  There's no clear agreement on the necessity of having one on a book's back cover or inside the flap, mostly do's and don'ts.  I don't typically look at them, but there are some I see over and over again, and they sort of stick in my mind.  There's that shot of Nora Roberts on the back cover of most of her books, dressed in black, leaning against a table beside a vase of flowers, there's Terry Pratchett in a big black hat--although in recent pics he's ditched the hat.  Chloe wants to put a picture of the two of us on the back cover of Wreath.  I don't really want one.  I don't think a picture of the author(s) adds anything to a book, but I won't miss a chance to do something silly.  Alice thought the idea was idiotic (even better than silly), but I talked Chloe into doing a shot wearing a bandana, turtleneck and a serious look.  I didn't shave, I set up the tripod and took one of us doing our best David Foster Wallace's.  Next, I think we'll do a Nora Roberts pose, arms folded, flowers, a window in the background, hint of a smile.

Here's our DFW shot:

(BTW: That's a pink bandana I'm wearing, the only one we could find that fit around my head.  Chloe's the only one with bandanas in the house.  Looks a little bettter in black-and-white).