Going Steampunk for WindyCon

My Necravenomicon Wings

I’m not a costume person. I had a bad costume-fail for my second grade class Halloween party and never quite recovered. I have always blamed my mother.

She had this thrifty notion that my costume should also be able to double as pajamas, so she had my grandma whip up a baggy bodysuit out of tiger-print flannel, complete with an eared cap that tied under my chin. The really egregious part was that she had forgotten to buy a mask or costume makeup, so she drew jagged stripes all over my face with her bright red lipstick. Altogether, I looked like Freddie Krueger had gotten hold of the neighborhood cat.

My classmates were grossed out. Worse yet, my two best friends, Mary and Leslie, were dressed like little dolls as Little Bo Peep and a fairy princess, respectively. My boyfriend  of the week, Larry Vorba, said Leslie was pretty but I was not. And the lipstick smelled like my mother’s saliva. I pretty much swore off elaborate costumes forever.

Then came WindyCon’s Steampunk-themed con, happening this Nov. 13-15. I’m on two panels and have a book signing — how could I not wear a costume? Besides, Steampunk is Victorian+fantasy+cool, Neil-Gaimanesque imagery. Irresistible. I decided to forget the tiger suit debacle and bought a hat and corset. I then set about creating a fantasy gadget “jet-pack” and attached it to some post-Halloween sale wings from Walgreen’s. I’m aiming for a gothy Victorian Tinkerbell look.

Here is a shot of the wing ensemble, and I’m also rigging up a big pocketwatch/brooch combination and will be carrying a transformed old book. I also have a very short ruffled skirt and tall black boots. And the only lipstick on my face will be between  my nose and chin where it belongs.

Larry Vorba, whereever you are, this one’s for you.

In Praise of the Index

I just finished my 11th (to be) published non-fiction book, and the good news is that I didn’t have to make an index for it.

The bad news is that I didn’t have to make an index for it.

My Strange Wisconsin index

My dirty little secret: I like making indexes. The old way. With a pencil and index cards. I know there are software programs for this, but I agree with the Chicago Manual of Style when it states that a computer-made index “cannot in any way substitute for a real index prepared with the aid of human intelligence.” (Thankfully, degrees of human intelligence are evidently not an issue.)

The crux of it is that indexing requires a sifting process to decide exactly what is pertinent to the subject at hand, and that process is at least partly subjective . If a book is about strange creatures, “phantom pigs” is probably a pertinent entry, but its exact  location in the obscure Welsh hamlet of Pentrefoelas may not be considered index-worthy. At least I didn’t think so when I prepared the index for Hunting the American Werewolf. A software program set for  proper nouns might have beeped to differ.

Besides, I find the process relaxing. You get the galley in the mail and look at how the pages have shaken out and how the designer has arranged things. That’s always enlightening. Then starting at page one, you write the words you choose on the indexcards, alphabetizing each. And don’t forget the page numbers.  Several packs of cards will be required for most books targeted above kindergarten level. And that Chicago Manual of Style will be invaluable for the picky parts.

Along the way you pick out any lingering typos that can still be fixed without disrupting design flow. A favorite beverage and snack is mandatory. The only tedious part is the data entry after you reach The End, but you could also enter as you go.

I’ve done this for five books — the others provided professional indexers at their cost – and this last one is part of a series with detailed chapter entries up front. But an index is normally a lovely and necessary thing to any researcher (or purchasing librarian — I’ve been one), and in my opinion no NF book should suffer the indignity of an indexless rear end.

I will add that I would never sign a contract for a book that required ME to pony up for a professional indexer. It would be like paying someone else to pet my dog or do my crossword puzzles. Genre NF advances are meager enough as it is.

And in the end, literally, a non-fiction tome without an index is just, er, book-naked.

If Midwest Express says I’m a Monster Hunter…

I must be one, then.

I’ve been called worse. So when an airline in-flight magazine gives me the title of monster hunter it strikes me only as a tad amusing, and perhaps even accurate. Midwest’s current fall issue chronicles the tour of southeast Wisconsin strangeness that I gave Chicago writer Rod O’Connor in July (read ONLINE). Using my books Strange Wisconsin and Weird Wisconsin, we covered Lake Geneva’s lake monster, Jennie, the Beast of Bray Road (natch), the Millard dinosaur store (which didn’t make it in but see my photo below), Whitewater’s famed witch’s triangle, and the weirdest legend in Wisconsin: Haunchyville, alleged domain of tiny men with miniature but lethal baseball bats.

 

O’Connor does a great job of contrasting SE Wisconsin’s pleasant, woods-and-cornfields landscape with the monsters and strangeness that lurk therein. He writes as fastidiously as he keeps his car — despite the fact that he often has a baby on board, the interior would put any dealer’s detailer to shame. “We never eat in the car,” he told me as I bit into the pita sandwich I had just acquired at the LaGrange General Store. His eyes followed a crumb that had dropped to the pristine passenger seat where I sat. I hastily retrieved it and made sure there were no more. You never want to tick off someone who is going to write a major magazine story about you. 

I did thoroughly enjoy the day, especially our side trip to Mystic Drive in Muskego where the Haunchies famously dwell. The tales tell of a forbidden lane at the end of the street that is guarded by a rifle-toting man in a black pickup truck, where you are sure to incur a whopping fine for trespassing. We did encounter a black truck with two men but no visible rifle. But the farm at the end of the street where the lane should have been is now busily subdividing itself like an amoeba, and the Haunchy habitat appears to have been obliterated.

I was amazed then when we discovered a weedy yard on Mystic Drive itself with three small, strange-looking buildings. From the looks of them, no humans of any size ever dwelled here, but I wondered whether their presence was enough to have started the Haunchy legend in the first place? Supposedly the Haunchies were a colony of little people retired from area-based circuses, but I had expected to find nothing at all from this popular urban legend. The tiny buildings were a fun bonus. They can be seen from the road, no need to trespass. Here is a picture of the oddest one:

 

It is obvious from the state of disrepair that this is no country for old, little men. 

The tour was fun, though, and we barely scratched the surface of weirdness in Wisconsin. I hope the Midwest passengers get a charge out of the article and a little crypto-education to boot. Perhaps more than one will be alert enough to glimpse that pterodactyl winging its way past their cabin window…. 

Books about puppies; Grendel Meets the Cranes (Frasier, Niles and Daphne)

I confess that I take way too many pictures of my Lhasa Apso, Grendel. But how many dogs get this close to three sandhill cranes and live for their owners to tell the tale? These were taken on a recent walk around the ‘hood. The comments on each photo are straight from the Grendel-mind, I assure you.

And it is a good thing I had my camera along to capture this scene. I heard the cranes blasting their “Dang the temperature hit 40 last night, let’s blow this place for Florida” call last  night so they will not be around much longer.

The horses stay all year, bless their stolid hearts.

This is the mean  one that always tries to kick Grendel.

We take this walk every day past very ancient and deep kettles (ancient as the last glacier anyway) and it never gets old.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Coast to Coast in the Wee Hours

This Thursday, July 23, tune into Coast to Coast am
http://www.coasttocoastam.comto listen as I attempt to remain coherent for 3 hours with George Noory discussing strange creatures and odd phenomena such as Green Glow and the Gable Film 2. Lots’ o coffee, lots o’ Red Bull.

Bray Road Beast on Hannity July 10

It was really hard to choose a category for this post. Is the Beast of Bray Road a celebrity just because it’s being featured on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show this Friday (9-midnight Eastern time)? That’s a toughie, but the creature IS going to be on national TV, so I finally chose the “celebrities, TV, movies” label. However, there have been so many clips of the late Michael Jackson looking werewolfish in his “Thriller” video this past week that the real-life incidents described on Fox may seem tame by comparison.

The six-minute segment will include yours truly and witnesses Steven Krueger and Katie Zahn. Krueger is the former DNR roadkill remover contractor who had a deer carcass nabbed from his truckbed by a 7-foot tall wolf-headed creature in 2006 near Holy Hill, north of Milwaukee. Zahn has been seen on H.C.’s “Monsterquest” episode, “American Werewolf” where she passed a polygraph test on her encounter with multiple Manwolves in southern Rock County.

It also will examine that controversial Gable Film my friend Steve Cook has so thoroughly explored and now opened to everyone as a “creative release.” I have not seen this on any other national program.

Hannity sent producer Tim Rhodes to Elkhorn just ahead of a big thunderstorm in late June and managed to film us in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, grab a few b-roll shots of Bray Road, and then flee the approaching “scattered tornadoes” local weather guys were predicting, all in one day.

He promised us a fair treatment, and seemed genuinely interested in the strange fact that hundreds of people around the US and world claim to have seen what looks like a huge, intelligent wolf walking,kneeling, or running on its hind legs. Open-minded curiosity…always a good sign.

The segment will appear on the show’s regular “Conspiracy Month” feature. See the above Hannity link for a gander at his take on the Honey Island Swamp Monster.

On the other side of the shadow world…Steiger hits a double

Are you still sleeping with the light on after reading Iowa mega-author Brad Steiger’s Shadow World, about spirit parasites and such lurking on the other side of the veil? Or are you just looking for some comfort and hope amid the fears of this near-Apocalyptic world? If your answer was affirmative in either case, you may wish to check out one or both of  Steiger’s recently released antidotes for gloom, Beyond Shadow World (Anomalist Books) and Real Miracles, Divine Intervention and Feats of Incredible Survival, co-authored with Sherry Hansen Steiger (Visible Ink Press).

book by the Steigers

When I ripped open the manila envelope and found my copy of Beyond Shadow World, I steeled myself for a deeper,  scarier look at the Other Side. Au contraire! I was pleased to be treated to an account of Steiger’s personal spiritual journey. The book is all about preparing one’s self for positive spirit helpers and experiences, and includes sojourns into the lives of others who have made crucial but unearthly connections along their intended paths. I was especially intrigued by the stories of Arkansan Al Kiessig, who has a knack for finding interdimensional portals, and New Age music pioneer Iasos, who hears and translates the heavenly choir. And Steiger doesn’t want anyone to swallow any of his information just on faith; he exhorts readers to examine every idea carefully. Always a prudent idea!

Real Miracles is an amplification of the Miracles series the husband/wife team has been co-writing for many years. It runs the gamut from amazing escapes from natural disasters to after death experiences. Some will give you the willies…a man escaping from an alligator after it chomped and swallowed his arm…and some, like the tiniest baby ever to survive at 9.97 ounces, will warm the cockles of the most  jaded heart. Even a heart too jaded for cockles.

I should mention for sake of full disclosure that Brad and Sherry are friends of mine. And it’s nice to have friends who write books so fabulous I would recommend them regardless. But both these books radiate the warmth and careful storytelling that is the Steiger hallmark, and will strike a celestial chord in anyone looking for an uplifting read.

Swine Flu name game; gettin’ piggy with it

What’s in an influenza name? A lot, apparently. And like the swine this one is named for, it doesn’t smell so sweet. A

H1N1 Swine Flu Virus Magnified

growing number of voices are clamoring for a better title for the recent virus, since it also (strangely) includes DNA from human and avian strains of influenza. The American pork industry is grunting the loudest because people mistakenly think they can catch swine flu by eating pork chops, and tenderloin sales are beginning to plummet.

Even genius raconteur Paris Hilton has fallen for this misconception. When TMZ crews asked her if she was afraid of swin flu, she stared blankly for a moment and then replied, “No, I don’t eat that.” (April 28 show)

So yeah, if  Paris is confused, the name has got to change. Some have suggested Mexican flu, but I think that sounds culturally biased. Here’s an idea. The virus contains DNA from three different species, which makes it an official scientific chimera. So how about the Chimera Flu? I’ve drawn my own nightmare image of it (right, copyright Linda Godfrey).

It does seem to spread very rapidly, so Flash Flu might be apt, and has great alliteration.

Scientists, however, have dug deep into their pocket protectors and pulled out the dull medical label, H1N1. That’s the official nomenclature of this particular virus and they say that’s what we should call it. OK. If you pronounce the 1’s like i’s, it sounds like Hiney. Hiney Flu.

But that makes  flu  the butt of a joke, and I don’t think that pig will fly. So I’m sticking with Chimera Flu. In world mythology, chimeras were everywhere — griffins, sphinxes, leopopards — and often had bird and human parts. Pig men are not unknown in folklore, either. It appears this version will spread worldwide, so that part fits too.

I’m glad that’s settled. Now to wait for the rest of the world to catch on.

CornDog Man and my t-shirt store

Yes, I’ve been away for a while, but it’s been a little crazy. One thing I did during my blog hiatus was to finally start a Cafepress store where some of my creature designs are now immortalized on a variety of t-shirts. People have been asking me to do this for 17 years and I have always said no, partly because I didn’t want to be in the souvenir business, and partly because I think hawking merchandise tends to take away from a researcher’s reputation.

It was the Yahoo group Unknown Creature Spot and their dialogue about dog men in cornfields — which devolved into something called CornDog Man — that finally nudged me into an e-commerce experiment. They asked if I would draw a cartoon of this creature for them, and I obliged, and then they began asking if they could get CornDog Man t-shirts. Truth be told, I kind of wanted one myself. So I took the plunge and opened a Cafepress store, which handles all the messy business stuff like printing, stocking and shipping, and set up a few CornDog Man shirt models. I enjoyed seeing my art on t-shirts so much that I added a couple of others; my original Beast of Bray Road sketch, a Bigfoot head, and my Weird Deer emblem.

I don’t know how long I’ll stay in the creature-T biz, I surely don’t expect to get rich from it. But I guess if a few people get a kick out of wearing my artwork, there’s nothing wrong with that. And I will probably be my own best customer, I already ordered a green Weird Deer shirt for my own summer wardrobe. And the CornDog Man, of course, in corny golden yellow.

Christmas Cards from an Ax Murderer and Other Things People Tell Me At Book Talks

Kenosha diner sign

There is a  reason I like to go out and talk to people about my books. Yes I like the sales, and the refreshments are often delicious. My gig last Thursday at the Burlington Antiques Club offered cheesecake and fresh fruit. The. Best. But what really got my boat afloat occurred after I finished blathering and took the opportunity to listen to the 10 people who had gathered to see me. That is when the good stuff always happens. 

This time was no exception. I found out that the host of the meeting, Laurence, grew up in the same town as the Lima Ax Murderer featured in my Strange Wisconsin. And that the murderer, after he went to prison for bashing his two elderly uncles to death, faithfully sent Laurence a Christmas card every year from Waupun. Touching!

I also learned that another of the attendees was the wife of the prinicipal who hired me for my first real art-teaching job, many moons ago, and that they had been following my book publication trail. They had been making a pilgrimage around the state to key sites related to the books and she had brought  their map to prove it. Seeing that was even better than the cheesecake.

This wasn’t unusual. People have told me all sorts of things at signings. One woman had a doctor’s diagram to prove she’d been molested by aliens. Many have related their family ghost stories, or that they have seen unknown, upright canines. The sweetest are those who share that their kids who never read sat down and read Weird Wisconsin or The Beast of Bray Road. Out loud. To their little brother.

Due to the inconvenience of there being only one of me, I sadly can’t attend all the events I’d like. But every time I have to say no, I wonder what I missed. What innermost secret did I fail to learn from some blessed reader?

For it really is true. Get enough cheesecake into someone, and they’ll spill their souls. With raspberry sauce.