IT'S UP TO YOU

I haven't written a post for my blog this week. My brain has been occupied to the point of overdose with the two national conventions we've witnessed over the past two weeks. We Americans have been given an important choice, as happens every four years.

This election year the choice is more important than it has ever been before in my lifetime. Whom do you favor?

or

For some the choice is complicated, a dilemma, a  choice between two undesirable candidates. I understand. Neither of the above candidates was my first choice to begin with. But now that the field has been limited to these two, I have no trouble with the dilemma.

No matter how you feel about Hillary Clinton (I happen to like her), I urge you to cast vote to prevent Donald Trump from setting one foot in the White House. Vote for Hillary Clinton, and urge all the undecided voters you know to do likewise. Do this for the sake of our children world-wide, for generations to come.

THE ARTIE SHAW BUSINESS

THE JOY OF STORY

John M. Daniel’s Blog

July 23, 2016

THE ARTIE SHAW BUSINESS

Note: The following article first appeared in Black Lamb. It’s rather long, but I hope it will hold your interest.

I got a phone call at the office in the late eighties, and the voice on the other end said, “Mr. Daniel? Please hold for Artie Shaw.” I got to know that voice well over the years, the voice of poor Larry Rose, who had the dubious honor of being personal assistant to the world’s greatest windbag, because Artie Shaw made a point of never doing his own dialing. But the voice I got to know much better was that of the great man himself, because Artie Shaw made a point of never stopping once he started talking. “Please hold for Artie Shaw” meant: look at your watch and write off the rest of the morning or afternoon. Like many an autodidact, Artie knew everything and wanted to say it all.

The first call concerned my letter asking him to write a blurb for a book we were publishing, E. S. Goldman’s Big Chocolate Cookies, a brilliant novel, one of whose themes was jazz. Artie agreed to read the galleys and a week later he gave us a gracious blurb, for which we were grateful. He clearly had read the novel and liked it. (Over the years we learned that he read constantly, although as far as we knew he never paid for a book. He asked for free copies of many of our publications, and for free copies of each of my books as it was published, and he paid for each of them in the currency of a long critique delivered over the phone.)

It wasn’t long before we discovered the real reason Artie agreed to do that blurb. Turns out Artie, who quit playing the clarinet in 1954 after being arguably the best in the business, in history, had been spending the rest of his life writing fiction. He told me on the phone that he was in the midst of writing a huge (circa 300,000 words) autobiographical novel called Side Man. I congratulated him but reminded him we were a tiny press with little money and small-scale distribution. Then he said, “Well, I’ve also written some short stories.” At that my ears perked up, and I agreed to look at a manuscript. So within a week Artie Shaw showed up at our office in downtown Santa Barbara with a cardboard box full—a big box, and totally full—of short stories. Susan and I took him to lunch (in all the time we knew him, Artie never picked up a tab), and talked about what the book might be.

As a fan of the big band era, I was eager to like the stories, and I liked enough of them to make a fairly slim but good book called The Best of Intentions. They were semi-autobiographical stories about Artie’s various exploits: as a musician, as a U.S. Navy bandleader, as a marksman, as a dairy farmer, as a husband of movie stars, and of course as a writer. I figured Artie Shaw still had enough fans to make the book sell like hotcakes.

Wrong. The book received reasonable reviews, and it was fun to brag about having a household name on our list, but it took us at least ten years to sell two thousand copies. On one occasion, the reconstructed Artie Shaw Band (which he licensed but did not play in or direct) performed at a theater in Santa Barbara. We set up a table outside the theater, and after the sold-out show Artie Shaw stood behind the table to autograph books for his fans. Artie begrudgingly signed autographs on pieces of paper and record albums, but we sold only four books. Luckily Artie didn’t take it personally; it just showed what a bunch of idiots the American public had become and probably always were.

Then he came back to us and offered to let us reprint his giant autobiography called The Trouble With Cinderella, which had been published by Harper, then by DaCapo, and was now out of print. I told him again we were too small a publisher for—

“How much would it cost?” he asked.

So we worked out a deal. Susan and I republished the book under our Fithian Press imprint, which we used for author-subsidized books, and he picked up the tab. Most of the books were delivered to his house in Newbury Park, a San Fernando Valley suburb of Los Angeles, and he, with the help of Larry Rose, sold copies by mail order and eventually through his website. We (Fithian Press) sold a few hundred copies over the years, through our distributor. The book went through two printings.

The more Susan and I got to know Artie, and we got to know him well, the more we liked him: entertaining, witty, bombastic, opinionated, and genuinely fond of us. But the more we got to know him the more he drove us nuts: he was a terrible listener, an egomaniac, and (as I said) bombastic and opinionated, which can get tiresome in a hurry, and he talked on and on. We spent evenings at his house in which he had to be the star of every conversation. He was the best name-dropper I’ve ever known. He had played poker with Samuel Goldwyn, hunted with Hemingway (Artie was a champion marksman), fished with Faulkner, argued about literature and feminism with his good friend Helen Gurley Brown (“she likes my stories, but won’t print them in Cosmopolitan, for some odd reason”), and of course he knew everybody in show business, everybody, and didn’t mind spreading the dirt. Lana Turner, he told us, murdered Johnny Stompanato, because Johnny had threatened to carve up her face, and the only thing Lana had going for her was her good looks. Mel Tormé was a great guy, but he was a violent husband. “Benny Goodman used to go on and on about reeds,” Artie told us. “’Benny, why are you always talking about reeds?’ I asked him. ‘Well, Artie,’ he says, ‘I don’t know about you, but I happen to play the clarinet.’ So I told him, ‘Benny, you play the clarinet. I play music.’” Sinatra? “He was a real prick.” And so on.

We got to know friends of Artie. One by one, such friends (including Aram Saroyan, Gene Lees, and other notables, plus a couple of girlfriends) dropped out, because, as Artie said, “Gene Lees? He went nuts.” “Aram went nuts.” “Midge, she went nuts.” Translation: they couldn’t put up with him any more. I’m sure that, over the course of Artie’s life, Ava went nuts, Lana went nuts, Evelyn went nuts, Kathleen went nuts, Betty went nuts...and these were only some of his wives. His own son, Stephen, went nuts. We never quite went nuts, and when Artie finally died, we still were on good terms with him.

But even if you were one of the ones who went nuts, even if you tired of never getting a word in edgewise, you had to admit he was a fine raconteur. He told me a story about how he was once having trouble with his lead trumpet. (“He wasn’t the best in the business, because I couldn’t afford Harry James, but he was damn good.”) This trumpet player was smoking a lot of reefer and his timing was getting erratic. Artie told him he had to stop. The doper insisted that he played brilliantly when he was high. “So I made a deal with him,” Artie said. “I said, ‘Tonight you stay off that stuff and I’ll smoke some of it myself. If I think it makes me a better musician, then fine, you can keep smoking it. If not, you have to give it up.’ So he agreed, and that night I got high as a kite and he stayed sober. And after we quit that night I told him, ‘Well, I’ve got to admit, that stuff is great! Man, I never played better in my life.’ He shook his head and said, ‘Are you kidding me? Your timing was off, your intonation was terrible, you played too loud…Artie, you stunk up the joint. I’m never smoking that stuff again.’”

Why did Artie give up the clarinet? For one thing, he claimed he could always hear the difference between how well he played and how well he wanted to play, which was perfectly, and not being perfect drove him nuts. Also, he was tired of grinding out the same arrangements of the same songs night after night. “They always had to hear ‘Begin the Beguine’ exactly the same way. That was excruciating.” He didn’t respect or like his fans, and, as he put it, he got tired of being in the “Artie Shaw business.” Tired of the fame, tired of the attention. So tired, in fact, that whenever he had a meal at a restaurant (with somebody else picking up the tab), he would always lead the subject back to the question of why he gave up the big band business, and his voice could be heard louder and louder, until at least twenty people around at neighboring tables would be able to clearly hear him say, “I simply got tired of being in the Artie Shaw business!"

     We received our last call from Larry Rose on New Year’s Eve, 2004. His boss, he told us, had died the day before, at the age of ninety-four. Artie was finally out of the Artie Shaw business, as was Larry, and so were we. We tried to get Artie’s lawyer, the executor of his estate, to let us reprint The Trouble with Cinderella, or at least let us sell whatever copies were left in Artie’s possession when he died, but we never heard back from the lawyer. My guess is the lawyer was glad to be out of the Artie Shaw business, too. Maybe the lawyer went nuts.

     In any case, we have missed Artie Shaw ever since. I even miss the two-hour phone calls. All that remains are a couple of books—the last copies of The Best of Intentions and The Trouble With Cinderella—on our shelves and some records, cassettes, and CDs of the music he had quit playing fifty years before his death. It still sounds as close to perfect as a clarinet can get.

§§§

Calling all published authors—

I feature a guest author the third Saturday (and week following) of each month. If you’re interested in posting an essay on my blog—it’s also a chance to promote a published book—email me directly at jmd@danielpublishing.com.

§§§

Call for submissions: Your 99-Word Stories

The deadline for August’s 99-word story submissions is August 1. The stories will appear on my blog post for August 13, and will stay posted for a week.

note: this 99-word story feature is a game, not a contest. Obey the rules and I’ll include your story. I may edit the story to make it stronger, and it’s understood that you will submit to my editing willingly. That’s an unwritten rule.

Rules for the 99-word story feature are as follows:

1. Your story must be 99 words long, exactly.

2. One story per writer, per month.

3. The story must be a story. That means it needs plot (something or somebody has to change), characters, and conflict.

4. The story must be inspired by the prompt I assign.

5. The deadline: the first of the month. Stories will appear on this blog the second Saturday of the month.

6. I will copy edit the story. The author of the story retains all rights.

7. Email me your story (in the body of your email, or as a Word attachment) to: jmd@danielpublishing.com

THIS MONTH’S PROMPT FOR NEXT MONTH’S 99-WORD STORY: Imagine a special place you like to go, a place that has much meaning for you. Write a story about going to that place, and being surprised to find someone there whom you haven’t seen in a long, long time.

§§§

Thank you for visiting. Please drop by next week.

http://www.danielpublishing.com/jmd/index.html

LOVE, DEATH, AND ADVENTURE

THE JOY OF STORY

John M. Daniel’s Blog

July 16, 2016

Greetings, writers and readers and appreciators of stories. This week I’m happy to feature guest wordsmith James R. Callan, author of several books about the craft of writing, as well as quite a number of mystery and suspense novels. Good ones. He shows us in his essay the quandary faced by amateur sleuths: to leap into the fray or to play it safe and stay home.

First, though I’m going to paraphrase a lesson I learned from one of my early teachers, novelist Herbert Gold. He said that all great stories are about love and death. He went on to say that if anyone contested that statement and wanted to suggest a great story that was not about love and death, he would patiently explain why the story wasn’t great, or why the story was, in fact, about love and death.

Certainly among the stories I’ve read, the ones that matter most to me and the ones I reread for pleasure and wisdom, are about love and death. That all great stories are about love and death does not mean they all are modeled on Romeo and Juliet. Love and death come in many forms, including the love of death and the death of love. Some great stories of love and death are funny, some are angry, some are uppers, some are downers. But if they’re great, they are important.

Writing should be important. It should be about what matters. Since I don’t know a lot about the cosmos, or about politics or economics or science or religion, I write about love and death. Why do I think I know so much about love and death? Because I’m a live, sentient human being, and love and death are basic ingredients of the human condition.

Now let’s move on and read what Jim Callan has to say about amateur sleuths in general, and Crystal Moore in particular.

§§§

THE RELUCTANT HEROINE

James R Callan

Many pieces have been written on the amateur sleuth. Quite often, the amateur is pulled into the case and reluctantly takes it on. In my Crystal Moore Suspense Series, Crystal admits the most dangerous thing she ever did was say “No” to a man who had never heard the word. And in that incident, she was pulled into the situation against her will. But, she had the will to extract herself, even if at a great cost. However, this is not the main thrust of the book. In fact, this is revealed only when she tells her sidekick about the incident two years later.

As unadventurous as Crystal sees herself, in both of the first two books in the series it is Crystal who pushes herself into harm’s way.

For the main plot line of A Ton of Gold, Crystal jumps into the fray. She gets in the middle of things when she believes someone is trying to kill her grandmother, her only remaining family and the woman who raised her.

My latest book is A Silver Medallion, published in June 2016. Here, Crystal decides to undertake a dangerous mission to rescue two young girls from a drug lord in the jungles of Mexico. Everyone tries to talk her out of it. Her grandmother, Eula, “who is tough enough to charge hell with a bucket of water” [description of Eula courtesy of a Caleb Pirtle review], tells her it’s a bad idea. Brandi, Crystal’s street-wise sidekick, says she can tell a dumb idea when she smells one. And Crystal’s boss, a former bull rider, tells her it is too dangerous. Lucita, the mother of the two girls, is not certain she wants Crystal to go, afraid a mistake might mean harm for the children.

Even Crystal is reluctant. Several times, she convinces herself not to go. But her conscience keeps pulling her back. She is plagued with nightmares about the two young girls and their mother, slaves for the rest of their lives. She tries to think of some other approach. But the circumstances eliminate all of them. Finally, she is convinced if she ever wants to sleep again, or have a normal life, she must go and at least try.

Fortunately, she gets hooked up with mysterious Juan Grande. But if she is successful, she will have two ruthless and powerful men, one in Texas and one in Mexico, who now want her dead.

In A Silver Medallion, as with A Ton of Gold, Crystal enters into the dangerous situations willingly, yet fearfully. She has the unusual combination of reluctance and eagerness. It makes for an interesting and engaging character. She is the kind of character that adds to the joy of writing.

John takes pleasure in announcing this late-breaking News!
A SILVER MEDALLION has won First Place in the East Texas Writers Guild Book Awards—in the mystery/thriller category.  They had entries from all over the U.S. and one of the finalists was from England! Bravo, Jim!

After a successful career in mathematics and computer science, receiving grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA, and being listed in Who’s Who in Computer Science and Two Thousand Notable Americans, James R. Callan turned to his first love—writing. He has had four non-fiction books published. He now concentrates on his favorite genre, mystery/suspense. His eleventh book was released in June, 2016.

Website: www.jamesrcallan.com

Blog: www.jamesrcallan.com/blog

Author’s page on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1eeykvG

Buy link for A Silver Medallion on Kindle:          http://amzn.to/1WxoEaF

Buy link for A Silver Medallion paperback:         http://amzn.to/28LIdWs

§§§

Calling all published authors—

I feature a guest author the third Saturday (and week following) of each month. If you’re interested in posting an essay on my blog—it’s also a chance to promote a published book—email me directly at jmd@danielpublishing.com.

§§§

Call for submissions: Your 99-Word Stories

The deadline for August’s 99-word story submissions is August 1. The stories will appear on my blog post for August 13, and will stay posted for a week.

note: this 99-word story feature is a game, not a contest. Obey the rules and I’ll include your story. I may edit the story to make it stronger, and it’s understood that you will submit to my editing willingly. That’s an unwritten rule.

Rules for the 99-word story feature are as follows:

1. Your story must be 99 words long, exactly.

2. One story per writer, per month.

3. The story must be a story. That means it needs plot (something or somebody has to change), characters, and conflict.

4. The story must be inspired by the prompt I assign.

5. The deadline: the first of the month. Stories will appear on this blog the second Saturday of the month.

6. I will copy edit the story. The author of the story retains all rights.

7. Email me your story (in the body of your email, or as a Word attachment) to: jmd@danielpublishing.com

THIS MONTH’S PROMPT FOR NEXT MONTH’S 99-WORD STORY: Imagine a special place you like to go, a place that has much meaning for you. Write a story about going to that place, and being surprised to find someone there whom you haven’t seen in a long, long time.

§§§

Thank you for visiting. Please drop by next week.

  

http://www.danielpublishing.com/jmd/index.html

ANIMAL STORIES

THE JOY OF STORY

John M. Daniel’s Blog

July 9, 2016

CREATION AND EVOLUTION, JUST SO

The Book of Genesis starts with the six-day creation of the entire population of all the animals and plants on earth, including a few that have since gone out of print, like dinosaurs and dodos, and excluding some late-comers like labradoodles and Monsanto potatoes. I very much like the story-telling in Genesis, but I think Genesis may not present an accurate account of how animals came to be the way they are. That theory is debatable, and gee whiz has it ever been debated.

Particularly by fans of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, which posits an entirely different account of how animals of olde turned into the animals they are today. I won’t summarize that book because I haven’t read it. I expect you already know what it says and about how fauna, especially human fauna, were born and raised.

So now I move on to a third book that sets out to explain how creatures on earth came to be the way they are. Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling, is a collection of tales telling how a number of animals (the whale, the camel, the rhinoceros, the leopard, the elephant, the kangaroo, et al.) acquired their most distinguishing characteristics (its throat, its hump, its hide, its spots, its trunk, its long hind legs, et al., respectively). Each story assumes that there was one member of a species who experienced a significant physical change as a result of a traumatic experience. The implication is that all subsequent members of that species have been descendants of the original survivor of that trauma, and therefore possess the acquired characteristic (the whale its throat, the camel its hump, etc.).

Just So Stories has been in print for more than a hundred years. I first heard it read to me seventy years ago, and I’ve read it and reread it maybe a dozen times since. In more recent re-readings, I’ve come to appreciate that the stories aren’t just about how animals acquired their spots, trunks, hides, and so forth; they’re about attitude.

The stubby-nosed young protagonist in “The Elephant’s Child” is repeatedly spanked by his elders—an Ostrich, a Giraffe, a Hippo, and a Baboon—for asking so many questions. One of the questions is “What does the Crocodile have for dinner?” He gets no answer and instead gets thoroughly and painfully spanked instead. But the Elephant’s Child is still dangerously curious, so he goes down to the Limpopo River, where he asks the Crocodile directly what he eats for dinner, and the Crocodile answers by grabbing hold of the Elephant’s Child’s stubby nose and pulling it, stretching it longer and longer. Fortunately a Python comes to the Elephant’s Child’s rescue and pulls in the other direction, until finally the Crocodile gives up, lets go, and swims off down the Limpopo.

As a result of this near-death adventure, all elephants to this day have long, useful trunks. As for the Elephant’s Child, perhaps he learned that being dangerously curious isn’t such a good thing. But he hasn’t forgotten (elephants tend to remember) the corporal punishment he has endured at the hands of his elders, and so when he gets back home he puts his useful new trunk to use spanking the Ostrich, the Giraffe, the Hippo, and the Baboon. “The Elephant’s Child” is also a story of revenge.

According to “The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo,” the Kangaroo once had four short legs. He wants to be somehow more distinctive than he is, so he goes to a god named Nqong in the Australian outback and asks Nqong to make him “different from all other animals…popular and wonderfully run after by five this afternoon.” Nqong, agrees, and promptly sics a Dingo dog on the Kangaroo. Dingo chases Kangaroo all over Australia, all day long. As a result of this all-day ordeal of fear and physical exercise, all kangaroos to this day have long, powerful hind legs, with which they can run from their predators, and they can be justly proud of being different from all other animals.

If you haven’t read Just So Stories recently, give yourself a treat. Kipling’s book may not enlighten you as to how all the animals really developed, but these stories will reward you with their humor, their rhythm, and their wisdom. I particularly recommend “The Cat that Walked by Himself” for its remarkable insight into the inscrutable feline spirit. It’s my favorite of all Kipling’s stories, and if I had read the entire works of Sir Rudyard (which I most certainly have not), I suspect I would still call that story his masterpiece. I won’t summarize it here. I wouldn’t do it justice.

Suspecting that your mind is already made up about the origin of species, I won’t urge you to subscribe to creationism, to evolutionism, or to Kipling’s notions of how this variously populated planet ended up the way it did. Actually, I think the evolving of life on earth hasn’t ended up at all. I believe we’re still in the process of creation and destruction, and perhaps we should stop debating the issue of Genesis vs. Darwin. Perhaps we human beings should worry a lot less about where we came from and a lot more about where we’re going.

Obviously I am fond of animal stories. So, as you’ll see, are the authors of the collection of 99-word stories I am about to show you. So scroll down and enjoy them. And when you’re done, please check out my promotion of an animal story of my own, at the end of this post. 

§§§

ANIMAL LOVERS

a collection of 99-word stories

THE ORDER OF IMPORTANCE

by June Kosier

I was in a restaurant with my husband, teasing him about what I considered his list of priorities. I told him I didn’t mind dropping to second place when our daughter was born, but I did mind dropping to third when we got a dog. I also sometimes felt that he pushed me down the totem pole for bowling. He told me that I definitely ranked higher than bowling.

A woman sitting nearby came to our table and said, “You miserable man, your wife should always come first.” And then left.

After we got over our surprise, we laughed.

•••

CAT ON A PILLOW

by Tom Donovan

“You need to get up!”

“Why?”

“The cat’s hungry, that’s why!”

“It’s your cat, and it’s my day to sleep in.”

“You hate the cat!”

“Not true. It’s the geography.”

“What?”

“I’m not fond of the cat in or on our bed! I like him better on the other side of the closed bedroom door.”

“He likes it here with us!”

“But intimacy is difficult with the cat on our pillow!”

“What do you want from me?”

“A decision: choose either the cat or me on the pillow!”

“I’ll think about it and let you know.”

“You already have!”

•••

HOME IS WHERE THE DOG LIVES

by Cathy Mayrides

He ran in front of a car when he was a puppy. A long scar remained on top of his head, making him look like a piggy bank. Then, he electrocuted himself, jumped out a second story window, got stung by angry bees (he was allergic), and tore his belly on a fence. These were just a few of his seemingly suicidal episodes. Yet, my family was fond of this nut.

No one ever said, “The dog’s got to go.” When we took an animal in, it had a home forever. Through thick, thin, and bizarre, he was ours.

•••

YOU’LL HAVE TO CHOOSE

by Herman Cantor

“Because it’s disgusting, that’s why. I don’t understand what you see in her anyway. She’s ugly, filthy, stupid, doesn’t speak proper English.… Face it, my dear, she’s an animal!”

“I can’t help it, Jane. She and I have been best friends since we were little kids. I love her.”

“Are you sleeping with her?”

“Well—”

“Because if so, we’re finished. She’s probably got VD. So. Do you two do it?”

“Define ‘it.’”

“Don’t touch me! I’m leaving.”

Tarzan and Terk held hands as they watched Jane board the river boat that would take her out of the jungle.

•••

OUR LAST DOG WILL BE OUR LAST DOG

by Carolyn Masters

  “We’re not going to get another dog.” My husband declared this theme repeatedly during the year after our dachshund passed away.

  “We’re only going to hug and socialize the dogs at the rescue adoption event this Saturday,” I replied.

  Shortly after we arrived, a staff member asked Scott to watch Isabelle, a young female dachshund who’d recently had puppies. Isabelle leaped onto his lap and into his heart.

I find the two of them snoozing on Scott’s leather recliner chair. Yes dear, I sighed, I love you. Just don’t forget that you have TWO girls in your life.

•••

ULTIMATUM IN THE EVERGLADES

by Madelyn Lorber

I married him because he was exciting. I’d never be bored. I rationalized his peculiarities away. Admittedly, trips to the Everglades were a thrill—airboat rides on that river of grass; alligators sunning on the banks of canals; eagles, falcons perched atop giant pine.

In a rush of emotion, I whispered, “I love you.”

“I’m glad you do, ’cause.…” With net and lasso he captured one unsuspecting creature and declared, “…this beauty’s coming home with us.”

  It was an endangered panther.

 “Yes,” I said, “I love you, but you’re going to have to choose between me and that animal.”

•••

FURRY FOLIES

by Jerry Giammatteo

Jack approached tentatively with stick in hand to guide the rodent to the cage. Peanut butter and apple slices placed outside the trap as an inducement seemed useless.

Maddeningly, Julie seemed fond of the furry intruder in their attic.

“Don’t hurt him; he’s sorta cute,” she said, much to Jack’s chagrin.

Suddenly the beast ignored Jack’s stick and leapt toward him. He fell through the trap door, down several feet to their bedroom. Jack was dazed.

“You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

Jack fumed. “I love you, but you’re going to have to choose between me and that animal.

•••

REDHEAD RESCUE

by Diane Morelli

Our son moved out, taking his beagle, cockatiel, and ferret with him. My wife and I agreed. “Just the two of us,” I said.

She said, “Heavenly.”

A few evenings later, a ginger tabby stained gray from motor oil came home with me.

“Why was this house cat wandering in the repair shop?” my wife asked. 

“Cheetah lived with Alice, Charlie’s girlfriend. Charlie moved in with them. When he broke out in hives, he told Alice one of them needed to go.”

“Playboy Charlie, with the green eyes and auburn hair?”

“That’s the one.”

“Alice chose the wrong redhead.”

•••

THE CHOICE

by Christine Viscuso

 “Yes, I love you, but you’re going to have to choose between me and that animal.”

 “That’s unfair, Stan.”

 “Dudley drools. He slobbers. I wake up with a soggy pillow.”

 “You also drool.”

 “It’s abnormal to sleep with a St. Bernard, Phyllis. He buries his biscuits under my pillow.”

“Look at that face. He’s so cute.”

“His weekly food bill is off the charts. And the vet bills. I’m thinking of applying for Obamacare.”

 “Just look at that face. He’s cute and he gives unconditional love.”

“It’s him or me, Phyllis.”

 “Take out the garbage when you leave, dear.”

•••

§§§

Calling all published authors—

I feature a guest author the third Saturday (and week following) of each month. If you’re interested in posting an essay on my blog—it’s also a chance to promote a published book—email me directly at jmd@danielpublishing.com.

§§§

Call for submissions: Your 99-Word Stories

The deadline for August’s 99-word story submissions is August 1. The stories will appear on my blog post for August 13, and will stay posted for a week.

note: this 99-word story feature is a game, not a contest. Obey the rules and I’ll include your story. I may edit the story to make it stronger, and it’s understood that you will submit to my editing willingly. That’s an unwritten rule.

Rules for the 99-word story feature are as follows:

1. Your story must be 99 words long, exactly.

2. One story per writer, per month.

3. The story must be a story. That means it needs plot (something or somebody has to change), characters, and conflict.

4. The story must be inspired by the prompt I assign.

5. The deadline: the first of the month. Stories will appear on this blog the second Saturday of the month.

6. I will copy edit the story. The author of the story retains all rights.

7. Email me your story (in the body of your email, or as a Word attachment) to: jmd@danielpublishing.com

THIS MONTH’S PROMPT FOR NEXT MONTH’S 99-WORD STORY: Imagine a special place you like to go, a place that has much meaning for you. Write a story about going to that place, and being surprised to find someone there whom you haven’t seen in a long, long time.

§§§

The Ballad of Toby and Lark

A Cat Fantasy

by John M. Daniel

ISBN 978-1-56474-481-4

Trade paperback original

64 pages • $10.00

For an autographed copy, 

call John at (800) 662-8351

What wouldn’t you do to win the heart of the one you love the most?

Toby is a simple farm boy, and Lark is the gardener he loves. Lark loves a handsome cat, also named Toby. Toby and Toby are much alike. In fact.…

Set in an unnamed preindustrial society, this is the story of a shy young fellow named Toby, who’s in love with his neighbor, a gardener named Lark. Alas, Lark, who’s twice Toby’s age, is wooed and won by Toby’s abusive Uncle Pewter.

Broken-hearted, Toby takes his troubles to Mistress Mangle, a witch in the woods, and she turns him into a proud and handsome cat. In his new fur tuxedo coat, Toby returns to the village and to Lark’s farm, where she takes him in and names him Toby, after the friend who disappeared.

Pewter has no use for cats. He kicks poor Toby out into the midst of winter, and so the cat returns to Mistress Mangle, where, with the help of a flirtatious female cat named Vixen, they plot their revenge. Another metamorphosis, a rollicking party, and a chase in the night, followed by another broken heart.

All works out in the end: Toby (the cat) is reunited with Lark. By that time Lark has taken a new partner, a man named Tom, and Toby comes to love him as well.

The story is told in “informal verse.” The language has the playfulness of a kitten and the dignity of a cat. The book is illustrated throughout with black and white renderings of heroes, heroines and villains, houses and farms, country lanes and wildwoods, and cats, cats, cats.

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