My goal is to get “Dead Aggies Don’t Drive Trains” to the printer on Friday. We’ll see.

The book has changed some since I posted an excerpt a while back. Books don’t really gel until they’re printed. Lois has bled red pencil (actually a pink marker) in the manuscript from end to end, pointing out where things could be clearer, where I beat a favorite word to death, and so on.  She is very good at that.

This is my first crack at self-publishing.  There’s not much opportunity for unknown authors to get other people to pay to publish their work.  I did not have to pay to get the last three printed, but this one is a different animal.  The others were published by a Christian print-on-demand publisher, at their expense, but it would be a stretch to expect them to publish this one.  It isn’t anti-Christian, but it doesn’t quite go where Christian literature generally goes.  People die (they do that in whodunits), and not even the good guys are quite on the up-and-up.  The writing style hopefully is close to old novels where the plot had to carry the story, before authors discovered four-letter words, graphic sex, and explicit gore.  Think a radio play, not television.

“Self-publishing” in this case means more than paying somebody to beat a manuscript into a book.  I write the story, format it, get ISBN numbers, etc., and take it to the local printer.  He has done books before.  If he has good suggestions, I’ll probably take them.  The cover pictures are mine, too, by the way.

I also expect to market in electronic format.  We’ll see how that goes, too.  The software so far has not been fully cooperative.

Speaking of Christian books, I entered “Mary in Transit” in a Christian literary competition.  It didn’t win.  On a scale of 10 (as rotten as possible) to 100 (perfect), the five reviewers ranked it 98, 96, 95, and 38 twice.  I think that means it was well written but offensive to some.

This is for the children sitting in front of me on the Amtrak Southwest Chief, who wanted to see me write a story.  Emily thought I should write a fairy tale or a fantasy story.

A Fairy Tail, Dreamed Up on a Train

By Don Bemis, for Emily, Brian, and Cindy

(I hope I spelled your names right.)

Once upon a time, there was a fairy with a long, long tail.  That was because she was a monkey fairy, named Prunella.  It wasn’t really a very good name for the fairy, because Prunella didn’t like prunes.  If her name had been Banananella, she would have been a lot happier, but it wasn’t.  The evil wizard Gorillagus had magically turned all of Prunella’s bananas into prunes, and then he laughed.  He was that way.

Prunella really wasn’t a very good fairy.  She had no real fairy type skills that she knew about.  She could do simple things like turn buttercups into butter, and she could make ice cream melt, but that was about it.

You see, Prunella had dropped out of fairy school.  She spent so much time staring out the window dreaming about casting beautiful fairy spells that she missed the entire class on fairy spells.  So she flunked.  A failure as a fairy, that was what she was.

Prunella stumped unhappily down the road.  Her tail, which should have been twirling happily above her head like a helicopter, dragged in the dust behind her.  Her wings, which ought to flap and sparkle in the sunlight, slumped from her shoulders.  And her face, which should be the prettiest green monkey face around, scowled.  Prunella was feeling sorry for herself.

Suddenly there was a flash of light in the road.  A brilliant blue baboon with crimson wings burst into view.  He stared straight at Prunella, and she stared right back.

“Who-who are you?” she stammered.

“I am Prince More than Charming!” he boomed in a musical monkey voice.  “And who are you, looking like something the cat might have dragged in?”

“WELL!” exclaimed Prunella.  “I have never been so insulted in my life!”

He frowned.  “If you looked like a proper fairy, smiling and flitting about with your tail twirling like a helicopter over your head, you would be beautiful.  But no, you look like something that dropped out of fairy school.”

“I am,” she said in a tiny voice.

“So drop back in,” he suggested.  “Then you will be beautiful and cast beautiful spells.  The evil Gorillagus will not be able to trick you anymore, and we can live happily ever after.  We will eat bananas until we nearly pop.”

So she did, and they did, and I ran out of story.

The End

The problem with writing is the writer wishes readers would read what he wrote.  That can be a problem if it isn’t published.  There are worse problems, of course, such as nobody liking what he writes.

Now is your chance to decide.  All you have to do is click the link to get a look at Chunk One of my latest unpublished tome.

Dead Aggies Don’t Drive Trains

My wife and I did a most unusual thing this weekend.  We watched television.  It wasn’t worth it.

We don’t have any theological reason to be so odd, but we just fell out of the habit while still in college.  When was that, you ask?  Before the days of leisure suits.  What’s a leisure suit?  Never mind, Kiddo, you wouldn’t want one.

Then Japan had an earthquake.  We were staying in a room with a TV at Turkey Run State Park, Indiana (Where’s that?  Just look for a lumpy place that doesn’t grow corn), so we thought we’d watch the news.

What a disappointment!  First we got Fox, who seemed to think it might have been Obama’s fault.  Too much rant for my taste.  We didn’t try the Big 3, who likely were still trying to pin it on George W..  The Weather Channel did a pretty decent job, although I’m not certain that earthquakes or tsunamis are meteorological phenomena.  Finally we settled on CNN.  It wasn’t that great either.

News sells soap.  It also sells cars, beer, insurance, and what have you.  Television news is not so much about imparting knowledge as it is about entertaining.  Keep those viewers around long enough to watch the next round of ads, which take a high percentage of the airtime.  That’s to be expected, I suppose, since I wasn’t paying CNN directly.  Those reporters have to get their grocery money somewhere.

Let’s start with the most egregious example.  CNN interviewed a well-known science guy who wears a bow tie and is entertaining to watch.  Unfortunately, he was completely out to lunch on the nuclear power plant situation.  Maybe he’s good at explaining other science phenomena.  I hope so.  It would be a shame if he garbled other fields as badly.  The problem is that people trust him.  He looks so geeky, how could he not know all about science?

Our scientific friend seemed appalled that anybody would use boron to protect against meltdowns.  He compared it to borax in the laundry.  Yes, they both contain the element boron, but that’s about the only similarity.  Boron stops nuclear chain reactions.  It is used as a matter of course in pressurized water reactors (which Fukushima Dai-ichi isn’t) and is used in emergency situations in boiling water reactors (which Fukushima is).  Our scientist didn’t seem to know that.

The element cesium was detected.  The science guy strongly implied that meant a meltdown was in progress, because control rods are made of cesium, so they must be melting.  Maybe, if Fukushima uses cesium control rods.  Control rods are made of many different materials (including boron, in some cases).  Many, many control rods have no cesium at all.  However, nuclear plants produce some cesium anyway as a result of radioactive decay.  The presence of cesium alone does not prove that a meltdown is occurring.

The guy was skeptical that the building explosion was caused by hydrogen, stating that nuclear plants produce helium, not hydrogen.  Au contraire.  Hydrogen is produced by several means.  A nuclear chain reaction will “radiolytically decompose” a small amount of water into its elements.   If water gets hot enough, its hydrogen and oxygen atoms may separate.  That is hotter than you would expect a reactor to get.  If a meltdown does occur, zirconium surrounding the fuel pellets will react with water in the same way as magnesium (remember that from science class?) to produce hydrogen gas.  Nuclear plants sometimes inject hydrogen into the coolant water to control corrosion.

As to helium, it does not explode.  There was an explosion.  Ergo, hydrogen is the likely culprit.  To be fair to our scientific friend, it is true that radioactive hydrogen (tritium) does decay into a rare form of helium, but it takes years to do it.

That’s enough for that so-called expert.  Another “expert” attempted to explain how the plant got into trouble when its safety systems failed, but he was pointing it all out on a diagram of the wrong type of plant!  To get technical about it, he was pointing at a picture of a pressurized water reactor (which Fukushima isn’t, etc.).  Was there not a single expert around who could point out such an obvious error?

Some other experts really did know what they were talking about, but they didn’t get as much airplay.  Maybe that’s because they didn’t seem half as excited.  They had a way of blunting leading questions, and there were plenty of leading questions to blunt.

I heard enough times that radiation levels had spiked a thousand times above normal, but I never heard what “normal” was.  When I finally got real numbers from other non-television sources, the very highest numbers were far lower than has ever been proven to cause damage to anybody.  Scientists conservatively assume that any level of radiation can cause cancer, but research so far has not corroborated the assumption.  There are too many variables to draw valid conclusions.

There also were smaller irritants, like looped videos.  I saw one wrecked train at least four times during a single audio interview, and multiple times during other interviews.  How many times did the same white van wash down the same street?

Then there was the President’s news conference.  “Mr. President, how did you feel personally about the disaster?”

It’s good I’m not the President.  I would have been tempted to say, “Do you realize just how stupid that question sounds?”

I spent three nights this week reading Dead Aggies Don’t Drive Trains to Lois.  She got a lot of knitting done, and I nearly lost my voice.  Last night was repair time for problems we found.  I also tried out a new little chunk I had been mulling over, but it didn’t work well.  Out it came.

The story was at least a partial success for two reasons.  First, she liked the story.  Second, she didn’t figure out whodunit.  That could be taken a couple of ways, though.  Maybe I covered my tracks decently, or maybe I just did a really bad job of setting it up.

Now we have 257 double-spaced pages for her to read, or at least start reading.  It may take a while because spring training began today.  Lois can’t read and listen to baseball simultaneously, and I have no illusions as to my position in that pecking order.  Lois has already served notice that the first chapter was confusing.  I’d better practice my grumping for when she dumps the marked up manuscript in my lap.

Maybe if I bribe her with a Cubs or Tigers ticket…

Last night, I filled the last hole in Dead Aggies Don’t Drive Trains.  It was almost exactly eight months after the dream that precipitated the story, and nine months after the train ride that precipitated the dream.

Today is Two-for-the-Price-of-One-Presidents Day, a bargain holiday if there ever was one.  It gives me an opportunity to run through the story again and print a draft to read to Lois.  She knits or quilts, and I read.  She’ll stop me every so often with a question or a suggestion, and I’ll get irritated before remembering:  If Lois can’t figure it out, neither can anybody else.  She’s a good critic.  Every writer needs a Lois, but they can’t have mine.  I’ll grumble, change something, and keep going.  Eventually we’ll get through it.  She’ll take the draft, bleed all over it, and I’ll grumpily make more changes.  That’s Round Two.

Round Three is submittal to a publisher.  Round Four is waiting to see if they like it enough to publish it.  That might take another year or so.  In the meantime, I’ll still be tweaking.  Publication is the only cure for tweaking.

Note the “if” in the paragraph above.  My Dutch blood and my Scotch blood up to now have allied to scotch (wonder where that came from?) any urge to self publish.  It costs money.  I’m cheap or chicken.  Take your pick.

If my story makes it through Round Four, an editor probably will tell me, “My, your draft is so clean!”  That happened with the other three.  I’ll have to fess up and tell them they’re Editor Number Two.

So don’t hold your breath.  Round Five is a ways out there yet.

Elmer was a smart little tree.

So smart, in fact, that he planned his life while still a seedling just tamped into the soil at Shady Acres Tree Farm.  He and several thousand others were set into neat rows.  It was a lot more spacious than the greenhouse where he had sprouted, and he liked it.

“This is GREAT!  Lotta sun, room to grow, and even- what’s this?  Company!” he yelled as a robin settled by him to look for worms in the disturbed soil.  “Hey, you!  Where am I?”

You’re in a tree nursery,” replied the bird.  “They’ll feed and water and take care of you here for six or seven years.”

“Wow!” Elmer whistled.  “Then what?”

“Then people will take you home with them and plant you in their yard.”

“How?  I’m stuck in the ground.”

“No problem.  They just dig you up.”

Suddenly it didn’t sound so good.  “But I like it here!  I don’t want dug up!”

“Too bad,” said the bird.  “If they want you, off you go.  But don’t worry.  Yards are a lot nicer than here.  Not just dirt between the trees, but real grass and gardens.  A land growing with mulch and bunnies.”

“Naw, there can’t be any place nicer than this!  I’ve never seen what you’re talking about, so I don’t believe it.”

“Okay, be that way,” replied the robin impatiently.  “But it’s true whether or not you believe it.”  He started to hop off.  The worm hunting wasn’t going too well anyway.

“Wait!”  Elmer yelled, an idea forming inside.  “What makes people like a tree so they’ll dig it up?”

The robin stopped.  Maybe the tree was reconsidering.  “Oh, I don’t know it all.  People are pretty strange.  But they seem to like trees that look healthy:  good color, even shape, no holes in the greenery, no fungus, that sort of thing.  That’s why the nursery people trim your branches and squirt you with fungicide.”

“Ugh!  I bet it hurts something awful.  And what if I like fungawhatevers?  They never hurt me.  And the growers never trimmed me either.”

The robin could see that it wasn’t going well.  “Maybe because you weren’t ready yet.  And they’ve protected you from fungi already.”

“Huh!  Some fairy tale!  What are you, a preacher?”

“Nope, just an old bird trying to keep you out of trouble.”  The robin flew off.

Elmer made up his mind.  If good color, even shape, and no holes meant eventual uprooting, he would do without them.  If other trees were dumb enough to believe snipping and squirting would prepare them for a better life, fine.  They deserved some pain for their stupidity, and what would they become for it?  Firewood, probably.  That’s what trees got, not free lawns.  No, Elmer would be the ugliest tree in the nursery!  Nobody would want him and he could stay put.  But how?

Just then a dog wandered by.  That was it!  “Hey, you!” yelled Elmer.

The dog ambled over and sniffed.  Nothing too interesting, but it had spoken to him.  “You called?”

“Yeah,” responded Elmer.  Would you mind sitting on me?”

The dog wasn’t too bright, but this sounded stupid even to him.  “Why?  I’ll squash you.”

“That’s why.  If you do, I’ll grow up bent and nobody’ll want me.  Then I can stay here.”

“Dunno why, but your wish is my command,” shrugged the dog.  He sat.

Elmer’s stem cracked.  It hurt worse than he had expected.  Besides, the dog smelled like a dog.  But it would be worth it.  So much for good shape.

It worked.  As Elmer grew, he leaned to the north.  But he didn’t stop there.  He grew a forked trunk.  He insulted thunderclouds to attract lightning.  He invited every passing fungus to make itself at home.  The itching was awful, but at least he could stay put.

After five years, Elmer looked terrible.  He was misshapen and had bad color.  In truth, he felt awful too, but his plan was going well.

The sixth year was the worst.  Trimmers came and lopped all the trees, including Elmer.  He screamed as loudly as the others, but he smiled inside for two reasons.  First, the other trees got pruned even if they tried to be perfect, so they were no better off than he.  And second, Elmer was really a mess.  He didn’t see any way they could ever make him beautiful enough to dig up.  He was a little worried about the robin’s statement about no holes, though, so one day he invited an itinerant porcupine to take a big bite out of his least bad side.

Finally the big day came.  People dug up Elmer’s neighbors, roots and all.  Then they were gone, leaving only a few scraggly extras.  Elmer was proud to see that he was the ugliest tree standing.

He had gotten his wish.  He was not sent to a lawn, but instead stayed where he was.  What had happened to the other trees?  Who knew?  What had all their primping and pain done for them?  Nothing that Elmer could see.  He was the wise one, the one who had fought off the people!  He congratulated himself…

…as the bulldozers drove into the field.

The blizzard is coming! The blizzard is coming!

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a full-blown blizzard, so the news and weather people are pulling out all the stops. They’ve been wrong more often than right this year.  I’ve done my part to keep the storms away by investing in a snow blower for the first time ever.  I considered blowing out the driveway yesterday so that job would be done before the storm hit, but I didn’t get around to it.

Just in case, though, I get to spend tonight at the nuclear plant. I’m what they call an “essential person” in the emergency response organization one week out of four and have to stay sober (no problem) and within 30 minutes of the plant (a pain). The pain is a potential problem if the roads all blow shut. Rather than try to round us up in time if a problem develops, we 30-minute people will already be there.

If the weatherpeople are right for a change, maybe I’ll be stuck there tomorrow, too.  Nonessential people won’t be.

It must be nice to be useless.

It’s snowing.  Welcome to Winter Michigan.  We’re warmer today, all the way up from last night’s 7 degrees to 19.

The weather computer calls it light show.  Compared to lava or volcanic ash, it is.  The street occasionally disappears behind the light stuff when viewed from our library, and the snowplows have been by several times to push several inches of the light snow from the street into our driveway.

We had pink snow once when I was a kid.  It’s crunchy.  A snowstorm collided with a dust storm, blanketing everything with a layer of barely off-white.  As soon as the snow melted (which usually is within hours in the southeastern New Mexico flatlands), a layer of pink silt replaced it.  It explained why the pawful of fresh snow I had popped into my mouth was so gritty.

We do get dark snow in Michigan.  Old plowed and shoveled piles of white snow get blacker and blacker in the springtime as they melt, leaving dirt and road grime behind.

Please pardon me if I henceforth refer to the weather computer as the weatherman.  That might be anthropomorphic or sexist, but he/she/it has been wrong more often than usual this winter.  Maybe instead of looking out the window, he slogs on with all of his machines and won’t ask for directions.

Actually, it’s our library, but please don’t tell the dragon.  Its feelings might be hurt, and it’s looking a bit hungry.

The dragon used to spend every Christmas season in a downtown South Haven shop window until the shop was done in by the big box store on the edge of town, after only 150 or so years in business.  Lois got it for my birthday after Count Otto’s Dragon was published.  She also made the quilt on the wall.