Who goes there? Please leave comments so (An Aries Knows)!
There’s a chapter in the first book of the Neverending Saga that I had fun writing because the character doesn’t know how to tie a necktie and later, he has to get help from an unexpected source with a bowtie. Whether or not they like wearing it, I think all my characters look sexy in formalwear.
September 19 — In black ©Chris Walter
I believe this is from the American Music Awards in 1976.
Now I can share this painting because it has been received by the person whose gift it is.
“Muse Garden No. 1: Need You Tonight” is mixed media on an 8×10 canvas. The painting’s inspiration came from the lyrics of “Need You Tonight” by INXS. Lines and words from the song are printed on the stems and leaves of the flowers. After I painted the canvas, each flower was individually hand-colored by me and applied.
The recipient has great affection for the late Michael Hutchence, Australian musician, singer-songwriter, actor, and co-founder of INXS. The center of the sun is a bottle cap from manufacturer Carlton & United/Carlton’s Crown Lager and says, “Australia’s Finest,” an apt description of Hutchence.
I was inspired by art I found on the Internet that used Spirograph drawings. I found them when doing research for this excerpt from the Neverending Saga.
She browsed the shelves and tables until a notebook caught her eye. The colorful flowers on its cover reminded her of ones she and her best friend used to draw. They’d start with her Spirograph, color the shapes and patterns with markers and pencils, then cut them out and glue them on things like the covers they made for their school books, her 45 records boxes, and notes they wrote to each other. They gave the shapes stems and leaves so they became flowers.
To create both a painting and fiction inspired by someone’s art and someone else’s music is extremely gratifying to me.
Back in August of 2010 (on Marika’s birthday, in fact), I wrote a post inspired by Toy Story as well as a dream I had. Those two things led to my purchase of a couple of vintage Arco Gasoline Dolls of the World to replace those I’d been given as a child: Spain and England. I had six in all, and I’m not sure when they left my life, but dreaming about them left me feeling nostalgic.
During the apparently unending (thanks to misguided, willfully ignorant, dishonest, cynical, or callous humans–don’t get me started) pandemic, I decided to replace the other four dolls I’d once owned.
The boy doll in the photo below represents one of my characters in my work in progress. He’s currently spending time with me as my muse while I write two new chapters featuring him that are necessary because I’ve changed how the books are divided (three books now becoming what I think will be four? I’m not sure at this point) before I continue the saga that will be ongoing (but in a more positive and creative way) even longer than COVID. I’m eager to know how many books will actually come from the original book I wrote first in 1979-’80 (from stories that started in 1970 or ’71), then rewrote in 1988-’89, and now again in 2019-’20-’21-?. When I look at all those numbers, I get dizzy. When I think of all those words, I get fatigued in a giddy way.
From left to right, the dolls represent Colonial America, Sweden, Spain, MY LIFE’S WORK, Scotland, Holland, and England. There were more Arco dolls, and who knows, I may one day purchase France and Ireland even though I didn’t have them as a kid because they are relevant to characters in the Neverending Saga.
I hope you have a spark of creativity or a tiny bit of whimsy in every one of your days.
It’s funny, but putting this post together led me to check when the Cochrane Lambert novel Three Fortunes in One Cookie was published (is it bad I couldn’t remember?). I stuck the title in Google and it took me first to the Amazon page. I don’t think I ever read but maybe a couple of the reviews, and it was heartening that the ones there are positive.
Timothy and I did the research in Mississippi in 2004, the book came out on September 1, 2005, just after Hurricane Katrina wiped out the coastal towns, homes, and businesses we used in the novel. I always felt like we captured a place that vanished and wish the novel had been marketed better because of the time of its release.
All that aside, I’ve posted this box before.
It’s overflowing with fortunes.
Always happy to pull one for any of you and share the front and back.
I got another Piccadilly book.
It had this task in it: Go to various Chinese restaurants and ask for fortune cookies. Then tape all the fortunes you collect to these pages.
We rarely went to Chinese restaurants even before the pandemic because we love Chinese takeout. I found a few fortunes from past meals that were dropped in a basket in the kitchen. So I used them to begin this task. Let me know in comments if you can’t read any of the fortunes or the numbers–and want the numbers to play the lottery.
That last one says, “You will be spending some time on the water soon.” No, thanks, really. During hurricane season, that doesn’t sound at all appealing.
ETA: Added to my Numbers Photo Series as No. 9.
While there’s a background story from the 1940s that impacts the characters and plot of the first book in the Neverending Saga, that first book is set in the mid 1950s through 1967. If I decide to self-publish it, I want a cover for it.
With that in mind, I took a recent stroll through my favorite antique mall looking for inspiration or ideas. I ended up purchasing this silly thing for reasons completely unrelated to my novels.
This rubbery Poppin’ Fresh has a 1995 stamp on the back of his hat, and I’m sure he was some kind of Pillsbury giveaway.
So, too, was one I got when I was a little girl. My mother mailed off the proof of purchase from some Pillsbury product and maybe the price of postage, and I received a pillow, about fourteen inches tall, of Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy. His fabric was the same as old flour sacks, smooth and soft, and I did love to hug him and tuck him next to my teddy bear.
My Poppin’ Fresh is long gone, but I found a photo of one like him on the Internet. Does he make you want to poke his belly to hear him giggle?
Might as well.
Last night’s efforts paid off. I slept 11 hours, and it was bliss. I did wake up a few times, but each time, I was able to get back to sleep. Woke up at 9:30 feeling rejuvenated! Gotta try to keep this up.
Made myself a great brunch later. Burritos built with eggs, sautéed mushrooms, and a little mozzarella cheese melted in. Served with cold water and apple and peach slices.
Recently scored this amazing box set at Cactus Music. Brand new CDs of Van Halen’s self-titled debut along with Van Halen II, Women and Children First, Fair Warning, Diver Down, and 1984? COUNT ME IN.
Got all six in the CD player now in no particular order. I may have to turn down the volume a little when I start editing the second book in the Neverending Saga, but for right now, they are BLARING. Dogs are sleeping through it (must be the heat).
One of my recently finished coloring pages.
I finished my big edit of the first novel in the Neverending Saga. It was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. I’m rereading it now in preparation for a fresh printout and a move to the second book edit.
It was fun to talk about some of the challenges of writing these with Rhonda and Lindsey last night. It was really gratifying for them to tell me they can’t wait to read them.
Three such small devices: my original Nook, my newer Nook, and my iPad. The Nooks are for my Barnes & Noble ebook purchases, but that old Nook also contains many books I downloaded from Kobo using my Murder By The Book account. They’d then get a portion of the sales. I can still do that as a way to support a local, independent bookseller, but now I can do it using the Kobo app on my iPad. My iPad also has a Kindle app.
Three little devices packed with hundreds of fiction and nonfiction books. There are many I haven’t read because I bought them just before the pandemic or during the pandemic, and I haven’t read any fiction during those months. I’m not sure there’s a reason for that or what the reason is.
Maybe I’m just too lost in the world of my own fiction.
Those pages are the draft of my newly completed third novel in the Neverending Saga. I’m pausing here, because I’ve moved back into the home office from the writing sanctuary. I’m going to do a thorough edit of all three books at my larger desktop computer.
The first book needs better chapter divisions and the storyline needs scrutiny and a few enhancements due to many things I’ve come to understand about the characters over the course of the second and third books.
The second book is way too long. I have good ideas about where to trim it without losing any story.
By the time I’ve finished those edits, I’ll be ready to read the third book again with fresher eyes. Then I’ll hit the ground running with Book 4, which promises to deliver some fun, some growth, and some changes to these characters I love so dearly. Even the ones who aren’t lovable, because sometimes they’re fun to explore.
Yeah, I know people think my fascination with dolls is weird/silly/a waste of time. Longtime readers know dolls were my first characters as a youngster. I wove stories for them in my head long before I put pencil or pen to paper or used Daddy’s typewriter. Letting dolls stand in now as characters often amuses and inspires me. That’s a good thing. I realized when I put them all together to shoot a photo, five really important characters are missing, but it’s only because I haven’t surveyed my inventory yet to match them to dolls.
People can be driven and/or comforted by a variety of passions. Mine is creativity. To get to creativity, I draw from art, music, nature, and my relationships and life experiences. Through creativity, I examine, contemplate, explore, reason, feel, advocate, and speak my truth and my conscience.
Will my Neverending Saga ever be on tiny devices? I have no idea. The first time I ever saw the phrase below, it was on a wedding gift to Tom and me. It still makes sense.
“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”
Today I planned my activities to be sewing and writing. I’m making a three-piece outfit for a character doll with which I hope to surprise a friend. She gets neither the doll nor the fashion! But she gets to see my doll version of a character she likes.
The sewing took longer than I intended because SEWING IS HARD. Also, it’s not perfect. Nothing I do can be, I think, because I’m not. Never said I was, never thought I was, never wanted to be. “Perfection” in my world is a highly overrated concept. Like one of my characters would say, “I’m not looking for perfect. I’m looking for real.”
Real is hard, too, because it can require tough decisions. About what we want to show and who to show it to. About the things we’re able to see and hear, and the things we can’t. Or won’t. Sometimes that’s self-preservation. Sometimes it’s a choice. I have a character (in the current chapter I’m working on) who’s spent her life grappling with it. I understand her well.
Whether or not I’ve had past lives or will have future lives, in this time, I have one life. We all do.
All that was part of what I was thinking about as I sewed, and I was accompanied by a most persistent ear worm: The Doors’s “Break On Through (To the Other Side).” Oh, that charismatic Jim Morrison. There is a Doors reference in the Neverending Saga because I always love a musical bad boy.
Mr. Mojo Rising, or whoever is tapping on my psyche, from this world or another, I think I’ve been dealing with over a year of breakthroughs, some good, some not so good. It all finds its way into all I do.
Here’s another of the posters I unrolled back in March. I was an assistant manager in a bookstore in 1991 when Oliver Stone’s film The Doors was released. An associate on the staff, Dorrie, also worked in the theater in our same complex. I put together a music display (I BEGGED to do it, and my manager knew my band-loving ways and okayed it) to help promote the movie, and Dorrie gave the store a theater poster to hang above it. When the display came down, the poster came home with me.
It was two-sided, which made it that much cooler.
Here are some photos of the display.
The tie-dyed fabric covering the cubes behind the books in some of the photos was a joint effort by Tom, Lynne, and me. I don’t think I still have it.
And here’s the song if you need a breakthrough, too.
Thanks, Tom, for being tall enough and also willing to climb a ladder to get photos of the movie poster back when the house was a wreck and we were still recovering from February’s snowy, icy storm.
ETA: Added as No. 8 in my Numbers Photo Series (because of the number ten over one of the displays).
A strange path led me to adopt/rehome a High School Musical “Troy” doll. Most Ken fashion dolls are 12 inches tall (in human terms, six feet, as they’re 1:6 scale). The HSM dolls are 10.5 inches (a human five feet, three inches tall). I am enchanted by the smallness and have him representing a character in the Neverending Saga (the second set of characters–in fact, he’s the twin brother of the character who creates her own Tarot cards, as mentioned in a previous post).
I had some smaller male doll clothes I could dress him in, and the original Ken dolls’ shoes will fit him okay (new Ken shoes are HUGE on him). I got him dressed and photographed for Instagram.
As a personal aside… In 2008, when we had my mother’s memorial service in Alabama, all of her grandchildren and all but one of her great-grandchildren were there. At that time, three of the “greats” were in the six- to seven-year-old range. They absolutely lit up my life with their energy and fun. They’d brought High School Musical DVDs with them, and danced and sang together while they watched them. It’s a great memory to have, so it tickled me to get the HSM “Troy” doll.
Little did I know that a second High School Musical “Troy” doll (different facial features and hair from the first one) would be joining us. There were no Ken clothes that seemed right for him, so I began looking at some of the designs I sewed for Runway Monday challenges (thinking the female dolls I used as models might have better-sized clothes for him). What he’s wearing is Dupioni silk fabric that I hand-painted. I then wrote the first lines of my work in progress on the fabric before I cut it. This was in 2012, and I STILL have not written that novel.
The uncut fabric after I painted and wrote on it. You can see the entire post here should you wish to go down memory lane.
When I put the outfit on the doll to see if it would work, I thought instantly of Eddie Van Halen’s many colorful concert outfits and that amazing smile of his that never quit. That’s how this doll ended up with EVH’s Frankenstein guitar.
Eddie, Ed, Edward, and my preferred, EVH
He’s a little bit country. He’s a little bit rock and roll.