During the first half of 2001, I worked on developing Maryoku Yummy for American Greetings. It was work-for-hire. AG had already established the fundamentals — cute little characters with a Japanese patina — and I was tasked with contributing to a potential Bible for the Maryokuverse.

Basically AG had the character designs and their names and their basic dispositions. I did not conceive Maryoku Yummy. But, I did a fair amount of enrichment and development. That is, I proposed a fair amount. In the end, they accepted my content, paid me, and... that was that. Maryoku Yummy, while not shelved exactly, was somewhat de-emphasized. 

It wasn't until recently that I learned there had been a Maryoku Yummy cartoon in 2010. I presume that there had been some greeting-card miscellany as well in the preceding years (and perhaps since). I've watched a couple of the episodes. I've seen nothing of my ideas, but even if I did, it wouldn't matter to my career. It was work-for-hire. AG owns what I gave them.

One thing I did notice is that the cartoon seems to revolve around a magical world of wishes. The original conception — again, not mine, but embraced by me — was that Maryoku Yummy would revolve around a magical world of friendship. That was more affecting and fun. "Wishes" seems almost... I don't know, narcissistic and greedy.

In any event.

Part of my work was to write several stories demonstrating my ideas. The hope and expectation, frankly, was that those stories would be in actual Maryoku Yummy books.

I'm pleased with everything I wrote. I treated the stories seriously. They were in my voice with my plots and core ideas. It was exciting work. It seemed a shame to me that it all vanished into the great File Folder of Never Mind.

Two of the stories were sufficiently strong to be recast and exist independently of Maryoku Yummy. But, despite my off-and-on ruminations about doing so, I didn't salvage one until 2017. And then, this week, I salvaged the other.

I've spoken before about my character Pugnacious Footefake, the only survivor of a children's novel that crashed. Over the past three and a half decades I have used Pugnacious to reclaim ill-fated stories that deserved reclamation. I've certainly written original Pugnacious stories, but it's amusing how many are salvage jobs.

For some reason I have been unable to write more than a few stories about Pugnacious. He is a perfect vehicle for silly fantasies and magical ideas. Yet... I have given him only eight misadventures. I think, in some ways, he's just too much from my authorial past.

Anyhow, I finally took him out for another spin in 2007. I reclaimed my Maryoku story "Number Crunching" as the Pugnacious story "Neighborhood Commerce."

Then, two days ago I woke up at four in the morning, feeling rather sick. As I could not get back to sleep, my mind fell to the usual patterns of despair and again I lamented Pugnacious's under-use. Earlier this year I had briefly attempted to give him the life of my Maryoku story "The Friendly Package." Now I resolved to finish the attempt. Even though I'm in the middle of another project, I spent the last two days finishing my Pugnacious story "The Capricious Package."

You can tell by the titles how Maryoku and Pugnacious bear rather different tones! But in the end I have salvaged a really cute story and done a good thing for poor Pugnacious.

If AG has used my two stories, somehow and somewhere, I suppose I am in some sort of legal breach by re-writing them. But hey, they're my stories. I invented what I re-used. There's nothing Maryoku about "Neighborhood Commerce" or "The Capricious Package." They're all Pugnacious now.

P.S. All of my Pugnacious stories, including "The Capricious Package," are available in Sideways of the Earth.

A reviewer of An Uncommon Day at the Lake thought I was making a pun on "day" because the women in the story — Lovely and Happy — have the surname "Day." I was not. It was absolutely reasonable of him to think so; but until he pointed it out, I didn't even realize there could be a pun. 

Likewise, if I died tomorrow and someone checked all the presets on the radio in my car, he would think I had a secret fondness for Beyoncé or some other tripe. But I do not. The presets were there when I acquired the car. They spew at me when I swap out CDs. I have never changed them, because I don't use the radio.

How many assertions are made about authors based on "evidence" that is wholly without relevance or meaning? Many, I am sure.

I finished my story for Cirsova. It is called The Unshrouded Stars. If Alex the editor refuses The Impossible Footprint, I'll still have a backup submission for 2022.

In the draft of my cover letter I mention this backup. Originally I described it as "weird-horror SF." I called it SF because it is set on the International Space Station (even though, in my usual fashion, I am a little unspecific, calling it just "the Station," trying to imply a world just a little to the left of ours).

Thing is, though, there is nothing science fictional in the story. It's not even near-future. It is set on the ISS, which is real. Being in space is very relevant to the story but the setting is no more fanciful than a train or a castle. This story set on a space station contains no science fiction!

That's remarkable to me.

Anyhow, I revised the description to "weird-horror."

Every so often I submit The Giant's Walk to a publisher. Self-publishing has proven pointless. Today I received the most recent rejection. I never really expect acceptance. I know the book is eccentric. Rejection still disappoints me.

The Baron of Nevada and His Branded Broads

Come on. That is a fantastic title. It comes from the cover of a men's magazine from 1962. Now, I suppose that the author was not unaware of the title's absurdity; yet I believe that he was earnest, as well. We have lost something if our only response to such a title is ironic snickering.

I think an excellent project would be to take such titles and write one's own appropriate tales — not in mockery, but seriously. To be sure, most such stories were soft-core pr0n, and that I would not do. But sexy and adventurous... Mmm!

I changed the title of this monthly miscellany to Mermaids & Termites because I like the sound of that and it nicely suggests the miscellaneous mode.

I also re-coded the blog page to present random quotes at the top, instead of solely the heretofore static "If you like your religion..." quote.

Every time I go back into the blog code these days, it is a strange and melancholic task. I once coded for a living. I am able to change things now not because I really remember how, but because I can decipher other code and mimic it as needed. God help me if I ever have to recreate this website. Backups notwithstanding.

I usually turn on subtitles with British TV shows because, let's be frank, they barely speak English in the UK; and I've often wondered if the subtitles provided by Amazon Prime are made by humans. Recently a character said that someone had been doing something "since the ball wall." Eh? It took my brain a moment to ignore the subtitle, review the audio I had just heard, and realize that the character had said "since the Boer War." Though a human might have heard "ball wall," I can't imagine he would have been so utterly smooth-brained to record it that way. Amazon Prime either uses some sort of inadequate AI or has farmed out their subtitling to morons who couldn't care less.

I am unlikely, in the short term, to take up the tale of the branded broads, but having finished The Unshrouded Stars I do need something to work on. Misha Burnett has himself temporarily set aside And Who Shall I Say Is Calling? (our collaboration). I could pick up the baton. I will immediately, if he resumes his interest. In the meantime, though, I think I will start the fifth Hamlin Becker tale. I do have another short in progress — weird-horror again, called Sympathy of Clocks — but that might be better left as a post-Becker activity.

Becker and the sisters Day need another adventure, I think.

Misha Burnett had seven stories that he had stalled on. He offered them as potential "duets" with other authors. I volunteered, read several, and was inspired by one. I sent him my proposal for the plot and resolution, which he liked, and I picked up where he had left off. I added 3.5K words and passed the baton to him. Depending on how it goes, he'll bring us to the ~4/5ths mark and then I'll wrap it up. 

I've never collaborated with another author before. He's pretty easy going, so it's been good so far. And the story is coming together rather nicely.

It's amusing to read his Twitter and see oblique comments about the story we're working on. He's not being explicit about the plot or characters, and he hasn't mentioned the collaboration. I feel like I'm in the know. Ha.

One of the reasons I passed the baton to Mr. Burnett is that I want to concentrate on writing a story for Cirsova 2022. Being an Official Contributor to Cirsova, I got an invitation from Alex the editor (although submissions are open this year anyhow).

I am going to persuade Alex to take The Impossible Footprint. You may recall it's way longer than what he normally publishes, but darn it, I wrote it for Cirsova and it's great.

But if I am unpersuasive, I need a fallback. Hence the break from the duet. Submissions are open the first week of August. So I've got less than two months to write a new story. And I'm a tortoise.

Fortunately Michigan has finally decided winter is over. This week looks to be invigoratingly sunny and warm. I might get things done!

The first six (of seven) seasons of The Venture Bros. are finally available for cheap. I bought them. I had only seen some of seasons four and five, and none of six (or of seven, for that matter).

The show never got bad as seasons four and five proceeded, but it got distasteful. The gays and pederasts and gender-bending became rather too ubiquitous. It was tiresome. The very lowest point was a routine about a "rusty venture." It was disgusting, and not in a funny way. It went on so long I thought I was watching the execrable Family Guy.

And then I got to the sixth season and... I was enjoying it again. I was laughing far more and the story and characters were good! And, not so incidentally, there was a decided decrease in the homo-pederasty. Not an absence of it — but then, it's the 21st century, isn't it? You can't escape the rainbow.

By the way, Rick and Morty is another show that's crossed the line. In many episodes, the fourth season is turn-your-head-away bad. "Oooh, we're edgy and vulgar, watch us edgily vulgarize!" Yeah, I guess I haven't abandoned Rick and Morty, but its nihilism really isn't as fun and clever anymore.

Notably there is more explicitly Christophobic "humor." That's the thing with nihilism: It usually becomes ever more vitriolic and, losing patience with subtlety, bitterly admits it just hates Jesus. Note well that you will never see Rick and Morty mock Mohammed — but that is a hoary and tired observation.

So I was cutting off the stems and leaves of a bunch of carrots and this little guy dropped out. It seems I snuck an extra carrot through the grocery checkout!

Speaking of grocery shopping, my store has been particularly enthusiastic about enforcing Michigan's eternal face-diaper mandate. They literally once threatened me with a burly six-foot stockboy, offering me a choice of putting on the diaper or being booted to the parking lot. I guess one chooses one's battles, but I am definitely one who has submitted.

I just want my carrots, you rotten karens.

Ah, but the mandate has changed slightly. You don't have to wear a diaper if you have been "fully vaccinated." Now, I will never have my genes altered by a politically rushed "vaccine" in order to avoid a bad cold. But, I can pretend to be vaccinated. What a wonderful taste of freedom it was, to shop this past Friday without that dehumanizing diaper. It was nice to breathe, too.

The latest issue of StoryHack is here! And it contains the third Hamlin Becker tale!

Buy it on Amazon (to give the publisher money). Review it on Amazon (to increase its rank). Read my story An Uncommon Day at the Lake and be amazed by my stupendifulacrity. Go, now!

I have an interesting post about peril in fiction (using Stargate SG-1 as an example), but that post is still fermenting. I have an even more inchoate post about the corruption of the tomboy, but as that subject is too directly political I'm hesitant to bring it up at all. Then there's that post about Warhammer 40K that I promised three or four years ago, which is also quite unwritten.

So instead, a few updates.

I sold An Uncommon Day at the Lake to StoryHack. Hurrah! So in 2021, I will have at least two stories published, one in StoryHack and another in Cirsova.

I guess I am now famous. I was checking the Internet Science Fiction Database about some authors and something made me check for my own name. And lo, I'm in ISFDB! To be sure, my author entry was auto-generated from the tables of contents of my home issues of StoryHack and Cirsova. Nevertheless, it's neat to be counted, and counted accurately. Check it out!

By the way, after having resurrected The Santa Mantle, I reviewed my trash pile and determined that, yes, all the rest of the trash is still trash. That is actually reassuring. First, I would not want good works of mine to be lost; second, I would not want to start second-guessing myself as regards my judgments of my works.

To the hordes rushing worriedly to this, my blog, upon my disappearance from Twitter, hear that my intent to disengage from the End of America would not be helped by even a limited use of that hellsite. If you're curious what prompted my break, here are my last three tweets:

I supported Trump as a force against the Uniparty. But now at the end, he accepts the frame of the enemy and calls yesterday's turmoil "heinous" without acknowledging its spirit nor those who DIED protesting a stolen election. Just another Republican after all. Yep. I am done.

Though angered by Trump's failure to distinguish between good MAGA folk and the hooligans, I acknowledge he is a man wronged and besieged. Even as I dismiss him in his final weakness, perhaps I should charitably temper my bitterness. He was often on the side of right.

That said, I am done with him and them all. Trust not in Princes, eh? It's time to take the blankpill and mind only my little life, my work, my God, and my family, and trust that the coming troubles will be endured.

I would just be tucking that blankpill in my cheek — failing, that is, to swallow it - if I maintained my Twitter presence. There are too many political and socio-cultural tweets, and too much temptation to bloviate.

I know I have said, "Don't ever trust that I will maintain my internet teetotalling;" but I think, in this case, that I might. This blog has never been especially political, except insofar as I defend reason and sense and Truth. And I barely update it as it is.

So I'll see you here, now and then; and hopefully, especially, in StoryHack, Cirsova, and other venues.

My works that I think are worth preserving have been identified and preserved in one book or another. The other works are on the scrap heap. My judgments of worth were made over the past decade or so, and I had thought the judgments were done.

Weirdly, though, yesterday I was reminded of a story that I scrapped long ago. I can't quite reconstruct my judgment against it. It was, of course, repeatedly rejected, but that isn't determinative. It may have gotten swept away by my general disillusionment with juvenile fiction. I think I was annoyed by its "dark turn." I just couldn't write anything without a splash of grim, even a children's storybook.

Anyhow, yesterday I re-read it and — heck, it's pretty good. Good enough to work up into a Kindle freebie. So, for a little while (December 22nd through 26th), you can get The Santa Mantle for free at Amazon.

By the way, that is not the original title. The original title was very lame. I came up with "Santa Mantle" yesterday. Pure inspiration.

P.S. Does this mean my scrap heap hides other unjustly discarded works? Not likely. Although, in this listless and boring period of pandemic and political collapse, maybe I'll take some time to double-check...