Watrous & Valmora - author notes

Welcome to the fourth week in the comment contest (see below)*** containing six weeks of entries in an author-note series for Tall Tales Shorter Days.  The fourth story in On Stranger Winds was a personal break from some of the book's darker content. Not that this story isn't scary for the right age group, but unlike more gruesome stories (such as Jitter), "The Pumpkinheart Tales" were written in mind (but not to compare) with the likes of Frank Baum, Roald Dahl, Madeleine L'Engle or Dianna Wynne Jones, which I think are still a great read at any age.

Watrous & Valmora is basically an adventure story following a young girl (costumed as royalty) chaperoning her younger brother, a werewolf, out for trick or treats on the night of Halloween. With its full title - Watrous & Valmora: Further Tales of Pumpkinheart - the story describe a Halloween chain of circumstance after a bit of candy greed starts the engines of unexpected havoc. What ensues involves a magical jewel, a weird scarecrow, a talking cat, a mournful ghost, armies of bats and ravens, as well as other oddities, and not to forget, a terrible witch.

You can actually read the story, in its entirety, here on the Bindlegrim blog. It was published here first during the week of Halloween 2012... see Watrous & Valmora (Part 1). And since the story is here, on the blog, I thought I would rather just offer a few bits of acknowledgement for some of the characters and scenes that appear in the tale.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:. Watrous and Valmora, New Mexico

Watrous & Valmora: In the spring of 2012, while finishing up this story, (during what turned out to be long Colorado / New Mexico road trips), I often passed this sign for two towns that screamed out to me as likely characters names in an Edward Gorey book. And I suppose, you might notice, the characters go un-named at the beginning of the tale, because as yet, they didn't have names. I adopted these town names Watrous and Valmora to the characters, yet I have to admit I still haven't been to these towns. I do hope, out of curiosity, to some day see what is there!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:. New Mexico scarecrow photo by pinconnected

The scarecrow: There is a very odd bogle in this story (part two), that our characters discover during their unintended raid of a night-time pumpkin patch. It's not your average anthropomorphic scarecrow, but instead described as a mix of various materials such as wood and Christmas tinsel, and the entirety moans as it spins about on the wind. The above photo was a huge inspiration on that "character" and is one my favorite scenes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Carbon (right) and work by Kilkennycat

Carbon: And finally a big thank-you for the posting of this adorable photo by artist on flickr Kilkennycat that inspired a few things in part three.  For beginners, I was very taken with this cute cat's name Carbon, which was the name bestowed to a very affable talking cat that helps Valmora on her adventure. That cat in the story lives on a farm owned by none other than the Kilkenny's (as another nod to the artist). Yet this also had me curious about the origin of Kilkenny cats which is  terminology based on an older story from the old world. You can read more about that in this wikipedia article (Kilkenny cat), that in turn inspired a bit of the story where Carbon mentions singing the lyrics of an old song.

Bindlegrim books in need of a new home. PS - Cover art is by David Irvine

Well that's it for now, and next week will feature notes on the next to the last story in the book - another of The Pumpkinheart Tales. In the meantime, thank-you to all who found their way to a copy of the book in either print (on Amazon or Etsy) or the Kindle/iPad e-book version which is available by loan (for a short time) or for purchase. And hope you are having fun during this giveaway...!

*** GIVEAWAY DETAILS ***

1) From Feb 24th to Mar 2nd - leave a blog comment here about whatever you like... about cats, witches, memories of trick-or-treat, recommended reading...

2) For each author-notes blog entries, I will draw randomly at the end of that week to give the commenting visitor a signed printed copy of Tall Tales Shorter Days.

3) At the end of all six blog entries I will draw from ALL comments (more commenting visits, more chances to win) for one Bindlegrim lantern - The Horrid Decor (Orange on Ghost Skin) seen below.

Note - Bindlegrim encourages and hopes, but does not require, that readers might leave a Like or a Review on the Amazon pages for the book: print or e-book.

*** GIVEAWAY DETAILS ***

The Herbivorous Witch - Author Notes

Now that a scattering of Tall Tales / Shorter Days are drifting through the digital ether of Kindles and iPads... (with Nook soon to follow)... and with a continuing thank-you to all who recently grabbed a copy..., I thought I would use the blog to share bits and pieces of author-madness behind the stories, one by one, over the next few weeks, and even answer questions if anyone should venture into the seldom tread footpaths these days of blog comments. (See recent GIVEAWAY DETAILS*** added to the bottom of the blog) and btw 2-9-2012 latest installment is here: Jitter - Author Notes.

The first short story in On Stranger Winds is a wintery tale, titled The Herbivorous Witch. In describing a general mood - I am reminded of the this passage from Wikipedia concerning the Grimms' Fairy Tales: "first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called Children's Tales, they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter."

The Herbivorous Witch is not quite fairy tale, yet perhaps disarming with the seeming innocent telling of such genres. It's like the awesome surprise of a snow-day vacation, yet lurking with the danger of frostbite. I tried to recreate the feeling of those hazy days from youth, when evenings were filled with the fascination of heavy snowfalls, and the following day exhausting with snowmen construction; it's about the popping sounds the heating coils make as you thaw yourself safe and cozy by the heater, hot chocolate in your hands. Funny though how small irritants mar bliss. Especially when reality clashes with a human's inability to understand magical realms. And at that I can say no more... I will leave that to anyone who wishes to discuss further within blog comments...

I can say that the story was born from a curious writing process I created for myself while in Seattle during 2007. Given lack of much disposable income, (well remembered for numerous lunches on boiled eggs and vitamins), I began writing to boost my morale. I would scribble, upon waking or just before bed, a deliberate batch of nonsense. The goal was to avoid any seriousness in content. So the lines began as such... "A lost collection of fruit bats gathered on my skin"... or "there is a leaky ghost on my ceiling"... or "the herbivorous witch lives in the woods"..., (and if your interest is piqued, you can actually find the original verse in an undisclosed entry here on the Bindlegrim blog).

Around this time, various stories were started, and halted, and Jitter (the 2nd story in the book) was mostly completed while residing in the northwest, Seattle. It wasn't until moving to Denver, where I experienced regular snowstorms once again, that the poems coincidentally founds themselves at hand. I was posting past poems to the blog, and wondered if I couldn't turn one into a short story, to be included in what was percolating into a book of shorts. Likely inspired by our cottage habitat bordered by a small bit of woods, The Herbivorous Witch was a natural favorite. Between the poem and the setting, I found the story practically wrote itself.  

Ichabod's Cottage, Colorado where The Herbivorous Witch was written.

Do you have any great techniques for writing? This seemed a great method, whereas I have found some tales cumbersome to the telling, while other simply refuse and opt to be left alone in their own forgotten folder on a laptop.

In closing, I would like to express my experience as an author submitting this story. As I was exploring the adventure of self-publishing from every angle, I was simultaneously submitting the book to various magazines (especially those accepting of possible reprints). While a certain number declined unremarked, I received one wordy review though it was seemingly scathing! This reader described the characters as unlikeable, and yet described them spot-on, as written, with all their intended human foibles... (irritants of bliss as it were). I was told this undermined the story, which I also found humorous, because the reader finished, then felt necessary to "quite frankly" detail the awfulness of it. Contrary to their helpful (?) intent, I was "quite frankly" delighted! This person was not my audience; this person would not appreciate a good story like Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. I like to believe the story shocked that particular reader, and if so, is an absolutely fantastic result! But enough about my fibrillating ego...

After all of this babble and scribble, I would love to hear what YOU thought of the story, or some aspect of it. Or even just your thoughts on writing techniques. Thank you for listening, sharing, and a big thank you to those who have taken time to explore this or other stories in the book.

Bindlegrim books in need of a new home. PS - Cover art is by David Irvine

*** GIVEAWAY DETAILS ***

1) Leave a blog comment here about witches, about writing, stories you like, or better yet about The Herbivorous Witch.

2) For each next six blog entries, I will draw randomly at the end of that week to give someone who commented a signed printed copy of Tall Tales Shorter Days.

3) At the end of the six blog entries I will draw from all comments (more comments, more chances to win) for one  Bindlegrim lantern - The Horrid Decor (Orange on Ghost Skin).

Note - Bindlegrim encourages and hopes, but does not require, that readers might leave a Like or a Review on the Amazon pages for the book: print or e-book.

*** GIVEAWAY DETAILS ***

*** And this weeks book winner! ***

Good evening! And congratulations to tonight's winner of a printed copy of On Stranger Winds: Tall Tales for Shorter Days! (See updated post). A screen shot of each comment was folded to the same size, shaken, and the first one to fall back out of the Trick or Treat canister declared the winner! All entries will be entered in the final drawing for the lantern (shown above), a few weeks from now. Thank you all again!

*** This weeks book winner! ***

A Ghost Story Animatic (2001)

A friend of mine mentioned she was going to be taking an animation class in school next quarter... which had me thinking of my ever so brief foray with a class (way back in 2001, shiver) that was called "animation pipeline"... and in some ways was less about the animation itself, but more about the process of getting an animated work completed. So, in the first quarter, our personal project, was to each come up with a story and go through the processes of creation - story pitch, storyboard, animatic, etc.

This was my story from that quarter, and the animatic I cobbled together with my grease-pencil storyboard sketches, some Poser figures, and a bit of Photoshop - Final Cut processing. It's rough, and was only supposed to be used as an animatic - which means more focus on things like timing... not so much on visual finesse.

In this short animatic, an elderly couple, (an inventor and a records clerk), seek the moonlit graves of forgotten souls. And with the aid of a strange mechanical device and a book of bedtime stories, loss and sadness are replaced with peacefulness.