Jack and Ellayne in Lintum Forest–I think this is one of Kerolyn’s, although it’s not that easy to tell them apart.
Stay turned day to day, because I’m saving a real corker for last!
(Young Readers’ fantasy novels–we are pioneering a new trend! Books for young readers illustrated by young readers–how cool is that?
Okay! I’ve written the first few pages of my new book, as yet untitled–although I do have a chapter title: “The Blow Will Fall on Durmurot,” the most indefensible city in all Obann.
I do need a book title, but that, I pray, will come. I worked outside until it got too hot: indoors, we get too many nuisance robo-calls. I will soon know how many times I can say “Bite me” to a robot. Not much point to that, although I do need to vent from time to time.
Poor Durmurot. All they want to do is produce enough copies of the Scriptures to distribute all throughout Obann–and across the mountains, too, if possible. General Born refuses to send any more military aid to Durmurot, and he may be acting wisely. We shall see.
But what’s going on in Lintum Forest might be an even bigger danger. Wish I knew exactly what it was! But that’ll come, too.
Meanwhile, Chalcedon’s crack editorial staff has begun work on Book No. 14, Behold!, and No. 13, The Wind from Heaven, is being printed and will go on sale any day now.
How many books will there be in the series?
As many as God gives me. That’s all I know about it.
Some of my readers are surprised to learn that I’ve written all my Bell Mountain novels outdoors, with pen and legal pad. Is it really that unusual? Why do I do this?
I guess it started because we had to give up smoking in the house, and smoking a cigar helps me to concentrate on my writing. But I still write all my non-fiction indoors, without smoking. It’s only the novels that now have to be written outdoors. I just can’t write fiction indoors anymore.
My novels are fantasy novels. That means I have to invent a world, invent characters to live in it, and somehow get the reader to imagine what I imagine: to get these people and places to seem real to the reader. But that can’t happen until first I make the fantasy seem real to me. Please note that I said “seem.” We try to stay sane around here.
Anyway, this is not an easy trick to pull off. It requires intense concentration. And I find that the outdoors itself helps me with that. It helps a lot. Squirrels, sky, grass, trees, birds (and I have even been blessed with visits from a deer, and a fox)–these are all God’s handiwork, they are all what’s real. Certainly a lot realer than one blasted robo-call after another, which is what I’d get if I stayed indoors. But there’s something about the sheer reality of the world I live in, God’s world, which somehow assists me in my work of fantasy. It’s very hard to explain how, but it’s worked for 13 books so far, going on 14.
I love it when a squirrel scurries up practically to my shoe and looks up at me, as if he’s trying to figure out what I’m doing. And once a monarch butterfly landed on my knee. Ah! I can’t go to Lintum Forest, but these tiny little aspects of it, as it were, can come to me.
I think most writers would tell you that inspiration’s where you find it; and I find mine outdoors.
Gotta get out before I can get in, so to speak.
Have you noticed? As you get older, a lot of big things get small, and small things get big.
Years, for instance. The more years you live, the smaller they get. When I was nine or ten years old, a year was an eternity. But this year, 2019, whizzed by so fast, I almost missed it.
Mr. Bruno, across the street, went spear-fishing once and brought home two enormous striped bass. They looked enormous to me! But now I realize they couldn’t have been that big, because they both fit in the kitchen sink.
It seemed a small thing, an everyday thing, to me that my father was able to keep everything around our home in good repair. Like, he just did it, no big deal. But now that I’m older than he was at the time, I can’t imagine how he did it! How did he ever manage to do all that work around the house, and still do everything else he did?
We had a lot of family Christmas get-togethers in Grandpa’s living room. When I was a boy, it seemed a very big room. Now I can’t believe we ever fit so many people into it.
The street we lived on: I was there the other day, and it seemed way too short for all those houses. I am sure it used to be much longer. That’s how I remember it.
Shoveling snow off the sidewalk: that was a little job, wasn’t it? But it isn’t anymore. Now it’s a big job.
What would it be like, if things stayed the same size for as long as we knew them?
I’ve heard there’s a place in Lintum Forest like that, but I haven’t found it yet.
Do you really want to read about the first “same-sex romance” on some reality TV show? Do you think I want to write about it?
It’s Tanystropheus time!
When the nooze is just too disgusting to bother with, it’s time to imagine going for a swim or playing Parchesi with one of those impossibly long-necked reptiles of a bygone age. They’re back in Lintum Forest now, if you can find the way.
Speaking of which, I think I’d better head out there myself. We have another doctor visit this afternoon, two or three hours of my work day lost… So please take the opportunity, dear readers, to browse around the blog archives for all sorts of cool stuff.
All right, I give up on the nooze today, I totally give up. I’m old enough to remember when serious people used to run for president, but now it’s a freak show. I know it’s part of my job to cover nooze, but I’m sick of writing about these people. Bob Knight has a column on townhall.com today about questions he’d ask them if he were moderating one of their debates. I would ask, in addition to those, the following:
“What are you doing out of your straitjacket?”
“How many times a day do you sing ‘Imagine’?”
“What terrible thing happened to you in your childhood, to make you turn out like this?”
And so enough’s enough. And that means… well, what time is it, boys and girls? What time is it?
It’s Tanystropheus time!
I’m so happy I finally found one of these in an unexplored, uninhabited region of Lintum Forest. I don’t bother with the evolution fairy tales: this animal was just plain cool. Nothing like it before or since. It makes its debut in the story I’m currently writing, The Wind From Heaven–which, I say, is galloping like mad to some destination yet unknown to me. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.
I went to the bike shop this morning and got my tire replaced, then settled down to write.
The Wind From Heaven is galloping along, and I won’t find out where we’re going till we get there. Ice Age hyenas on the rampage, mysterious strangers from an unknown continent, frantic efforts to make peace before another war can start, a venture into a legendary region of Lintum Forest where no one dares to go, savage barbarians in search of a heathen god–no wonder I’m tired at the end of the day.
But it’s better than writing up the nooze. And if I’m not too beat after supper, I can unwind with a bike ride.
If this blog seems a bit light on nooze today, it’s because I have to use the time to work on Bell Mountain No. 13, The Wind From Heaven–a wind which is blowing my characters this way and that, some of them to places that they never knew existed.
With a dozen chapters written so far, I have no idea where the story is going to take me: I just hang on for dear life and hope I’m still hanging on when it gets there. I ask the Lord every day to give me the story that He wants me to tell, and do my best to tell it. Good thing I’ve got really sharp editors to back me up!
We have thunderstorms in our afternoon forecast, so I’d better get out there as soon as I can. There’s an unexplored sector of Lintum Forest waiting for me, a crazy man who’s gotten a nation of barbarians to think he’s a god, and a fleet of ships turning up from no one knows where… among other things.
See that picture? It’s an accurate representation of how I feel just now–flat-out flattened.
Blog posts, grocery shopping, research for gigantic Chalcedon article on censorship, more blog posts, Newswithviews column… If you’re thinking this is easy, think again.
I’d give you another news post, but my head has gone completely empty. The other day I discovered a new region of Lintum Forest that even Helki has never visited. I would love to get down to writing about it, but there’s all this other stuff that has to be cleared away first.
However, not to be defeated, I offer my readers the opportunity to create their own nooze posts. Just use the space reserved for comments. It’ll relax me to know I don’t have to write them myself.
Jambo! Mr. Nature here; and today our safari takes us to an unexplored corner of Lintum Forest, by way of the Triassic Period. It will feature in Bell Mountain No. 13, The Wind From Heaven, which I’m writing now.
Behold Tanystropheus, with its improbably long neck. This fossil was so weird, that when its first pieces were discovered, the scientist thought it might be wing bones from a pterodactyl. But eventually enough pieces were found to yield the reconstruction pictured above.
How did this animal live? There’s nothing even close to it around today, no living creature to compare it to. Did it squat on the shore and use its long neck as a kind of fishing pole? There aren’t enough bones in the neck to make it very flexible. So the answer is, we just don’t know.
Our Lord is a highly versatile Creator!