My So-Called Writing Process

Posted on March 16, 2023 by K.D. Keenan

I don’t usually write about my “writing process.” (In point of fact, I hardly ever write things for this blog, but I’m trying to change all that.)

I had someone ask me once if I lit a candle before writing, or had a favorite shirt or something that I wore only to write. As someone who used to get paid to sit in an office and write all day, I find that notion hysterical. I can see me now: sitting in an open workspace in a Cisco Systems building, surrounded by my co-workers, wearing my favorite schlumpfy nightgown and fuzzy slippers, surrounded by rose-scented candles as I feverishly pound the keyboard. If that is what it took to inspire me to write, I would never have had a writing job. At least, I never would have kept a writing job.

My writing process is basically sitting down and writing. However, I do have a process for researching before writing, and it is the most enjoyable part. Until recently, I don’t start out with a story in mind. I decide where I want the story to be and I go there. I let the location tell me the story.

You might say that is an elaborate and expensive process for a fantasy writer. Why not just make it up?

There are a couple of reasons why not. First, I have placed most of my fantasy fiction in the real world (past or present). I have not (until my current WIP) made up an entire world and the way it works like Brian Sanderson, who is a master of world-building and magical systems. My first novel, “The Obsidian Mirror,” took place primarily in Northern California. This was convenient, as I have lived in Northern California for more than 40 years, so I didn’t have to do much location research. I did revisit a few locales to refresh my memory. I also researched Native American traditions and folklore, and also threw in Voudún and meso-American elements just because I find them interesting.

This is a fantasy rendering of my villain in “The Obsidian Mirror, Necocyotl. He is not a nice god.

I didn’t have a storyline before I started writing “The Obsidian Mirror.” Actually, I didn’t set out to write a book. I have done that before and never gotten anywhere. This time, I started with the concept of fantasy based on New World traditions and mythologies, which I hadn’t seen much of at this point. The first draft clearly reflected that I had written it by the seat of my pants. (Authors call this “pantsing.” Some writers do it well. I learned that I do not.) I rewrote the entire book and discovered that creating a plot outline is just a swell idea.

During the time I was writing “The Obsidian Mirror,” I also had a full-time writing job at Cisco Systems, and it was tough to write all day at work and come home and write for fun. I took a few “staycations” just to work on the novel. It took me seven years to write, but I did learn a lot about what to do/not to do when writing a novel, so it was hardly time wasted.

After ”The Obsidian Mirror” was published, I decided to locate the next novel in Hawai’i, using the same set of characters. Like a good researcher, I tried to make appointments with a few experts on Hawai’ian culture, but never received any replies to my emails. So I changed all my travel plans and went to Moloka’i. I had never been there, but I found ancient references to the island as “the island of sorcerers,” which sounded about right for my purposes.

I have told this story elsewhere (https://wordpress.com/post/theobsidianmirror.net/381Z), but long story short, before going to Moloka’i, I had an encounter with Pele, goddess of fire, and she blessed my work. Everything from that point flowed like hot maple syrup, so easily, so effortlessly, that I really did not doubt that I had been blessed. I met with every person I had intended to meet, and they gave me information so generously that “Fire in the Ocean” practically wrote itself. (I know that sounds woo-woo, and my husband would be the first to agree with you. I am not normally a woo-woo person, but I stand firm on this point. We still don’t know everything about this world or this life.)

I did a lot of book research for “Fire in the Ocean.” I read as much as I could from older sources about the religion and culture of the ancient Hawai’ians, with an emphasis on Moloka’i. Each of the islands had their own, slightly different culture, and I wanted this novel to be firmly rooted in the traditions of Moloka’i. I also wrote a plot outline for “Fire in the Ocean.” This time, the novel took me about a year and a half to write—a big improvement!

For the third novel in the trilogy, “Lords of the Night,” I had some difficult choices to make that involved whether or not to kill off a particular character. And there were some characters that had been central to “The Obsidian Mirror” and somewhat less involved in “Fire in the Ocean” that I just didn’t want to deal with in a third novel—but I also didn’t want to kill them. They didn’t deserve that. (Yes, these characters became absolutely real to me during the process of writing about them.)

So for various reasons—including that I just wanted to do it—I set the third novel in the pre-Columbian Mayan empire of the Yucatán Peninsula. This meant that I got to go to the Yucatán and wander around ancient ruins, which was irresistible. The story began to come together for me in the ruins of Calakmul, a once-great city in the middle of dense jungle. Calakmul was a peak experience for me. It is so remote that few tourists make it that far. The trees growing throughout the ruins made the heat and humidity somewhat more bearable. I had all the time I needed to wander and think. Calakmul—or as it was originally known, Ox Té Tuun—generated one of the major characters in “Lords of the Night,” a teenaged Mayan girl who was a strong enough character that she nearly upstaged my original characters, Sierra and Chaco. Again, the story almost wrote itself once I had generated a plot outline. The novel took me about a year to write—getting better!

Again, I did an enormous amount of book research for “Lords of the Night.” I read one of the few Mayan codexes still in existence, the “Popol Vuh,” in addition to books and academic articles on Mayan religion, culture, crafts, religion, and folktales.

This is a minor character in “Lords of the Night: a mosquito. It is rendered and colored from a Mayan painting. The Maya drew lovely little caricatures of animals, some, like this one, anthropormorphized.

Sadly, this is where I lost my publisher, which decided to publish only non-fiction going forward. My first two novels are still with them, but “Lords of the Night” is available only as a Kindle book. Talking to agents, editors, and publishers convinced me that no publisher was going to pick up the final book of a trilogy.

I wanted to move on from the characters and premises of the trilogy at this point. I decided the next book would be set in Iceland. I originally had some vague ideas about setting it in modern Iceland and making it a paranormal mystery, but that is not the story that Iceland told me. I went to Iceland and visited many areas associated with the supernatural and magic. In the Settlement days of Iceland a thousand years ago, magic was accepted as normal and necessary, and magicians served an accepted purpose. Even after Christianity came to the island, Christian priests were sometimes known to be magicians without any stigma attached.

I was standing deep underground in a massive lava tube in western Iceland when the story came to me almost full-blown. From that point on, everything I did was aimed at filling out the characters and plot. The people I talked to in Iceland were generous with their time and information—and again, I did the book research and even learned how to read Icelandic runes. (I’m out of practice now, so don’t ask for a reading.) It took me nine months to write “The Spell Book of Thorfinn Bare-Butt.” It isn’t on Amazon because I have been looking for an agent.

The lava tube where the story for “The Spell Book of Thorfinn Bare-Butt” came to me.

If there is a Hades, he makes deceased writers eternally look for an agent in Hell. It’s like Sisyphus rolling the boulder uphill, or Tantalus, who can never reach the water or fruit to quench his thirst and hunger. I have contacted seventy-two agents so far without more than a “thanks but no thanks,” if that. I will keep trying for a while, but it was easier by far to find two publishers than it has been to find an agent.

In the meantime, I am trying my hand at a middle-grade fantasy. This is my first stab at world-building, and also my first serious attempt at writing for young people. My process? There is no location or culture to research, because they are entirely fictional and created by my own imagination. So my process is that I wrote a plot outline and now I sit at the computer and write. Works for me.

Where the Ideas Live

Posted on September 17, 2021 by K.D. Keenan

People sometimes ask me how I get ideas for my books. The short answer is: I don’t. I think people sometimes envision authors sitting at their elaborately carved Renaissance desk, complete with quill pen, and an exclamation point appears with a brand-new, amazing idea for a story! Eureka!

Maybe that’s how it works for some authors, I don’t know. The way it works for me is that I decide what part of the world I want a story to take place in, and then I go to that place. I let the place tell me the story. If that sounds mystical or authorish, it isn’t. It’s just how it works for me.

The first book of my trilogy, “The Obsidian Mirror,” took place mostly in Silicon Valley because that’s where I was living and working at the time. I understood the high tech industries, so my protagonist, Sierra, was a high tech public relations person (as I had been, many moons ago). The idea for the basis of the story came from my familiarity with the semiconductor industry and the ubiquity of integrated circuits around the world.

The second novel, “Fire in the Ocean,” had its origins in a Hawai‘ian vacation on the island of Oahu. I decided I wanted to set a novel in Hawai’i. Once home, I began planning a research trip the way I thought an author ought to—I contacted the Bishop Museum, the leading museum of Polynesian culture in the world. I contacted the University of Hawaii Dept. of Hawaiian Studies (or some such). I made reservations to go to Oahu to meet with these knowledgeable people.

Crickets. No one ever responded to my requests. So I decided that the story would be set on Moloka‘i, because that is the island of sorcery, according to the ancient Hawai’ians, which made it extremely attractive to a fantasy writer (that would be me). I also wanted to visit my friend in Captain Cook on the Big Island, because I hoped he would introduce me to some local people who could tell me about myths and legends. I changed all the reservations, abandoning the idea of speaking to the academic experts in Oahu.

At this point in my journey, I didn’t have a story. I knew i would be using my protagonist Sierra, and probably her friend, Coyotl the Trickster, but there were several other characters involved, and I wasn’t sure how I would be using them: Clancy, Rose, Mama Labadie—and especially Fred.

So my husband Tom and I jetted off to the Big Island. My friend was not available to meet for a few days, so Tom and I found ways to entertain ourselves—snorkeling, sampling the local goods like honey and macadamia nuts and coffee. We tried the local Captain Cook grocery store for wine, but the selection was unappealing, so we made a trip to Costco in Kona. While standing in line, I noticed an enormous refrigerator nearby, full of leis. I have always wanted a maile leaf lei. They are made as garlands rather than necklaces, and they often use only the pleasantly vanilla-scented leaves, not flowers. Sure enough Costco had them, and I took my prize back to Captain Cook.

I wore the lei the next day on a visit to Volcano National Park. Kilawea, Pele’s home volcano, was erupting, so I decided to sacrifice my lei to Pele, Goddess of Fire, and ask for her blessing on my work (which I hadn’t started because no story yet). To my disappointment, they wouldn’t let us anywhere near the actual flowing lava, but we were able to approach the rim of the caldera. It was clear this was the right place because there were other offering leis hanging in a tiny tree next to the railing, as well as on the railing itself. I held up my lei, asked for Pele’s blessing and whanged it right into the little tree, where it was securely caught in the branches. Then we turned around and started to walk away, but I wanted a photo of my lei hanging in the tree, so we went back after only a few steps.

Flinging my maile lei into the tree at the rim of the Kilawea cauldera.

My lei had vanished. All the other leis were still there. It was absolutely still without a breath of wind. We looked all around the ground under the tree. No maile leaf lei to be seen. With that incident, the story began to take shape in my head, with Pele taking an important role.

When I started thinking about “Lords of the Night” (I didn’t have a title at this point, by the way), I decided to write a historical fantasy—even though my characters were 21st century people. Why? I think it was the challenge. And I wanted to learn more about the ancient Maya. My mother helped to excavate several Mayan ruins in Yucatan and Guatemala, back when most of those great cities were still covered in jungle, and there were no roads to the excavation sites. So in addition to reading intensively about the Maya, their history, arts, mathematics, science, and culture, I set up a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula. (Actually, Tom does all the actual trip planning, based on what I want to see. He is wonderful that way!)

I was blissfully untroubled by the problem of getting my 21st century characters back to the 5th century. This is fantasy! I can just make it up! As a writer, I adore that freedom. Why do you think I don’t write science fiction?

I also cleverly invited a couple to go along with us. Clod, the male half of the couple, was born and lived as a young person in Mexico City, with vacations in the Yucatan, which is where his father was raised. Linda studied Spanish in school. I speak Spanish like a first-year student with a strangely good accent (thanks to my Spanish-speaking mother). Tom has never studied Spanish. See how I did that?

The story began to take shape for me when we visited the ruins of Calakmul, which lie within the borders of a large biological reserve on the Guatemalan border. Calakmul had been my primary destination, though we did visit Tulum, Uxmal, and a few other archeological sites. I don’t know why Calakmul drew me so strongly. My mother didn’t excavate there, and I had never heard of it before beginning research for this trip. I had seen photos, and the city has a temple that rivals Egypt’s Great Pyramid for size. Plus, it is located in the middle of a jungle, far from the well-trod tourist trails. Intriguing, no?

There is only one hotel within the borders of the biological reserve. If you want to visit Calakmul, you more or less have to stay at Hotel Puerta Calakmul, because the hotel, deep in the jungle, is still 60 kilometers or so from the ruins, along an unpaved road. When you get to the drop-off place for the ruins, you still have to walk a kilometer to arrive at the actual city.

At the base of one of the temples in Calakmul.

All of which made my visit to Calakmul everything I could have hoped for. As we walked along, I picked our guide’s brain about Mayan folk tales and we saw peacock-gorgeous oscillated turkeys, and monkeys, and javelinas. The ruins themselves were pleasantly shaded, with very few other people around. It was nothing like the wait-in-line-in-the-tropical-sun-with-a-million-other-tourists experience of the more popular sites. The temples, all of which have not yet been excavated, are impressive. In its time, Calakmul was one of the most powerful cities of the ancient Mayan world, and its name was Ox Té Tuun. Ox Té Tuun is central to “Lords of the Night,” and as I strolled along its broad avenues I developed the character of Ix Mol, a young Mayan girl from Ox Té Tuun with a very big problem who enlivens the pages of “Lords of the Night.”

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that place is central to my process as a writer. I have no idea why, but there’s nothing like a good trip to someplace far, far away to stimulate my creative juices.

That’s what I tell my husband, anyway.

Finally, the Climax! But It Needs a Cover.

Posted on March 6, 2021 by K.D. Keenan

It has been about three years since I submitted the third and final book of my “Gods of the New World” trilogy to my publisher. If you have followed this blog, you know that my publisher, Diversion Books, decided to publish only non-fiction going forward. My fantasy, no matter how climactic, did not qualify. Diversion’s first offering in non-fiction was a memoire by Corey Lewandowski, a man so vile that even Michael Cohen despises him. I felt that perhaps Diversion and I were never going to be really close. They are still making my first two books available, so I don’t want to make them mad.

But this did leave me in the middle of a trilogy without a climax. I felt bad for the few people who had read “The Obsidian Mirror” and “Fire in the Ocean,” who rightly expected a satisfying ending to Sierra and Chaco’s adventures—and relationship.

About a year and a half ago, I attended the World Fantasy Convention, held in Los Angeles that year. I went there with a short list of people I wanted to have a discussion with—an editor for a large publishing company, a publisher, and an agent. I told each of them the quandary I was in—third book in a trilogy, no publisher—and their answers were fairly uniform: I, a fairly obscure fantasy author, was not going to find a publisher to pick up the trilogy, much less the third book of a trilogy. My best bet was to publish on Kindle and move on.

Okay. Not the optimal solution, but I am not Neil Gaiman, either. I asked a dear friend, a graphic designer, to create a book cover for the third and final, climactic novel, “Lords of the Night.” Then I went to Iceland and started writing a completely unrelated fantasy about a slightly defective magician in ancient Iceland. That tale is in the throes of final polishing.

But my designer friend had a very tough year—tougher than for most of us, as horrible as 2020 was. She was unable to complete the artwork. I needed to move forward—I had a delayed climax on my hands, after all! I gave it some thought and then learned a new art program for the iPad called Procreate. I loved it so much that I decided to tackle the cover art myself.

This wasn’t an easy decision. I knew my friend’s graphic talents would result in an entirely gorgeous cover, perfectly in tune with the covers of the other books. I am an artist, but I have no design training, so I realized that the final product would not be as wonderful as the first two covers.

But all we do what we must. So I have produced two covers. I would very much like to hear your opinions on which version is closest in style to the first two covers. First, pleaze take a look at the covers for “The Obsidian Mirror” and “Fire in the Ocean”:

The first two covers for comparison. Now please take a gander at the next two and tell me what you think.

So which do you vote for? Cover 1 or Cover 2? Or are they both terrible? I can take the criticism—I’m a writer. Please leave a comment–much appreciated!

Blogging, Publishing, Disappointments, Runes, Dried Cod Slathered in Butter

Posted on November 9, 2019 by K.D. Keenan

Okay. I admit I am not the world’s most dedicated blogger. I haven’t posted since the end of my Iceland trip, sometime in July—and I was cheating, because after we left Iceland, we went to Copenhagen, then Stockholm, and had a wonderful time. Except for the heat. It was 85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit the whole time we were there, and of course, Scandinavia doesn’t know from air conditioning. My husband, who walks six to eight miles EVERY FUCKING DAY wanted to walk everywhere. I vividly recall standing in a jeweler’s shop looking for gifts and raining sweat on the display so hard I didn’t even contemplate looking for better prices because I was so embarrassed.

The only place I recall being air conditioned was the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. It is a museum that was built around an entire 17th century ship called the Vasa that sailed for 1500 yards on her maiden voyage, then keeled over and sank. It turns out she was top-heavy and there wasn’t sufficient ballast. A great pity for the king of Sweden, who had commissioned the ship and assured she was as gaudy and painted and stuffed full of guns as a wild west whorehouse. A greater pity for the thirty people who drowned when the Vasa sank. But a benison for the rest of us, because the ship was raised nearly intact and restored so that we can marvel at her and the astounding objects and decorations that she flaunted so briefly. And the entire building was positively freezing. I loved it.

But back to blogging. Why do I blog? I blog because I hope it will help sell my novels, although I don’t talk about my novels that much. I guess I am hoping that you’ll adore my prose style and want MORE! MORE! MORE!

But I have a problem, and I suppose I’d better discuss it. I have two novels of a trilogy in paperback, ebook, audiobook, etc.: “The Obsidian Mirror” and “Fire in the Ocean.” I also have a children’s book that was self-published, but let’s leave that aside for now. Last January, I sent my publisher, Diversion Books, the draft of the third, final, and (in my opinion anyway) best book of the trilogy, “Lords of the Night.”

My publisher basically said, “Oh, did we forget to tell you? We’re focusing on non-fiction now.” Long story short, they are still making the first two books available, but nothing further, and they won’t be bringing out “Lords of the Night.”

I believe that’s called “trilogus interruptus.”

Fast forward to last week, and I attended the World Fantasy Conference In Los Angeles. I wish I could say that a publisher stepped forward and rescued my entire trilogy, all the while warbling promises of AWESOME book promotion, but that didn’t happen. I did talk to an editor at Daw, and editor at Tor, and an agent that handles fantasy, and they all said the same thing, more or less: you are so screwed.

It seems that publishers don’t like picking up series in the middle, even if they can (my publisher will give me back my publishing rights). The advice was to take “Lords of the Night” to Kindle—maybe all three books—and do my own promotion. The agent suggested that a smaller publisher might pick up the trilogy; it would be worth trying. And then I can write my next book—unrelated to the trilogy—and find an agent and a new publisher.

Interestingly, I met at least three other writers who said the same thing had happened to them. Being a novelist is so glamorous.

But I did come back newly energized. I plan to pitch a few publishers and see what happens. And I have started on a new book. It will be set in settlement-era Iceland, as the Vikings began to turn into farmers and build a new society.    But there will be magic, and it will be Icelandic magic, which is different from other magical systems I am familiar with. As a consequence I am studying the Elder Futhark, which is the set of Icelandic runes used in fortune-telling in the Icelandic tradition. In this tradition, the runes themselves are magical, not just another alphabet. Each does have its own sound, which means the runes can be formed into words—but each also has its own meaning, both symbolic and literal.

For example, berkana:

As you might suspect, the sound associated with it is “B.” It means “birch.” Its more mystical meaning is “purification, fertility and birth.” This can be interpreted a number of ways, depending on where it falls in the casting, whether or not it is reversed, and its relationship to the other runes in the casting. It’s almost as complicated to learn as tarot, except that a standard tarot deck has 55 cards, while the Elder Futhark has only 24 runes. Which I guess makes it about half as complicated as tarot.

I am the rankest of amateurs and I don’t actually believe in magic, but I have been a bit awed by the runes and how accurate they tend to be. I’m looking forward to the role they will play in my new book.

For now, I will leave you with this random observation. In old Iceland, food was always an issue, and many times life depended on finding something dead washed up on the beach. One standby food was dried fish. Here’s what dried cod looks like (this one has a tag on it from the supermarket):

I suppose this could be rehydrated and cooked in a stew, though I haven’t gotten that far in my culinary research yet. But the preferred way of eating it was to break off a piece, cover it with salted butter and eat it. Icelanders still enjoy this as a snack, kind of like we eat potato chips.

I admit I did not know this when we were in Iceland, or I would have tried it. Next time.

The Tale of How a Little Book for Kids Grew Up and Became a Little Book for Kids

Posted on March 22, 2019 by K.D. Keenan

Once upon a time, many years ago (many, MANY years ago), I was a college student at Beloit College (it’s in Wisconsin and that’s all you need to know about it). I was earning a Master’s Degree in Teaching, and one of the courses I took was Children’s Literature. Much of our grade was based on two essays the professor had assigned. Two essays that I am sure the professor had selected carefully for their learning potential, but which I thought were incredibly boring.

So without any notion of what I was really doing, I asked my prof if instead of writing two essays, I could write two children’s books instead. He agreed.

I spent the better part of the next several weeks holed up in the house trailer where my husband and I lived at the time, writing a little book called “I Am Not a Bear,” and illustrating it in pen and ink and watercolor. I painted the scenes and then pasted the typewritten text onto the watercolor paper. Lacking any sort of binding option, I punched the pages with three holes and fastened them with binder rings. It was a crude production, but the best I had to hand.

The original illustration of Paul picking up his room.

The new illustration of Paul picking up his room.

The story is about Paul, a little boy who wants to live with the bears because bears don’t have to do math, pick up their rooms, or eat oatmeal. He winds up trading places with a bear cub, Growf, who wants to live with people. Both discover there really is no place like home, but they do meet each other in the end and have a good laugh about it. It’s a simple story with a sweet message about family and home—and whether or not the grass is really greener elsewhere.

My prof liked the book and read it to his kids, who also liked it. I got an A+ in the class. End of story.

Except it wasn’t the end. I kept this opus in a file drawer for many years. When my kids hit the right age (around four years old), I pulled out my “book” and read it to them. They seemed to enjoy it, even if it didn’t become a favorite like “The Cat in the Hat.” But then, my book didn’t rhyme.

The decades passed. The grandchildren came along. I read “I Am Not a Bear” to them, too. But as I was reading it, I noticed a few things with embarrassment. It was too long and wordy for the target age. The illustrations were crude, and I had learned how to paint in oils by this time and had paintings hanging in galleries. Even more important, print-on-demand had been invented, so I could create a genuine book for my grandchildren—something they could keep if they wanted.

I rewrote the book, trying to cut verbiage and page count. Then I re-illustrated it in pastels. I wanted a soft, fuzzy look, and pastels seemed ideal. I had never used pastels before, but I didn’t let that stop me. It turned out pastels weren’t that much different from painting in oils, just…drier. Then I formatted it for lulu.com and printed a few copies for the grandchildren and sundry other kids belonging to friends and family.

I thought that was the end of this little story. But no.

I became distraught over the separation of families at the border and the imprisonment of immigrant children. I lay awake at night, agonizing over those poor kids and their families, frustrated because there was nothing I could do to help.

Then it occurred to me I could help. If I could find an appropriate organization aimed at helping immigrant families at the border, I could self-publish “I Am Not a Bear” as a bilingual English-Spanish book and donate all the proceeds to that organization to help them be more effective.

I approached only two refugee assistance organizations. The first one never replied to me. The second, the National Network for Refugee & Immigrant Rights (NNIR), responded immediately and enthusiastically that they would love to work with me on this. They have been an appreciative partner.

Just one problem. I don’t speak or write Spanish. I can find my way around a Spanish-speaking country by dint of speaking only in the present tense and waving my hands around a lot, but I didn’t even know the Spanish word for “bear cub.” (It turns out a lot of people who speak Spanish don’t know that either, which made me feel better.)

Fortunately, I have a Spanish-speaking friend who grew up in Mexico, Clod Barrera. I asked Clod if he would translate my book, for the magnificent compensation of nothing but my eternal gratitude. Clod, being a wonderful person, did so. And then I passed the translation around to a few other people to make sure all was copacetic—because I sure wouldn’t have known if there were a problem!

Finally, everything was ready to go. Except for formatting the new version of the book on lulu.com. For some reason, this took forever, and I have no intention of boring you with why, but it is finally ready to sell.

I don’t usually ask people straight out to buy my books, but I’m making an exception. If you care about the plight of children and families at the border—and know a child (around four to seven years of age) who would enjoy the book, or know of a school that could use bilingual books for young children—I’m asking you to buy “I Am Not a Bear/Yo no soy oso.” One hundred percent of the profits will be donated to the NNIR for at least two years. Here’s where to get it: http://www.lulu.com/shop/kd-keenan/i-am-not-a-bearyo-no-soy-oso/paperback/product-23979188.html

I thank you in advance. Every book that sells sends more money to help immigrants and their families.

This illustration didn’t make it into the book for purely technical reasons. but I kind of like it anyway.

Raising Tad

Posted on June 4, 2018 by K.D. Keenan

First:
I love animals. I have always had pets, and never believed what I heard from others about how they don’t have the same emotions, or even the same ability to feel pain. Nonsense. Animals are more like us than not, but we have spent millennia trying to prove that we are better, finer, and superior. We have behaved accordingly, acting as though animals could not feel, or suffer. As if they didn’t matter.

So don’t read this piece if you are one of those individuals. You won’t like it.
* * * *

A few weeks ago, my daughter Kerry came home from her teaching job with a jar of water containing two tiny black commas of life: tadpoles. One of her middle-school students had given them to her so that Kerry’s two little girls could observe the miraculous transformation from tadpole to frog. The tadpoles were no bigger than my little fingernail.

Sadly, one of them did not survive. It was a rough journey from his home pond to middle school to our house. But one tiny scrap of life lived. We never named it, nor do we know its gender, but let’s call him Tad for convenience.

Tad took up residence in a plastic food container with purified water and two baby spinach leaves to eat. He swam around energetically enough for a few weeks, gorging on spinach. I marveled at him. He was so tiny that he couldn’t consume even one leaf before it started to go bad. I regularly changed his water and his spinach leaves as he worked on growing out his hind legs.

He became a bit sluggish and one morning, Kerry found him floating on his back on top of the water, apparently dead. But when she picked up the container, he flicked away, very much alive. Kerry consulted the oracle (the Internet) and found that once tadpoles get their hind legs, they also begin developing lungs, so he needed an easier way to breathe at the surface. I selected a rock for his container, one with gently sloping sides so he could almost swim right out of the water onto the top of the rock, which I left rising just a bit above the waterline. I added some sticks for good measure and topped it off with a couple of baby spinach leaves.

I swear he was way happier with the additions. (Go ahead and laugh. I don’t care.) Lethargy forgotten, he careened around his enclosure, now with far less water, dodging between twigs and hiding by the rock’s sloping sides. He did swim right up to the rock to rest in the water while he breathed. I was delighted, and I think that’s when I lost a little piece of my heart to him.

Tad’s forelegs seemed to pop out overnight, each the circumference of a thread. And one day, he climbed right out of the water and sat on top of the rock like a grown-up frog. The picture above is of this event. Terrible photo, but remember, he was teensy, and I was shooting through the plastic walls of a food container.

Tad sat on his rock the entire day without moving. My hypothesis is that he was allowing his lungs to practice breathing, and perhaps this was an energy-intensive exercise. I was smitten. He was just SO cute sitting there like a real frog, and yet—still the size of my little fingernail.

It was time to let Tad return to nature. His tail was nothing but a nubbin and his legs were fully developed. He would need to eat tiny insects now, as spinach would no longer appeal to him.

We live near a large tract of wild woodland. I thought I would let him go in the stream that winds through the woods. Lower downstream where it meanders into the ocean, there is always a crowd of ducks and seagulls, it’s polluted, and the water is brackish.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t reach the forest stream. Although there are places where you can reach the stream easily, they are not near the park road. My husband and I had taken our youngest granddaughter to witness the release and we were also carrying Tad’s container. Jessamyn, age four, is definitely not Nature Girl and objects to long and difficult walks. I had safety-proofed Tad’s container as best I could by removing the sticks, emptying most of the water and replacing the rock with a mound of sodden paper towels so he would have a safe place to sit out of the water if he needed it. But I could tell the movement and jouncing were frightening to him.

So we drove closer to where the creek empties into the ocean. The banks became much less precipitous. I found a spot upstream from where the ducks and seabirds hang out, far enough from the sea that the water wouldn’t be brackish. It was a shallow stretch of streambed with a golden, sandy bottom. I clambered as far down the bank as I could and let Tad out of his container.

With a burst of speed that surprised us, Tad leaped downhill toward the water and disappeared into the weeds matting the stream bank. We lost sight of him within a second. He was such an infinitesimal scrap of a creature that any shadow, any shelter disguised him entirely. It made me wonder how many little animals I have unwittingly walked upon without ever knowing it.

I absolutely would be lying if I told you that were the end of it. No, I worried. Did he make it to the water? Did he live through his first day as a free frog? Did he become a light snack for a garter snake or a sparrow?

Was this silly of me? Yes. Tadpoles are spawned in the hundreds of thousands, and they are ready food for many animals. Frogs, too, are the prey of birds, toads, foxes, raccoons, fish…and so on. Hakuna matata, the great circle of life and all that.

But I still think a lot about that minute froglet, sitting so quietly and proudly on top of his rock. Although Tad’s chances of survival were slim, at least I gave him a safe and predator-free tadpolehood. That is probably the best we can do for our own children before we release them into the wild.

Review: “The Book of Lost Things”

Posted on March 10, 2018 by K.D. Keenan

“The Book of Lost Things,” by John Connolly, is a fairy story about fairy stories—and not the kind that necessarily turn out happily ever after. More the Grimm kind, where virtue isn’t always rewarded, but evil is always savagely punished. It shows again that fairy stories are primordial, ancient, bred in the bone.

David, our protagonist, is a 10-year-old English boy who loses his beloved mother in the opening days of WWII. His father and he do as well as they can together, but then David’s father marries Rose and they have a baby boy, Georgie. None of this goes down well with David, who is grieving, angry, jealous, resentful and lonely. He also starts seeing strange things like a crooked old man lurking in his brother’s room, and begins having fits.

The one solace David finds in his new situation is the books in his room. They are fairy stories, but different from the ones he has read before—darker and more disturbing. He asks Rose about them, and she tells him they belonged to a great uncle who had loved the books, but he and a young female relative had disappeared one day and were never seen again.

One night David is awakened by his mother’s voice calling him. He knows his mother is dead, but his desire that this not be true is so powerful that he wanders into a neglected sunken garden. The voice seems to be issuing from a hole beneath a great tree there. As David hesitates, he hears the screaming of a bomber overhead, disabled, on fire, and heading right for him. He dives into the hole beneath the tree and discovers himself in a strange land as the bomber crashes through and David’s escape route is blocked. Just to let you know that the story to come will not be about sweet little creatures with butterfly wings, the pilot’s head bounces by David after the crash, blackened and bloody.

David soon discovers that a great evil is growing in this new land. A wolf army is gathering, led by the Loup, half man, half wolf. The Crooked Man is here as well, and seems to want something from David. The dangers here are genuine and they are deadly. The author doesn’t flinch at detailed descriptions of some truly grotesque and bloody deaths.

Amid the growing darkness, David also meets some good people who help him. One of them tells him to seek out the king of this land because he has “The Book of Lost Things” that will help David to return home. “The Book of Lost Things” doesn’t help him to find his home, but it does clear up the central mysteries of the story, pointing David to the truth of the Crooked Man and his agenda.

David proves he is brave, loyal, and resourceful. He discovers that not everything is what it seems, and learns to be discriminating about whom he trusts—a single misstep could be fatal. In the process, he solves the mystery of what happened to Rose’s great-uncle and his young relative, and of course realizes his mistake in rejecting Rose and Georgie. By the time David finds the way home, we feel he has earned his return many times over.

The book follows David’s life after this event. It was not a life free from pain or unhappiness, but he finds love, comfort and a purpose in life. At the end—I’ll let you read the book to find out what happens at the very end. Like a good fairy story, the end wraps everything up in a most satisfactory way.

I would have to say that ‘The Book of Lost Things” is not for the faint of heart. Although the protagonist is a child and the source material is fairy stories, it is definitely not a children’s tale. I might even hesitate to recommend it to a teenager, particularly if they were going through a Goth phase. There is a lot of violence, a pervasive sense of creeping evil, and many adult themes. I would have to say that it cleaves to the original tenor of the ancient stories, though. The old fairy tales are dark and primeval. They have nothing to do with living happily ever after or marrying the prince. They teach us to beware the evil in the dark and the forces we do not comprehend. “The Book of Lost Things” is that kind of fairy tale.

Review: “My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry”

Posted on January 27, 2018 by K.D. Keenan

I like fairy tales. I also like fairy tales re-imagined, but not all of them. For instance, I hated Gregory McGuire’s “Wicked.” I thought it disrespected Baum’s innocent vision of Oz, though obviously I am in the minority, and Gregory McGuire is now a rich man. On the other hand, I loved McGuire’s “Lost,” which skillfully weaves together Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” shades of Jack the Ripper, and some other goodies into a gripping ghost story.

“My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry,” by Fredrik Backman, is a rare jewel. It is a fairy story that combines several related fairy stories and reveals the truth behind them. And it’s completely original, in that it doesn’t rehash older source material. (Not that I’m saying it’s wrong to rehash source material. What would we do without it?)

Elsa, our protagonist, is seven years old and precocious, but I am happy to say she is precocious in a believable, seven-year-old way. Her grandmother is a character, to put it mildly. Among other things, Elsa’s grandmother has taught her a secret language and told her stories of the several kingdoms of the Land of Almost-Awake. Her grandmother is her super-hero, and Elsa adores her. In fact, Granny is Elsa’s only friend, because Elsa doesn’t think much of the kids at school who don’t understand great literature. Like “Harry Potter.” And Marvel Comics.

Elsa, her mother, her grandmother, and her stepfather live in a kind of a boarding house. Some of the tenants are very much in full view, like Britt-Marie, who bosses everyone around about signs in the laundry room and strollers in the stairwell. Others are never seen, including the mysterious “Our Friend,” as Granny refers to him. Elsa’s mother works all the time, her remarried father is not a strong presence, and she resents her stepfather. Her grandmother is her rock.

And then Granny dies. But before she does, she asks Elsa to deliver a letter. Elsa does, and sets off a chain of events that reveal the true nature both of Granny’s stories and of the people in Elsa’s life. Bit by bit, she comes to understand who these people are and how they came to be who they are. She also discovers her grandmother’s hidden connection to every soul in the boarding house.

Elsa eventually discovers a mother who loves her unconditionally, a stepfather who’s actually okay, and a father who turns out to be important after all. She even makes a friend. She learns some things about adults that in the end, she knows she just has to forgive.

While the protagonist of “My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry” is a child, this is not a children’s story. The heartache and sadness are all-too-poignant, and the adults’ stories are, well, adult. The story is about a child finding her way through the complexities of life by relying on herself and her memories of her grandmother. She learns the truth behind the tales, and adult truth is sometimes difficult and scary.

Fortunately, there is enough humor in Elsa’s take on things that the book never becomes dreary—and I was pleased that the humor never condescended, even though the lead character is a child.

I had a hard time deciding whether to categorize “My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry” as a fantasy or mainstream, even though the only fantasy elements in the story are Granny’s stories. It’s a fairy tale, but although it has a happy ending, it is a realistic ending. Granny doesn’t come back to life. Britt-Marie was never a princess. “Our Friend” is not really a wurse from the Land of Almost-Awake. And yet, the fantasy carries the story. Read it and decide for yourself.

My Christmas Gift to You. (Sorry About the Vampires.)

Posted on December 24, 2017 by K.D. Keenan

The following short story is my Christmas gift to you. We’ve all had a tough year, and I hope this little parody will make you laugh and forget for a brief time the troubles of our mixed-up world. It’s not exactly a Christmas story, but it’s what I’ve got. Sorry about the zombies, too.

The Lady Sheriff of Gristle Creak

The first thing I noticed about Lili Darkling was that she was alive. Now, no woman, be she ever so homely, rides through the Territory all by her lonesome. Apart from it not being proper behavior for a woman, she’d wind up raped and dead within the day even if she weighed 400 pounds and had bearded warts all over. Not only did Lili ride into town alone, she rode a shiny black horse almost as pretty as she was. If I’m any judge of horseflesh—and I am—that steed of hers was a purebred Arabian, about as common as diamonds in these parts.

To be honest, I would have noticed her anyhow, being a man in the prime of life and kind of hankering after a wife. Lili was a mighty striking woman. Tall and slender, with that whippy look. Black hair, done up under a hat that was more suited to a cowhand than a woman. And blue, blazing blue eyes. A sweet sight, for all she was dressed a bit mannish.

Later I heard she was applying for sheriff. We’d never had a female sheriff before—nobody had—but there wasn’t any real doubt about hiring Lili. We desperately needed a sheriff, and if some woman wanted the job, I guess that made her about the only human being that did. The town council voted before Lili said a single word, and it was unanimous.

But I have been forgetting my manners and have not introduced myself. I am Doctor William Cantrell. Call me Doc. I am the only physician here in Gristle Creak. (That’s pronounced “Grizzly Creek.” Our founder was a great man, but he could neither spell nor abide any criticism.) Despite the town’s small size and our remote and undesirable location here in the Territory, there is more than enough work for a sawbones, alas. More than ever lately, what with the vampires and zombies.

Which is why we needed a sheriff. We went through about one sheriff per month for a while. But I guess the word got out, and the stream of applicants dried up like spit on a griddle. It turns out the techniques that succeed pretty regularly with bandits and bar brawlers aren’t near as effective when dealing with the undead. Townspeople had taken to betting how many days it would take for each new sheriff to wind up either drained of blood or missing his brains. The one before Lili held the record, I think. Fifty-eight days before they found him hanging from a meat hook down at Hanson’s Butchery.

The trouble started about three years back. I was riding back from Jed Holstrup’s place outside of town. Jed didn’t live out there, but he had some cowpokes running cattle on his land, and one of them had turned up dead. Brainless, in fact. I’d been called out there to certify the death, but I was stumped, never having seen a man without his brains before. In the normal way of things when a man’s brainpan gets opened up, the brains might spill out, but they don’t disappear. In this case, the man’s skull was smashed open and the inside of his head was as innocent of gray matter as my pipe was of tobacco, me having run out some time before and Smith’s General Emporium not expecting any for another fortnight.

So I was ambling back to town on my old horse, puzzling over the brainless cowboy, when I saw the zombie. At first, I thought it was Jake, the town drunk—one of them, anyway. He was a real skinny man, staggering along like Jake on a Saturday night after he’d caged a few drinks down at the Gristle Creak Saloon. I rode up to him, intending to say howdy and make sure he was all right out there on his own, drunk as I thought he was. But I got a little closer and saw the gray-green, peeling flesh, the bones showing through, and the lipless mouth exposing brown, broken teeth. Jake ain’t the prettiest thing you ever saw, but he’s a sight better than the thing that was stumbling along the dusty road into town. I wheeled my mount around and lit out for town as fast as poor Jupiter could gallop.

That’s when we lost the first sheriff to the zombies. All it took was one. I thundered into town and swung down in front of the sheriff’s office, screaming my head off. Sheriff Yurnameer must’ve thought I’d gone off the rails, but he mounted his horse and went down the road to investigate.

When the zombie finally slouched into town, he had fresh sheriff all over him. A bunch of us surrounded the zombie and tried to kill it, but it wasn’t easy. He was perfectly comfortable losing a few limbs or his innards so long as he could smell human flesh. It was Miss Prinkett from the upstairs part of the saloon—you know what I mean—who brought a bucket of kerosene, doused the zombie, and set him on fire with someone’s stogie. That seemed to solve the problem, and we all went to the saloon to toast Miss Prinkett and congratulate her on her quick thinking. The congratulations went on all night as I recall.

But the zombies kept turning up. We could handle the singles pretty effectively—we started calling it the “Prinkett Fix”—but if someone encountered a zombie on their own, or if there were more than a couple of them, we were in deep trouble. We soon ran dangerously low on kerosene.

We could’ve held our own, though, if it hadn’t been for the vampires. It started on a fine spring day so bright and sweet I almost didn’t mind that that the mud in the main street was halfway up my shins. I was talking with Jed Holstrup, the ranch owner whose cowpoke started the whole thing. Jed was doing awfully well for a rancher, and we were all proud of him, because everyone else was pretty much scrabbling just to get by. But Jed—he was our golden boy. He’d acquired some mighty pretty suits all the way from San Francisco and I heard tell he was planning to build a big new house now that he and his pretty bride—she that had been Annie Whitethorn—had produced one beautiful little girl, with another on the way.

Anyhow, Jed and I were talking about the zombie problem. Jed was saying he thought they wandered in from the badlands. Nobody really knew what was out there, Jed pointed out. I was arguing that someone must bring them here a-purpose. Why anyone would do that was beyond me, but a man’s got to have a point of view, or there’s nothing to argue about. That was when Pearline came pelting down the street from the saloon, shrieking like the devil was snapping at her heels.

Pearline under full sail is a sight to behold. She is a woman of enormous and abundant charms, if I may say so, and most of those charms were fully evident now because Pearline had departed her place of employment without pausing to dress. She had a few filmy tatters streaming behind her like a wake, but that was all. Jed found a tarpaulin to cover her while she sobbed out her story.

“It’s Miss Prinkett!” she wailed. “She’s dead! Somebody musta kilt her!”

“Does she still have her brains?” I enquired, fearing another zombie attack.

“Yes! But, but, but …” and Pearline was off again like a siren and I couldn’t get one more sensible word from her. Nothing for it but to examine the body, so I trotted down to the Gristle Creak Saloon to take a look.

Sure enough, Miss Prinkett still had all of her quick-thinking brains. She wasn’t going to be using them anymore because she no longer possessed any blood. Cause of death was straightforward: complete exsanguination via two puncture wounds in the carotid artery. On the surface, it was a classic case of vampirism, but I was reluctant to note this on the death certificate. Adding vampires to zombies as the leading causes of death in Gristle Creak could completely discredit my reputation as a man of science. I noted cause of death as “vam-pyric attack,” hoping if the papers were ever audited this might be taken for some sort of systemic failure.

After the vampires started showing up, the town was under siege. Turns out a lot of the things we thought we knew about vampires and zombies just weren’t so. Garlic, for instance. Vampires appear to appreciate a good garlicky blood feed, judging by their preference for those who turned to the stinking rose for protection. Crosses and silver were useless—I told everybody that, but no one believed me until it was too late. You couldn’t shoot, stab or bludgeon a vampire or a zombie to death. We began to bury exsanguinated townspeople with stakes through their hearts, and that was wonderfully effective—I never saw another one of them again once they’d been planted. Of course, the brainless ones never posed a problem, but each new corpse meant one less person to help us fight against the forces of darkness.

So I was happy to see Lili Darkling step out of the sheriff’s office her first day on the job, six-shooter on each womanly hip, brass star twinkling in the sun. I walked over, stuck my hand out, and said, “Sheriff, we all wish you the best of luck. Let me know if there’s anything a-tall I can do to help.”

I was only trying to be polite—I was already up to my elbows in doctoring. But she fixed those mesmerizing blue eyes on me and said, “Why thanks, Doc. I could use your help, now you mention it. I deputize you in the name of the law.”

I spluttered a bit, but she paid me no mind. In the end, I saddled up Jupiter and drifted glumly over to the sheriff’s office. Turned out she wanted me to help her get the lay of the land. Maybe if we rode around outside town we’d see something useful. I had my doubts, but followed her obediently.

We had plenty of time to talk as we rode. Lili wanted to know how it got started, so I told her about the first victim, that cowpoke out at Holstrup’s place. She nodded and said, “Let’s start there.”

“Why? That was three years ago.”

“Just show me the way, Deputy,” she replied, so I did.

As we neared the Holstrup place, I asked, “Why’d you want to be sheriff of Gristle Creak?”

She was silent for a bit, head bowed and the creak of saddle leather and the clop of our horses’ hooves the only sounds. “I don’t rightly know,” she said at last. “I saw the advertisement in the paper. Gristle Creak sounded like my kind of place. I sort of felt I had to come.”

I was satisfied with that, and by now we had reached the little ranch house. We swung off the horses, tied them to the corral railing and hailed the house. Out here in the Territory—especially these days—you don’t just walk up to someone’s door and knock—not unless you want to get shot, that is. The polite and safe thing to do is to stand well away from the door in plain sight and halloo. That way they can take a moment to decide whether to shoot, so the odds of surviving your visit are a deal better.

A head poked cautiously out the door. It was Petey, one of Holstrup’s boys. I greeted him, and he said, “Hi, Doc. Who’s the little lady?”

“I’m Sheriff Lili Darkling,” Lili said, her face stern. “Doc here’s my deputy now. We’re investigating these … murders, and I understand the first one was right here.”

“That’s so,” Petey said. “C’mon in. We got some coffee going and it ain’t too burnt yet. What can we do for you?”

So we drank strong black coffee out of blue-enameled mugs and asked Petey, Eb and Zeke a lot of questions. They didn’t mind. Truth to tell, they were pleased as bull-pups with a marrowbone to have some company out there. Then the sheriff asked Eb if he had seen any zombies on the ranch since his partner had been killed.

Eb, a long, dried-out string of a man, bobbed his Adam’s apple and nodded. “Yes’m, I sure have,” he replied, fear at the back of his worried eyes. “Every now and again I have to go looking for strays up in the box canyon. That’s where I seen ‘em, mostly. Zombies, I mean.”

Lili’s eyes lit up, making her beauty nearly lethal. She’s going to have to learn to tone that down, I thought, or there’s going to be mayhem in the streets. Then I recalled there was already mayhem in the streets. “You ever see them anywhere else on the spread?” she asked eagerly, leaning forward. I reflected that she probably shouldn’t lean forward, either.

Eb looked like someone had just clobbered him on the head with a branding iron, but he replied, “No’m. Yes’m. I mean, no, I don’t see them anyplace else, Ma’am.”

Lili patted Eb’s knee, nearly causing him to lose consciousness. “You’re a good man, Eb! C’mon, Doc. Let’s go explore that box canyon.” We got directions from Petey, who could still talk, and we set off. Three heads poked out of the little house’s windows, staring after us.

“Y’all be careful now,” Petey called, but the other two just gawked. They don’t see womenfolk out there too much, and Lili was good for a couple hundred of the usual kind.

The ride up to the box canyon took maybe an hour or two, but the sheriff and I didn’t talk much. I guess we were both pondering what we would do if we got there and encountered zombies. I didn’t know what Lili had in mind, and she wasn’t saying. For my own part, I had brung along a bottle of kerosene and some lucifers—the Prinkett Fix. I wasn’t worried about vampires—they always attacked at night. We hadn’t figured out why, because they could walk around in broad daylight just like regular citizens, but night was the only time they ever attacked.

It was a mighty pretty day for a ride. Birds were singing their little hearts out, and there were buckets of wildflowers. The air was warm and sweet, for the scorching heat of summer hadn’t gotten its feet under itself yet. I watched a pair of butterflies courting and thought what a grand day this would be for a picnic with my sweetheart. If I had a sweetheart. If I weren’t riding around looking for brain-gobbling ambulatory corpses.

Weathered pillars of pink sandstone, layered like a cake, concealed the entrance to the box canyon. But Petey had told us the way, and we had no trouble winding through the narrow passage into a lush little canyon. There was a stream flowing through it, fed from a waterfall spilling down the cliffs at the back of the canyon. Cottonwoods and willows grew thickly by the water, and there was plenty of pasturage. I could see why some of those strays wound up in this canyon; it was a tiny paradise.

Except possibly for the zombie. This one was female, but that makes no nevermind when you’re talking about the walking dead—they’re all bad eggs. Anyhow, this one was standing under a cottonwood tree, staring at us. Well, her one remaining eye was staring at us, though from what I’d seen, they didn’t really need eyes. She wasn’t moving.

We were maybe a quarter of a mile away from the zombie when we saw it, and our horses’ nostrils caught the stink of deliquescing rotten flesh. They began to crow-hop and whinny. “Maybe we should stop here, Sheriff,” I said. “The horses ain’t hankering to get any closer.”

She agreed, and we sat in our saddles, regarding the motionless zombie. “Looks harmless from here,” Lili said.

“I got some kerosene with me,” I told her.

“Naw. Not yet. Let’s see if there’s any more around,” Lili said.

I was disinclined to seek out more of the walking dead, but I kept my peace. We waited for a good half-hour, the zombie standing there like a war monument, and us on our skittish horses. Then there was movement in the trees behind that unmoving figure. A line of zombies emerged from the undergrowth along a well-worn trail. They were hefting burlap sacks, like the kind you store potatoes in. When they sighted us, they set the sacks down on the ground all at the same time like they were rehearsing a dance-hall routine, and began shuffling toward us in the now-familiar zombie attack mode: arms extended, heads lolling, feet stumbling.

“Boss, I don’t have enough kerosene for that mob,” I said, but Lili was already wheeling her horse around.

“Hyah! Back to town!” she yelled, and her fancy black horse sped off toward the canyon entrance. Jupiter needed no encouragement, and I caught up with her easily. Once we left the canyon, we stopped to see if the zombies were following. We waited maybe an hour because zombies are powerful slow, but nothing ever emerged from the canyon.

We rode back to town in the late afternoon, the shadows of the mountains stretching purple across the chaparral. Lil was thoughtful and quiet for a while, but finally she asked, “Doc, what d’you reckon those things are carrying around in those sacks? Even more interesting, why are they carrying whatever it is? And all those zombies together. You ever seen that many in one place before?”

I shook my head. “No, Sheriff, I surely have not. As to the sacks—well, I kinda hate to speculate on that.” I repressed a shudder. I was afraid to imagine what might be in those burlap bags.

“I’m thinking maybe we ought to call on Mr. Holstrup. That box canyon is on his property, so might be he has some notion of what’s happening,” said Lili.

I turned in Jupiter’s saddle to face her. “You’re a brave woman, and that’s a fact. You haven’t been in Gristle Creak very long, Ma’am, but you should know right now that Jed Holstrup is the richest man in this town. He pretty much runs this town, for all he ain’t an elected official. I’d advise caution.”

Her delicate black brows frowned, looking somehow enchantingly like a moth’s antennae. “Well, I’ll take that under advisement, Deputy. Night’s coming on and we’d best leave it to morning. Good night.”

I went home and blocked all the doors and windows, as usual. I even had the chimney blocked off. I had run a narrow stovepipe from my cast-iron wood stove out through the wall, making sure that there were steel mesh blockages several places along the pipe just in case someone tried to get clever and enter as a bat. We had discovered that while vampires were greedy and vicious, they were also lazy. If you made it really hard to get at you, you had a better than average chance of waking up in the morning and still seeing your reflection in the mirror. Yes, that particular bit of lore is true; vampires have no reflections. Of course, that was no good to us. All it meant is that the females always looked like sinister circus clowns; they wore a lot of cosmetics but couldn’t use a mirror to apply them properly.

Next morning Lili was still hell-bent on seeing Holstrup, so we both called at his home. Mrs. Holstrup, she that had been Annie Whitethorn, opened the door to us after peeking cautiously through the curtains, her thick blonde hair piled high atop her head like a proper matron (though I recalled it used to tumble down her back in a waterfall of gold). I introduced the sheriff and asked if Jed was to home. He was, and Mrs. Holstrup showed us into the sitting room.

Jed strode in, wearing one of his pretty suits. He had a shirt of whitest linen, set off with a Chinese silk cravat, and a yellow brocade vest under a black frockcoat. His black kid boots gleamed like wet tar. He shook my big paw, but stooped over Lili’s little white hand and kissed it like he was Sir Water Raleigh. I snorted audibly, but Lili didn’t react at all. She just said calmly, “Mr. Holstrup, we want to ask you a few questions about those zombies on your ranch.”

He continued to smile, but somehow, it was no longer flirtatious. “I know nothing about them, Miss Darkling.”

“Sheriff Darkling,” Lili corrected.

“Sheriff. Nonetheless, I can tell you nothing. I go out there only a few times a year, and I have never personally seen any zombies on my property.”

“Me and Doc were out there yesterday. We saw a whole passel of ‘em in that box canyon north of the ranch house,” Lili said, her eyes fixed intently on his. “Any idea what they were doing out there?”

“I haven’t any notion, Sheriff.”

“Do you know what’s in those bags?”

For the first time, Jed looked nonplussed. “Bags? What bags? No, I haven’t the slightest idea. Wish I could help—I’d love to see those devils gone for good myself, you know.”

Lili looked at him for a full minute. Then she said, “Thanks for your time. Let’s be going, Doc.”

Lili didn’t say anything about this conversation, but she told me we were going back to the box canyon. That very day, no less. I filled several canteens with what kerosene I could find. I checked to make sure I had my lucifers. Lili brought her supply of kerosene as well, so I figured we were probably in for some action.

I tried talking to Lili on the way to the canyon, but she wasn’t much inclined. Finally I asked, “Why’d you pick me as deputy, Sheriff? Seems to me there’s other men better qualified, but I’m the town’s only doctor.”

She looked round at me from atop her pretty horse. “Took one look at you and I knew you were the man for the job. Knew you wouldn’t let me down in a tight spot. Think I’m right about that, Doc?”

Well, there wasn’t but one answer I could make to that, so I nodded and we continued on, the clopping of our horses’ hooves the only conversation between us. When we reached the entrance to the canyon, Lili silently dismounted and secured her horse’s reins to a cottonwood. I did likewise. Taking our canteens of kerosene along with our pistols, we walked the rest of the way, careful to tread quietly and keep to available cover.

Once inside the canyon, we moved cautiously through the trees along the little stream, heading for the back of the valley. We made slow progress, as we had no desire to inform the zombies we were on the way. The path the zombies used seemed too risky, so we moved through the underbrush, making it rough going. At one point, an impenetrable thicket forced us back to the path, which was fortunate, because otherwise we never would‘ve seen the gold.

Lucky that Lili had such sharp eyes. It was just a little chunk, lying to one side of the trodden dirt trail. She picked it up and it shone like pure sunlight in the palm of her hand. We stood there for some minutes, gaping at it.

“Fool’s gold, d’you think?” I asked.

“Naw,” Lili said, and pointed a slender forefinger at the rounded shape. “If it was fool’s gold, there’d be sharp crystals, maybe layers. This here’s rounded. It’s a real bright color, too. It’s gold.”

I didn’t think to ask how she knew, but I was sure she was right. “Think that’s what the zombies are hauling around in those bags?”

Lili gave the gold nugget a last, loving look and tucked it into her pocket. “I sure do, Doc. Let’s take a closer look at the back of this canyon.”

It took a long time to get back there because we knew if we were sighted by the zombie gang, we’d have a hard time getting out of there alive. We crawled on our bellies and snuck through the bushes and tiptoed like little girls playing at hide and seek. When we finally arrived at the back of the canyon, we saw a line of zombies staggering in and out of a cleft in the cliff wall. Further observation revealed the cleft to be the opening of a cave. The zombies would shuffle in with limp, empty bags. Then they’d shuffle out again, each with a laden bag.

I felt a deep sense of revulsion, watching these things go about their strange business. The only sound they made was a slow dragging as their feet shuffled along over the earth, with an occasional nauseating splat when a random part fell off and hit the ground. The smell was beyond anything a civilized man would’ve encountered, unless maybe he was a grave robber. Being a doctor I am no stranger to bad smells, but this lot had it beat all to Kingdom Come for pure, unadulterated stench.

“Follow,” Lili hissed softly, nudging me. I deduced she meant follow the zombies with the gold, and began edging away from the scene. We did a lot more belly crawling as we tracked the undead, but they didn’t go to the entrance of the little box canyon. About halfway to the entrance, they veered sharply off, following another trail. They shambled in silence toward the west wall of the canyon, coming finally to a small, windowless shack hidden among some piñon trees. Each zombie entered the shack laden with a full sack and exited a moment later with an empty one.

Sitting a ways off hidden by trees and brush, I whispered to Lili, “Want to use the Prinkett Fix on ‘em now?”

She shook her dark head. “I’m more interested in who’s gonna come and pick up the gold. I never heard tell of a zombie that cared anything for gold. Or money. Or anything. ‘Cept maybe brains.”

I had to admit she had a point there, so we waited all that blessed afternoon, as the walking dead marched painfully along, depositing their precious burdens in the shack and then departing. As the shadows lengthened and the canyon began to darken, shaded by its walls, no more zombies appeared. Apparently, production had ceased for the day. But we waited, still hidden nearby, making as little noise as possible.

To amuse myself during the long wait, I tried to identify birdcalls. I identified quail, scrub jay, roadrunner, mourning dove, and pygmy owl, but I was having trouble with a new one. The call reminded me of the squeak of new leather boots, a sort of constant creak creak creak like a cricket. By the time I felt the rifle barrel poke me in the back, I had just about figured out that it actually was the creak of a pair of new boots and that someone had been stealthily creeping up behind us.

“Afternoon, Sheriff, Doc,” said Jed Holstrup. “I can’t say as how I’m too happy to see you, though. Get up, now, and let’s move on back to the mine. ‘Bout suppertime for my … men. Throw your pieces on the ground.” He grinned. We complied.

Lili looked up at him. “Thought it might be you, Holstrup,” she said. “So would I be right in thinking that you brought the zombies here? That’s a pretty sweet berth you found yourself here—gold mine, free labor, no losses. Run some cattle to pretend you got a legitimate operation out here. Am I right?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Holstrup agreed. “They’re hard working, too. Feedin’ ‘em has been my most pressing problem. Only reason they wander away and bother folks is if they’re hungry. Otherwise you’d a never known they was here.”

“Bothering folks.” That’s what he called cracking people’s skulls and sucking their brains out.

“So how do you feed them, Jed?” Lili asked sweetly, for all the world like she was taking tea back in town and making polite chitchat.

“Well, now, that’s where the vampires come in,” Holstrup said, puffing his chest out like he was a proud daddy. “I ain’t really had too many runaways since I invited the vampires in—yes, that’s true, you really do have to invite them. Anyhow, the vampires provide a regular supply of fresh brains. Zombies don’t mind rustling up their own dinner.” I pictured the newly turned graves in the cemetery outside town and shuddered.

After a bit Lili pipes up again, “I know you’re gonna kill us, Holstrup. But we might as well go in comfort. I need a drink, and I bet Doc here does, too.” She hefted one of her canteens and looked at me.

“I could use one last smoke,” I responded. “Jed, you’d let a condemned man have his last pipe, wouldn’t you?”

Holstrup didn’t even look annoyed or impatient. “Sure,” he said. “I got all the time in the world.” He kept his rifle pointed at us, but leaned comfortably against a cottonwood.

I pulled out my pipe and filled it. As Lili pretended to take a swig of water from a canteen, I lit a lucifer.

“This water tastes terrible,” Lili commented as she poured the canteen’s contents on the dusty earth near Jed’s feet. I flicked the match before Jed had the opportunity to react to the smell of kerosene. The resulting fireball would’ve startled a man with better nerves than Jed; he dropped his rifle and leaped away, cursing and shouting. Of course, by that time I had the rifle and Jed was on the wrong end of the argument. Once he’d put out the flames I examined him and he wasn’t hardly burned a-tall.

Which is more than I can say for the zombies. Lili and I pretty much Prinketted the lot of them right there in the mine. We gathered up all the loose pieces and burned them, too, just in case.

So that was all right and satisfactory, except that now it was well past sunset. We decided not to attempt the ride into town at this hour, as there was too much risk of vampire attack. Also, we wanted to make sure there was nothing left of the zombies but ashes. So we decided to camp in the box canyon for the night.

I fetched the horses, our two and Jed’s handsome bay. There were enough emergency rations in the saddlebags to feed three people, plus more lucifers and canteens filled with actual water. We tied Jed up to a tree, built a campfire and commenced to jawing about the day’s events.

“Why’d you want to go and bring a mess of zombies in here, Jed?” asked Lili. “Couldn’t you just work the mine with a few of your ranch hands? You’d have to pay ‘em, of course.”

Jed didn’t seem especially neighborly, but he replied right enough, “Cain’t trust them boys. They’da stole me blind. You can trust zombies. They work hard and they don’t ask nothing in return. ‘Cept brains. The vampires, though, they been a bit of a problem. I can see that.”

“A problem no longer,” said a new voice, and it wasn’t Lili’s. It was a rich, dark, oily voice, and it came from the darkness beyond our circle of firelight.

It was a female vampire, and as she stepped into the light I saw she was a looker, too. Although her cosmetics were apparently applied with a trowel, they weren’t smeared all over her phizog like circus paint; her face was perfect. She was tall, and like all vampires generally, thin as a knife blade. I guess an all-blood diet is what does it, but it doesn’t seem to be catching on with the female population at large. Modern womanhood will smear poison on their faces and smash their innards into mush with corsets, but they won’t drink blood for breakfast. Anyhow, what with the tight, low-cut black dress, eerily floating long, black hair, curved black nails, and eyes that were somehow both black and fiery, this lady was indisputably difficult to overlook.

I broke the silence. “Does this mean you’re clearing out of Gristle Creak? All you vampires?”

She turned her white face and huge eyes to me. Her lips were a bright, fresh, wet-looking red. “Yes. That is exactly what I mean. We came at this man’s invitation,” she looked scornfully at Jed, sitting on the ground, bound to a tree and looking at her with horror. “But it is time to leave. We are very old”—she looked no more than a muslin miss, despite her provocative clothing—“and we can predict how humans will behave. Your little town is dangerously close to the torches and pitchforks stage. And this one”—she nudged Jed with the tip of her dainty black boot—“won’t be paying us in gold anymore, if I’m any judge.”

I stared at her with the fascination of a small bird for a large snake. “But what do you need gold for? You’re immortal, aren’t you?”

Her dark eyes unblinking, she slowly nodded. “Immortal, yes, but we still need money. It’s so much easier to hide from the authorities when one has plenty of money. We do what we can to avoid the torches and the sharp stakes, you know. Well, this has been amusing and profitable, but we have overstayed our welcome, I fear. Farewell.”

And she was gone. She didn’t turn into a bat and fly away. She was there, and then she was not there.

We sat in silence for several minutes. Finally, I turned to look at Jed. I had intended to ask him if he wanted some coffee, but Jed was slumped against his restraining ropes, perfectly limp. I checked all his vitals, but no luck. Jed, host to the undead, was now a potential member of that club himself. And all she’d done was flick at him with her little boot.

We burned Jed’s body, not wanting to take any foolish chances. After we finished up this chore, Lili turned to me and smiled. It was a triumphant smile, stretching from ear to ear in a manner that seemed unnatural to me—the widest smile I’d ever seen, so wide it seemed like she could swallow me if she had a mind. She seemed to gleam and glow in the light of the campfire, so full of some kind of energy that her body could scarcely contain it. She stood straight and tall like the goddess of victory, smiling at me.

“I am Ardat Lili, daughter of Lilith, demoness of the Western Wastes. I have triumphed in battle, and this town is now mine by right of combat,” she said, eyes blazing in the firelight.

I squatted down by the fire and poured myself a cup of coffee. “Yes, I know. Have a seat.”

It’s hard to use a word like “deflated” when you’re talking about Lili, but she did seem taken aback.

“How … how do you know?” Lili asked, puzzlement knitting her fine brows together.

“I am the wizard who summoned you here, Demon,” I replied equably. “By the laws we both obey, you are my servant. Sit.”

As I had commanded, Lili sat, looking like she’d just been kicked by a mule. I went on, “I was weary—weary of dragons and meddlesome priests, weary of kitchen maids wanting love potions. I settled in Gristle Creak as the town sawbones some years back, and everything was just fine. I healed folks and they paid me. Then all these incomers started up—the undead, you know—and I knew we needed a demon. It’s all very well burning the undead and shoving stakes into them, but when you’ve got an all-out infestation, the only satisfactory cure is a demon.” I drew on my pipe and sipped some coffee.

Lili’s eyes burned a feral green in the firelight. “So now that the undead have cleared out, I suppose you’re going to put me in a lamp for a thousand years? Seal me into that gold mine back there? Or did you have it in mind for me to be your slave, is that it?”

I looked up in surprise. “Oh, no. That would be poor payment for your assistance. You were compelled to come here, and you couldn’t help chasing after the undead because that’s what I brought you here to do. But you did your job, and a mighty fine performance it was, too. No, I have it in mind that you and I should marry. Settle down. Maybe have some children.”

“And be your lawfully wedded slave? No thanks!” she snarled, her dark hair all down around her face like smoke.

“Well, I won’t compel you. I don’t want a slave, I want a wife. Pretty difficult finding a wife when you’re a wizard, you see. It’s just hard to explain certain things that most ladies would find kind of peculiar. A demoness wouldn’t need any explanations, and she’d be right handy at times, too, helping out with a bit of magic here and there. But if it don’t appeal to you, I guess I can’t change your mind. You can go any time. With my sincerest gratitude.”

Lili didn’t say anything. We settled down to sleep. The next morning, she was still there, though I had freed her. We made some coffee, saddled up and rode back to town, stopping at the ranch house to explain to the hands that Mr. Holstrup had a terrible accident and wouldn’t be around no more, but Mrs. Holstrup, she that had been Annie Whitethorn, would no doubt want them to stay on with the cattle, so they should just keep on as they were. They didn’t seem any too cut up about Holstrup’s demise.

We reported back to the townspeople about the improved undead situation. Out of respect for Jed’s wife, she that had been Annie Whitethorne, we didn’t tell anyone about Holstrup’s wholesale importation of the undead. I borrowed a leaf from Jed and said they’d wandered in from the badlands, but they were all gone now, and no more were expected from that quarter. We opined the vampires had departed in disgust on account of the poor quality of blood nowadays. As for Jed, he had died gallantly fighting zombies and had gotten himself burnt up on accident. We advised Mrs. Holstrup, she that had been Annie Whitethorn, to put an armed guard out at the gold mine, and to find workers she could pay in actual money.

Lili relieved me of my deputy duties and I went back to doctoring. She didn’t say anything the next week nor the week after. Finally, I went to see her one quiet afternoon. She was in the sheriff’s office, doing paperwork. She looked up when I knocked and walked in.

“Howdy, Doc. Help yourself to some coffee, and I’ll be right with you.” I did so, and then sat at the empty deputy’s desk, waiting patiently. We hadn’t any need for another deputy since the undead skedaddled.

Lili signed her name on one of the documents with a flourish and gave me her attention. “What can I do for you, Doc?”

“Well, Lili, I was wondering if you’d given any more thought to my proposal?”

Lili looked thoughtful. “I have. And it was a fine and generous offer, to be sure, Doc. I like it here in Gristle Creak. I’d like to stay on as sheriff.”

“That wasn’t my offer, Lili. You’ve done an excellent job as sheriff, but you can’t be sheriff if you’re going to be my wife.”

“Whyever not?”

That stumped me. I had thought it obvious. “Ladies aren’t sheriffs, Lili. Especially not married ladies. What would people think?”

“Do you care?”

“I care what folks here in Gristle Creak think of me, yes I do,” I said defensively. “It’s my home.”

“Well, I don’t think we’re especially suited, Doc. Seeing as how I want to be a sheriff, and you want me to be a wife. Why don’t you go ask Mrs. Holstrup, she-that-had-been-Annie-Whitethorn?”

I was positively thunderstruck at this suggestion. Annie was a married woman! Then I remembered that Jed’s ashes were blowing around the chaparral like the memories of youth, and that Annie was indeed a widow. A rich widow. With a gold mine.

Well, I reckon I can talk the hind leg off a donkey and you’re probably itching to be on your way, so I’ll make this short. Me and Annie have got four adorable little ‘uns—if you’re counting Jed’s two, and I am—all with curly blonde hair. Annie’s hair is as beautiful as ever, though there’s more silver in the gold now. I’m doing about the same. Wizards tend to age kind of slow. If they’re careful.

But Lili—well, some in the Territory think it’s a scandal that Gristle Creak employs a pretty lady sheriff. But I’m telling you, when it comes to enforcing the law, why, that woman’s a real demon.

The End

Cover Reveal: Fire in the Ocean

Posted on November 11, 2017 by K.D. Keenan

As I have mentioned before, my second novel, “Fire in the Ocean,” is coming out from Diversion Books in February 2018. Diversion’s art department came up with a spiffy new cover for “The Obsidian Mirror,” which will be re-issued along with the debut of “Fire in the Ocean”:

New cover for “The Obsidian Mirror”

“Fire in the Ocean” is the sequel to “The Obsidian Mirror,” and features the same cast of characters. New twist, though–the book is set in Hawai’i on the islands of Moloka’i and Hawai’i (the Big Island).

Why, you might ask, Hawai’i? When I wrote “The Obsidian Mirror,” I drew upon strictly New World mythologies, folk tales and traditions–Native American, MesoAmerican and Voudún, avoiding the supernatural traditions that essentially migrated to the Americas from Europe. I started it as a kind of experiment after reading one of Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” novels. I just wanted to see if a fantasy could be crafted that entirely eschewed the standard fantasy tropes of caped adventurers, swords and sorcery–elves, vampires and trolls need not apply. To my surprise, the experiment turned into a book.

Although I wanted to continue the adventures of Sierra and her friends, I didn’t want to repeat the setting, plot, or other key elements of “The Obsidian Mirror.” So I picked Hawai’i as the venue for the sequel because: 1) I love Hawai’i ; 2) Hawai’i is also “New World,” and therefore fit into the strictures I had placed on myself; 3) it was an excuse to go back to the islands to do research. (And an amazing and wonderful trip it was, as those of you who have followed my blog for a while know!)

Why Moloka’i? Well, it turns out that Moloka’i in ancient times was known as the island of sorcerers. The island has its own take on the mythology and its own unique legends. Moloka’i proved to be a rich source of information and experiences, most of which were incorporated into “Fire in the Ocean.” As for why I chose the Big Island for part of the story–you’ll have to read the book.

Diversion Books just sent me the cover design for “Fire in the Ocean.” What do you think?

Cover Design for “Fire in the Ocean”

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A blog about writing fantasy fiction. And other stuff.

Tag Archives: writing

My So-Called Writing Process

Where the Ideas Live

Finally, the Climax! But It Needs a Cover.

Blogging, Publishing, Disappointments, Runes, Dried Cod Slathered in Butter

The Tale of How a Little Book for Kids Grew Up and Became a Little Book for Kids

Raising Tad

Review: “The Book of Lost Things”

Review: “My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry”

My Christmas Gift to You. (Sorry About the Vampires.)

Cover Reveal: Fire in the Ocean

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