The Anchoress has her own Quiz results posted. That’s why I went to the Quiz Farm to take the “Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in?” test. The results are below!

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

So, what results do you have? Are you stranded with the original cast of “Lost In Space”? Hey! Lemme know, why don’cha?

Just when I think I’m confident in my ability to do something, change comes along. As always with the Gubmint, the change is not exactly for the better.

Tele-File is dead. I’ve been tele-filing my taxes for a few years, now. It had gotten pretty easy. The IRS mails you the returns, you fill them out, and you call them at the 800 number. The computer voice walks you through the process, and when you are done … BINGO! … your taxes are filed!

Not no more, Compadre!

No, the IRS sent a nice, multi-colored postcard – a bog thing! – to say that the Tele-File was dead. It then directs me to go to the IRS E-file page, online. Easy, right?

Wrong!

Before, I refused to efile my taxes, because you were required – as far as I understood! – to use a tax program, like Quicken or something. A program that you had to purchase! Yeah, I was gonna do that. Buy something I couldn’t afford to do my tax return so I could, maybe, pay the Gubmint money I didn’t have. Ohhhh, yeah, thats a good idea to me!

Okay, so I type the addy in my browser, and off I go! So far so good. Except … you cannot simply file your return at the IRS. They aren’t equipped. Or they aren’t interested in being equipped. No, you have to go to an outside website to use a tax-preparer. This is through a link to an IRS page called FreeFile. Isn’t that special, eh?

Okay, so I’m off on a new adventure. I click on a link and head to a new site – that of a tax-preparer. Off-site. Away from the IRS. A third party! Just what I wanted. I like having my meager earnings seen, possibly, by a third party, don’t you?

Trust me, I do not like doing this stuff without enough information at hand. Too many places give you little iconic links to help you. But when you click on them – within the form you are working on – you end up with your form erased. Luckily, this site does not do that. They are fairly into the 21st Century.

So, I doggedly filled in the tiny blank boxes, and hit the “next” buttons, and progressed through the site. It was tedious, but not as difficult as I had feared. I actually finished in less than a half-hour. Now, that’s because I have damn near nothing. But I did finish. Not too many error pages popped up during the ordeal.

So, I learned a lesson, I think. I did what I had to do. I was afraid it would be hard, or impossible to complete. It wasn’t.

“…I’m scared o’ lots o’ things. But y’ can’tlet that run yer life. Sometimes y’ gotta . . . grit yer teeth

Isaac Benning, 1780 – “Benning’s War”

Cinderella (Enchantment) – 1913

Besides the spectacular colors, something a Maxfield Parrish painting always has, there’s also an attention to details that is unimaginable. In fact his art was always so much that it would not be mistaken for a photograph. The colors were simply too vivid, the settings too perfect. Just beautiful beyond belief.

There are quite a few Artists that I think are fantastic, those whose works I think are among the finest any man or woman has ever produced. And right at the top of that list stands Maxfield Parrish. On an earlier post you would have seen “Moonlight”, my favorite Parrish painting. I have yet to find a print of this for sale anywhere. Nertz!

Take a little time to wander through any Gallery of Parrish’s works. Soon you will be enthralled at the depth, vibrancy, power that the colors he produced hold. “Garden Of Allah” is one, and “Daybreak”. The skies Parrish produced, the water – still or falling, or waves crashing – all evoke a living world. So many painters seem to have problems making their works seem alive, whether an abstract or otherwise. There is just something missing from what they produce. In Parrish’s case it is the opposite. There is too much life! Does that make sense?

Aquamarine – 1917 (Isle of Lesbos)

When I was younger, I was a drawing, painting kid. I can still remember being punished for drawing on a nice, white wall with a yellow crayon. I hadn’t figured out that white walls were not big pieces of paper waiting for me to toddle along. And over the ensuing years I thought I would be a painter. Ask anyone in my family about the life-sized John Wayne that once adorned the door of my bedroom. I wasn’t bad, as a painter. I even read up on the techniques Parrish used for his colors. (Did you know, for instance, that Maxfield Parrish didn’t mix his colors? He used pure pigments, atop clear varnishes, to let light blend his colors. This in the age of oils not acrylics. Talk about time-consuming!)

Alas, I was not good enough, or driven enough, to enter the world of painting. But I had gained a tremendous appreciation for the works of Maxfield Parrish. Along with him I discovered N.C.Wyeth, whose children you may have heard somthing about. Others soon came along, as well.

(To be continued! Interested?)

By 1997 I had joined an online Trivia site, and met a woman who was there. She lived in Wyoming. We chatted often, after playing ‘Cosmo’s Conundrum’ – a game no longer in existence at Uproar Games – and I fell in love with her. Mind you, without ever having laid eyes on her. So it can happen! And yes, I am quite shallow, but she was something special!

While chatting and surfing with her – nice to do with someone far away! – she sent me to a page with a short story she liked. It was “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner.

I liked the short story, but was intrigued by one of those banner ads on the page. It advertised a free writing course. Something called “F2K”. Well, that sparked something, brought something to life, so I surfed over and signed up. I went through a session – 7 weeks – of F2K and liked it, and joined WVU, its parent organization. Heck, it was just for one year, so it’s not like I signed my life away. Besides I had money then. *sigh* Yes, I did, then. And I was thinking, quietly, that maybe these folks would show me how to get published.

So, I joined a Study Group or two, posted parts of chapters, gave feedback to the other writers, and generally had fun. I managed to get a few short stories published – and paid for! – and started work on a few projects that I eventually abandoned. And Time, of course, passed.

My Dear Lady agreed to move down here, so I paid to first move myself – from a small one-bedroom! – bought a plane ticket to the north, and moved her on down. An expensive, love-filled adventure! And I was madly, deeply in love. Within a few months I had lost my decent-paying job, and had scrambled to find a carpet cleaning job that paid less than half what I had been making, and ate up 10+ hours a day, six days each week. It exhausted me, frankly.

By the time we experienced the Four Hurricanes in late summer of 2004, she was tired of the lack of money, and my seeming inability to look for better jobs. And she left. Much as it hurt/hurts … I can’t blame her. I told her I’d take care of her, and in the end I could barely take care of myself.

By the following April my car had been repossessed, the phone – and dial-up – had been shut off, and I was barely hanging on. Writing was just another dead dream at that point. I was now working at Wal-Mart, had saved enough to buy a bike, so I could ride to work, and was on the trail of a cheap truck. Eventually I was able, with some help, to get the phone back, and with it the Internet.

May saw me wake early one morning and go through the submission Guidelines of ePress. Well, what the heck, right? I was going nowhere, I had nothing ahead of me, so why not take the plunge again? So I pulled out the manuscript, made sure it fit the guidelines, and emailed it. I related that tale here, so I won’t bore you with the story again.

After nine years, and a lot of crap in between, my manuscript began the publishing journey. Nine years! Now do you see what I meant in the previous post? Why did I want to go through that again?

I had a nice short-ish tale in the SF genre. Might make a decent novel. Might! But do I want to write something as involved as “Dune”? I just don’t know. So, can I sit my arse down and do what my head tells me to do? Write down the dialogue I hear, describe the scenes I can see? Do I?

Gotta say, it still scares me, just as “Benning’s War” scared me when I began it in 1996.

*sigh*

Yeah, I know I will, too. But I don’t wanna!

Why is it that I can see the story I wish to tell, in my mind, yet I cannot seem to be able to sit my arse down and write it? I know that what I thought was my tale has grown in leaps and bounds. It is now a very large story.

At first I had a nice, easily-handled tale – a story of two individuals, perhaps three – who are in conflict with one another, although one of those individuals only realizes said conflict a ways into the story. But, as so often happens, on some reflection, and dissatisfaction with the direction of the tale, I realized that it was but a portion of the tale. There seemed to be much more to be told.

Am I unwilling to go through with it? Am I afraid of writing a huge novel?

My first novel, “Benning’s War” – soon to be available at LULU.com as well as ePress – did the same bloody annoying thing! Now I ask you: do any of you go through the same thing? Look, I had a perfectly decent little article on an incident in the American Revolution. That’s all I had in mind. Nothing more! And is that what I had at the end?

NooOOOOoooo! Of course not! Why not?

If I recall … as I read the article, my mind’s eye (yes, we have that! A Cinema in our brains that shows us things.) summoned up images and dialogue. Now, there was not one word of dialogue in the article, yet I was hearing it in my mind! Well, poop!

So, I figured, “Why not write that down?” After all, a short story can earn a little money, just as an article can. And I worked at that short story. Put a lot of sweat and writer’s cramp into it. And when it was finished, the Mind’s Eye was still showing me “Coming Attractions”. I could re-read that short, and say to myself, “This is pretty good, Old Boy.” But I knew I wasn’t finished. And I hated that!

Damn it! Look, this was beginning to cut into my lazy, leasure time. I don’t want to write any stinkin’ novel! (“We don’ need no stinkin’ batches!” – name that motion picture!) My dreams are dead and buried! Finished! I had urges to write when I was far younger, but life goes on, y’know? And I left that behind, before my acting dreams died, before my Art dreams died. Dead and gone!

By Golly, I was not gonna stir up an old dream. I’m not interested. Who needs to be rejected again? To hell with that! I am my own man, and in no mood to listen further.

Hmmph!

So, of course I sat down and started writing. When I had done much of the story, and done quite a bit of research, too, I decided I wanted to see it. The ground. I wanted to be at the Waxhaws, climb the sides of Kings Mountain. See the Watauga River at Sycamore Shoals. Feel the weather in South Carolina in May. So I went.

Took my brother along – no Lady at the time, and who wants to do these things alone, eh? Well, I didn’t! And Tim made a fine companion – and we met in Charlotte, rented a car, and drove up to Boone, North Carolina. We did a lot of driving! Up and down! North, through the mountains, and into Tennessee. On to Elizabethton, the present-day site of the Watauga Settlements, and Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River. Then down to Kings Mountain, and a hot climb up to the top and back down. We rented a motel room, then rose the next day to drive down to the Waxhaws, the place where so many brave men died. The place that started all of this folderol.

Good Lord! It’s almost not there! Sad, haunted place. A turnaround by the side of the road, information on the Park Service sign incorrect. A quiet place where brave men died, many years ago. And it looked surprisingly as I envisioned it! Only, in reverse! Where I had seen the Virginians on the east of the Waxhaws road – in my mind’s eye – with the British Legion charging down the rise from the west, it was, in fact, the exact opposite. I think if it had been as I foresaw it, I might have tossed the entire book! It would have been far too spooky a happening.

But the trip inspired me to do some revisions, make some changes. And also, almost from the start of the writing, I had co-workers and friends who agreed to read snippets, and chapters as I finished them, and give me thier honest opinions. They were very helpful. And very tough! Finally, the manuscript finished, my family pleased with the result, I sent it to a small publisher here in Florida.

I figured a publisher where I live might be more inclined to publish me. Wrong. I received a polite rejection letter. Not a helpful word in the entire thing. Just one of those, “This doesn’t fit our needs at present” letters. ooOOooooh! How stinkin’ helpful! Yeesh!

So, with my very first official rejection in hand, I put away my book. And almost forgot about it.

“Hometown Evening” – 1998 by Thomas Kinkade

Well, Hick, this might or might not be Placerville. But I do like it. It’s odd, seeing paintings of an America that only exists in dreams. Don’t you agree?

Thomas Kinkade has a series – Sweetheart Cottage? – that’s like that. Beautiful setting for each, but only a dream setting. And still, I have to return to gaze at it. For Kinkade, it’s that “Painter of Light” hallmark that puts him in his own class. The illusion of light – candles, lampposts, reflected moonlight, and so on – that is the hallmark of a Kinkade painting is widely imitated. Sometimes those imitations have been quite good. They are, in their way, an homage to Kinkade. But there are a mountain of bad imitations, too. Yet, you can always seem to pick out the Kinkades from the fakes.

“Moonlight Cottage” – 2001 by Thomas Kinkade

Look at the puddle, the reflection within it. Sorry, those of you who find this pedestrian, lower-class, beneath you. This is Art. I love it! Complete with Kinkade’s hallmark – the light!

Yes, Kinkade seems to be doing the Warhol thing in recent years – mass-producing product, dabbing a few bits of paint on an assembly line of canvases to add his ‘touch’ to the copies (copies that are hand-painted, just not by him) before they go on sale. That part seems tawdry at first glance. Commercial as opposed to Artistic.

Well, why not? He isn’t the first! I can’t remember if it was DaVinci or Michelangelo, but one, or maybe all of them did similar things. Using a school of apprentices to do the work under their guidance, the classic painters still garnered the credit, money, and plaudits for the finished product. Kinkade simply is doing what the painters of old did. And doing it very well, indeed!

I think that’s the worst of it, too. To the Elite critics, it’s his success that is his sin. Artists must suffer in their own time, and be incomprehensible to most people to be true artists. Otherwise they are ‘commercial’, simplistic, good only for placemats in diners.

So color me plaid and give me a Big Mac! I don’t care! The Critics are idiots with inflated opinions of themselves. Piss on ‘em!

I’m just sayin’. LOL

Yeah, I know. It looks kinda like something from Field & Stream, but still, it’s pleasant to see, isn’t it?

Now, I need to find something by him from his paintings of Placerville. ‘Hick’ mentioned that, so I’m looking. Click on that picture to head on over to Kinkade Central.

Maxfield Parrish coming, too!

There are so many fine novels out there. So many fine works of non-fiction, too. And it’s quite hard to pick a favorite. But I know that many of you tend to keep your books, regardless of whether or not they were good or bad.

I keep way too many books, that’s true. But I like to know that my favorites are where I can find them. As well, I like to buy copies of my favorites as gifts for friends and loved ones.

I just finished re-reading one of my all-time favorites: “Something Wicked This Way Comes” by Ray Bradbury. Love this book. It still manages to give me chills. Here’s what one synopsis said about it:

“A classic fantasy novel about a mysterious carnival that arrives in an Illinois town and begins to damage the lives of its inhabitants. Two boys are the only ones who realize what is happening and it is up to them to fight a growing evil that destroys all it touches.”

Or here’s an Amazon.com reviewer on the book:

“A masterpiece of modern Gothic literature, Something Wicked This Way Comes is the memorable story of two boys, James Nightshade and William Halloway, and the evil that grips their small Midwestern town with the arrival of a “dark carnival” one Autumn midnight. How these two innocents, both age 13, save the souls of the town (as well as their own), makes for compelling reading on timeless themes. What would you do if your secret wishes could be granted by the mysterious ringmaster Mr. Dark? Bradbury excels in revealing the dark side that exists in us all, teaching us ultimately to celebrate the shadows rather than fear them. In many ways, this is a companion piece to his joyful, nostalgia-drenched Dandelion Wine, in which Bradbury presented us with one perfect summer as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old. In Something Wicked This Way Comes, he deftly explores the fearsome delights of one perfectly terrifying, unforgettable autumn. –Stanley Wiater”

Not bad, but this misses the fact that this tale is written so poetically that it almost brings tears to your eyes.

Now, I don’t particularly care for poetry. And modern poems do nothing for me. Somehow the loss of rhymes and a kind of rhythm makes these ‘poems’ seem, to me, to be just short prose. At times they read, to me, like stream of consciousness. Not for me. I don’t really want to read what somebody’s psychiatrist should be reading.

That being said, Bradbury’s prose here goes to a different place. It is not poetry, but reads so much as if it is. It is lyrical, melodious, rhythmic.

Now, whether or not you care for Fantasy, Horror, or Science Fiction – another of Bradbury’s genres – this a novel that must be read. And savored. Read “The Martian Chronicles” , “Dandelion Wine”, or “October Country” for some of the Bradbury flavor.

All I can tell you is that Ray Bradbury makes for some fine reading. He is a Master of Fine Writing. Go to the library, or the book store, or your favorite online book store, and find some Bradbury. You won’t regret it!

Y’know, when my book got to the publisher, they sicced an interviewer on me! LOL

No, actually Parker Owens is a very nice person. She emails her questions, asks you to answer them, and when you’re done she will send it back to you for your final approval. How sweet is that?

And nobody can whine that they didn’t say that! So, Parker Owens interviewed me!

Does that mean I’m a real Writer? An Author? Heheheee!

Read, and I hope you enjoy! I don’t think I came off sounding too odd, did I?

What more needs to be said?

Just this: Find more beautiful Art at CGFA.

Also, you can find beautiful works of Art at The Art Renewal Center.