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Mornin’.

It’s my birthing day. My mother nearly died, I was supersick as well. My mother had to also feed me on goat’s milk when I couldn’t digest anything. The doctor told her there was nothing to be done as I was starving to death but she persisted. Found I could handle goat’s milk. Of course she also liked to tell EVERYONE that I pooped a lot when I was a baby. It was one of her go-to stories. Yeah.

It was green, runny, and filled my crib. A sort of horror story involving my baby pooping abilities. Thanks, mom!

I do have a new book out. The Adventures of Grumpy Odin and Sexy Jesus, which got so few reactions I wonder if I should bother at all anymore.

And I won’t bore anyone with that shit. Don’t worry. No words on the gutpunch of being an invisible writer.

Every time I glance at my blog, the little message at the top says this site has coupons. Like it’s Amazon or the candle site I drool over. I love candles. And they’re amazing. Carpathian Mountains, Lost At Sea, Norway, Halloween ones. Goose Creek Candles, if you’re curious. They run sales all the time.

Applying for jobs that do not involve wiping other people’s bottoms. So far, a big fat zilch. Can’t even get an interview. Nope. That’s something to sigh over tomorrow.

Painting rocks again. Not really writing that much. Drifting along, waiting for the meteor. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me!

Okay, will end this with a brief takedown of Stranger Things. Now. I watched all the episodes. I guess the new ones will drop in July.

So. Mm. It seems the same storyline got repeated for three seasons. El or Jane must rally and fight the Monster/Upside Down world and close the gate/s. The other kids, um, figure out stuff and act like actual kids. Refreshing.

There’s a lot of 80’s references. A lot. From Ghostbusters to aerobics to the music being played. There’s Metalheads. There’s Cyndi Lauper. And Kate Bush wasn’t that popular, but we get her song over and over and over. Air Supply!

They even cast Winona Ryder as the mom of the kid who gets sucked into the parallel world in season one. Matthew Modine was also pretty common in 80’s fair, so he’s a doctor who might be evil or not. We get 80’s fashion, from the big hair to the overly bright patterned clothes.

I really liked how Dungeons and Dragons got blamed for the happenings of season four. The Satanic Panic! That was real, it happened a lot like that and real people were sent to jail over allegedly being in league with Satan. That Satanic Panic shit is still hot and heavy in America to this day. After all, liberals align with the devil, do they not, Fox Newz? And Alex Jones? And a lot of far right preachers? And…?

Also, the murders in season four were…jaw-droppingly horrific. Warning label indeed needed. Jesus H. Christ, there really was no way to warn against how ghastly they were. I know it’s fake, it’s not real but damn. I actually gasped, made sounds, had to look away. I happened to watch season four right after the Uvalde shooting. So…yeah.

I love love love the sheriff, played by David Harbour. Who would have been a kid in the 80’s. He really is the backbone of this show. His current storyline is just…eh. Really? [I won’t spoil it if you have not yet gotten to season four or through the end of season three.]

Oh my goodness, and the whole Soviet inclusion. You forget how twitchy we were as a country over anything Soviet or USSR. That constant dread that any minute a nuclear bomb was gonna drop on your town or nearby. The movie the Day After captures this very real fear. That someone would make a mistake and a nuclear exchange would take place. That the Russians in Stranger Things could be right out of an action movie staring Sly Stallone, Arnie Swarzenegger, Kurt Russell or hell, right out of the original Red Dawn…I found a bit off-putting. They wouldn’t know to hide themselves completely, like in the series, the Americans? The USSR wouldn’t send English-speaking sorts able to pass to do their fell deeds at the Hawkins mall? Not bitchin’, dudes.

Off to water the lawn, maybe watch some silly movies and enjoy my birthday cheesecake. I got myself a small cheesecake. And hope the following year isn’t the shitshow it promises to be in America and the rest of the world. Father of the Bride on HBO looks silly, dumb, fun and frothy.

Jinx

I know there’s no such thing as jinxes. I know this. My brain know it. The rest of me, eh, no so much. I am always wary of speaking or writing of something before it happens. Like a job interview. Do not tell anyone or even admit you have one before the interview. Otherwise, IT WILL GO BADLY.

Anyone else have this one? You don’t talk about something important or just ordinary [like a job interview] before you get the results or it will GO BADLY.

Anyway! Yes, I have a job interview or rather, a process to get to a job. A series of steps, as it were. I’m on step two. If I get through [this next task], it’s on to other steps. Hurray. The good thing is: I can do this job from home. I don’t have to deal with anything but equipment going nutty. Or a bad internet connection that day. As the internet works most days here, not really concerned that way. My computer works fairly well. I can even hook cameras and headsets up without much trouble. Go me! Normally I am such a Luddite. But it’s just plugging stuff into the USB ports, so…yeah. I can totally do that. I am the master of plugging stuff into USB ports. You betcha.

I’ve tried this before, what sort of job I’m trying to land now. I failed so miserably at it. Ugh! Could not get the equipment to work. But this time, I am ready, more or less. I’m being vague because of the whole jinx thing.

I have books out. Aftermath: Boise, Idaho deals with sentient zombies and our intrepid, pragmatic heroine, Hannah. The Remarkable Women of Brokenheart Lane pits three elderly, but thoroughly fabulous sisters, each in their own way, against a beat-up cannibal bikers. The Werewolves limp into what’s left of Fallon, Nevada, after their own epic showdown with a rival gang, the Glitterbugs. But wait, there’s a third gang of law and order church ladies looking to restore everything called the Snitty Ratballs. There’s also a lion roaming around, double and triple crosses and alliances formed to fight a common foe!

I had a lot of fun writing both of those. I tried to balance between the absurd, the comedic and the horrible. I think I did okay. Both are available on Amazon, Goodreads, etc.

Secret Writings

That is a truly crappy closeup of the owl hooting away the other early evening

Last night the winds cracked their cheeks. Probably some dead branches cracked as well, but not enough to fall onto the roof. Yay! You really can find the good, even in a wind storm. No branches fell on the roof from the incredibly ancient, rotting even as you read this, cottonwood tree.

It’s the same tree that the local owls like to use to send their owl messages back and forth to owls perching in the locust tree along the lane. There’s just the one locust tree, which draws every insect within a thousand miles when it puts forth its honey-smelling blooms. Tractors have attempted to yank that thing out but the tree won. It was quite a goodly thrill to watch a tractor nearly do flips trying to kill that old tree. Ha ha ha, take that, evil farmers!

So, yes, I am writing. I have started a new novel with the title of Vampire Bride. Where a vampire marries a human after a wild tequila-fueled night in Vegas. Have I mentioned this in the few blog posts I’ve put out since January? Anyway! I’ve also been what I call junk writing. This is just writing I do for me. I will never ever ever show it to anyone. It’s indulgent, shallow crappy tripe. Most of it, anyway. I have millions of words invested in this.

Now, my actual question is—do other writers do this? Do they have a private stash of self-indulgent, just for them, creations?

Is there a split of the ‘good’ stuff and the everything else stuff they’d not show to others? Is there a secret stash of bodice ripper historical romances versus the ‘serious’ literature produced for awards and lit mags to fawn over?

Is there an Anne Rice in all writers? Her BDSM series, based on Sleeping Beauty being woken up by a very horny dom Prince…and her other works, which don’t feature actual whips, chains, human trafficking and passages involving orgies. And were published long before 50 Shades had grown from Edward Cullen fanfic. A.N. Roquelaure is the pen name used for the Beauty series. I just found out there’s a fourth book in this series, Beauty’s Kingdom, 2015. The others were out in the 80’s.

So, honestly, just wondering if other writers keep a secret stash of words meant only to be read by themselves. It’s probably a way of coping with life, rejection, life and the slow strangulation death of any and all dreams. Yep. Drowning yet again, I pen words meant to comfort and console my dying brain that there’s still some oxygen bubbles bursting nearby. That I am writing away, just not on anything I’d show to group of other writers. Private little romances that always end in happy times or adult-themed high to very lowbrow fantasy full of dragons, shapeshifting creatures and goblins living under magical castles full of ghosts, devils and sexy dark lords…hey, not admitting anything. Nope!

Or perhaps I am ashamed that I have a need to write the secret stuff at all. That it’s rather like that ‘comical’ moment in movies when the heroine’s vibrator is found or turned on by accident so that it rattles away as she stands there with a red face. Instead of just shrugging, grabbing it up, turning it off, and admitting, yes, she likes orgasms. You got a problem with that, she should demand instead of the embarrassed horror of people discovering she’s, well, masturbating on a regular basis.

Did I mention the owls have been very busy the last couple weeks? And that I am writing, not necessarily on anything I’d let you or anyone else read. Vampire Bride, sure. It’s meant for others. Goblin Ghosts  Versus the Dragon Lord’s Prisoner, no. And no, I did not write anything like that. Or did I??? Bwhahahahahaha.

No, actually I didn’t.

I swear it. On a stack of Interview With the Vampire. Oh hey, anyone else go through an Anne Rice phase?

I have four books out now. I have a short story in the next Ghastling. Go check them out.

Exhausted

Is anyone else exhausted by the attempted coup everything from trumpie and company?

That above pic is Jake. Yes, he’s the best dog, a good boy, a furbaby and thoroughly spoiled in the best ways possible.

There was that one day of joy, when Biden got past the 270 mark, then…eighteen million months of trump throwing tantrums as the GOP and the Dems tiptoed around him. The waiting for Jan 20 so this current attempt to overthrow a legal election can be tucked under all the rugs ever and…ugh.

I can’t even. Is that still even a phrase??

I’m tired. I’m low, tired and pancake flat all the time now by all this happening in America. I just want to punch someone yet can’t lift my arm long enough, let alone make a fist, to do so. My blood pressure is heart attack high, frankly. I’m having all sorts of problems but won’t go into that because it’s boring and no one cares.

Hi, depression, yes, you widdle rascal. You here as well, gonna sit a spell and make sure I don’t make it to Christmas without some sort of chemical or actual intervention? Great! Let’s not be able to concentrate long…What was I doing?

I did manage to make homemade dinner rolls for the first time. I used my overnight bread recipe, and it works just fine for a two hour rushed roll job. They looked like rolls, they were cooked all the way through and I hate the holidays. Yeah. I’d rather do peanut butter and jelly sammiches at this point in time than cook ONE MORE GODDAMN FUCKING TURKEY WAH WAH WAH.

Speaking of holidays, have no plans on going to the relatives in freaking Idaho, COVID Central. I know, it’s freedom and liberty to totally ignore a raging pandemic so I can feel extra manly. I know! Spank me with an eagle already.

I’m trying to be lighthearted and fun with all the not-fun America is right now.

Even that thin defense mechanism seems broken as all get out. I just go numb anymore as a safeguard against whatever newest stench wafts out of the trump sewers.

I wait for Somebody Heroic to rise from these streets to put an end to all this. A cross between Wonder Woman and Captain America with a hint of RBG. Show yourself already! Enough not existing ever in the first place!

The cat woke me up at four. She also saw something outside, when it was yet dark, that made her hiss and retreat well into the house with an offended tail swish. What the what did you notice out there, Madam Jaws?? Neighbor dogs outside the fence? A coyote or several? What??

OMG, was it a BEAR?

You get wild thoughts at four in the AM. Though there have been bear sightings around where I live. We could have a bear or two nearby…not really or maybe, mmm. Or was that cougars? I can’t keep the sightings straight some days.

So should dive into a final editing or so read of my fourth novel, Remarkable Women of Brokenheart Lane. I just…I’m a deflated flower pot of useless golf bags. Woe is me, o Canada.

How many times can you watch Schitt’s Creek before it becomes necessary for people to step in? What is that number?

Snow Expected

The sky this morn

There’s snow forecast for my tiny neck of the woods. The sky appears appropriately cloudy. I hope it does snow. We need the moisture here. The local mountains have been hit pretty hard with the white slippery pretty stuff but nothing, so far, where I am. Boise got snow! Damn it!

Well, the celebratory mood, gone. Fizzled. God damn fucking orange coddled fuckwaffle. If this were any other person who’d just lost a major election, then refused to vacate…none of what’s being tolerated and shrugged off now would be tolerated or shrugged off.

If Obama had pulled this crap, Fox News and the GOP would have lined up to take turns hanging him from whatever tree they could find. If Hillary had dug in her lady  heels and gotten all hysterically I won I won gimme gimme…oh boy. Oh boy, would that have been something to behold in America.

Now, Biden won. He won. He and Harris will take over no matter what’s thrown at them…unless there’s an actual damn coup by Barr, orange fuckstick, McConnell and the rest of the toady GOPers. That’s being tried now. The voter fraud conspiracy!

I must focus on, oh, writing.

Oh that.

This all, too, shall pass, this current rotted pumpkin madness.

I am reworking the ending of my Odin and Jesus novel. To give it more of a punch, a kick, a boom. I want to write and work on this! WHAT THE HELL? I seem to be shaking off, a bit, of this strange not wanna write nothing spell some malignant demon flung at me on its way to whisper conspiracy hints in some broken-brained QAnon’s decaying skull organ.

I but jest. Sort of.

If you don’t know what QAnon is, please. Go and look it up. It’s a cult that’s growing, born from a hoax. No, the person behind all this admitted it was a hoax. And yet…here we are.

Writing! I’m supposed to be shilling my writing to those who might be interested and even those who slow down to gander at this train wreck of a blog.

So yes, reworking the ending. I think I will just pick a spot, start a new doc, see what happens. I have the ending, the last bit I am keeping for suresies. I think. Oh dear. Or am I ruining my tight little novel with…oh dear!

Yes, I would like to see how medieval cheese was made, Youtube. Yes, I would!

I found this channel on historical cooking and I LOVE IT SO MUCH. You get history and recipes! Score score!

Yes, I’m fine, I’m okay.

Waiting for the snow. Writing a bit and holding my breath as my country TREMBLES on some precipice akin to the Civil War or…something equally savaging. I do think…I don’t know, actually. I am just as lost as anyone else here, even those throwing out pat predictions this will all be fine or it will all be a clustermess of the highest order, grab your minivan and head for Canada.

I really like moose. I can learn to like hockey more than I do. I’d like to live on Prince Edward Island. Eh!

What am I working on?

New Puppy. Brigit. Don’t be fooled! She’s a perfect engine of destruction. 

 

It’s beginning to look a bit like spring time! I turned the earth over yesterday for my mini garden, Year Two. I’m also moving the stumps to New Locations. I am cognizant of both function and decoration via my mini garden. I am also eyeing the places where rabbits and ground squirrels like to visit. Plus, there’s the New Puppy. She likes to dig. Investigate where the humans go. Check out why the humans do this or that. I have a feeling my mini garden might not survive New Puppy.

Politics. If I. It’s just. WTF. I??!!

After that above enlightening delve into the current state of American politics, let’s move on. Oh sure, there’s a political rant in there eight miles long. It slaps the Spirit in the Sky, nut punches Jesus and generally includes words better suited for our POTUS and the Locker Room Boys known as the GOP. Anyhoo!!

What am I working on. Nothing.

That’s right.

I don’t have a PROJECT on deck or waiting in the wings. It just tires me to even think of rumbling up the engines right now. Or ever again. Which is troubling, to say the very least about that.

I have the Oregon novel. Which deals with the sorts that took over the Malheur wildlife refuge over by Burns. I really do wish to work on this. Eventually. It interests me. I like doing the research into extremist radical gun-toting scary ass militia groups as well as Oregon history. Scraping some sort of novel out of all that, interesting as well. But not right now? Or maybe tomorrow. Or.

Rework my Beastface Bay tales. Fuck no.

Start a brand new something. Maybe even a PLAY. What?? I never leave the house. What can I write a play on?

My conversations with the three dogs?

My inner monolog on trying to decide to make a pie or not out of whatever I can find in the fridge?

A family story that’s so boring it’s almost interesting but it’s not? Something I saw in the news cycles????

Seriously, when fiction can’t compete with your basic cable opinion piece on liberals taking their babies home to kill them, reported with a straight face as if true…yeah. You just kinda deflate like a sad little balloon writer-wise. Maybe that’s just me?

That’s total fiction, of course. But all we hear is that LIBERALS KILL BABIES here in ‘murica. It’s going to be a slogan for 2020. It’s predictable. They control the narrative, so they get to direct the narrative with the Lefties playing wide-eyed defense. It’s just…fuh.

Oh no, political rant about to snarl forth like a castrated lion looking for a snack.

Short stories, flash fiction, humorous essays? Mmm. Nope.

I seem to be running on dead writer batteries.

I even scraped myself together long enough to go to a FREE WRITER’S WORKSHOP. In Nampa, Idaho. It was on a Saturday, all afternoon, at the library, which was right by where that other writer’s gathering had been! So I knew how to get there and back again. Score!

It wasn’t in the downtown one-way hell of Boise!

Yeah, I went to the workshops, as there were four of them. I did three, then the fourth had to be held at a coffee shop, as the library closed at five. I just headed home, I’d had enough. All three of those were practical, well run, informative and actually helpful.

Death Rattle is the name of the organization here. I can’t say enough nice things about them. I’m glad they exist and that they’re nearby. 

I wish, sort of, I’d schlumped off to the fourth one. The drive back was right as the sun was going down, so trying to see the road turned into GUESS WHERE THE ROAD IS HA HA for me. I also treated myself to a sausage biscuity thing and an outing outside my present comfort zone.

I also felt guilty. I was wasting time. I was feeding my delusions that I’m a writer. I clearly am not a writer because writers, well, for one thing, actually write. 

My thoughts all the time. All the time. All the time. A constant punching stream, with me as that bag the boxers hit. Except it’s punchy thoughts that swing haymakers at whatever’s left of my drive, ambition or will to GET SHIT DONE.

Maybe it’s time for the ole writer standby of heroin, wine, mind-altering shit that allows one to be totally oblivious to reality while writing about reality. 

I am trying to co-write a screenplay. I should have whipped that out in a couple days. Nope.

To sum up!

I just need to retrain myself to start writing again. Something like that. Just put some crap down on the page! I am in a frightful abyss, looking upward for any bit of light. There isn’t any. I always admire people who are positive, or at least pretending super-alot. The ones who’ve lost their entire family to the local volcano, then found out they have brain cancer. Their dog then gets run over, and their house catches on fire. Yet, that person smiles at the world, going, oh, isn’t that daisy growing through the cracks of that mass grave grand?

Maybe I need to hang out with more creative sorts. That energy seems to sizzle the old writer batteries a bit. Except me and other humans have seldom gotten along. I’m always too much or too little in some way…it’s confusing. Oh sure, just be yourself! If I fucking knew who that is, I’d now be a teacher with a pension plan, a bad perm, wondering what would have happened if I’d followed my dreams…

You get hammered in the face, dear.

That’s what I’d tell that other me. You get hammered in the face and it’s supposed to mean something. That’s pretty grim.

Smile. You look so pretty when you smile!

So, there ya go. You’re all caught up on my Artistic Strainings. Thanks for stopping by. I hope…

mumbles something about almost ready to outline that Oregon zombie novel set during the imagined ages of Middle Earth if it were run by the Narnian minotaurs. Almost ready. Almost.

 

 

 

Grumpy yet Sexy Kalurching

 

Actual screenshot of my Grumpy Odin and Sexy Jesus project

Someone has a project plugging away and lo and behold, it’s me.

I’ve been rewriting my Odin and Jesus thingamabob. I’m skimming through it, just trying to get the LATEST FREAKING VERSION out on the page.

What am I kalurching about? [That’s a vomit sound combined with another vomit sound, BTW.]

The Adventures of Grumpy Odin and Sexy Jesus

With possible name change– Mr. Grumpy and Sir Sexy. Which is…eh.

But I am always thinking of MARKETING these days. How to market X. How to get MORE PEOPLE TO BUY MY X.

I usually end up sobbing, and taking lots of things and stuff to calm my innards. Marketing has become my bete noire.

Where did I leave off before I drifted into MARKETING waters.

Oh yes.

Doggedly discuss latest writing project because that’s why I started this blog in the first kalurchy place. And to spare my friends my burbling too-long emails. Poor friends!

SHUT UP, I DO SO HAVE FRIENDS.

That was for the roflmao voices in my head. Sorry.

Odin, Jesus, God, Maggie, batboys, Minions, Stella Lou, Click and Clack, Minette and Suzi and…

I am trying, this time around, to STREAMLINE the tale. It turned into a messy, sprawling mess last time around, which I liked but might, well, probably, would test the patience of dear readers who bothered to read it.

Poor Ms. Wuehler, she’s a bit all over the place here and if there’s a story here, I might need a compass, some rope, and a miracle on the order of loaves and fishes to find it.

Chapter five or so is where I am.

I’m having fun and want to get back to it, so that’s good. Of course I’ve written this one several times over now. It started off as a play, as a short story, and is now a PROJECT that will need MARKETING.

Can you sense a theme developing here?

I’d go off on a magnificent political rant but hey, I can funnel that rage and WTF is happening? into my sentences and word choices and subtext. When I have subtext. I am more Ibsen than Chekhov most of the time. If you get that, high five. Or– Ibsen wasn’t that subtle and Chekhov was really subtle. Okay.

Ah. So!

I’m just letting it unfold, more or less, as it wants. TAOGOASJ seems to want to get back to the far more light-hearted, rather goofy road into the wilds of the Alvord than I had written it in earlier attempts.

As the Big Showdown will take place, still, in the Alvord Desert of Oregon.

Why is everything I write set in Oregon, mostly? Ah.

Because I’m from Oregon and setting all my tales, in, say, Alabama, just doesn’t work for me.

I have nothing against ‘bama, Roll Tide!, but…not from there or from the mystical, gothic-smeared South. I’m from the interior West, home of mythical cowboys and gothic Aryan Nations smeared bullshit.

Whee?…eee…uh. That’s a sound effect spelled out. Imagine the first part is ‘should I be happy about that? Then the second set is ‘no’, with the sound descending from a high squeal to a lower, softer noise and then a gulp.

I’m keeping a lot of the things I really liked from earlier versions. Names for things, characters, Swiss Charlie’s, Po. Po is Horus’s horse. Jesus has to be more charming, more slick. Odin needs some actual grumpiness! MORE COWBELL FOR ALL.

From the SNL more cowbell sketch. Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, Horatio Sanz, Chris Kattan. Missing, ironically, is Christopher Walken. Ironic is my middle name.

I still laugh at that skit from SNL. Christopher Walken is my spirit animal, as the kiddies opine. He’s not, but for that skit, he is.

Back to Grumpy Odin/Sexy Jesus.

I’m also working a lot on Maggie, the Head Receptionist. On her will and drive, on not making her such a Mary Sue, oh ghastly gasp of horror inserted here. [Uhhh!] I’ve kept the tentacles and the mask.

Oooh, who’s wearing a mask!

Look at you! HOOKED. Hooked, I tell ya!

Did I mention the cute ground squirrel prolly ate most of my pet eggplant? And that the cucumber I doctored for teensy black bugs has give up the ghost?

Yeah. I transplanted the eggie into a big pot and put it up high. It’s fine so far, just the leaves got nibbled off. It still looks rather splendid, except it’s just a stem with leaves at the top and one purple blossom left.

Eggie in the halcyon days before the leaf massacre…poor Eggie. It’s in the downstage corner by the plastic chicken, btw.

I also trimmed the forsythia and rose bush next to my mini garden, put up some redneck fencing– that’s whatever crap you have laying around used as a fence– and check my mini garden obsessively.

The yard bunnies prolly also had a tooth in this.

Oh! I turned over a board on the other side of the fence and there was a mama quail and her eggs. I hope she didn’t abandon them. I’m afraid to check. I do love quail. They are perhaps my favorite bird, with hummingbirds of course ranking right up there. I saw a hummer the other day. Poking that long beak into the wild roses. I thrilled. I was thrilled.

Quail nest found beneath ratty old board.

A little news– I somehow have nine novels to get written.

I have two done and nine to go. Someone, [it was me] mentioned titles to her publisher. Who remembered them, jumbled them a bit and then sent a contract…yep. [This is good. In case it doesn’t come across that way. This is good!!!!] 

It’s a zany slapstick sort of life, yes, it is.

So! Blog-wise, I will be attempting to MARKET my oncoming flux of writing onto the indifferent universe. Even a mild splash would be nice.

Let’s see. I’ve mentioned my latest writing project, the Alvord Desert, MARKETING, my mini garden, and Alabama. I think that’s enough for now.

Me working hard. Go me!