Mercurial Moments Sonnet Construction

I know I am speaking here a little ahead of myself but I must. For one, I am still running behind with catching time for directly tackling the next Tale in line, one which needs explanation in serious whole for it is the basis of what has become, structurally, what it is I am working on now. What I present here is nothing other than my outline, without any explanation other than this represents a 2000 word section within "A Sestina Writ in Darkness". How this came about and why it exists, I have no true excuses. It was a wild time in my head as this chapter was emerging though, I'll tell you that.

Just on a note, and to satisfy anyone who does the math, there were ten orphan words at the end.

Master Character Index

This is what I call my Master Character Index. It has the same list of 389 characters who have appeared in the Tales of the Bajazid as does the Character Timeline. Across the top though are the Tales themselves (coded for space) in order of their being written. As the characters appear in the Tales, an "X" is placed along with the grouping color I identify with that character. Some of these colors are faint and don't show up well, but then again, this is a jpg based on 88 pages in Excel.

This is basically how I keep track of who has appeared where so I don't get things confused and end up with a huge continuity error (I know of one small one I haven't been able to fix and it is in print but I'm going to fix it... before ya'll find it). This table, in conjuction with the Character Timeline, keeps me from embarrassment.

Character Timeline

This is my current Character Timeline.

It does not contain any of the characters which are exclusive to the work I am currently on. The total number of Characters represented here is 389 identified individuals who have appeared in these stories. It is extremely compressed because this Excel spreadsheet is comprised of 66 pages.

Dates across the top are the same as on the Story Event Timeline. On the left are the Characters. Those in yellow are characters who have appeared in print.

On the Timeline, Pink is Female, Blue is Male and Maroon is a named Haunt (such as Mama Death). Black marks are deaths.

The color-coded section between the Character names and the Timeline is a classification for the characters. This classification is purely mine and contains such groups as "Mortenson Men", "Sultans", "Clergy", "Bezer", "Law", "Prospectors", "Locals", "Thugs", "Witches", etc.

 

Story Event Timeline

 This is my Story Event Timeline.

It is set up with the Tales in order of writing down the left side. Across the top are the dates and I know this is tiny, but this does actually encompass 10 pages in Excel, two vertical and five horizontal.

The dates starting on the left in the green and yellow reads "Pre-History" and extends from 13,000BC to the 1st millennia CE jumping a thousand years per line. The Blue section jumps from 1000CE to basically 1799CE. Beginning with the first purple section on it goes year by year from 1800 through to 2029 in color-coded decades. Yeah, that is 230 years there year by year.

The red marks indicate the year a Tale begins if the story covers multiple years. In case of multiple years covered in a story, the blue indicates that time covered. The black marks indicate when a story takes place if that Tale exists within a singular year or the year, on a multi-year Tale, the year it ends. As can be seen, the majority of these Tales cluster within the years the town of Baird's Holler was existent.

Story titles that are in blue are ones that have been published or are awaiting publication.

Most of all, you will groan

 Hello Christmas Eve, 1871! Are we ready for an extraordinary adventure? Strap in, Dudes (and Dudettes) 'cause were gonna have one excellent time!

I will admit that what I have done here is a horror unto itself, but there was no one around to stop me so "Gouliélmos Theodorakis' Most Extraordinary Day" sprang to life with zero temperance. Oh, I knew what I was getting into when I started in on this, but the idea hit me in a splash as connections drew to a head one day ruminating, as I do all day everyday, over the diverse potential connections available within these Tales. As I was thinking on certain aspects developing within the potential of what I needed, specifically, two more dead people, something clicked into a viable potential and then slipped quickly into that place wherein all bad puns are born. It was a steep descent.

See, I was pretty sure that the party down deep on Line B that evening must have consisted of more than just those 15 Sultans and Engineer Goff. There were a lot of men down there and the chances one was around when the earth started shifting is most probable, especially if Goff was seeking audience so the Sultans would know the men who worked their mine knew they knew of the loose and unsafe nature of the mess at the end of the B Line. Considering Goff was as professional as they say he was and that his advice was never in question, it would seem doubly so for him to cast such audience. As to any omission from such a lowly laborer from that loosely looked at count in "Forgiven" is easy to consider knowing Felix Jeffords' opinion of those who labor for others. Why would the owners deign acknowledge the interchangeable immigrant working for them in the dark?

Speaking of immigrants in the dark, Nasti Harju comes to mind considering the night that this is. There was a man with whom she shared a tent and a bedroll in order to stave off freezing the night before. Who the hell was he that this saint came and offered warm pulled tight the night through? Let us begin the Tale...

It's basically a simple yarn detailing Guoliélmos' day following, one which does not concern him as Orthodox. I mean, there is that cave-in where he follows the lead of Engineer Goff shoring up wall compromised so the room shall not fail. His bravery acknowledged by a Sultan known for his fondness of cigars, he is sent to the tyrannical little paymaster for his extra pay to keep silent those Sultans who succumbed to fear to find some kid waiting at his camp.

Thus this story continues through time... well, from his warm savior until her sainted screams rend the night as he stares up wondering which star is hers. It's a fun story and yes, that entire troupe is there. I could not help myself, but it played perfectly to lead our confused hero to heights he had not conceived to his world crashing down like a failed note on the keys poorly struck.

I did not want to be overly direct here, but I know a little more about that piano player at Baron's that sucked so bad Dickie had to comment on it. I also know I don't need to look anymore for what it was I needed.

It took a while...

 The second story I wrote, "My Thoughts on What Happened to Timmy Carmichael" had sat untouched since an allusion in "Anger", my 7th story. Being that "Anger" was itself completely isolated insofar as story, it served well for geographic and archeological spacing, Timmy Carmichael and its narrator, Michael, had been left adrift a long time. Thing is, there are so many possibilities that rise from this story, so many different possible leads if I chose, all those boys who were there and the effect that day had on their lives. I'd never touched any of those possible paths. Not one had I taken and long had I set any thought aside. Thing is though, there is my List and in that list, which I had turned to as "The Portraitist" finished up, was an idea with the title "The Testimony of Randall Howe". Randall Howe is mentioned as one of the boys on that trip, one who was last seen by Michael (I had no family name for him) standing in his padded cell pissing himself. Seeing that title, the story that day opened up at last and the elements that had since the start of this adventure lay gathering dust in the earliest boxes of unsorted clues in my mind. It was time for this story to be written and I was no longer afraid of the start.

See, that start is the formatted structure. This is to be a report by a psychologist based upon the first interview with Mr. Howe after he was picked up wandering a forest road naked as a cabin burned up the mountain with his friends dead in the flames. He had been unresponsive for days and, well, I needed to know what such an initial interview might look like formatted. I say this because there are all sorts of specific formats out there for different things. There is that lined double-spaced style of the courts, there are multiple formal letter formats... goodness, just look in Word. There you will find examples of many different formats for many different situations but what would an interview look like in a formal report at a psychiatric institution? Time for a little research...

Now I might not have done the most exhaustive review, but my conclusion would have been the same had I done so. I could have written this in runes on a bubblegum wrapper and it would be in line with any other format I saw as an example. I was looking for structured progression in an interview leading to conclusions or recommendations, something that would look like an official report. Seriously, there is no such animal. I saw no two examples that looked alike and it pretty much seemed that whoever wrote these used whatever style and format they were comfortable with or that they were trained into. In other words, "official looking" meant squat as long as it looked like it was written up in some structured manner as opposed to a  narrative structure. Okay, research complete and format problem solved. I was on my own and I had me an idea.

Gotta mention some things here as to things I knew going into this. I knew Randall was in a mental institution and was not coming out. I also knew that a character who first introduced himself to me at the start of this adventure... seriously, the first notes I made after writing my first story, "Where Lies Hope", were about him. He appeared in "The Little Metal Man", story #5, but has been absent since. Thing is, I got me some info on him before he took his powder and shied from my pen. I had my notes and I knew that his cabin was burned down in 2000. I can show you the ruins... it's one of my favorite places to visit on a summer day free with the quad and an afternoon to sit and write on some ruins.

First time I was up at the Amulet mine was 1977. I was on a hike with my older brother, younger sister, and my grandmother. I was 10. I remember that day clearly, not just because the two doberman pincers that came running at us as we were back down on the lower road back nor the black rock that my grandmother asked me to hold so I could see just how light it was (it was lead... she thought it was funny), but because of the bunkhouse there at the Amulet. The mine itself is where I go when I can to dream. My wine-selling friend in the ghost town on the other range there, he and I spent an entire afternoon up here pacing and plotting a story that I hope sees the light of day. I have over 2 hours of it recorded...

That bunkhouse though... it did, as did Willard Reams' cabin, burn down in 2000, but in 1977, it held something that was so very... well, let's just say my brother and sister both remember it and some years ago as my buddy and I were looking for the Poland-Walker Tunnel, we stopped and chatted with a local from Poland who suggested we go up to the Amulet if we wanted ruins. After I told him we had just been there, he reminisced about a summer in 1978 he was hiking up there and got caught in the rain and how he waited it out under the porch of that bunkhouse. Mind you, this was unbidden... I had not prompted this but what he said next turned me white and my friend, who knew my secret, his jaw was slack as well. This stranger said that as he was standing under the eaves of bunkhouse, he saw down in the mud several plastic dolls heads half submerged.

Why was this a jaw dropper? The secret of that bunkhouse, peering into it that day with my siblings and my grandmother, showed that its last occupant had peculiar tastes in decor. Dozens of plastic dolls heads hung on strings from the ceiling of that bunkhouse I visited in 1977. That the guy giving us directions to the Poland-Walker Tunnel would mention this place, and then, of reason, a memory specifically flashing to that oddity of plastic dolls heads and a memory of a deceptive rock, a long hike and my very active fear of large black dogs with pointy ears running at me with anger expressed in fangs that grew with each stride. But yeah, that bunkhouse was decorated with the heads of dolls and it is from that memory of that bunkhouse that both Willard Reams and Colonel William Nesmith descend in the narratives here built.

Just to be clear, Nesmith will pen a book and it will receive a small publication (he financed it himself as no one else would but he was nearing 100 anyway so he paid happily), a copy of which has been in the hands of Professor Van Hooten for a long time. Another copy was at the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, but sometime in the early 1960s, it was discovered to have been stolen. Willard Reams did not mind the "Property of Sharlot Hall" stamp on the inside pages of his volume, but he had him one as well. It is my assumption that Reams' obsession with collecting dolls began with his reading of "Ruminations on a Wicked Life" by Colonel William Nesmith. As soon as I can pin Reams down on this, trust me, I'll let you all know.

Thing is, I'm starting to doubt Willard Reams' very existence at this point with how he's stood me up all this time. Here's the thing... I'm cheating. This story is not about Reams. This is a story about Randall Howe that Reams just happens to be in. I knew not long after finishing "My Thoughts on What Happened to Timmy Carmichael" that I would be getting back to Randall Howe. I also knew that Randall was involved with the burning of Reams' cabin. Thus to discuss what happened to Randall Howe up on that mountain, or better, for Dr. Maurice Adams to draw from Randall that story, meant I had to discuss this most elusive of seriously jerk characters. Trust me, I'm not the only casting doubt on that old bastard right now, Dr. Adams is convinced he's a figment of Randall's imagination at best. That suits me fine and I hope it stings.

Oh, a couple really sweet things about this story that I discovered along the way. I'll do them in order of whichever I recall first. Oh, here goes...

I now know Michael's last name! Yup, Dr. Adams mentions him in the addendum.

Speaking of Dr. Adams, um, I have here a character, time stamped early 2000, who has developed an interest into cult psychology and is considering using the incident with the Gardens of Grace church group, the death of that boy on Bajazid Creek in 1992 and the ramifications it has had on its former members over the years as his primary case study. Here might be a way to collect many of those stories that wait from "My Thoughts on What Happened to Timmy Carmichael".

And, finally, I finished up the Sultans. Yup... I had Old Man Mortenson and 28 of those who had hired on named and most of them at least name-checked in Tales at this point. That last Sultan had been completely hidden from me all these years. I had suspected he left early on in the town's history but I could find no one to back this up. I had heard only rumors that a Sultan had forgone his fortune at the founding but was unsure. I looked around gullies and thickets in those early years to see if there was evidence of anything but nothing was found... no bones, no haunts. I was missing a Sultan and that actually was putting a pinch in what I could do for where was this last Sultan and how could I close that number with one unaccounted?

That rumor I heard that one, on an early trip to Prescott that first year, announced his departure must have been true. Randall Howe mentions how his ancestor, the first of his line to enter Arizona, was a prospector who made his small fortune in a gold mine he had forsaken his partnership in. Imagine that...

"The Testimony of Randall Howe" is the 64th Tale of the Bajazid, finished May 30th of 2020 and punching in at 4,857 words. That 5,000 word limit spell I put on myself a couple years before has, through consistent exercise, paid off.

The Portraitist

 There once was a time long ago that I was not seen without a camera around my neck. In high school, I was that kid... the one with a Pentax K-1000 single lens reflex and dozens of little plastic film canisters littering everywhere I went... with not one of them, shockingly, holding residue of weed. Yeah, I was a serious square, a nerd, a geek whose hands smelled each day of primarily "fixer" (one of the chemicals we used back when cameras used something called "film"). Thing is, it was a passion and every few years, when I get a camera (digital) that feels right, I go crawling around the forest floor taking pictures of little bugs hiding in flowers and mushrooms poking up from the earth. I, um, will start with one photo and then just get lost and some time later have to explain myself to the passing hikers why I am crawling on my belly along the trail. Ah, photography...

This love was not just a shallow thing. I've always had an eye and I paid attention in my art classes (and history... but the rest? that's the mystery...) Along with my love of visual arts, throughout high school I began falling in love with particular artists and their techniques as well as photographers. I had one teacher... man, this guy was great!... he really did some things that stretched perspectives and talents. Hell, I had a friend who was taking art classes as an elective to hang out with me, after that second year when Mr. Neal started his experiments, he started actually producing real work. My photography teacher was as well a boundary pusher and I'm really surprised now that they let me get away with what I did back then in the early 1980s. Seriously, my first oil pastel was a nude and the image I used, from a Penthouse magazine, I sat and worked with at my desk without issue. In a project of superposing two images in the darkroom, I took a photo of some guy named Adolf and placed him looking approvingly over some preacher named Jerry standing at the pulpit with a greedy grin. Four years after I graduated, I went to visit on an open house night when my little sister was at the school. Turns out, that photo, um, it was still a hot topic with, according to my Mr. Holgate, the photo teacher, an argument breaking out over it in the staff breakroom that very day I was visiting. Oh, I had some great teachers!

When I started going to community college in earnest (working 50hours a week bartending, 16 credit hours and a new baby whose mother liked soap operas), my focus on photography really went deep and there again I had an incredible teacher who offered, on that first day of that first class there (I ended up taking photo classes every semester no matter what just so that I wouldn't have to turn the bathroom into a darkroom... the missus hated that), a couple pieces of advice. One was to throw my flash away. Since I had only a crappy little flash I never used, that was done. He challenged us (and I took it to heart) to only use existing light. I became a master at holding still at 1/15 second shutter speed, something the teacher told me was impractical. He also challenged us to only compose in camera. In other words, don't take a photo and then crop it to where you want. Instead, make your composition in-camera and never crop in the darkroom. That one right there forced me to see. Seriously, it made me work for what I wanted. The last rule was to only use a 50mm lens... no zooms or wide-angles as such pervert perspective and at this point I was in the process of falling in love with a few particular photographers. You want to emulate your heroes, right?

No longer do I have a refrigerator filled brown bottles marked poison. When I was, a couple years later, doing the same only without the soap-opera viewer around to occasionally help with, well, anything, that passion was stifled and after years, the usage of the back bathroom was no longer available and with moves and moves again, what remains are the lessons learned. As for those lessons, they extended well beyond the process lost (and lost now to digital). They were the lessons in how to see, how to compose and image and weigh the balances to achieve the harmony or discord needed. Shapes and forms, color and hue (even in monochrome), shadow and light... these elements that the photographer works to compose into an image that tells a story, even if that story is recognition of a pattern pleasing. I still take a kick-ass photograph.

Another boon I am ever thankful for is the education I received on those whose work impressed me, from those of artistic bent such as Ed Westin to the documentarians such as Gene Smith. One thing I always looked for, no matter the subject matter, was, if there was a human (or certain animals) involved, the portrait. Where there is a subject of willful intent, there is always where the portrait is found and always, if you look, there is a portrait. It is the sailor and the nurse, it is the infant screaming in the ruins, it is the monk in peaceful immolation, the mother's worried expression with child in arms... and there is the portrait that most captures my attention the expression of that word is summoned. Dorothea Lange's endearing portrait of the migrant mother with her child is all that beauty and composition rolled into one. Of the photographers of that particular era, the Portraitist who most inspired my own attempts would be her more than any others.

I was thinking about her and Margaret Burke-White and Evans and some of the others who traveled America during those depressed years documenting the plight of this nation knocked to its knees. I had intent and reason to be thinking along these lines one July evening in 2018. I had driven my daughter down to see her mother and had returned up I-17 as I always do and on that 7 mile climb to Sunset Point, where it always seems to happen, an idea glanced off the clouds in spectacular display and my mind was set adrift. Arizona sunsets can have that effect... and for some reason, that spot right around the Bumble Bee turnoff seems to always be where new ideas spring forth from nothing.

When I got home, for then I was still holding those little white cylinders of stink of habit, I was out standing about in the creek bed, pacing to and fro over the drive as a light, gentle rain touched around. It was this that was on my mind. I was discovering with explosive force the elements that would go into this story, the base germs at least. It was as I was pacing, cigarette in hand and thoughts on fire, I heard a sound intrude upon my awareness and pull my attentions away. It was not a new sound, but one which waited to distinguish itself from its ordinary course so as to influence in the way it could best. The water falling from the drive, as I looked into the moonlit forest upstream, drew my thoughts away from this Portraitist and the beauty I knew was potential. It drew me away and sent me shortly inside whereupon a flurry of typing produced in a few short days "Puddle of Mud". It was "The Portraitist" I was ruminating over when that water behind me shifted me with thoughts of  revenants lurching forth from the pool below. This is how it works.

It took some time but I at last returned to this story, "The Portraitist". With "Mama Death" done, I was sent to the List again and upon seeing this title, decided the time was ripe. If I could have conceived this story which I had been avoiding, then I could write it. The research was done decades before, all aspects of it. I just needed to dedicate and pick a point of entry. The story flowed forth with ease as soon as I convinced Mrs. Gluck that it was okay to talk. I offered her a gin and tonic as well. It worked. The story came out fast and it followed basically the design I had originally hoped only better. That Professor Jasper Van Hooten showed up and laid the groundwork was a delight. It seems I've found a way, between this and "Tell Me About the Butterfly Man", to have the good Professor show up here and there and beyond, the simple device of the interview seems to work well.

"The Portraitist" is personally one of my favorite stories that I have written. I capture something here, at least I hope I do. I hope I painted this particular portrait with enough care that the tender touches come through. "The Portraitist", completed on May 18 of 2020, took me deeper than I think I had been planning on going, both into Eve's head but as well into Bezer and what our dear Millie and her grandfather, Jonathon Kearns, were up to. Yes, the year is 1938. Jonathon Kearns was born in 1840. He was 98 years old when Evelyn McPhee and Eddie Gluck chugged to a halt, to the startlement of everyone, before the gates of Bezer and the subsequent invite to photograph the struggles God's Chosen bore here before the Gates of Hell. Needless to say, having shown Kearns a sample of her work and him being so impressed as to offer that boon, this is still in the environs of the Bajazid.

1969 is the year Eve Gluck was visited by that Professor, and in 4,972 words, I examine just what horror a still plate can hold.

Mama Death

 Long had I wanted to find some way, any way, into the head of Mama Death. I knew her as she was when she fled that night Jonathon Kearns came for her ("The Witch of Pitts Junction"), but from that moment on, when death had taken her and rejected her, she was lost to me. All her appearances since, and many it has been (six in fact out of the 54 stories since "The Witch of Pitts Junction"), she has served as a haunt, a demon in the darkness doing delightful things like ripping... well, it's best not to really discuss out of context those things she has be rightfully accused of doing. I mean, in context it's all bad enough, but just lobbed out like candy grenades of delightful madness, no, that would prejudice too much any potential reader as to the irredeemable nature... an nuts... she rips people in twain. There, deal with it.

Just know that I needed to find a way into her head and tell a story from the perspective this thing she now is but that was a hard pull to make. Thus the reason this beautiful title sat empty and unused all this time. I needed to come up with just the right story to fit a Tale using solely the name given to this character by those she most torments because it's such, in truth, a badass name. You would do the same and you know it too.

Ah, but what a story? Seriously, what story? What am I going to do...

Oh, I know a few secrets about good old Mama Death and what she's up to at certain points in time distinct from just being a haunt waiting for opportunity or a summoning. Actually, there is no understanding as of yet to her actions yet those, speculating, would suffice. Why does she haunt? Why does she focus on the Kearns? Why does she not cross the ridge and take to the Bajazid proper for some proper slaughter? She's been seen up at the Amalgamated Mine ("The Golden Hawk"), that is if you don't trust your 3 day Benzedrine bender and yes, on the other side of the ridge such as up at the old beehive smelter, but seldom. These were a few of the things that I had been of recent wondering.

Another function of thought progression was what is she doing there in that cave? I have notes galore of things hinted, speculated. Oh, there are Tales to be told... I know of one guy, a member of the Kearns Family, who will lie in that chamber of bones as her incantations torment him for was she not a mamba before her descent into zuvembie? Patient in the eons it is said, but here upon the Bajazid, what corruptions in incantations exist to twist the outcomes to something perverse. If the zuvembie still remembered, even corrupted and flawed, the processes of mamba, what goals should drive the Dead in exhaustive fury to attain? What pursuit would strain a mind forgetful the passage of time to the point willful attention? What struggle would be, could be between the amnesia of death and something new in the sphere of the wicked undead... a zuvembie of willful intent, struggling against that void and the urge to be mamba yet again... a lich of sorts in a new and perhaps...

Hey, I am just spitballing here, trying to figure out exactly what Mama Death is. This is something that's really taken on a bit of a struggle with me because she is zuvembie by design but the potion was corrupt, the ingredients altered by regional availability. Other inconsistencies she improvised, such variances which should make no difference being intent is true. Such variations should not alter the stream of a casting too much, should they? Then how to account for the retention of will, even to such a degree. It is know that there are many undead species who possess such distinct will, the vampire and the lich being too such examples. Zuvembie are not know for such planning, so design as I know Mama Death strives. What then? What to account for this perversion, a witch turned zuvembie clinging yet, like some wizard lich, to the magical aspects she claimed in life?

Ya'll think on that and tell me what you come up with, what makes our dear Mama Death so much more demanding distinction from her species of undead. Me? I just know that not even gods who stray casual into this valley claim their own counsel. This is where is That Which Damned. That should suffice.

Now, as to this story, "Mama Death", what was I to do and how can I hook all this somehow onto the first day of action in the Outside the Circle of Midnight Black collection? You know, set up "Girl Rattled" and give reason for the expressions of horror and disgust in "There is Clearly Something Amiss". I saw an opportunity here and I figured I'd go for it, starting with our dear hero, Mama Death, waking up from her death to the confusion of lost cells and the fortification that brings clarity of rotten mind. I needed to wake her up.

When I first presented "Mama Death" to my two beta readers, I did not send an email (to one) or bring in a printed copy to work (for the other). Instead, I sent them each an audio file produced days after my final edit as I sat stood in my box early one morning reciting this Tale into my phone. The recording is roughly 20 minutes long and there are a few minor voice chokes, but the fact that I made it through in a single take (not the first, by the way) without customers interrupting me, is kind of amazing. I wanted the first reactions to this Tale to be from the presentation of how it works, how I hope it to sound in the mind's ear when pulled from the paper. I sent the text copies shortly afterwards.

You know, I truly hope the security cameras on me don't have audio...

The trick that I had to tackle with "Mama Death" was to wake her up from dead in death to awake in death, return her from emptiness to functioning in thoughtful manner, much like when one is roused from a deep sleep too soon interrupted and the first moments of staggering consciousness are fractured in moments unstrung. That is what I had to portray, as well as her, um, cup of morning coffee (?) Then I needed to bring her direct understanding and defiance just in time to coincide with a particular event in the third chapter of "Circle of Midnight Black" (as it is being developed) that involves seismic movement. Lastly, I needed to set up those established incidents so that my fabled Reader, upon connecting these Tales, issues forth a soft and reverent "ah-ha!" as these revelations pour forth.

From both those two beta readers the response came back, both from the audio files and the text which followed, that the production worked. I am still wary of this for though I revel in playing with form and apparently have taken to doing strange things, the method of wakening I wonder at often. Then I open this up or, lucky me, the audio file takes exactly the time I need to get to work, and I realize that yes, despite my fears, this story works and it does so surpassing my initial hopes. In fact, it has set in motion other things that I am not at liberty to speak of right now (That Which Damned only allows me to say certain things) as well as clarified for me certain intents which I intend to pay close attention to shortly (ah, famous words written in vain!)

And now for that obligatory information which I somehow failed to find ways to incorporate into the text above. "Mama Death" was completed on April 17, 2020 at 2,999 words. This is the 62nd entry into the Tales of the Bajazid.

I would like everyone to meet Mister Jonathon S. Mortenson

 One of the nice things about this little project, this blog, is that it has brought back to me stories that have gotten lost in the mix. Seriously, I've put out a rather large amount of stories in these last couple of years and not all of them remain that long in ready recollection as I've moved on to others since. As well, I've taken to reading through my works of the previous year not long after the new one has started and I haven't done that yet with "A Sestina Writ in Darkness" under construction and this blog going... until now as the stories of 2020 have caught up. Thus some of these I have not read since I set them aside a year ago to move on to another. "Mister Jonathon S. Mortenson Has Arrived" is one of those.

The story itself arrived as "Mythic Proportions" was wrapping up and it began as a repetition of terms seeking the proper one, pretty much the way the story itself begins. From there, it was a conclusion I knew must be, one hinted at multiple times over the course of these Tales in letters from lawyers back in New York. I had been privy to them and I knew what needed to be must need be taken care of. Thus I figured it would be best to take he who needed to be taken care of to the very threshold of his crowning glory... and take it away from him.

This is the story of Jonathon S. Mortenson, the man who organized and financed the expedition which found gold in the waters of the creek they named the Bajazid. It is a respectable 4,923 words long and it was completed on March 10 of that most immemorial year. Having just read it since, well, it was finished a year ago, I'm delighted by what is here. Before touching this Tale with determination, I knew only that his goal was to be recognized in those highest of social halls. I had not known why. The motivations came through in the writing of the story, the reasons why this remained his goal and why it was birthed in the first place. I thoroughly enjoy it when this happens, when the telling of the Tale reveals to me things I did not know.

As I went through this text, with realization that I really need to submit this somewhere, I recalled its construction. I remember looking at maps of New York for the years needed to ensure the location of where the needed points were as I couldn't have him staying at just a "really nice place". Hell, there were really nice places there then and I wanted to put him in one which would have been very, very nice and real and there and at a distance from his destination that was real and there and that would encourage the hiring of a carriage rather than a brisk stroll. I now know more about the geography of that mysterious place in 1872 than I do 2021. Yup... my impression of New York City is mostly from Marvel comic books in the 1970s and it kind of stuck there.

"Mister Jonathon S. Mortenson Has Arrived" is a story that I needed to tell. That is why I included it when I did. This is an example of me turning to that List, that collection of titles of potential stories written down and selecting one with dedicated purpose. Thus the repetition of my "working title" into the Tale that needed to be. The device I used in setting this up proved useful throughout, allowing me to transition the character to where I needed him to be. The result of this story as well needed to justify those hints left throughout these Tales and I believe it did... as soon as I had him at that moment of anticipated glory.

Dude! Where'd you get those shrooms?

 Yup, that was my original working title...

See, had this idea of some hippies trippin' on shrooms they found while camping and communing with nature up on the Bajazid. Eventually it ended up with three hippie dudes and three hippie chicks traveling in a VW bus with a biker tailing... he's got and is holding the hard drugs and looking to score a little something based on that even though he's a loser and there just to draw tension at this point. That's an idea I had early on in this process... again, probably within the first dozen to score of ideas first written down. Went nowhere with it all this time. Didn't know where to go. Didn't know where to take it. Didn't seem to have a finer point.

Meanwhile...

Had myself a very fine point that I wanted to ensure that I avoided. I still want to avoid it. That it why there are but manifestations but no thing itself. I will still try to avoid this but I knew there needed to be statements made, positions pointed out and understandings made clear for the restless. But how could that be spoken of? What is it even to be spoken of? From whence is this for such is not, that alone I shall tell you, the trite fallback of "ancient Indian burial ground". Fortunately, there was really no way I could conceive of such a Tale being told and calmly went about my way.

Then...

One day my story without a point was bumbling through my head, totally irresponsible like, and it bumped into, of all things, the Tale without means to tell and lo and behold! A Tale with a crisp horror shell and a nightmarishly chewy center. Dear God, that's an understatement!

That also, oddly enough, fully completes what I need to say about this Tale, or perhaps what I should say about this Tale outside of things accelerate just a few degrees past weird in this one. Finished February 28, 2020 at 4,223 words, "Mythic Proportions", introduces the "Rolling J's" (Joe, Jack and Jerry) and their three fine foxes with flowers in their hair... but that biker? He didn't make this trip. He really was without a point. In truth, turns out, this is the luckiest fictional character ever to cross my path since I began writing these Tales. He missed out on what would have been a hard as hell death.

Damn Ephemeral Tracks!

I lied... I said the weirdness would start now and it should 'cause the next story in line, "Mythic Proportions", does get mildly weird. Thing is, I have now been awake 19+ hours and am starting to drift. It's been a very busy day starting at waking up at 3am (it is 10:15pm as I write this) for work and then my daughter's online school and then a zoom meeting and then a promised drive for my wee one who just wants to ride around a little, dinner and two loads of laundry and I'm not going to be completing anything overly successful tonight... especially since the harsh chemicals I use at work have my hands dry to the point were 7 of 10 fingertips are split. Even typing on a computer keyboard is damn annoying.

Thus I am going to get away easy tonight by posting something I found earlier today as I was trying to figure something out on my computer and accidentally found something I wrote last year. Now please note, this was written after, well, the note to myself says it all but I'm just going to copy the whole into here so ya'll can see how an idea burst open... and then gets lost until I fiddle around on my computer. This though is an important note because it gives me some direction to follow concerning a character I had dedicated to just disappearing but didn't know how. I'll let the note I wrote to myself as I was in a half-sleep state speak for itself, specifically in the fact that you can see my mind blinking here.

Oh, and for the discerning eye, this gives you a great example of what my screen looks like when I'm working. This is the font I use, an old type-writer font, from the Underwood #5 actually, which is what Robert E. Howard banged away on. Until I can get my Underwood #5 cleaned and such (yeah, uh, lots of confidence on this one here...) so I can make a font based on my own machine, I use this. It's called MyUnderwood and yeah, just look it up. I like it 'cause, as I said elsewhere, it gives you a certain aesthetic when you're working, one where you want to lower your fedora and shout at your paper as the words clack off the platen. It's like live action role playing for writers and I highly recommend it for anyone with an over active personal fantasy life focused in that pulp writer mystique niche...

*****

6-19-20, 1 am

I know what happened to Radul!

He goes missing… he just isn’t there.

Why? I’d thought of that in earliest charges against what I’d set myself up with in There is Clearly Something Amiss. Nesmith just shrugs.

Tonight, after being awake 20 hours, an 8 hour work day and 107 miles under my belt, no nap and only a Marie Calendar’s pot pie in my belly, it came to me on a walk to go get beverages at a late hour. It was around 11pm and I was walking back to Yvonne’s place from the store this first night of mandatory facemasks. I was chasing through ideas seeking leads, looking for something to speak up and something did.

Let me first square away a few points, the first being Radul Izkov is, so far, only a mystery. We know that after Vidak’s death, Radul becomes reclusive and dour. This is confirmed in The Trial and Execution of Leopold Tarkenfeld.

Sleep might overtake me as I sit, half dressed with one shoe on and still, somehow, pants half off, weaving from side to side and losing myself for great stretches of time. I just must say this, a hint dropped to myself if my fingers fail. What if, upon the death of Atterly at the rope, at that moment, Radul just goes, leaves of an instant… seriously, a fucking instant and so transfixed by the spectacle of Atterly’s hanging, people looking right at Radul don’t seem him just go away… vanish… ceasing occupying space. It isn’t until after the body dropped that anyone turned to comment to Radul.

Where is he? Well, that place, or way/space/dimension wherein my dead, my ghosts at least, exist, that darkened place with vivid colors ‘til nigh not much but faded monochrome with hints… aside from those distinct attentions such as blood. That’s where he is. Yup… sucked right on through physically to the other side. Might want to read up on some myths of divine mortal ascension for inspiration.

Can we consider a Chapter 24 only tied at the start, one trio running progressive and the other trio into the past so they end as far from each other as possible? Yes, it is possible to consider and actually, as we all know, oft times the story develops from the addition of those around it.

Oh, um, in any story which deals with the execution of Simon Atterly, the set up could be included of Radul just popping (almost wrote pooping) out of existence. Or there could be a Tale based on reaction to Radul going away… and that is what the name of this title implies.

The second story potential which I’ll have to come up with a temp(possiblepermanent) name which deals with Radul in the land of the Dead. In fact, WITHIR (this story idea the whole note is based on), could end on the other side of the door (metaphor, folks! er, me). By the way, this is going to end up being a wild and fucked up journey for Radul… but I could have so much fun for it for what is someone who exists in the land of the dead having ascended there both body and soul together? What would this be called?

So let’s develop this off the title and go from there… Where in the Holler is Radul? (or should it be Radul Izkov?)

Oh, one thing brain storm walking dredged up that I have to write down before falling over is I forget ‘cause I’m that tired damn ephemeral tracks!

Girl Rattled

One story is written and it inspires another which in turn inspires another which in turn inspires another and this and how the Tales of the Bajazid are formed. From the inspirational explosion that was "Child of the Earth" came the concept of the Circle of Midnight Black and subsequently that which took place Outside the Circle of Midnight Black. It is that outside development that is of concern here for I have not yet further progressed inside that Circle.

In "There is Clearly Something Amiss", a story whose origin appeared at the same time the development concept for "Child of the Earth" came about, there is mention of a massacre found early the second morning as the US Marshal's and the mine inspector are on their way in to Baird's Holler. I knew when I came up on this horror in that meadow that I was going to have to explain what happened. You don't just leave nearly two dozen bodies strewn through the grass with no explanation. I just needed to identify which party it was crossing that meadow I was going to relate and from which particular member of those parties this nightmare going to be viewed.

I also needed to actually determine what happened in that meadow that would leave such carnage. Truthfully, I had an idea. I was pretty sure I knew who was responsible for this and knowing this, I knew that I had the ability to go full crazy. With the knowledge of what waited, what was hunting the meadow that night, I had to isolate that POV and develop that person into someone the Reader feels for. Taking a tiny clue from "There is Clearly Something Amiss", something horrible discovered that morning, settled for me that decision. Always aim for the most heart wrenching, right?

Sara Jane Callow is a young bride, wed into a tight, extended family. The patriarch of the clan manages the smelter at the Mortenson Mine in the town of Baird's Holler. His two eldest sons, Sara Jane's husband one of them, work at the smelter with their father. Sara Jane's husband, Calvin, had two younger sisters and a younger brother as well ranging from 10 to 17. Also in the house was Calvin's grandparents and his older brother's wife. Sara Jane's mother has been welcomed into the family as well, the Callows being anything but callow (seriously, I was not intending that at all). Oh, and of course, we cannot forget the matriarch, Constance. That would probably not go over so well.

 

Sara Jane is a bystander in the events of the day, the day happening to be the very one which "Child of the Earth" begins. As news from the mine filters back to the Callow household, as the Callow men send word for the available women to come bringing bandages, Sara Jane is left with her husband's grandparents and her infant child to worry away their concerns. As the afternoon draws on, the family patriarch determines a rash course of action and sets the family in direct and immediate motion. They are to pack up everything dear into two wagons and they were leaving Baird's Holler this very afternoon. John Callow, a man unflappable, was clearly frightened of something and that was a distressful thing for Sara Jane to know. Something was clearly amiss. It his from here the world devolves and things get rather extreme. Let me just say this young woman does run and she does escape that terror raining down upon her family, but she is definitely rattled.

This story, "Girl Rattled", was finished on January 20 of 2020 at 4,933 words. It is part of the collection Outside the Circle of Midnight Black, taking place on the first of those five horrific days. It does run hard to pulp but that is a positive... the visuals are pretty great. I mean, you're gonna have that particular arching spray in your head for a bit, if I've done my job right.

One last thing before I go... I gotta talk about the title. The development of this story sprang in part from the realization of the title. Upon selection of the POV character and what I knew zuvembie could do... well, I had seen "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" not long before by the Coen Brothers. One of the shorts within is titled "The Gal Who Got Rattled". It is a rather beautiful little piece in its horrendous sadness and it is based loosely upon a 1901 story by a gentleman named Steward Edward White titled "The Girl Who Got Rattled". Now I haven't read this story though it is on my "to-read" list, but that doesn't really matter. I don't know how loose "The Gal Who Got Rattled" is based on "The Girl Who Got Rattled", but "Girl Rattled" is based just by that right there... and the fact that I have actual rattles in my story.

Tomorrow things get weird... finally.

I know who she was, that Woman in the Tree

 I celebrated Elvis' birthday in 2020 by completing my first Tale of the year, "Hrafns", a short little (2,611 words) yarn that took me quite far in places I had not planned on going. I would go on to spend the rest of the year waiting to prove that which I had learned in the research that went into this Tale, the primary focus of this examination springing of natural course here in these mountains, only to be disappointed by, you guessed it, 2020. Yup, with an almost complete lack of rainfall... the worst I have seen in my life and I'm and Arizona native with more than a half century racked up... well, let's just say the ground is dry and none of the fungus the forest animals rely on sprouted this year... not even those pretty ones you used to see in old-timey Christmas cards.

There were a few things which led up to the writing of this story. First, there were the multiple deaths that took place the night of December 24, 1871 and one of them was known to be a woman lodged in the upper branches of a tall cottonwood overhanging the then under-construction Baptist church. Ever since that story, "The Woman in the Tree", and its follow up, "What it Feels Like to be Hunted", there has been an injustice of ravens which have fluttered around on the edges of my thoughts. I needed to find out who this woman was and I was pretty sure I had a delivery system in place to get her into those high branches. I just needed to figure out how to do the impossible and when weighed with such stakes, it's always best to hallucinate (or just smoke a gentle bowl and get busy).

Since these Tales seem to have brought me into a permanent semi-hallucinatory state through their intrusion into my near every thought, I figured I'd go that way (with help from a gentle bowl) and began to run down who this woman was and where she came from. Having an affinity for those two ravens who flew for Odin, his Thought and his Memory, and having that association appear in my head whenever ravens cross my mind, that was the first to where my own thoughts went if memory serves. From there, and being that Christmas had just passed and the imagery was on my mind when this story was conceived and began, that Christmas mushroom, the anamita muscaria or fly agaric, became a vehicle of natural choice.

Now I'd known of this mushroom for many a year and its history and legacy. The lore associated with it and those in the furthest reaches of Scandinavia for its mystical properties and symbolism is a rabbit hole I was well comfortable in visiting... again. I had never conceived of consuming it though and had to understand its preparation, particularly with the limited means this character would have available to her, and did quite a bit of reading. Turns out you could just bite the damn thing but that seems too crude and if this is a person who is familiar with this as a sacrament and the preparation thereof, some form would be needed. I took a deep dive on this one, both with this mushroom and the associated culture.

Have I mentioned there were no rains this year and no "experiments" rose from the forest floor?

As for that associated culture, when it landed upon me where this woman must be from, I needed language adjustments because I can't just use, and this is a common thing, words available to the reader but anachronistic to the character unless there is a bridge of sorts. I needed as well to find a name and there is always a fun dive. I ended up trying (and failing) to match her name with the same region I used with some of the word choices used and I know that there is a mix. I hope the casual reader will not fault me and those of this particular culture realize I did as good as I could with what I had.

As for who this woman is, she is representative of a particular element found throughout all cultures in all times... someone we recognize when their faces are splashed on the evening news and we ask each other what happened to that person. She is an aberration common to all. Why choose to write about someone such as that? I can hear certain family and friends say. Well, because writing about an ordinary person doing ordinary things does not a Weird Tale make. Also, I never liked reading about ordinary people doing ordinary things. It is more fun, and this is a selfish reflection as the Writer, to find such an aberration and then wind it up and let it loose. Taking that ordinary person doing ordinary things and then thrusting upon them extraordinary challenges is another way to look at it. Taking a horrible character (ethically) and putting them in extreme situations is just fun. Remember, I like Slavers 'cause they are a character class that you can pretty much pull the toes off of one by... hang on, making a note elsewhere...

Now here's another thing that I've found is fun as the Writer and that is taking a person who is horrible and hiding that little fact. Instead, what I find before me is a woman so far from her lands of ice and snow, so far from the traditions she never thought she'd miss, and putting her in the most desperate straights. I mean, from the far north of Finland to the deserts of Arizona for Christmas Eve, 1871? That though was also one of my big problems that lay before me. I am pleased with the execution of this in this Tale with that method of delivery discovered allowing methods for further deliveries to be made. Trust me, it makes sense.

As for who she was... well, she's a stranger in a strange land, barely conversant in the language and the one who brought her here from her frozen home dead in the desert heat of Phoenix. It is desperation and desire to escape the heat of that desert which brings her the final leg to the mountain town of Baird's Holler, a place where the desperate go to die and often much worse. It is when scrounging in the forest following the rainy season next that she spies a familiar spotted cap. She is lonely, she is hungry, she is desperate... she just wants to travel home one last time and fortunately, there is one way she just might.

Okay, I did have fun with her name. As I go through lists of names available that I could find in such situations, if I am not looking for something of a particular meaning, then I'll just keep reading until one either sounds right speaks out to me. With Násti, well, um, I was just reading along and looking at meanings associated, I could not help noting the mixed-message that would cause with a speaker of English and not a tiny population herding reindeer in the Arctic wastes. That was already a plus because throwing the Reader a bit off is always fun. Let their own mind construct from the sound the hear in the their heads, meanwhile "Star" will be busy preparing a nice, safe place from which to leave when Yule thins the veil.

I had originally, in my notes, referred to this Tale as "Night Flight" but, well, you know why right now, don't you? Yeah, you're checking your playlist to makes sure you have Physical Graffiti in there, right? Yeah, that's just not the vibe that fits this story though. I went with "Hrafns" because, well, that's kinda what the story is about and I always like that spelling. If I ever own a black horse... (p.s. I never will, but I suspect the next midnight cat to claim me will hear that when I beg attention)

"Hrafns" advances further yet the Christmas of '71 collection of Tales bringing to my knowledge now four of the six to perish that night revealed and named. This collection will grow further by the end of this short-story writing season (since I switched to a novel late in the year) and I refuse to apologize for what is coming. I had way too much fun.