The Saga of Mr. Chase Bellamy, Agent of the Bureau of Shadows

Journalist, Keeping Body and Soul Together

Missing, A Long Row to Hoe

Pa's Here, Fame and Fortune

Theophanies and Revelations

The 'theophany' during the night in the wilderness on Deacon's Peak; the Raven's Curse from Taken From Life.

Thursday Night Animations

The Challenge: A Grave on Deacon's Peak

 

Our Founder, Mr. Samuel Frobisher

The Deacon Approaches

I’m developing my own terminology to keep track of things. An AI Enhancement starts as one of my original drawings; an AI Embellishment uses an existing photo or artwork by another; an AI Generation is something produced by a composed description in words. Hence a picture can be Enhanced, Embellished, or Generated. There. Let’s try to keep that straight. This, of course, is Generated, so an original original.

Rescue on Deacon's Peak

Friday Fiction: September Script

A GRAVE ON DEACON"S PEAK SCRIPT OUTLINE

A proposed short wordless teaser that shows PA in desperate danger ending with a presumed death.

 

1. New York City, the office of FROBISHER. He explains to MA and BOB the situation with PA, ending with them taking the position of occupying the cabin on Deacon’s Peak.

2. They collect DAISY from MRS. GURTON’s school, where she has been raising a ruckus.

3. Cut to Cumberton, a small town in the mountains, and MR. CULPEPPER’S store, where the family buys supplies. DAISY insists on purchasing the bumblebee JAR.

4. CULPEPPER drives them up the mountain to the cabin. Along the way they pass THUNDER, who is sleeping (after a harsh night).

5. They arrive at the cabin, and CULPEPPER introduces them to the DEACON, who is a corpse in a standing, windowed tomb. CULPEPPER leaves.

6. They spend the day fixing up the cabin then bed down for the night. MA puts the rest of their money in the JAR and entrusts it to Daisy’s keeping.

7. A thunderstorm strikes in the night, damaging the cabin. BOB sees the DEACON looking in at the window during a lightning flash but dismisses it as imagination.

8. The next morning, they find the main staple of their supplies ruined by the leaking roof. MA must go back down to the town to see what can be done.

9. Left on their own, BOB decides to take his SLING out to forage, leaving DAISY to tend the house.

10.        When BOB returns, he finds Captain McALLISTER and his gang looting the house. When DAISY refuses to let go of the JAR, the gang rides off with her into the mountains.

11.        BOB takes PA’s rifle from its hiding place and chases the gang. By the time he catches up, it is night.

12.        BOB challenges McALLISTER to a duel for the release of his sister. The captain cannot refuse, or he will lose face. They assume the positions.

13.        At the crucial moment they turn and fire. BOB cannot see, but DAISY can, a shadowy figure in buckskins rise and fire at McALLISTER from behind BOB. The captain goes down and all is chaos.

14.        BOB drops the heavy rifle and he and DAISY flee. She still has the JAR in her clutches. They stop and rest.

15.        A dark figure approaches them and uncovers a lantern. It is THUNDER. He is wearing buckskins but has no gun. He tells them he is in the woods fleeing the DEACON, which puzzles them. They all move along, with his promise of returning them to the cabin.

16.        They go higher up the mountain. As they rest, THUNDER tells them the story of the DEACON.

17.        Long ago, THUNDER saved the DEACON’s life. The Deacon was a magician who came to America in search of fresh magics. THUNDER, a medicine man and the last of his tribe, taught him much before realizing his evil intent. When a particularly bad spell backfires and starts to kill the DEACON, the evil magician works a curse that will take THUNDER’s life and restore his own. He has only to catch THUNDER, who flees him at night and rests during the day when the corpse must stay in its tomb.

18.        The children are skeptical, but suddenly the DEACON appears over the ridge in all his incandescent rotting glory. They run down into a valley hidden on the other side of the peak.

19.        They stop on the verge of a lake below. THUNDER makes an invocation, then pulls out a canoe hidden in the willows. They begin rowing across.

20.        The water does not stop the DEACON, who begins walking over the lake in pursuit. They cannot paddle very fast as THUNDER is weary from his long flight and the children find it hard to move the heavy canoe.

21.        There is a flash of pearly white and suddenly ONARI, a serpent-like spirit-creature arises from the waters and attacks the DEACON. This was THUNDER’s last desperate plan.

22.        ONARI and the DEACON fight, and it looks like the sorcerer might win. BOB thinks about all the stories PA told him about supernatural aid.

23.        As ONARI sinks into the lake, BOB asks DAISY for a piece of silver money from the JAR. He uses his SLING to shoot it into the DEACON’s forehead. The silver “unknits his undead sinews” and shorts out his power. ONARI arises triumphantly from the lake and snaps him down. THUNDER faints from the breaking of his magical tie to the DEACON, and BOB passes out.

24.        BOB comes to on the other side of the lake. He and DAISY get the nearly comatose THUNDER out of the canoe and try to find their way back home, the girl attempting to ‘sing life back into THUNDER’.

25.        They get lost and find themselves in forbidden territory. Finally, they must sit down and rest beneath what looks like the trunk of an old, blasted tree.

26.        This turns out to be the WOOD-GIANT, who picks them up and carries them the rest of the night to the verge of familiar land near the cabin. He fades away into the morning light.

27.        BOB and DAISY return to find MA is back and has raised a posse to go in search of them. When BOB tells them the (more natural) adventures of the night, the posse scoffs, but investigation proves the episode with the McALLISTER gang. It seems BOB is due a reward.

28.        Meanwhile THUNDER stays under their care while he recovers. One night he just slips away, and he and BOB witness the disintegration of the DEACON’s grave as final proof that his power is broken.

29.        Some days later FROBISHER arrives with the reward money, which DAISY insists must be shared with THUNDER, who she believes really shot the captain.

30.        BOB and Daisy’s quarrel is interrupted by the arrival of PA. It was he wearing the buckskins, come searching for his children, that shot McALLISTER, then was separated in the dark and lost in the mountains. The family is joyfully reunited.

 

--9/1/2021

Notes

In 2021 I considered trying my hand at expandinding my Tales of the Bureau of Shadows 'franchise' by seeking to produce a proposed film script and then flogging that. After the only bit of original work, a Prologue (published here on the Niche) I worked on fleshing out this Outline, which petered out after about Scene 8. Lately I've been haunted with the idea that with the developement of AI generated films (short though they now be) a complete film of AGODP (or any of my other projects) might just be a short jump away. A guy can dream.

Synchronicity?

Last night for maybe the first time in a year I found I could look at my book A Grave on Deacon's Peak again, maybe because it was mentioned so often in the diary entries I've been posting. At the end of Chapter Two, 'Up a Crooked Path,' the Bellamy family and Mr. Culpepper encounter a pod (or rafter) of wild turkeys walking out of the woods next to the Deacon's cabin. Today when I went to take some recycling out to the bin, I saw these four birds strutting across the yard. That white structure is no cabin, of course; it is one of the original ticket booths from Disneyland. My sister bought it. We sometimes, but not often, see wild turkeys in transit, remarkable to me in that we are only a few blocks from the town square. It is an odd coincidence.

 

Up to the Minute: Diary 2019

 

7/9/2019: Up at 5:30 AM. Got up with thoughts about ‘Barek and Dunwolf’ [a new short story] and wrote some notes and a couple of pages. Kris Jerome messaged me and said he had sent for the proofs by expedited means, so they’re coming to him; I asked him to go over what I need to do when I got them. I continue to squirm under inaction: if you’re not going forward, you’re going backward.

At supper, sausage and potatoes and cabbage. When I went in to clean and grab some more cabbage, the sprinkler came off the lemon pepper and dumped almost a half-bottle on my cabbage; luckily, I was able to salvage most of it. This evening saw [The Day the Earth Stood Still], The War of the Worlds, and Forbidden Planet. Finished a little more than 5 pages on B&D, or Shutting the Door [now available here on the Niche in final form], as it’s now titled. Devotions done at about 11:30 PM, so just under the wire.

My communications for the day:

Kris Jerome to me:

K: I did rush shipping so I should have the proofs tomorrow. If they look good, I will forward them the following day!

B: Thank you for keeping me updated - my mind tends to race around about what's going on, otherwise! Please set my mind at rest and remind me exactly what I need to do when I receive them.

K: Just look them over, if it all looks good, we can launch! This is mostly so that you can see what they look like in person before they are available for sale.

B: All right, thanks. The hot weather here in Texas is doing all it can to boil my brains and make me sluggish!

K: I can imagine! I might be sent to Texas for a training for my day job sometime in the next few months. If so, we will have to meet up and celebrate the release of the book!

Me to John:

 My Antsy Pants

Well, how are things going? Are you still on vacation, or is it back to the grind? I'm still squirming, waiting for things to happen; the gears are turning away, but so quietly. But now Kris Jerome messaged me today that he sent off for the proofs by express, and that once he gets them, he will send them on to me. I wonder if I will have to mail them back.

In my writing I seem to have hit a wall in the story that I was working on, but the water of another story (Barek and Dunwolf) has oozed around that wall and is flowing along quite easily of its own accord.

I have been having oodles of dreams, which does tend to happen in the summer, what with the heat and restless nights. In fact, one of my dreams was about receiving the proofs of my book directly from the postman's hand. In another I get to see a young dynamic Mom moving around in a very energetic manner; quite a change from how she has usually appeared in my dreams. And again, for some reason, the coveting of old wooden blocks.

As I don't know what your schedule is like, I almost hesitate to suggest we have that trip to Half Price as soon as possible. Again, not so much for the money, but to get rid of the pile of books out in the open in my room, get rid of clutter, foster at least an illusion of 'progress', and of course have a visit face to face. Saturday would perhaps be best, as the greater chance of not having Kameron attached (delightful as he is). But I can see how the trip might not be feasible just yet.

My ID license expires on my birthday. Can't be done by remote control this time, and I'm going to have to reserve $16 to renew it. Sheesh.

 

He to me: Yep, I'm back to routine, yesterday was the first day back, actually.  This weekend is supposed to be my weekend off, so a Saturday book trip is probably doable - it is one of those coupon weekends, so it may be busy, but we will have coupons, too! I actually dreamed two separate dreams last night wherein in one, Stephen King was hanging out with us in our old "boys room" at home, and in the other, in a slightly fancier version of the same room, none other than an unexpectedly jovial Tolkien was hanging with us! What the …? Very odd... Yen said he was going to call me today to chit chat, but, you guessed it, he never called. Glad to hear some Goldfire [Ortha stories] is impressing itself unto your pen - I get a real kick out of your pure fantasy, and to see the old dudes in action again is just a thrill. We need to get you down for that I.D. sooner rather than later, as they say - I'll let ya know about this weekend and maybe a trip to the DMV as soon as the near future is more concrete - until then - patience, my friend, much good cometh soon!

Me: Somehow it is not surprising to find those two - after all, in the heyday of "the boys’ room" they had a great presence there! I know what you mean about finding a jovial Tolkien 'surprising', even though in real private life he was known to have quite a droll sense of humor and a genial quality. The few times he's turned up in my dreams he's always seemed rather severe, perhaps because he represents a standard which I don't feel I'm living up to. If he is a saint - which some people have suggested pressing for - that might explain his trying to get me to pull my boots up. 

At 11 PM learned that Rip Torn had passed away. Went to bed at 1 AM.

 

7/10/2019: Got up at 6 AM. Prayers, then read the entire book of Hebrews, except the first two chapters, which I read yesterday. Read as a whole, as an address or dissertation, it hangs together so well!

Went in at 9 AM. The chihuahuas (and Kam) seemed so deeply asleep I left them for the time being. Went back a bit after 10 AM and let the dogs out, having to carry Cricket, who seems to have gotten ricketier in proportion to Ginger getting spry after her trim. Turned the AC on at 11 AM. A little more done on B&D [Shutting the Door].

Spent time getting books ready for a trip to HP and wrote a bit. Just at 8 PM, as I was getting ready to go in and clean up, I checked FB and saw Kris Jerome had sent me pictures of the proof copies of my book! I sent them straight off to John on e-mail and Kenny in Messenger, and a little later right on FB. Exhilarating! Rosary at 9:30 PM. Still flying a bit.

 

7/11/2019: Woke up about … um … 6 AM? Wasn’t really thinking about the time because still a little distracted about the book – when was the earliest I could expect the proofs, whether I should start a blog dedicated to it, who would be a good Native American actor to play Thunder (found an actor actually named David Midthunder, who, aged up a bit, looks the part). It’s now just about 8 AM, so after getting dressed, checking FB, e-mail, and so on, ready for devotions.

Kris Jerome, 11:32 AM:  Books are in the mail to you. Should be there Monday. The text needs to be centered on the hardcover a little better, so I will make that adjustment. If everything else looks good to you we can launch!

Told John about the books via e-mail. He at 3:48 PM: “Very exciting, indeed! Yes, the pay is something that needs to be nailed down pretty soon.  Puss that I am, I'd probably wait until the book "drops"- just to avoid some unforeseen queering of the birth. It is easy enough to get a free checking account if you no longer maintain an account somewhere.  Let Art be loosed, that Commerce may quickly follow!” [As it is, not much came of it monetarily.]

At supper, Kam made me swat a wasp that was hanging around the kitchen door. Finished the 7^th page of B&D, so that fulfills my 20 page obligation – in three weeks.

 

7/12/2019: Wake up at 4:40 AM. Restless, so plunge into updating BoS Timeline by going over Diary and noting the progress of AGODP over the past few months. It’s now 9:09 AM, so time for breakfast.

Found out today there is a store in Seguin called “Dragon’s Loot”, put up, I think, in the very place I had wanted to put Babel’s Books and selling basically the same kind of stuff! This might be the place I can ‘consign’ my garage sale fodder. Okay, looked it up, it’s not the store I was thinking of, it’s even closer; in the offices a little way down from the Silver Center.

Wrapped up Nanny’s Bible to send to Kelsey for her birthday. John confirmed he (and Joey) will be here at noon tomorrow to go to HP. Kam came in about 7 PM; Joey and Morgandy are here, but he didn’t want to go swimming with them at first. Eventually I got him out there, and I straightened the back porch.

Went in and baked cupcakes for Kelsey’s birthday at 9 PM; finished at 10:20 PM.

 

7/13/2019: Up at 5:30 AM. Devotions. Calculated that if I lived to June 7, 2020 I will have lived exactly as long as Mom. Spent the morning watching Boston Legal. S&A&K left before 9 AM. At 11 AM I moved the Rotts in, then shifted the enormously heavy bin of books and two Wal-Mart bags of books to the kitchen porch, then waited on the front porch. Saw the mailman a street over and kind of worried that I wouldn’t be here to get the mail. John came and we loaded up. Much good talk and then we got to Half Price. Almost immediately I found 3 DVDs that I wanted, that were on my Amazon Wish List: The Whole Wide World, The House with a Clock in its Walls, and An Awfully Big Adventure. Then I found the translation of The Song of Roland by Dorothy L. Sayers. I found all of this in like the first 20 minutes, then nothing really necessary after that. Found Kameron a German Phrase Book (used the money S&A sent for that). I sat down while John finished his searching, and then my offer came up: $25.80. Among the other things John found was a hardback Burl Ives Songbook, so that finally replaces the one Alan borrowed so long ago. We checked out and went over to Dragon Palace to eat, which I thought was great, but John was a little put-off by its run-down nature. We had a good discussion, in which I tried to encourage him to write, and he talked about philosophy. My fortune cookie: Great things happen when men and mountains meet. (7-13-2019) (Or men and peaks?)

We drove home, and he stopped off to get me $20 for the pages. We came back, I asked him to check the porch for packages (nope), and then once I was out of the car and getting my bin, I couldn’t stop farting (human, all too human) and we parted in a cloud of gas (not uncheerfully). I hustled inside to poop and peep and let the dogs out and feed the chihuahuas. When I finished all that business, I came back to the Guesthouse to start up the AC and the computer, then went out to check the mail. 

6:21 PM: Opened the mailbox and saw the proofs had come early.

I called John immediately and we both groaned over the fact that we could have shared the moment of opening it together. Couldn’t quite make it out (bad connection) but it sounds like he might drop by later to check it out. It’s lying right now, unopened, like an offering before my picture of Christ and my christening candle. I can wait. It is a moment I would like to share with someone. Altogether, a red-letter day.

S&A&K got home just as I was trying to remember the right switch for the outside light. They gave me a leftover corn dog. “I opened [the proofs] with a less than excited Kam - he was more interested, I think, in the new German phrase book we got him! … To see it in print makes it REAL, like it's gotten away from me out into the outside world, like Pinocchio running off from Geppetto.” Kelsey messaged me, thanking me for the Bible. Can’t get my computer port open again, so no movies just yet. Finally killed that yut-dang roach that’s been crawling around.

Started actually reading the book at 10:30 PM and got caught up in it; chortling and squealing as I went along until I looked up at 11:30 PM realizing that the book was a BOOK and seemed to have legs. Noticed, though, when they met Thunder Bob said he had no rocks, and then when they were looking for a sacrifice to Onari, he had some. Change them to nuts? Bed before midnight.

 

7/14/2019: Kelsey’s 24^th birthday. Waking up at 3 AM, I didn’t feel I could go back to sleep, so am puttering around. Considering going back and starting a more systematic reading, but I’ll need to do it when I can read it at one sitting, I think, to get the entire effect. Look up exact pages: page 81 “I reached for my sling and cursed myself when I realized I didn’t have any more stones.”  Page 104 “… the contents of my pockets … two or three rocks …”

Left for church at 7:10 AM; rosary. After service walked [home]. Already pretty hot. Brought up the paper, went to the guest house, turned on the AC and flumped.

Spent much of the day giving AGODP a wide-angle reading, as it were, and an all at once reading, to look for any hiccups or inconsistencies, and found a few: most egregious an entire two pages somehow dropped! Sent notes to Kris Jerome that evening.

John called me at noon to set up a visit tomorrow; Andy came in at the same time to give me bananas.

 

7/15/2019: E-mail to John: “Typical Monday for me so far. Bringing Susan's packages in off the porch - 3 more cookie jars, with only one of them arriving broken this time (you might be surprised how often that happens), doing the wash (at least three trips in and out, and then folding of course), making the broccoli salad (takes about an hour altogether). Cleaning the cat box, getting my trash together, and so on. All the time thinking, thinking, thinking about the book and the consequences of being published, although I had already spent much of Sunday going over the proofs with both a microscopic and wide-angle lens. I append the list of errata I sent Kris Jerome on yesterday evening. 

“Every now and then I burst out with joyful chortling, although I also feel the compulsion to tamp it down and not really "feel good" until it's absolutely a done deal: book published, brisk sales, and the acclaim due to a mortal god. But then, my life has always been good at slapping down any hubris. But it also tends to slap down any well-earned rewards, as well. Ah, me. (Rueful grin.) I get the feeling I'm being watched somehow to see if I get to feelin' uppity.”

John had called me earlier to say he couldn’t make it today, as he was taking care of Alfred. 

Changes To The Script

 

Not Exactly How I Pictured The Deacon

I had promised myself, when this blog had expanded beyond my Autobiographical Inventory of Books, that I would never stoop to merely recounting my dreams, of which I have a lengthy personal log. I have dallied along the boundaries of that resolve before, recording a few story ideas and their origin.  Well, for some reason or other, I feel compelled to completely break my promise and record a dream I just had. Feel free to skip this post if such things annoy you.

Attentive readers of this blog may remember that I had a book published, in rather unimpressive numbers, called A Grave on Deacon’s Peak. Well, in this dream I had sold the rights to an animation studio (cheaply), and my brother and I had gone to see a rough cut of the film. This was my first involvement since the deal had been made, and I completely expected some ‘adaptations’ to occur. Frankly, my only hopes were that more copies of my book would get sold if the movie was a success.

We gathered in a small viewing room with about thirty seats. There were plenty of other people already there, animators and production team and so on. They already seemed a pretty tight team, familiar and comfortable with one another. They all appeared a trifle unsure about who we were, and why we were there. We took our aisle seats on the second row; being on the first row seemed too pushy.

The film started to roll, and I immediately began to see the ‘adaptations’ they had made. Instead of Bob and his family moving to a small mountain cabin out of grim necessity because the father was missing and the family being plagued with various strange phenomena, they had the father inheriting a family mansion in a southern swamp, disappearing under mysterious situations, and the little family having to brave a group of local relatives (many of them living in the mansion) who are trying to squeeze them out with bogus supernatural appearances. Only, one of them turns out to be real. It was more like an episode of Scooby Doo than anything I had written.

Still, I gritted my teeth and thought of the money. I determined that anything positive I could say at the end would be said. For some reason (well, it was a dream) I could see all the decisions and rough draft drawings that had gone into making the film. I was thinking, in effect, of the saying of the Queen in one of the Fractured Fairy Tales, “It’s a beautiful face, but it’s not my face.” The dream ended before the film did.

A little closer, but hair too long, he's not floating, and the nimbus is restricted (it should be whole-body). Not ghastly enough.

A Grave on Deacon's Peak: Prologue

 

OPENING SEQUENCE:

A dark swamp, barely visible. Into the scene comes PA, wading through the dark shallow water, carrying a dim lamp. He is dressed, most incongruously, in rather fancy 19th Century clothing, now soiled and somewhat ripped. He stops his slogging and leans against a tree, listening. Many different swamp noises. He proceeds more quietly, looking cautious. One noise begins to stand out: something large is approaching, slowly at first, then faster and more obviously. PA quickens his pace until he is actually fleeing, and the noise is churning behind him. He comes upon a decayed house and tries to enter it, but the door will not open despite his desperate efforts. The unseen thing is suddenly upon him and there is a roar. He turns in fear in a sudden close up of his widening eye. The screen goes black.   There is a pause, and then the title comes up:

 

A GRAVE ON DEACON’S PEAK

 

Music up softly, title down, and then BOB speaks in the darkness:

 

BOB: My name is Bob Bellamy, and in the year 1803, when I was twelve years old, I had the most peculiar adventure you ever heard of. This is how it began.

 

FADE IN to a distant shot of New York City in 1803, that draws in until we are in FROBISHER’S office.

A while back I considered trying to write a film script, adapting my book A Grave on Deacon's Peak. I wanted to start it off, well, short and spicy, showing something never described in the book, though hinted at: the peril of Bob's father and a tease of his possible fate. It would set up the dilemma that starts the story in a more cinematic, dramatic way than the book does. I continued the adaptation for a while before it stalled at the morning after the mountain thunderstorm.

A TRUE AND CANDID HISTORY OF THE BUREAU OF SHADOWS

It all really began twice; that is to say, the two separate strands that intertwined to become the concept of The Bureau of Shadows began at very different times, in very different ways. The first strand began as a dream that I had sometime before 2000; I have no more precise date than that for it, though possibly two or three years before. I jotted down the details, about two pioneer boys who went on a wild folktale adventure, on some yellow legal pad paper and showed it around; the general consensus was that, yes, it would make a good story. And there it stood for many years.

     The second strand showed signs of life around 2006, when I began what was projected to be an entire book on the adventures of Martin Blake, a high school student seeking to enter the government Paraskills Program. I had finished the first chapter, printed it out, and started on the next when my computer crashed, obliterating many files. That made me abandon the project in despair.

     In seeking for a new project, I revived the idea of the first strand, which I had dubbed 'The American Fantasy.' I wrote a first chapter, and my older brother Mike joined me as coach and advisor. Before we could get very far, however, he passed away and I again became bogged down in gloom and inertia. And there it stood for some time.

     In the meanwhile, a third project started stirring sluggishly in my head. It was to gather together several already existing stories, write some new ones, and unite them under the rubric of 'Tales of Gothenberg,' using the little fictional Texas town I had created for Blake. It also got no farther than the planning stage, a wistful dream while I struggled with job and daily life.

     Then, in 2015, I had my TIA, or mini-stroke. That removed me from the job and daily life, but not from the struggle. In the enforced idleness and deepening poverty, I turned to transcribing my old diaries, poetry, and hand-written stories into computer files. This brought many old ideas back to the surface.

     At the very bottom of my penury, my brother John came to my rescue. He would pay me $20 every two weeks for every chapter of 'The American Fantasy' I finished. This was enough to tide me over some very lean times. I went to work with all the eagerness of a donkey going after a carrot on a stick.

     'The American Fantasy' (or "Unsettling Tales", or “A Grave on Deacon’s Peak” as I later re-titled it) brought me two things: the character of Samuel Frobisher, and the idea that the father's disappearance in the story was due to the fact that he worked for the Department of Extranatural Affairs. Before I had even finished "Unsettling Tales" the first new short story of the Bureau was written, and its growing mythos had begun.

     The Bureau of Shadows has attracted to itself much of my old work, and my attention. It had absorbed Gothenberg, as well as Blake, and kept shooting out new branches. How long could this go on? I wanted to see.

     Story after story followed, and then began to slow down as my natural dithering proclivity asserted itself. I was depressed, perhaps, after the high of actually completing a project, but getting no further in publishing it. I became distracted with my niece's wedding and by beginning to transcribe John's work on 'Goldfire;' I actually started writing new stories about that old high school era effort.

     I was kicked back into gear by another, less severe, but still frightening TIA in May of 2018. Within a month I completed two old stories I had been dallying over and wrote two new stories in the span of a week. Now I have gathered together a list of notes on story ideas jotted down at random and garnered from dreams. My plan is to try to write one of these stories a week.

[And then, of course, my book was published by Dark Tidings Press.]