Category Archives: Nonfiction

April 11, 2025 · 4:20 pm

A week of dodging bullets. Yes, that’s a good thing.

First up, I spent today proofing our income taxes. I spotted several errors and when I crunched all the numbers our bill went from $500 in to maybe $100. Whoot! My brain is shot but all I have to do now is print out the forms and send them in.

Second, it was Plush Dudley’s eye checkup this week. He’s had glaucoma for a year and the pet optometrist told us that’s usually the point at which the drugs stop working. Nope, his eye pressure is still excellent. That’s really good news.

Third, TYG went to a social event last weekend and developed a hacking cough a couple of days later. Then I started to hack and cough. No, that’s not good news but it’s very good news that it’s largely cleared up for both of us. Normally she has a hard time fighting off these things and I’ve had multiple infected throats intensify into laryngitis. Doesn’t seem to be happening.

And last but definitely not least, Wednesday morning my iPhone stopped charging. Bad news, obviously, but when I took it to the Apple Store right after lunch, the young woman at the Genius Bar solved the problem — debris in the charging port — and cleared it out easily. I’m impressed and relieved.

Work was … okay, partly because I had to spend the whole day working on the taxes. I’d thought it would be smoother but I made more errors than I thought, and kept thinking “Oh no, that makes us pay out more” followed by “oh, but this error cancels that one out and then some.” Trust me, not as exciting as it sounds.

I didn’t watch anything for Jekyll and Hyde but did work on the section covering Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde. Reading some of the reviews and analysis of the film, I found it more interesting (not necessarily more entertaining) than my review at the link.

I proofed another dozen or so entries in Savage Adventures including yes, The Mental Wizard. I wound up writing two articles for The Local Reporter, one of which they’re holding for next week. They printed one article on the local Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle and one held over from last week on Carrboro’s commitment to Vision Zero, a program for eliminating pedestrian deaths due to traffic.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop we’re suffering an ongoing problem: our tech/admin person is AWOL (valid personal reasons), the site won’t let us load photos a lot of the time, and the hosting company isn’t answering my emails. In hindsight having one person handle the admin with nobody designated as backup was a mistake but this was always meant to be a fun project so none of us thought about that. TYG, skilled IT pro that she is, would have known better.

Still I managed to get some stuff up: reprinting an old post about the choice between buying old vs. new comics, one on what makes a good antihero and one on Timothy Dalton’s debut as Bond in The Living Daylights (Maryam D’Abo, below, plays the Bond Girl)

And the taxes are done! That’s a load off my mind, as is the smaller tax bill.

Doc Savage cover by James Bama; rights to all images remain with current holders.

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April 9, 2025 · 5:15 am

Hyping Dr. Jekyll’s dungeon of death!

DR. JEKYLL’S DUNGEON OF DEATH (1980) has yet another descendant of Dr. Jekyll (James Mathers) doing evil experiments — though as he points out in the opening narration, unlike his ancestor he’s not fool enough to experiment on himself. Instead he has his brute man assistant, Boris, kidnap people off the streets for testing in his basement.

As he explains at one point, he’s successfully developed a better strain of beef cattle but the bulls are sexless drones who refuse to breed the next generation. He tried adapting his great-grandfather’s formula to unleash their lust, which worked — except that the bulls then killed the cows after mating. He’s been testing on people to see if he can neutralize the aggression — but watching his victims battle in the “dungeon of death,” he’s starting to think creating an army of psycho soldiers would be more lucrative, if he can just refine his control.

This would be a serviceable story, and the fight scenes are good (the producer got actual karate-trained fighters) but too much of the film is creepily misogynistic: Jekyll has his dream girl tied up and drugged for raping (“I want to hear you scream.”) and abuses his mute sister, having already lobotomized her to stop her opposing him. He’s also involved in some elaborate revenge scheme … but we never learn exactly what. Overall, this low-budget entry is not a winner. “Good god, Jekyll, does tragedy follow you everywhere?”

DR. HECKYL AND MR.HYPE (1980) stars Oliver Reed as a deformed podiatrist — think the Fredric March atavistic Mr. Hyde but with Hulk’s skin tone — depressed nobody will ever love him, oblivious that his patients, colleagues and employees are all fond of him. When he takes a friend’s experimental weight loss drug with an eye to drinking enough to kill himself, he discovers, instead, that it’s stripped away the deformities to make him handsome Oliver Reed. Now women are happy to go to bed with him — but at the first hint he’s not their romantic fantasy, he kills them.

This fits into the Nutty Professor subgenre and much like Eddie Murphy’s Professor Klump I feel as if Reed has the same mind in both bodies — I have no trouble believing in his altered behavior as a plausible reaction to his new form. However the movie asserts it’s the drug — he’s become the person he most wants to be, a handsome ladies man, even though it’s the kind of guy he also despises. That’s not a bad idea, I’m not entirely sure it fits here.

All rights to images remain with current holder.

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April 4, 2025 · 4:04 pm

There is no question that spring has sprung

In North Carolina, mother nature lets us know.

This has been an exceptionally pollinated week. Monday I could see clouds of the stuff blowing along the street; despite taking Claritin, I’ve been coping with occasional sneezing, scratchy throat and watery eyes all week. It still doesn’t wipe me out the way the pollen mix back in the Florida Panhandle did.

Pollen aside, it was a good week. The Local Reporter printed my story about musical duo Blue Cactus. At Atomic Junk Shop I discuss the pros and cons of sticking to the status quo when writing fiction. Unfortunately the site is glitching and not posting illustrations when I upload them so my second post couldn’t be posted; our tech person is AWOL and the hosting company hasn’t answered my questions so far.

I wrote another 6,000 words apiece on the next drafts of Impossible Takes a Little Longer and Let No Man Put Asunder. My decision to shift Impossible to the early 1980s is paying off — it’s working much better — though I’ll need to add more period detail.

I worked on rewriting Savage Adventures and watching more films for Jekyll and Hyde. I also worked on a couple of Local Reporter stories that won’t be out until next week. And I got to read part of Jekyll and Hyde to the writing group, the section dealing with Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Strongly positive reaction, though they pointed out that in a couple of spots I was dropping too many movie references without explanation. It’s a common problem and easy to course correct.

TYG’s birthday was this week too. Her birthday wish was to have it free of any responsibilities around the house so I took care of the dogs, including lunchtime drug-dosing while she went off shopping and eating lunch out. For dinner I made her zucchini lasagna, a labor intensive dish that’s one of her favorites. She gave the day thumbs up.

Oh, and I sold one ebook of Questionable Minds and one of 19-Infinity last month. If you’re reading this, thanks for purchasing.

Cover by Kemp Ward.

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February 28, 2025 · 2:45 pm

I’m typing this on my new computer

Because TYG bought me one for my birthday. My seven year old laptop is still going strong but it’ll wear out eventually and who knows what the Felon will have done to the price of computers by then (and by the way, thanks Apple shareholders for refusing to drop DEI efforts). Last Friday we went out to the Apple Store at the mall, hit Barnes and Noble, had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen and came home with a 15″ Macbook Air. Bigger screen than its predecessor, more memory. Here she is receiving all the files from my backup drive.

I have gotten into a bad habit of holding whatever I’m eating or drinking too close to the keyboard. I’m determined to avoid that though it’s harder than you think. I sit on the couch with pets around me most of the time I’m working. That means there’s only a limited number of spaces to put my lap desk and my food or tea mug where they won’t rest on a dog or cat and the pets can’t climb on them or knock the tea over. I’ll make it work!

(Plushie contemplates how yummy a sip of tea might taste).

It’s a particular plus that I now have 18 hours of battery life. I can run a long Zoom meeting, watch a movie or two and not worry about power going out. It gives me more flexibility in where I sit, which is handy.

Now, as to work. Once again Local Reporter took up more hours than planned as I covered Carrboro’s work on a new land-development code and plans to make Baldwin Park playground more accessible.

I also took the car in for its mandatory state inspection. Everything’s good but that took up some time too. I did, however, get a good bit of work done on Jekyll and Hyde — research reading, movie watching, writing the text. And over at Atomic Junk Shop I muse about Star Trek‘s prime directive, dystopia and comics artist Mike Sekowsky’s transition to writer-artist. You can see a sample of his work from one of his Wonder Woman stories here (I blogged about it here a few years back).

Trying to up my contributions to the resistance, I contacted Rep. Valerie Foushee to thank her for voting no on the Republican budget and our Senators, Tillis and Budd, to ask them to oppose it (I’m not holding our breath). For the first time ever I wrote to my state-level representative and senator to urge opposition to various Republican bills. I also resumed writing GOTV postcards for Activate America. Very small steps, I know, but it’s not like I know any big steps I can take.

I hope y’all’s week went well. Let’s all have a fabulous weekend, shall we?

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February 21, 2025 · 4:30 pm

Find me at Ret-Con this weekend!

After two or three years trying, I got accepted at Ret-Con, a Raleigh-Durham specfic con. I have a 1 PM signing on Saturday, plus panels the same day: Comics You Should Read (noon), Does Classic SFF Matter (5pm), Never Have I Ever — Movies (6pm), Mean Streets and Magic Spells (9pm). Sunday at 11 PM we have the Pirate Panel. I might make today’s opening even though I’m not scheduled for anything. Then again, I might stay home so I can help TYG give the dogs their drugs.

TYG’s hand is much improved from last week, which helped the work week go well. It was completely devoted to nonfiction, primarily Jekyll and Hyde. I watched multiple movies, rewrote some parts of the book, did some online reading — mostly regarding the trans aspect of Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde — and read a section to the writing group (thumbs up).

I got two stories in at The Local Reporter, one about Carrboro road projects and an interview (not online yet) with the head of Carrboro’s new library branch.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop, I had an article about DC’s late Silver Age spy team, the Secret Six. I do love the Frank Springer cover I got this image from.

I also wrote about how Batman’s New Look era of the 1960s came to an end, as dramatized on Neil Adams’ cover below.

And that’s pretty much it. Given this week’s snow, I’ll wrap up with an image from the previous snowfall, a sad truck that froze to death alone.

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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January 31, 2025 · 4:30 pm

How could I have failed? My plan was perfect!

Last year I decided to rearrange my schedule so that I cleared out email, did all my blogging and planned my week on Friday, At first it worked great — easier to focus on writing the rest of the week then an intense but productive Friday (intense because I’m tackling multiple small tasks instead of one or two big ones).

This past month, it hasn’t worked so well. And no, not because the cats keep sitting on my lap desk.

I’m not sure what the problem is but I end up having to get out my computer and do some of the blogging (and planning. And email) over the weekend. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. I can’t quite pin down why but I have to change. Starting next week I’ll try getting more of my email done on a daily basis and seeing if that improves Friday results.

This week went well with one disappointment. I spent most of it writing on Jekyll and Hyde: I’d gotten behind in writing about the movies I’ve watched and that’s a mistake. Not only do the details fade (even given that I take notes) but writing my thoughts and assessments helps me see other movies in a different light — in a sense, they’re all in conversation with each other. Now I’m caught up.

I spent Thursday tackling Samantha Collins’ cover suggestions for Southern Discomfort. She sent me several images, not finished products but as possible indicators where to go. I studied them all morning, decided to break for lunch and then wrap it up with a refreshed mind. Plushie, however, had no interest in me refreshing myself and got in my grill all through lunch. I decided I’d work on a couple of minor tasks after lunch before returning to the cover question … and never got back to it. I’ll get it done next week though.

Lucky for Plushie he’s too cute to stay mad at for long.

I did get in a Local Reporter article about a new Carrboro history walking tour. At Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about fictional characters who think their actions are justified and the first clash between the Avengers and the Justice League … in 1969.

All rights to images remain with current holders. Film image from The Nutty Professor; Avengers cover by Sal Buscema.

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January 24, 2025 · 4:19 pm

The cat ate my homework

Monday night, we had a guest on our back deck.

Cute guy (or girl, we could hardly sex them). After eating he scrambled under the tarp on the right, which is where we keep the heated shelter for Snowdrop. It was getting down into the teens that night and TYG, already worried about Snowdrop in the cold, became more worried the opossum might seize the shelter for his own. So when Snowdrop showed later in the evening and came inside for food, we shut the door on him.

It was like Spider-Man trapped by the Spider-Slayer only, you know, not.

Snowdrop has not been pleased with this development. On the other hand, he’s adapted better than we hoped. Outside of pissing on the couch once, he’s been going in the litter box (Dr. Elsey’s brand cat-attracter litter works!). He sleeps, occasionally snuggles with us and doesn’t constantly whine to go out.

On the downside, he does meow loudly a lot. Sometimes to be let out, sometimes for attention, sometimes for food (we’re barely starting to learn which is which). And he does it most in the night, so for the past week, regular as clockwork, I’m jarred out of my sleep at 12:30 AM. This morning I put down food, which satisfied him (I’d put some down before going to bed; it was gone when I got up), but after I returned to bed I’d hear these erratic meows from the living room, strong enough to be heard all the way upstairs. I tried a couple of naps during the night but one or other of the cats made enough noise that it was impossible.

It’s a relief when Snow goes under the coffee table and hides, as he’s quiet there. It’s sweet to have him snuggle next to me, but it’s hard finding a position I can sleep in.

Overall I was too tired to get a good work week in. I even gave up most of Tuesday’s writer’s group zoom meeting — I was worried Snowdrop would attempt to bolt while TYG was wrangling dogs for walkies, so I came down to watch him.

Plus no matter how early I got up, the cats seemed to distract me enough I didn’t get any extra time in. I also got distracted by umpty-zillion little tasks. I set aside Monday to do a bunch of small things — bills to pay, subscriptions to cancel, items to order, paperwork to sort, contractor appointments to make. Wednesday I worked on The Local Reporter, planning to watch the Carrboro town council meeting and write it up, then use the afternoon to watch Jekyll and Hyde movies. Turns out it was a three-hour council meeting so that sucked up a lot more time.

Thursday morning I did something I’ve had on my To-Do list since I upgraded my blog-hosting plan, putting PayPal buttons on my Behold the Book page. WordPress makes it simple but reconfiguring the layout and doing the work still required more time than expected (hopefully I got it all right).

(Figured I’d throw in an extra photo of Plushie for your enjoyment)

In the end, all I got done on my own writing stuff was spending Tuesday working on The Savage Year. Cat or no cats, I’ll have to do better next week.

For reading — well, you could buy some of my books direct from me, couldn’t you? But if not there’s an article on the Carrboro Film Fest and one on that town council meeting. At Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about the debut of Sesame Street —

— my perennial MLK Day topic of “getting out of Egypt” (and what the Silver Surfer has to say about it) and blogging about the new DC Finest’s Legion of Superheroes reprint book filling a gap in my collection.

Hopefully by the time next week starts we’ll have figured out how to keep Snowdrop quieter during the night. Or I’ll have come up with some other workaround. Stay tuned.

Art by Steve Ditko (Spider-Man) and Nicholas Cardy (Legion). All rights to images remain with current holders.

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December 31, 2024 · 5:15 am

2024 takes its final bow

Ever hear of the recency effect? It’s the tendency to make annual evaluations based on recent behavior—”Oh, Cliff has been so helpful this past week, I should give him Exceeds Expectations” rather than the year as a hole. I get it: this has been a good month and a good holiday season so I feel like saying “Hey, this was a great year!”

And certainly it wasn’t a bad year. TYG’s and my policy of having regular dates and doing fun stuff continues to make us a happier couple. Wisp has adjusted to life indoors and both dogs still have a great quality of life. TYG’s in good health, I’m in good health, and we’re currently financially secure. So yay.

However it’s been a lot more effort to care for Plushie since his glaucoma diagnosis back in March. Drops in the morning, early afternoon and evening. Plus more drugs for Trixie for various conditions. We’ve ruled out traveling anywhere together for more than a few hours because TYG doesn’t trust anyone else to administer everything properly (I can’t say she’s wrong). However if that keeps Plushie around and happy for another year or two years, yay again. But it does take more time and energy to get stuff done (on top of dog exercises and other treatments we were already doing).

Now as to writing … I didn’t come even remotely close to my goals for the year. Time for short stories dried up; I’m so close to finishing Oh the Places You’ll Go and yet it didn’t get done. Didn’t complete a second draft of either The Impossible Takes a Little Longer or Let No Man Put Asunder. Didn’t sell anything besides the two stories in The Ceaseless Way.

I meant to finish and publish both Southern Discomfort and Savage Adventures; the former is done but not published, the second still needs work.

I’m not beating myself up over this. Some of my plans were over ambitious. Some of it was starting the Jekyll and Hyde book and having to devote time to that. Some of it was putting in more work than anticipated on The Local Reporter. Which brings in money but isn’t as satisfying as finishing a novel or publishing a short story.

Still, I did finish Southern Discomfort and I think it’s good, as are the two stories in Ceaseless Way. And my reporting. I shall take pride in all of that. And squeezing my work into four days a week with blogging and stuff on the Friday has worked well.

Back tomorrow with plans for 2025.

Cover image by GetCovers based on design by Arden Brooks.

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December 20, 2024 · 4:21 pm

This was the wrong week to visit the post office …

Last weekend was hectic. We hosted the annual Christmas party for the writer’s group so Saturday was cleaning and cooking. Sunday was recovery and more cleaning, and petting Wisp — we had to exile her upstairs for the evening and she got very needy the next day. The dogs, by contrast, thrived on the attention.

Regardless of the work, the party was great fun, as always. Excellent food, too — mine, TYG’s and our guests. We’ve been dining on leftovers most of this week.

(A shot of Wisp checking out the birds on our deck. We have a cat tree by the window now. So far she hasn’t used it).

Unfortunately, mundane tasks took over the week that followed. I had to take a package to the post office Tuesday, for instance, and you can imagine how long that took. I also had to meet with the repair guy who came in to look at our washing machine, which was clanging ominously. It was busted, so I spent part of the next couple of days researching a replacement, which I’ve now ordered. This weekend, TYG’s taking some of our dirty laundry to a friend’s house to wash.

I got one article in The Local Reporter, on disaster-planning for floods, dam failures, wildfires and so on. At Atomic Junkshop I looked at advertising for CBS’ fall of 1969 Saturday morning schedule—

— and at the moment Green Arrow grew a beard, the first step towards becoming the radical firebrand of the early Bronze Age. Nobody made comic-book archery look this cool before Neal Adams.

I got several films watched for Jekyll and Hyde, though two of them turned out to barely qualify for the appendix. But that happens with every movie book I’ve written.

Oh, and my friend Katherine Traylor posted an interview with me about my stories in The Ceaseless Way.

And now the weekend is here, considerably more laid back than last weekend’s. Trust me on this.

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December 13, 2024 · 4:30 pm

Squashed by the squirtles!

Squirtles being those diarrheal dog poops that are more liquid than solid. Monday night, Trixie had one, which TYG and me both up at 1 AM. Tuesday, she had another one. Rest of the time, things were normal.

Wednesday night, the squirtle flood hit. Every 90 minutes. Anticipating the possibility, I’d taken Trixie to join me and Wisp in the spare bedroom so that only one of us would have to wake up (TYG has bosses and customers to answer to, I don’t). I got very little sleep and still got up too late for one of her episodes so I had to clean it up as well. Ugh.

Thursday we took her in to the vet, got her some probiotics and limited her food. Last night she was fine.

Thursday TYG took both dogs upstairs and I spent most of the day asleep. It’s hard for me to take long naps but once in a while, when I’m dead on my feet, I can do it. And this was one of those times.

Oh, and Plushie has decided he wants to eat cat poop out of the litter box which would be bad (clumping litter makes it worse). We have to keep it covered with the entrance to the hood blocked, then remove the cover when Wisp needs it. Pain in the butt, but unless one of us hits on a brilliant solution, it’s necessary.

(As you can see, Plushie’s floof is so thick now I can stick my whole finger into his ruff).

Despite missing a day, Monday-Wednesday were a good work week. I finally finished rewriting Southern Discomfort. I still need a final pass to see if my rewrite introduced spelling errors, typos, dropped words but I won’t be editing otherwise — the book stands as it is (and I think it’s very good). That feels good. Took close to two days to accomplish but they were productive days.

I had an article in The Local Reporter on local GoFundMes. At Atomic Junk Shop I looked at yet another Silver Age reboot of Marvel’s Captain Marvel —

— good and bad stories spotlighting women —

— and reprinting an earlier AJS post about Christmas as a pop-culture black hole.

And my friend and Ceaseless Way collaborator Ada Milenkovic Brown has interviewed me on her blog.

TYG and I also spent a good deal of time playing a video game on a gorgeous digital advent calendar friends of ours gave us as a gift — Tetris with Christmas ornaments, more or less.

The whole calendar’s a treat. I’ll post more pictures down the road.

Despite the squirtles, a good week

Cover for “The Man Who Never Sleeps” by Jack Kirby, Captain Marvel art by Gil Kane, Supergirl art by J. Winslow Mortimer, computer image by Jacquie Lawson. Ceaseless Way cover by GetCovers, based on idea by Arden Brooks. All rights remain with current holders.

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