no ghost rent

One of the books I enjoyed this summer was The Tattooed Potato

Alert The Bugle

CARNIVOROUS FLOWERS ON CAMPUS!

Luna listens

Laura took this photo of Luna when she listens for me walking up the driveway, back home from work!

kinescope

When Aaron texted me the illustrations of Howard Harvard and Lucky Skeleton, it reminded me of those 1950s kinescope TV shows.

Phil cover

The final cover spread for this 2017 collection of novels about ace detective Phil Ticks. Fred Sodt helped create this cover layout.

Original Phil

Aaron's amazing original cover drawing for The Book of Ticks.

UP

An ancient little sewn magazine from Bridge City. I think there were 3 different issues. This one has a cover by Aaron Gunderson who also drew the cover for One Drop in the Milky Way and many more Good Deed Rain books.

up in the attic

Without a home, on the run, disguised as Abraham Lincoln, this is where Howard Harvard lives, up in the attic of Old Main. This is also where he finds a sarcophagus containing Lucky Skeleton...

Path from the Milky Way

This is the path that Howard Harvard takes in One Drop in the Milky Way after his money runs out at the Aloha Motel.

Joan Crawford in the morning

It's just past 6 AM, a peaceful time before I have to go to work. I'm having coffee and writing my next novel. Who knows where these words come from, like this latest sentence: "Then Joan Crawford’s jet-black wig hid him from sight."

THURSDAY MORNING

The street sweeper takes its elephant time past our house. It makes a loud gray furrow in the window. For about a minute it mooches along until it fades into the rest of the Thursday morning sounds.

view of Chuckanut, walking home

under the willow, looking up

publication notification

basketball plan

Decided to give you some real-life pictures of settings from the new novel, One Drop in the Milky Way. Available for pre-order from Amazon and blackmarketeers. The book begins with our hero, Howard Harvard finally reaching retirement. Upon meeting with his college employment advisor, he's told that after all the deductions, he'll be making about $160/month profit. Not much. So he comes up with an extravagant plan to make some money. It involves the basketball games taking place in this gym.

WEDNESDAY MORNING

Two people in blue shirts are restocking the vending machine, talking about The Lord of the Rings. Yesterday, the janitor was vacuuming to Frank Sinatra. These are the people I see at this hour. Tomorrow might be a circus horse.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS for BEGINNERS

I remember writing this way back in 1989, when I used to ride the NYC subway to the glass factory.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON

A butterfly grows tired of chasing her.

The BARN OWL

The wind swept across the big pond behind the barn. An invisible river blew between the poplars out by the road and waved the tall grass aside like green long-bottom weeds. When it hit the barn, warped and worn by the rain, crooked boards faded silver as fish skin, there was a music in the creaks and ticks. The steady hiccup of a rope that hung from a rafter. Up in the broken roof slat, an owl was dreaming his flight above nighttime fields full of mice. He could turn into air silently. But wise as the owl was, he didn’t know he slept while the wind blew. He was in a dream apart from everything. He forgot he was also in this world, held together precariously and waiting for that one last breath to fall.

MONDAY MORNING

Like me, the spider making tracks across the floor has somewhere to be. I don’t ask if it’s late to work or on some errand or what, but I disrupted its plan when I caught it and let it free outside. A familiar song is playing, we all know this time of day, when we find ourselves lifted out of a web we were stuck in and carried to a place like the early morning backyard.

chapter drop

Here are the enticing chapter titles for ONE DROP IN THE MILKY WAY... The Town Heel/ Last Resort/ Purgatory/ A New Acquaintance/ A Fibonacci Spiral/ Low Tide/ The Train to Transylvania/ A Universal Language/ Talking to a Dog/ When I Was Abe Lincoln/ Breakfast/ A Forest in the City/ Marmalade/ Infinite Wisdom/ Nothing/ Dream Animals/ Burnt Coffee/ Catching Sunlight/ Chandu the Magician/ The Grand Scheme of Things/ The Set to Pop Parking Lot/ Forgiven/ The Movie with Fay Wray/ Other Planes of Existence/ World Without End/ Looking for Howard Harvard/ Showboat/ Criswell Predicts/ The Howard Harvard Fan Club/ Where the Linoleum Ends/ Moths/ Millie/ Impossible Animals/ Taken to the Cleaners/ From Time to Time/ The Golden Gate Bridge/ Pretend

Milky Way Introduction

only in the Milky Way

Here's a funny story for the Johnny Carson show author interview. As mentioned previously, one of the stars of the book is, out of necessity, an Abraham Lincoln impersonator. I wanted Aaron to draw him for the cover. At first I thought of movie star John Carradine. But then it occurred to me that a better model would be Paul Whiteman. Imagine the stout "King of Jazz" trying to dupe anyone with that disguise! Only in the fiction of ONE DROP IN THE MILKY WAY!

ONE DROP IN THE MILKY WAY

Good news! Just sent off new novel to the printer! 268 page adventure starring an Abe Lincoln impersonator and a living, kindly, skeleton. ONE DROP IN THE MILKY WAY. This is the cover spread, thanks to Priya for her help again! And Aaron Gunderson did the spooky illustrations. Just in time for Halloween, publishing date is October 17. Stay tuned for more and be sure to order your copy with a side order of candy corn.

Summer with Mr. King

Presenting...

The Hardest Working Computer in Pine

YOU in the FALLING RAIN and EVERYTHING

An old poem from 1994

update

Trying to get as much done before I go "back to school" next week. 3 projects going right now. Just waiting on final cover template for the next new novel. Also finishing up proofs for the new animal book. 300 pages! Will also be my first hardbound book! And I've started writing a novel which is about a couple of Martians working odd jobs on Earth, with guest appearances by Joan Crawford and Conway Twitty. Stay tuned for updates!

dogfish

peaceful animal

A handsewn book I made in 2012. A story from this will be appearing in the new animal collection. Stay tuned....

preview of birds

A secret preview of the new novel I'm writing

King Wins!

New Animal Book

Finished compiling a big book of animal stories, coming soon. Animal writing from 1989--2023. Cover of handsewn book from 2004 with Rosa cover.

MOVIE TIME

Watched Robot Monster (1953) and Johnny Eager (1941) double-feature at the imaginary drive-in

HORACE the WALRUS

Horace used to work in the employment office. He was notoriously slow and unhelpful. It was a miracle anyone got hired. After he got fired, he got another job at the Gulf gas station on Ellis Street. I found him by accident when I stopped there once. He floated behind the glass of that little booth and gave wrong directions. A year or so after that, they knocked the place out of existence and now all that’s left is a plot of gravel.

doubleheader

Finished reading these 2 books this summer:

ON a COUNTRY ROAD

An old pickup belongs on the farm, parked in the folded grass of a driveway or making passage between the rows of corn on a country road. An engine loud as black coffee, and every ripple on the road makes the seat squeak like a nest of tin birds. We spot the weasel just ahead, running right beside the tar, its body hunched almost rolling, like a half-inflated inner tube. It’s going quick, but as we pass, we see it turn its head to glare. Caught in its mouth is a burly field mouse and what a sudden, fierce look that weasel gives us, startling and sharp as a wound, just before it cuts into the crop it knows by heart.

PIG FARMER BLUES

He raises sixteen pigs every year, feeds them the food from his garden, stands in the middle of them and rubs their backs. It’s a good feeling after a long day at the office and summer is the best time to have pigs. Next week he will let them in the turnip field. They’re as happy as they will ever be.

strange tapping

I was upstairs reading The Strange Reincarnations of Hendrik Verloom when I heard a tapping overhead. What could it be? A rodent with a grudge? A ghostly telegraph from beyond? With terror mounting, I finally went outside and up on the peak of the roof I saw a flicker, caught in the act.

The 20-MINUTE PARKING SIGN

Today it’s in the center of swallows and dragonflies. They all orbit around it like a circus ride. If a car arrives it will have to duck.

the party pooper confesses

I have to go home now. I need to watch Revenge of the Zombies

the race