My Friend the Author: Bob Welbaum
It would be not quite accurate to say I met Bob Welbaum climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. We actually met two weeks before at the Amazing Maasai Marathon in Kenya. Bob is an adventure athlete, a middle school substitute teacher, and first subject in my new My Friend the Author series.
No Limits: What I’ve Learned Traveling the World One Mile at a Time
Bob set out on a quest at the age of 59, returning to running after a decades-long hiatus and ultimately earning a coveted Seven Continents Marathon medal at 74. No Limits follows this adventure and many others along the way in a conversational and informative style that non-runners can also enjoy. I’ll admit that I turned first to the Maasai and Kilimanjaro chapters first, and found my memory tickled by a few details that I’d forgotten.
He also writes fiction that’s suitable for all ages. “The Joy in Forgotten Objects” is a favorite of mine from Stories Short and Strange – short but sweet.
More posts in this series will be coming along presently… I have a lot of talented friends!
The Unboxing!
Just a quick note this morning to share my unboxing video:
Books & art prints are on sale right now right here on Jaycroft, under the “Shop” tab. Autographed books will be available October 1 in the shop and also in person. Remember every book comes with a free downloadable song!
Thirty Years in the Making
It’s a book! I’ve approved the proofs (spoiler alert: they’re awesome) and the first print copies are winging their way to my mailbox in Oro Valley! Lullaby in Red is a visually sumptuous children’s picture book for all ages based on the song of the same name from my first album, Anchored to the Wind. Expanded with new verses and re-recorded at Barrel Cactus Studio in Fountain Hills (yes, a free download of the song is included), this updated story is illustrated by Paige Ozma Ashmore’s fantastical pastels.
After looking at what the authors of other children’s books are doing these days, I chose to go with the 8-1/2” X 11” paperback format as the best option to keep the book affordable while preserving the detail of Paige’s artwork.
Lullaby in Red is available Print-On-Demand through Bookbaby’s online store, and roll out to their international Print-On-Demand partners throughout September-October. Also, we’re going to get some of these bad boys autographed when Paige is out here in Arizona next month, and make those available in my store right here on Jaycroft.
Keep your digit on this blog for updates!
Lost letter office
I saw a meme recently that reminded me of a letter I received long ago, and kept briefly, and discarded. I hadn’t given a thought to it in the decades that have passed between, but like so many memories laid down in the first act of my life it remains crystal clear and detailed, where more recent memories blur into a hum.
Back in the 1980s, when Astronomy was still a print magazine that arrived in the mail each month smelling of glossy paper and ink, there was a section in the back where you could advertise for a pen pal. “Seeking correspondence with others interested in discussing observation of deep sky objects” they would say. I took the leap. “Seeking correspondence with others interested in astronomy and the TV show Star Trek.”
Two months, three elapsed before my ad appeared in print. Instantly a flood of letters from strangers arrived in the Freeman mailbox. Astronomy fans, sci fi fans, young and old from all corners of the US and Canada. The ones whose sole interest was exchanging lists of deep sky objects soon fell off, my telescope being a wimpy refractor. Others became fast friends, corresponding for years on any topic that took our fancy.
And then there was this guy. I don’t recall his name, only that he was in his thirties – not quite ancient in my teenage eyes but old enough to command the wary regard I held adults in at that age. He had once, he told me, been an avid sci fi fan like me. As he grew older he put such foolish things behind him and so, he assured me, would I.
So what was the meme about? Well, it wasn’t so much a meme as a short essay of a few paragraphs, about the tragedy of people who crush the child within in order to become an “adult” in society’s eyes. Do glittery unicorns spark your joy? That’s not very grown-up, is it? Read the stock market report, not the funny pages! Splashing in puddles, playing with clay, building sandcastles? That’s for babies! Stop bursting into song (leave that to the professionals)! Are you still reading that fantasy and sci fi garbage? Grow up!
What could impel my would-be correspondent to put pen to paper (remember, this was before the Internet), seal that letter in an envelope, pay for a stamp, and send it off to a complete stranger? I kept it in a drawer for a while – maybe I felt there was some sincerity behind it – then tossed it.
In the same way I discarded the idea I picked up and briefly entertained from a sex ed book set called Lifecyles that as I started to become a woman I would stop having fantasies where I was the hero and dream of being rescued by a man instead. (To be fair to my parents, who added these slim volumes to the family bookcase in the hope they would spark discussion of an embarrassing topic, I don’t think they delved too deeply into the contents.) It wasn’t my truth.
Every culture has its own signs and ceremonies to distinguish the threshold between childhood and adulthood. Long trousers, debutante balls, throwing out your beloved comic collection; none of these signifiers make a person grown up. Nor does the tedious minutiae of grown-up life in the 21st century that we call adulting, although signing a 30-year mortgage certainly gave me a kick to the truth about my own mortality! The maturity is a much more gnarly and indefinite grab bag that includes delayed gratification, self-love balanced against self-discipline, and the equanimity that accumulates over years of living in the world and becoming less startled by its repetitions. Most importantly, I think, maturity rests on a foundation seeing and regarding others as whole persons.
In other words, stomp them puddles in your unicorn galoshes.
Boy, do I have news for you about Lullaby in Red! Watch this space over the next fortnight!
Refining my technique
Another beginner blacksmithing class at Arizona Metal Arts, another hook!
This time Smith Logan was our instructor. With a smaller class size he was able to give us more personal attention with an emphasis on technique - such as using peening (get your mind out of the gutter) to draw out the material faster and more evenly. The resulting hook is simpler than my first, but more elegant and tapering.
Logan remarked that, with many projects - he was talking about knifemaking IIRC but it seems to me it applied to my humble hook as well - most of the intermediate forms the iron takes as you're shaping it look nothing at all like the final product. In fact, it can look like a complete mess up until the very last steps.
Now that I have a little sample of hands-on experience, I've gone back to my manuscript in progress and started ripping it apart. In the best possible way. I know what's happening in this chapter, but I'm still figuring out how to tell it, and the way to do that is writing. Right now it's a mess of dissociated, conflicting and redundant scenes that I wouldn't want anyone else looking at, but when it's finished, and I've trimmed the bird's beak and filed and brushed and burnished... oh then it will be a thing of beauty.
Fresh Prints (& Posters)!
I’m pleased to present the first advance art prints from Lullaby in Red, pairing my lyrics with Paige’s wonderful artwork. First is a 10” X 10” detail of the cutest bagpipe-playing cicadas. There’s also a 20” X 30” poster that will look familiar if you followed us on the Kickstarter last year. These are printed on demand on really good-quality paper to last a long time.
AND! For the first week both new prints are on sale for 20% off!
Find them in the Lullaby in Red Collection in the Jaycroft online shop.
La Peste
Do you remember, oh, roughly five years ago, all the memes floating around with the exhortation that now was the perfect time to write one’s magnum opus? Last fall the New Yorker somewhat prematurely took a gander at the literature actually produced during the “lockdown” period and declared that y’all are a bunch of slackers.
By way of refutation, here is my short list of recommended COVID-era works worth seeking out:
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021, film) Joel Coen (Director)
Starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand
Visually stunning in black and white, Tragedy’s cinematography reflects the physical and emotional starkness that prevailed during COVID’s second wave, during which most of the production took place. Macbeth and Banquo stalk the moors as a vacant whiteness, from which the witches emerge like a Japanese ink painting, never appearing in the same frame as the actors who apprehend them. Interiors are undressed, the stone walls bare and echoing; the Macbeths preside over banquets where neither food nor plates arrive. (My first inkling that the pandemic was a thing to be taken seriously came when I arrived at my eye surgeon’s office to find it over the weekend stripped of magazines, brochures, coffee machine, any and all amenities that blunt the sharp corners of a clinical space and make it human.) In the film’s final shot, after Malcolm has been crowned and the succession restored, Ross gallops away in an explosion of crows with the boy Fleance, prophesied the founder of a new dynasty of kings. For all the talk of peace, Scotland’s future remains long years of bloody war.
Cavaet: the acting is very much of the Shouty Shakespeare school.
Glass Onion (2022, film) Rian Johnson (Director)
Starring Daniel Craig
While the rest of the world chafes at the strictures of social distancing and lockdown, a group of deliciously awful influencers gather on a billionaire’s private island for a murder mystery game that turns IRL deadly. Like Knives Out, the previous Benoit Blanc episode, Johnson uses traditional whodunnit tropes as a springboard to a more complicated story. There are flashbacks aplenty, POV shifts, and the editing itself becomes an unreliable narrator – or does it? If that sounds like ponderous going, it isn’t. The humor is brilliant, the dialog is fire, and the quantity of celebrity cameos gobsmacking. Johnson seizes the zeitgeist of the summer of our discontent and runs with it right up to the film’s satisfying catharsis. I saw this in the cinema and the atmosphere was electric with shocked laughter. No spoilers here, but – Hindenburg!
The Last Post (2020, podcast) Alice Fraser (Host)
From The Bugle podcast stable
A niche pod definitely worth seeking out. The premise was ambitious from the beginning: a satirical daily newscast from an alternate dimension similar to our own, but slowly and weirdly diverging over the course of a year. Enlivened by Alice Fraser’s signature wordplay, a rotating cast of co-hosts, and a faux advertising section featuring Half a Glass of Water and the latest literary offerings from self-published romance (with a supernatural twist!) author D’Ancey LaGuarde, the serial got off to a bang with news of the Atlantean continent of New New Zealand emerging from the waters east of Old New Zealand. Unfortunately the sinister octopus people bent on world domination found themselves upstaged in March when the pandemic hit simultaneously in both worlds. From that point on it was a scramble for Fraser and crew to keep the weirdness in the alternate dimension one step ahead of the weirdness running rampant in our own. By the end of the year the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and its running mate Wayne “The Rock” Johnson had won the U.S. presidential election, despite the former not being a citizen; Piers Morgan and Boris Johnson had jointly given birth to the Dragon of the Apocalypse, and the sole remnants of humanity were a handful of wealthy podcasters (yes, this universe seriously diverged from ours) ensconced in their bunkers or orbiting high above the Earth’s scorched surface. The Last Post ran daily throughout 2020, with a handful of episodes in 2021 forming a sort of post-apocalyptic coda.
Look also for spin-off “A Passion for Passion,” a delightful book collecting D’Ancey LaGuarde’s increasingly convoluted and unlikely cover blurbs.
Doctor Who: The Flux (2021, TV series) Chris Chibnail (Series writer/producer)
A destructive force of unknown origin sweeps across the Universe in waves. In its wake the bereft and sundered strive to reconnect, while Doctor Who’s baddie species – the Daleks, Sontarans, et al – take advantage of the devastation to expand their own empires. Meanwhile Earth cowers sunless behind a shield wall that eventually fails them. It’s wild that the Season 13 narrative arc was plotted in 2019, well before COVID-19 was a blip on anyone’s radar.
Filmed over 2020-2021, the fingerprints of the pandemic are all over this production. The UK’s strict social distancing rules meant that shooting was single-camera only. Crowds are non-existent, explained away by alien curfews and other plot devices. Actors double up on roles. Two conspirators meet – in the middle of a forest – and speak to each other exactly six feet apart. The sense of a melancholic, depopulated world couldn’t be starker.
What makes The Flux a quintessential pandemic work for me, though, is at the meta level. Chibnail has an unfortunate knack for introducing plots too complex for their runtime and trying to wrap them up in the last two minutes. Originally planned for eight episodes, pandemic funding cut this down to six, further compressing the denouement. When the big red reset button is pushed – as it inevitably is at the end of any Doctor Who doomsday story – it’s not clear what save point we’ve reset to. Has all the damage done by the Flux, the worlds erased, the lives taken, been reversed? Or has the destruction merely stopped, leaving the Doctor and companions to wander a now half-empty universe? Season 14 never answers that question. Dissatisfied, the fans argue amongst themselves what the hell, if anything, just happened. And isn’t that the most COVID thing of all.
New release on Smashwords
New short story on Smashwords!
I had some fun with this one. An historical fantasy - or rather a pre-historical fantasy. What might our earliest ancestors, applying their curiosity and intelligence to the world around them, have made of their dreams, illogical and insubstantial? Would it be foolish to act on them, or would that, in their world, make perfect sense?
There’s something about Doggerland - Europe’s prehistoric “Atlantis”, slowly drowned by sea level rise as the last Ice Age ended - that intrigues and fascinates. I’ve been enjoying the collection of essays in Doggerland: Lost World Under the North Sea edited by Luc Amkreutz & Asaja van der Vaart-Vershoof. Specialists, citizen scientists, and North Sea industrial concerns, working together, reveal new findings every day about the peoples who thrived here in the Mesolithic era. My story is set during a brief warming period the late Paleolithic, from which much less in the form of artifacts survives. But that’s the fun of speculative fiction - it’s speculative, and it’s fiction.
I made a thing!
Forging a hook at Desert Metal Craft
Just spent a rainy Friday evening at the forge at Desert Metal Craft in the heart of Tucson. Instructor Sean took us through the basics of blacksmithing, from square steel to fancy decorative hook in four hours. It’s a lot harder than it looks, and not because of any superhuman strength required. It’s skill and experience that makes the metal go in the direction the smith wants it, and makes it look pliable as putty to the gormless onlooker.
So anyway, I made a thing, and learned some things, including do not touch the hot thing! Can’t wait for my next class!
This is all part of research for the fantasy novel I’m working on. It’s a High Fantasy adventure seen through the eyes of the Commoners, with a splash of Hydropunk, plenty of family drama, dragons (of course) and maybe a capybara or two!
Working title? [smiles mysteriously] The Blacksmith.
Lullaby in Progress: an Update
Strawberry tart, Rhubarb scone, Apples on the hillside grown….
Last week Paige Ozma Ashmore took her beautiful artwork to be photographed at Davin Lavikka’s studio in Mesa - one more step, and a big one, on our road to bringing Lullaby in Red into reality as a book! My current plan is to do a limited print run around September of this year, and also offer it long-term as print-on-demand.
In the meantime, we are looking into making some of Paige’s illustrations available as posters for children’s playrooms, libraries, maybe your bedroom or living room? Watch this space to find out!
For those who have joined us recently, here’s a little promo video we put together last year. Unmute to hear the music!