The story idea: Harry Houdini tries out for an opening on the Ghost Hunters team. He goes on a trial investigation.
It's yours
Why Give It Away: Because I would need to research Houdini more than from the Tony Curtis movie. Also, I just wrote a story where Hercules is hired to be in Ghost Hunters, and I like it enough to work on it so I guess I have released Houdini from servitude.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
It was a grave yard smash
Last month, my son and I were at a library we don't usually go to. Small one, but the children's section had a great deal of recent picture books. George was not interested in these, he found a bin of Scooby Doo picture books and he was hooked but good. Which gave me time to look at the new ones. It was Halloween so I was happy to see all these lovely SPOOOOOKY books. One took my attention, it was a picture book of The Monster Mash. You know. The old silly novelty song. It was new and had lovely illustrations, the illustrator really did a great job. The artist is David Catrow and it really is fun and awesome, if only.....
On looking at it, I realized something was off. The cover and the spine and the title page all said the author of the book was David Catrow. It hit me. What about the guy who wrote the song back in the sixties? Where was his name. So I searched and finally found it in the copyright page in tiny print acknowledging that the song was written by Bobby Pickett. The guy who wrote the words to the picture book only gets credit in the copyright notice. I checked and all the words of the book, and the only words of the book, are the lyrics written by the almost uncredited Bobby Pickett.
And now comes the rant.
I want to believe that David Catrow had nothing to do with this. That his publisher said, people are buying this book for your pictures, you are the author. I hope that an artist who illustrated someone else's words would not think himself worthy of sole authorship of the work. I mean hell, even in most pictures book versions of The Night Before Christmas you get the author Clement Moore on the cover. So this song by Bobby Pickett is not his anymore? He was just a workman on a song from a half century ago and we don't need to even mention more than we have to legally? Catrow is our boy and that's the only name we need to float.
This pisses me off more than it should. Bobby Pickett wrote a silly song that is still being sung fifty years later. It's not like David Catrow rescued this obscure work from the vaults. Someone wrote it, and it wasn't the artist who made the cool pictures.
For years I wrote a column on GotPoetry.Com called the International Revue of Bad Children's Book. I ended it after 42 columns about three years ago. If I was still writing it, I would include this book, not because the words are bad and not because the pictures are lousy, they are certainly not. I would include it because it is showing the publishing world being disrespectful to a writer. Even if they think the words are silly and superfluous. There would not be a book if not for Bobby Pickett. Someone needs to write the words, and that person should have his name on the goddammed title page.
On looking at it, I realized something was off. The cover and the spine and the title page all said the author of the book was David Catrow. It hit me. What about the guy who wrote the song back in the sixties? Where was his name. So I searched and finally found it in the copyright page in tiny print acknowledging that the song was written by Bobby Pickett. The guy who wrote the words to the picture book only gets credit in the copyright notice. I checked and all the words of the book, and the only words of the book, are the lyrics written by the almost uncredited Bobby Pickett.
And now comes the rant.
I want to believe that David Catrow had nothing to do with this. That his publisher said, people are buying this book for your pictures, you are the author. I hope that an artist who illustrated someone else's words would not think himself worthy of sole authorship of the work. I mean hell, even in most pictures book versions of The Night Before Christmas you get the author Clement Moore on the cover. So this song by Bobby Pickett is not his anymore? He was just a workman on a song from a half century ago and we don't need to even mention more than we have to legally? Catrow is our boy and that's the only name we need to float.
This pisses me off more than it should. Bobby Pickett wrote a silly song that is still being sung fifty years later. It's not like David Catrow rescued this obscure work from the vaults. Someone wrote it, and it wasn't the artist who made the cool pictures.
For years I wrote a column on GotPoetry.Com called the International Revue of Bad Children's Book. I ended it after 42 columns about three years ago. If I was still writing it, I would include this book, not because the words are bad and not because the pictures are lousy, they are certainly not. I would include it because it is showing the publishing world being disrespectful to a writer. Even if they think the words are silly and superfluous. There would not be a book if not for Bobby Pickett. Someone needs to write the words, and that person should have his name on the goddammed title page.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
The Seasoning of Life
The new Grand Fiend trifle is up, The Seasoning of Life. http://www.linguisticerosion.com/2012/11/conversations-with-grand-fiend.html\
For most of them, I got my inspiration from my collection of monster drawings (yeah I know, kind of goofy just even writing that) but this came from a small book by the food writer MFK Fisher, A Cordial Water. This is a neat little book about all the foods and herbs meant to cure people. She is a fine writer and its more engaging than it might sound at first, with that said, I haven't finished the book, I just gotta sit down and go through it.
The first chapter talks about a gray little girl she went to school with who stank "She wore around her neck a bag of assafeddity. It had a bitterness to it, rather rancid, and when I discussed this casually with my mother, she laughed in a vague remembering way and said to see if my new friend did not wear a little cloth bag hanging under her dress around her neck. And she did. During recess went down to the dim toilets together, and quietly she showed it to me, gray, gray, even her skin in that light was he color of her wool dress, her underwear, the soft little bag like a dead field mouse on a string. It would keep fevers away, she whispered gently to me."
Two paragraphs later the little girl dies and the family moves away. Strong stuff this thing called belief. And of course it inspired nonsense from me.
For most of them, I got my inspiration from my collection of monster drawings (yeah I know, kind of goofy just even writing that) but this came from a small book by the food writer MFK Fisher, A Cordial Water. This is a neat little book about all the foods and herbs meant to cure people. She is a fine writer and its more engaging than it might sound at first, with that said, I haven't finished the book, I just gotta sit down and go through it.
The first chapter talks about a gray little girl she went to school with who stank "She wore around her neck a bag of assafeddity. It had a bitterness to it, rather rancid, and when I discussed this casually with my mother, she laughed in a vague remembering way and said to see if my new friend did not wear a little cloth bag hanging under her dress around her neck. And she did. During recess went down to the dim toilets together, and quietly she showed it to me, gray, gray, even her skin in that light was he color of her wool dress, her underwear, the soft little bag like a dead field mouse on a string. It would keep fevers away, she whispered gently to me."
Two paragraphs later the little girl dies and the family moves away. Strong stuff this thing called belief. And of course it inspired nonsense from me.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Lzy Wriders Untie
I have a new Grand Fiend story going up on Linguistic Erosion a couple of days from now. I am happy that I can still be in the right mood to create the tone. I wrote five of them from April to August and I put them in a little chapbook, which I made 13 and sold 0. My salesmanship is still a stellar thing to behold.
I looked in my notebook a week ago and saw the first paragraph of a Grand Fiend story and figured I could toss this out in a half hour and submit it a half hour after that. That is what I did. I have been very fast with these and I had the thought that I could just type and they would be decent.
You know where this is going. Yeah, the editor for Linguistic Erosion, that accepted all five previous ones, sent me an email saying that it is ragged and can I edit this puppy. I was chagrined. I have always been the type to not care about editing or proofreading, I get too into the rush of first draft creation that I forget that the rush does not translate always into a complete story.
I brushed it through again, and even came up with a better joke at the end, or at least I thought it funnier. Luckily, it was accepted. Its nice to be published, and its a good thing to be humbled back into reality from time to time.
I looked in my notebook a week ago and saw the first paragraph of a Grand Fiend story and figured I could toss this out in a half hour and submit it a half hour after that. That is what I did. I have been very fast with these and I had the thought that I could just type and they would be decent.
You know where this is going. Yeah, the editor for Linguistic Erosion, that accepted all five previous ones, sent me an email saying that it is ragged and can I edit this puppy. I was chagrined. I have always been the type to not care about editing or proofreading, I get too into the rush of first draft creation that I forget that the rush does not translate always into a complete story.
I brushed it through again, and even came up with a better joke at the end, or at least I thought it funnier. Luckily, it was accepted. Its nice to be published, and its a good thing to be humbled back into reality from time to time.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Things from Three Graces
This is a mess of links of things Heather and I have from Three Graces, they brighten up our lives, because that's what art should do.
I love this AManda Atkins piece. It is a funny take on Nancy Drew and that ilk
http://amandaatkins.blogspot.com/2010/09/and-roses-ran-rampant.html
This was purchased the first time we went into the store. This is on a wall with a bunch of other monster drawings and paintings
http://nicolemaloof.com/artwork/786361.html
These next two are by a soft scuplture artist Abby Glassenberg whose owls make Heather swoon. We don't have owls, but we have these two birds and two others
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25512190@N00/4857064345/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25512190@N00/2805949332/in/set-72157619007769910
This is the latest thing we got from Kim at Three Graces. Heather adores it. It is on he wall right under a really awesome Syd Hoff drawing we have. The two work great together
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1024&bih=491&tbm=isch&tbnid=pfD3JtZr941yMM:&imgrefurl=http://www.threegracesgallery.com/shop_deniseduong.html&docid=Ig-5oEddcPCtAM&imgurl=http://www.threegracesgallery.com/Denise_Duong/ITsAlwaysfunwhen.jpg&w=650&h=650&ei=-jqTUPGkIYns0QH684Bo&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=96&vpy=137&dur=7004&hovh=225&hovw=225&tx=127&ty=187&sig=107206406750834753625&page=1&tbnh=140&tbnw=137&start=0&ndsp=10&ved=1t:429,i:72
On our walls at home is a lot of art, but five of them all come from one gallery. It is a gallery in portsmouth NH that is going to be closing of nine years.http://www.threegracesgallery.com/ I love their art and Heather and I have gone crazy for much of their work. Kim, the owner, wrote that she is ready to focus on her own art and who can blame her. Still. One less place where beauty might be allowed to happen.
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