One of the reasons that I will claim to have started this blog is to allow an output for the constant thoughts which cross my mind concerning these Tales which now consume me. As time has gone by, my responsibilities have kept me a hermit beyond my immediate family and my associations at work. Raising my daughter keeps me busy so I cherish each moment I am able to grab and write. When the world was normal, I would drop my daughter off at school and then sit in a Starbucks nearby for and hour and a half writing under headphones before my work shift started. Then, on Fridays when I was off, I would have an entire day, or at least four or so hours, to disappear in public to prove that I don't exist. It always worked.
These dark days of COVID have quashed that, as well as the late night stops at Village Inn or Denny's where I could ignore repeated offerings of coffee. With on-line schooling and the eternal cooping up, finding time to write often becomes a bit of a challenge now. I work on my stories constantly though, adding bits and pieces all day long thanks to the miracle of Word in the palm of my hand. In between customers, I add furiously and edit once home and after my child has gone to bed. When I take my daughter to visit her mother, I remain there so that I may help if needed... and because there is a room I can lock myself in, put my computer on the bed and sit down on a delightfully hard chair to type away with music in my ears.
Time to write is often time hard to find, but what happens between those moments is not inactive. I can point to a particular point on I-17 climbing between Black Canyon City and the Bumble Bee turnoff (yeah, that's a real place) where two different Tales took root at 70mph. One of these stories, "A Safe Place to Hide" will be appearing in and upcoming issue of WeirdBook. The other is yet written and remains one of my earliest ideas... if I could just find the right voice. These were conceived two weeks apart on Wednesday evenings as the summer sun set over the Bradshaw Mountains to the west.
It is in the Bradshaw Mountains where I live. It is in these mountains that my great-grandfather dug for gold four score and more years ago. It is these mountains that claimed my great-uncle far too young. It is here I spent my youth playing divers games of action and imagination with my cousins and select friends loved enough to bring to this special place. This little valley I live in, where the bones of my ancestors have already been laid, is in the northernmost reaches of this range that rests down the spine of Arizona.
Here, the ghost towns I live in and around, the abandoned mines and crumbling ruins, this is my world. I know where some of the hidden graveyards can be found, lost places known only to those with forgotten maps and an understanding of how rocks settle. Each morning I pass a mine shaft hidden no more than forty yards from the road, the timbers blocking passage weak enough to be shattered by a heavy weight dropping. The remains of what men did lie all about, some such as the Walker Kiln, easy to visit and others, such as the entrance to tunnel that runs beneath the mountain connecting the ghost towns of Walker and Poland, requiring a bit of hunting to find. These are found in "A Memory of Flame" and "Venomous Constellations" respectively. Everywhere is inspiration.
When the idea of the town of Baird's Holler first burst into mind, I did not need to look far out my window to see the ghosts that would come to haunt it passing by. Everywhere on the Lynx is found my Bajazid. I just needed somewhere to put it, somewhere that wouldn't disturb too much the small community up here.
I have had the extreme pleasure and joy of spending hours out with my father in these mountains, just driving about and exploring down the old Senator Highway or the lost places in the desert at the base of the southern reaches of those mountains...
None of this has anything to do with my internal dialogue though...
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