Before, Part 1

Story no. 57. This is an OLD, OLD, OLD story which I wrote back in 2012. I wanted something to illustrate with my new gouache paints, and I still think it has some nice imagery, so I decided to chop it up and post it here in four parts. It is definitely written in the tradition of certain late-90s sort of fantasy, where the main character’s trauma is front and center as their primary personality trait. This is no longer my preferred mode of storytelling, but it’s interesting to read something from eleven years ago and pick up on my developing voice as a writer.

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You’d never guess how deep this damned stream was from the surface, Innas thought. She jammed her bare feet against a rocky outcropping and shoved her body deeper into the crystalline water. It rushed at her legs and torso, trying to yank her around the next stone corner.

Innas frog-kicked desperately, trying to arrow through the current to the stiller depths below. Stream-born pebbles bashed against the sides of her head, and her short hair whipped painfully against her face.

Seventeen years on the dry northern plains, she thought grimly, made a person thoroughly unsuited to fetch whatever seeking-spell-on-a-stick was lodged at the bottom of this frigid mess of water. Blood beat in her head. Her diaphragm snapped angrily against her lungs. Innas grabbed for another jut of pale rock and finally pulled herself below the strongest tunnel of current. She risked a glance up and almost let her air go in a terrified prayer. Thirty feet of water, tightly channeled between two deep-carved stone walls, stretched overhead.

Appendix to the June 2011 Flood Report

Story no. 56. This is another story from 2019. I did the illustration over the past three days in a flurry of procrastinating finishing up my next romance novella, which is apparently the main thing I do these days! This one has got lots of goblins and goats frolicking about and getting into trouble. My thoughts about this story are longer than usual, so I’ve put them at the end.

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When the new river found his couch ravaged by salt, he decided it was time for retribution.

The new river lived in a 1987 Winnebago Chieftain mounted on four aluminum fishing boats, bolted together and reinforced with two-by-fours. It was driven by a complicated and scientifically dubious set of wheels and pulleys that connected the Winnebago’s engine to two large propellers at the back. (An even more questionable process got the Winnebago up and down the new river’s many dams; it stopped working if he thought about it too much.) If he hadn’t been the anthropomorphic personification of a body of water, the flotilla wouldn’t have moved at all. As it was, he spent a lot of time bailing water out of the driver’s seat.

Even before his partial deification, he had spent the larger part of his ambiguously human life in various states of dampness. The canoe he had portaged from the tip of Lake Michigan (though in those days it was called Mishigami) to the Illinois River never lost its fine coating of mold, and the furs he had tried to sell on to skeptical Anglo settlers had always been unfurling green tufts of fungal activity. He found moss in his beard and lichens on his feet, particularly during that bad period when he was hiding out in the headwaters to avoid being called up to fight for the Union.

The primary attraction of the Chieftain, for him, was that it sported a full-length divan. A person who owned a divan was a person who could luxuriate. One could not luxuriate in a railroad car, a tent, or a pile of brush under a tree.

One could also not really relax on a couch that had grown salt crystals the size of bowling balls through the cushions and arms—great, cubic monstrosities that had split the upholstery and liberated chunks of yellow foam, which now floated dazedly in the inch of water sloshing over the floor. His beautiful couch looked like a glassy mountain range.

The new river stood in the door of the Chieftain, hands on hips, glaring at the damage. The old sea had been harassing him now for months. The rotting corpse of a Dunkleosteus had bobbed to the surface in Lake Sakakawea late last November, and he’d had to nearly burn out the engine in the Winnebago to get up there in time to dismember the damn thing into uninteresting lumps of fish meat. He’d heard reports that limestone quarries up and down the river were filling up with salt water. Then, in May, a flood surge had brought a whole colony of trilobites. These had crawled into his boats and sunk the camper to the bottom of the river. Only an unseasonably dry July and a stolen tractor had made it possible for him to get it out again.

But this. This was it. This was a violation. He was done with this bullshit. The old sea had to be dealt with. He’d gotten rid of the old river, and he’d get rid of this too.

Sea Daughter

Story no. 55. I wrote this story early in 2019; started the illustration Tuesday night after sending my next romance novella (!!) to my editor. That project should be coming out mid-March. Togit and her people are, more or less, gigantic space otters. This is a story about not being what your parents expected and not being sure what you expect from yourself; about wanting to do things with your actual body and not just think about and process things through virtual interfaces, and what tradeoffs one or the other ends up demanding.

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When Togitar Yoben-erda (that’s her matronymic) Gabash-lodan (that’s her patronymic, which no one is supposed to use but everyone has definitely been using since she left to go live with her father on the ice) comes over the hill, she is limping. She aims her steps at her mother’s house. She has been aiming at her mother’s house for the past four months of walking and swimming and occasional boating.

The back gate of the low dome where her mother has lived for a century opens onto a shared nature area with trees, large stones, and a stream where residents are strictly forbidden to fish. Togit’s mother is not at the stream, meditating upon the forbidden fish, when Togit limps into sight. But her neighbor, a professor who once signed a committee decision recommending that Togit change her course of study from transubstantial physics to marine biology, has just bowed her head for a drink of water. The sound of unsteady footsteps yanks her face back into the air.

Maybe it is because she is in the habit of noticing her students’ defects that the professor sees immediately why Togit is limping: her back left leg no longer has a foot attached to it. It ends in a stump shortly below her knee. The stump is not bleeding; the wound appears to be healed. Togit is putting all her weight on her remaining three legs and holding her footless leg close to her belly. She is wearing a team-style pack harness with a bag on either side. Her fur has gone clumpy and hoary, a sure sign, the professor thinks fastidiously, of too much sun and poor hygiene.

Togit’s eyes glint as she sweeps her blunt muzzle from side to side, sniffing old smells made lovely and strange again. Even if she pushes her thick tail all the way to one side, she cannot stand on her hind leg for a proper greeting. Instead she balances on her back left leg and her front right leg and raises one claw to her mother’s neighbor.

The professor does not acknowledge her. Her call into the nearby neural networks is almost a screech.

[Honorable Yoben Jamiran-erda! Honorable Yoben! Your daughter is home!]

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Fun Hot Dog Shapes and Other Curses

Story no. 54. It’s been a few years! 2019 was a difficult year for me personally, and about when I was coming out of my yearly winter depression, ALL OF THIS started. I work in retail, so it’s been an intense couple of years for me. I’ve been very fortunate to stay financially stable and basically healthy through most of this, but I didn’t write or illustrate anything in 2020, and 2021 was a slow and careful process of remembering how to create. That fallow period helped ease a lot of the pressure I was putting on myself, and I feel more excited about writing fiction and doing illustrations now than I have for a long time.

I was extremely blocked on the Aunt Thompson story, and I still am not quite sure how it resolves. I’m going to be posting completely unrelated things, and hopefully something shakes loose in my head so I can go back and finish it off.

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“All I want,” said Amelia Jurgenson, beloved star of the viral hit Disaster Kitchen!, the latest video of which had at that very moment three point six million views, “is some normal cheese.”

The employee stared at her, eyebrows immobile. The large fake mustache affixed to their upper lip quivered.

“Normal, tasty cheese,” Amelia went on. “Not exploding cheese. Not cheese that turns into an alligator when I try to grate it over pasta. Not cheese that opens a small interdimensional portal when it melts on top of a macaroni casserole. Normal cheese. Do you have any normal cheese?”

“The cheeses are right behind you, ma’am,” the employee said in a gray voice. “On the cheese shelf. Would you like to pick out a bottle of wine to go with your selection?”

When she filmed the next episode that evening, she set the cheese directly in front of the camera. The crumbly, golden round of curds, networked with thin streaks of blue, did not transform into an animal or summon a demon. (Amelia had chased the six-winged, four-headed, eight-inch-tall creature around the kitchen with a broom for twenty minutes, before finally batting it into the microwave and zapping it on POWER 10 for thirty seconds. She edited out the microwave bit for the final video.) Each creamy hunk she broke off to sprinkle over the rolled tortillas of her “Funchiladas!” recipe tasted like butter and smelled like fresh earth.

The cheese tasted so good, in fact, that she did not notice for several minutes that a dense mat of blue-gray mold coalesced on every surface it had touched. From each initial spot, furry tentacles of fungus crept over the counter and down across the floor. She reached for an oven mitt and found that the drawer pull was . . . fuzzy. She looked around the kitchen. A grizzled pelage covered walls, stove, refrigerator, sink, and her treasured robin’s-egg blue stand mixer.

Amelia Jurgenson, viral cooking star, known for the fact that every one of her videos ended in spectacular, magical failure, stood in her kitchen and screamed.

And then she shoved the rest of the cheese in her mouth and chewed angrily.

The Woes of Aunt Thompson, part eight

Story no. 53. What a perfect delight this section was to write! I thoroughly advise everyone to pick up A.S. Byatt and P.G. Wodehouse when they are feeling under the writing weather.

As before, if you want to catch up on this story, you can read parts one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. The illustration for part six is currently in progress. 

If you’d like to support this project, I have a Patreon! $1/month gets you art process posts; $3/month gets you extra stories and illustrations. There are also links to my Kofi and Paypal on the right-hand side of the page. 

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“I can, of course, leave any time I like,” Mr. Jenkins said primly. “I was just performing a bit of reconnaissance to assess the scope of the problem here.”

“Of course,” Aunt Thompson said sourly.

“Of course,” the human echoed faintly. It was staring at a clay hedgehog with its brow furrowed. The hedgehog was wearing a pink bowtie and a purple vest. “Is there any chance this place is—ah—a outgrowth of a real place? Or maybe an amalgation of real places?”

“Almost definitely,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Why do you ask?”

“I recognize that hedgehog,” the human said. “It’s right at the top of Aunt Lara’s garden. Uncle Klaas kept vanishing it into the cellar until she hid it behind a rhododendron.”

“So what?” Aunt Thompson snapped. “It’s only a shadow.” She picked up the hedgehog and threw it at the ground; it dissolved into a little pile of sand. When we looked back at the shelf, the ceramic hedgehog was back in its former location, but now its eyes were narrowed and it was holding a little clay knife.

“If it’s a shadow, it’s still got a link to the thing casting it,” the human said. “I might be able to set up a gate back to where it’s throwing from. If,” it added, inspecting one hand, “you give me back my book.”

podcast episode #33 is up!

This one does not have a summary of previous episodes, because in fact the last episode was only a week ago! SHOCK! You can listen to it on libsyn or iTunes. As I say to dozens of coffee shop customers throughout the week, enjoy. 

podcast episode #32 is up!

It is, unsurprisingly, the sixth installment of “The Woes of Aunt Thompson.” There is a short summary of what has gone before if you’ve fallen behind! You can listen to it on libsyn here and on iTunes later today. Also I have episode #33 recorded and cleaned up — just have to add the music cues for next Monday!

ENJOY.

The Woes of Aunt Thompson, part seven

Story no. 52. Friends, we have survived the holidays and the shortest day of the year! Let us bounce forward, hopefully not into a brick wall! 

As before, if you want to catch up on this story, you can  read parts one, two, three, four, five, and six.

If you’d like to support this project, I have a Patreon! $1/month gets you art process posts; $3/month gets you extra stories and illustrations. There are also links to my Kofi and Paypal on the right-hand side of the page.

Edited 5/30/2019: If you would like a print of this story’s illustration, you can get it here from my Society6 page. 

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Aunt Thompson climbed out of the hole first. As low as the ceiling had gotten, it was still no easy task for the human to lever itself after her. Gremlins, as I believe I have already conveyed, are not entirely affected by the laws of physics in the way a non-Lathustran might expect them to be, so I had already swarmed up the wall and flung myself through the opening by the time the human’s rather substantial nose poked over the edge.

“Care for a hand?” I asked.

The human grunted and rolled an eyeball filled with malice in my direction as it jerked an elbow over the edge. Apparently its powers did not include levitation (at least not while its small book remained in Aunt Thompson’s possession).

It had just gotten its other elbow planted when Aunt Thompson grew tired of waiting and hooked a hoof into the collar of its robes and hauled it up to stand with us.

We were standing in a sort of library of towering shelves receding in all directions in tight rows. Instead of books the shelves held a variety of ceramic objects—teacups, teapots, round cats with bobbing paws, and little yapping dogs frozen just at the moment before they catch their tails. Light suffused the space, yellow light, red light, cold white light, coming from any number of directions, in spite of there being no windows in evidence.

The Woes of Aunt Thompson, part six

Story no. 51! I had to take a brief hiatus to work on an illustration for Lackington’s issue 18, which should be released sometime this month. I was very excited both about the watercolor I finished and the story which inspired it, so I am very much looking forward to having everyone see it! Besides that, there is also cow art.

As before, if you want to catch up on this story, you can read parts one, two, three, four, and five.

If you’d like to support this project, I have a Patreon! $1/month gets you art process posts; $3/month gets you extra stories and illustrations. There are also links to my Kofi and Paypal on the right-hand side of the page. 

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The magic that rushed forth out of the human as it shouted – from its mouth, sure, but also from its hands, eyes, and curiously, its left ear – formed a thin skin between us and the pressure of the whispering. The onslaught of hostile magic from the voices of the dead sparked and slapped against the barrier, turning it various nauseating colors.

The human took another deep breath and the power of the mummies shoved it back toward us, wrapping the membrane tight against our faces. This seemed like the sort of thing that would be a problem for the human, so I wriggled my way over its shoulder and put my elbow up against the magic near its nose. A bit of pressure, and I was able to make a fist-sized opening; a bit more more peeled the magic away from its lips.

It shouted again, this time a little louder and a little longer, and the bubble expanded. This time when it ran out of air, it threw the little book up in front of its face, sending a shock wave of light out into the room.

The Woes of Aunt Thompson, part five

Story no. 50. That seems momentous, somehow. I’m finally getting a bit of a schedule going in my free mornings, which of course doesn’t mean more regular output here, but it MIGHT mean more regular output here.

You can read parts one, two, three, and four of this story to catch up.

Illustration to follow; I’m still working on the magician for part three.

If you’d like to support this project, I have a Patreon! $1/month gets you art process posts; $3/month gets you extra stories and illustrations. There are also links to my Kofi and Paypal on the right-hand side of the page (emoji arrow here).

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The human eyeballed me, its lips pressed together in an iron line. “I begin to suspect, microscopic magicum,” it said frostily, “that you are not dealing entirely in good faith with me.”

With that, it spun on its heel and strode off toward the blurry house, which was coming into sharper focus by the moment.

I skidded after it, feeling rather indignant. Of course I hadn’t told everything I know about Aunt Thompson—half of what I know is laughable, the other categorically unbelievable, and all the most important bits can’t be voiced in a human tongue—but I’d truly only just thought about Bill at that moment. Nothing against the fellow—solidarity between fellow gremlins and all—but he’s always been a gray smudge of nothing. Aunt Thompson’s pulled him out of her ear before without noticing. Once he got stuck under the cheese grater in Mr. Jenkins’ kitchen for a month, and only the arrival of a large round of cheddar smuggled in from the Blue Earth saved him from oblivion.