Tag Archives: Atomic Junkshop

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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March 28, 2025 · 4:26 pm

Sometimes you have to eat the frog

As y’all may know, “eat the frog” is a time-management axiom: grit your teeth and start the day by doing whatever necessary task you least want to do. Which this week was taxes. And they took more than a morning.

Things are way more complicated this year than in previous go-rounds (hence my choice of the Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko cover right). What I thought was the proceeds of Dad’s life insurance last year was actually a beneficiary account of some sort and the income is taxable. TYG did a lot of investment stuff. There were dividends, there was interest on various accounts, we had a tax credit … it took me a day to work it all out and to enter some of the taxable transactions on the various schedules. And that was more like a day and a half because I had errands to run getting dog meds (I would have combined them into one errand but I didn’t anticipate running out of two separate meds at separate times).

For the record, the totals look good — we’ll pay in a small amount due to my inheritance, but no shell-shock. I still have to go over it a second time early next month to double-check everything’s right. It’s possible correcting errors will work out in my favor — for whatever reason that’s how it’s worked out in the past.

On top of the taxes, we had the house cleaners in on Thursday. This didn’t use to complicate things much — just move around with my laptop out of their way — but having to put Wisp and Snowdrop somewhere they can’t run out while the Strangers In The House are opening doors makes it a lot more complicated and distracting. So a lot of Thursday was a wash.

Another wrinkle: I worked on two stories for The Local Reporter and for various reasons had to spread the work over three separate days. It always expands if it spreads beyond one day. Monday I got in a story about how Carrboro property values — and possibly property taxes — are going up. Wednesday I interviewed Blue Cactus, a Chapel Hill musical duo, though the story probably won’t be out until next week.

I also got progress on the cover for Southern Discomfort. Deciding it was an ounce of shag problem — the only way forward was to sit and think it through — I set aside a chunk of time, thought, and finally have suggestions for Samantha Collins, my cover artist (see her previous work for me above).

Over at Atomic Junk Shop, I blogged about the Losers, the Metal Men and Spider-Man, as seen in that Jim Mooney image above.

And last but not least, my brother Craig’s birthday present for me arrived, as seen below.

Way more fun than taxes.

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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March 21, 2025 · 4:21 pm

Huh, my birthday wasn’t this week’s biggest obstacle to accomplishment

For whatever reason my brain couldn’t pull together any sort of birthday event this year so Tuesday’s birthday was pretty quiet. We went out to lunch at a local Indian place Saturday (very good) as an early event, watched a movie Sunday (Soundtrack to a Coup) but Tuesday I mostly read. Which wasn’t a bad thing: it’s very rare that I get a long, uninterrupted block of time to read in, so I enjoyed it. As I was watching the dogs, I didn’t get to go out any except for my visit to Cheesecake Factory.

Mostly relaxing, but then a whole mess of stuff happened I can’t get into here. Nothing catastrophic but very distracting, and it kept us hopping much of the evening (though I did squeeze in my writer’s group meeting and everyone sung me happy birthday). And dealing with the details kept me busy a lot of yesterday too — not so much I couldn’t have gotten stuff done but distracting enough I didn’t get stuff done.

The result? Well I got a couple of movies watched Monday for Jekyll and Hyde (yes, 200 Motels is one of them) and spent Wednesday writing the text. I’m much more confident about my timetable than I was last month — I should be able to wrap up the movie-watching with plenty of time left to put the book together. Beyond writing analyses of the individual movies, I’m also thinking how to rearrange the material from my original TOC — the more I see, the more I can see new relationships that might make for better chapters.

And that was it. Though I did get a couple of posts up at Atomic Junk Shop, one on comic-book ads from the end of 1969, another on Batman stories from the same period. I love the scene below from “The Brain Pickers” for the young stockbroker’s nerdy insistence the bad guys plan makes poor financial sense.

Art by Bob Brown, in case you were wondering.

On the upside, it looks like Local Reporter is up and running, at least for a little while longer, so I’ll be back to covering city government next week. And getting paid, which never hurts.

I also discussed the cover options for Southern Discomfort with Sam, my cover artist. More on that next week. We’re not there yet but it feels like the book is really going to happen (I mean, it always was but it’s nice to be doing something about it).

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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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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January 17, 2025 · 4:15 pm

Thoughts on Facebook, then my work week

As I mentioned yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg has not only given up fact-checking on FB, he’s loosening the rules on content so that insulting women, gays, trans people will be easier. As someone said (I don’t have the link) it’s not just about kowtowing to FOTUS (Felon of the United States) it’s that right-wingers having their speech unrestricted gets them more engaged, which keeps them on FB rather than popping off to X or Gab.

I’m not leaving, at least not yet. There’s lots of people I stay in touch with on Facebook. For “Oh, my wife said a funny thing” or similar trivia, FB works better than an email newsletter or a txt, and I contact more people. The format works better for me than Bluesky though I’m there too. As with X, the whole threads thing feels very awkward if I have a long post to make. And screw it, Facebook is (practically, though not legally) part of my public space. I’m not letting people push me out if I can help.

As someone said years ago when FB started, we need a social medium like Facebook … just not Facebook. However that’s what we’ve got. So unless Zuckerberg works to make it as toxic as X, I’ll stick. But no clicking on ads of any sort.

Now, my work week. Wait, first here’s a photo of my master bedroom, taken at an odd angle.

This was a good week but not as good as last week. I wound up doing three Local Reporter stories which took up more time than I’d wanted. However one of them’s held over until next week so that means less work (hopefully—it’s a council meeting so it might run long). One of the two that ran this week was about Carrboro’s plans to turn East Weaver into a pedestrian mall. The other covered a discussion of how Carrboro can keep up its support for diversity and equity in the face of national trends against it.

We also had our housekeeping people in Thursday. They do good work (and get tipped accordingly) but having to shift the dogs and Wisp around so they’re out of the way and can’t run out through an open door takes some work. And invariably ends up with me sitting in a room with three pets for half an hour. The cleaners came earlier than usual, which is good, but then again it was disruptive enough I was off my balance the rest of the day.

(Our dogs in the master bedroom when they’re not freaking out about strangers in the house).

Wisely I spent Thursday on mundane matters that didn’t require much creativity or thought. That helped balance things out.

The rest of the week I did some work on Savage Adventures, though various distractions (most notably an overflowing toilet) hindered me from focusing. I watched one movie for Jekyll and Hyde and did some rewriting. However I also did some fiction, returning to both Let No Man Put Asunder and Impossible Takes a Little Longer. I made my word quota for January on each book — it’s rewriting the early chapters which is relatively easy — though I may put more time in, depending how the next two weeks shake out.Impossible was the more interesting and challenging rewrite: I’m trying setting it back in the 1980s. This requires changing a lot of the pop culture references, though it also simplifies some of the alt.history.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at ABC’s Saturday morning lineup from 1969, a bad Wonder Woman story pitting her against three eeeevil lesbians —

— and Roy Thomas on his efforts to shake up Marvel’s Captain Marvel.

Not a stellar week but satisfactory. Art by Mike Sekowsky, all rights to image remain with current holder.

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January 10, 2025 · 4:25 pm

So that’s what a productive week feels like!

Or is it just that after the relatively light holiday schedule, I’m refreshed and energized? Either way it was a good work week.

Monday I got back to work on Savage Adventures. It didn’t go as fast as I wanted but it did go. And yes, I was right to think I needed to at least skim every book and check names of characters. Miswriting Buttons Zortell in The Red Skull as Buttons Zorelli is a small mistake but in a nonfiction book, it’s still an inaccuracy.

Tuesday I watched movies for Jekyll and Hyde: the 1968 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf, the Dick Van Dyke film The Comic and The Purge (I’ll explain those last two later).

Wednesday I got in two articles for The Local Reporter, one on a new development project, one on Carrboro’s new sustainability officer. Over at Atomic Junk Shop, I reposted an article from this site on Lester Dent’s early 1930s crimefighters, and on one of DC’s late-1960s humor strips.

Thursday I worked on the writing side of Jekyll and Hyde. Not stellar output, but like Savage Adventures, progress.

Oh, and Tuesday night I read part of Jekyll and Hyde and part of Savage Adventures to the writing group. I got positive reactions to both, which is good to hear

It’s been freezing cold so once again TYG has been taking Wisp to sleep in the master bedroom. I sleep in the spare bedroom, get up alone and let Snowdrop in. He seems to handle the cold okay — some chilly mornings he’s out there by the crawlspace door, just sitting — but he loves coming in and going to sleep in my lap. A shame he’s not willing to do it if I close the door because sooner or later I have to (like I said, freezing cold). Then he insists on going out. Still he’s using the shelter on the deck with the heated cat shelter at least part of the time. That’s good.

He loves his belly rubs too.

Plushie, as I’ve mentioned, has been much livelier since we trimmed off his mats. This has its downside: he’s way more energy for fussing and barking and typically starts whining for dinner/walk around four PM. I’d been planning to use that time for tidying stuff up, writing letters to politicians and such. I may have to rethink that part of my schedule. Though I did get a couple of letters off this week.

Wednesday I intended to drop in on a book club I managed to attend once last year. Their switching to Wednesday is much easier — no conflict with writer’s group or with Con-Tinual — but instead of entering Boxyard (an outdoor mall where they meet) I typed Boxcar into Google Maps and wound up driving through downtown Durham to a bar/arcade. Nice to know I can still navigate downtown Durham in the dark — it’s a tricky place to drive — but I missed the meeting. Next month!

Hope your social events this weekend go a little better than that one.

Doc Savage cover by James Bama, Ollie strip by Henry Boltinoff. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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January 3, 2025 · 4:30 pm

Free!

TYG was off work this week, which was cool. She’s way more relaxed so I’m more relaxed. Plus, to make up for how much I deal with the dogs when she’s at work, she took them all of Thursday, leaving me to do what I liked (we tried that during her last week-long vacation but then dog vet visits sucked up half the day). Much as I’d have enjoyed wandering through Barnes & Noble or one of our local comic book stores, I decided to make it a writing day. Rather than stick at home, however, I headed out to the Bean Trader, a nearby coffee shop. I sat and worked on rewriting Jekyll and Hyde, ran a couple of errands (we have a dog appointment Saturday morning which is my normal errand time) came home.

It was really fun. Hot chocolate to keep me going (it’s been freezing cold which is perfect chocolate weather), no pets to distract me. It was much more fun than back in Florida when I’d occasionally write at a Starbucks. The difference, I think, is that I had no real reason to be there and this time I did.

In the afternoon I worked up in my room on more Jekyll/Hyde, and then some on The Savage Year. The opening chapters are in better shape than I thought; next week we’ll see how the book-by-book breakdown looks.

And as I mentioned Tuesday, I finished editing Southern Discomfort. I’ll feel better once it’s published but I’m way pleased to have it done. And glad it’s not on my to-do list for this month.

The Local Reporter took a week off so I didn’t have any articles published. I did have two posts up on the Atomic Junk Shop blog. One was about yet another noteworthy issue of Captain Marvel — as I say in the piece, the Silver Age Mar-Vell’s adventures aren’t terribly good but they keep being worth writing about. #18, for example, plants the seed that would eventually turn Carol Danvers into the next Captain Marvel.

I also posted about Marvel’s ongoing efforts to find the next big thing in comics. Spoiler: knocking off Casper the Friendly Ghost was not the answer.

With Wednesday a day off and Tuesday devoted to planning 2025, there wasn’t much time to do anything else. It was a good week though.

Captain Marvel art by Gil Kane; Homer cover by Dan DeCarlo (presumably the same DeCarlo who created Josie and the Pussycats at Archie Comics). Doc Savage cover by Emery Clarke. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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