Startin' the New Year with....

n. "Javelina" or Collared Peccary. Toyassu tajacu. C and SE Arizona, New Mexico. Like a pig with a big head and shoulders. Roams in large packs. Can be aggressive, with tusks. Rough as that tree in the heading picture. So that's what's been passing through the condo grounds at night, huh? Wild pigs! I thought it was the neighbors partying all the time.

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It's That Time Again!

And may all you resolutionaries stand firm in your commitments!

Well, well, well!

What a nice way to end the year! Over the last few days, the 10,000th page viewer visited this blog and I want to wish them all well and give 'em a very big THANK YOU for coming by! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Signing autographs

Yours truly, ooly-dooly, hard at work signing books. My cap says "Be careful...or you will be in my next novel."

Enjoy the Christmas Day. Hope everyone got what they asked for and then some!

Santa Claus

How bless'd, how envied, our life,
Could we but 'scape the poulterer's knife!
But man, curs'd man, on Turkeys preys,

And Christmas shortens all our days:
Sometimes with oysters we combine,
Sometimes assist the savory chine;
From the low peasant to the lord,
The Turkey smokes on every board.
           Gay---- Fables

The Turkey will not be smoking on my board.
It will be HAM, BY DAMN!
          Oscar-----

May the joys of Christmas rain gifts upon Thee!

Don't forget the author signing at 114th Ave & Bell Rd, Surprise, AZ (Bell Mar Plaza) Barnaby Street Shoppes::

From 11:30 - 2:30 PM both days.

Dec 23: Ann Goldfarb, discusses her first two time travel mysteries for YA.
Dec 24: Brenda Heyward, inter-racial romance fiction writer.

Monsieur Gustave Flaubert

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"What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright....Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?"
                            ----------------Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary 


"Oui, M'sieur, that I have had. Subtle and not so subtle feelings, and vague and not so vague notions, uh-huh. About every time, no, by golly, every time I pick up a book and hear the wind, and sometimes the rain, beating on the window with the lights burning brightly, i get filled up, overcome, vastly excited, and all the other adverbs, and my mind fills with vague notions and subtle feelings, and I can't begin to tell you - such feelings, such notions! I'm overwhelmed as I open the book and make myself comfortable - on the floor, on the couch, in the chair, on an airplane, in a submarine, on the deck of a fine ship in the middle of the ocean! Wherever! I must read, I must read, my soul, my life, my everything is about to be expanded when I begin to read a book."
                          --------------Oscar

A hearty welcome to Albie to my blog. Check out his blog at: http://albiethegood.blogspot.com

Gila Monstuh!

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Gila monster: Am. A large poisonous lizard of Arizona and New Mexico, covered with bead-like orange and black scales. Carnivorous. Stays underground when too hot or too cold. You may pick one up if it has a nice, fat, swollen tail which means he is well-fed. Then again, he may object to being handled. Its venom won't kill you, normally, but you never know. Bites hard and may hurt, hell, it will hurt. There are only two poisonous lizards in the world, and this is one of them. The other one is Mexican and wears beads - the beaded lizard. I've lived in Arizona for about forty years and only seen one - at least, I think it was one. I didn't follow him to find out. They can jump FAST.

Cartoon/Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert, while writing Madame Bovary, believed that characters should reveal themselves in their actions not like the analyses of character used by Balzac. My feeling in this regard is to do what the story you're writing tells you. If you feel that long character descriptions enhances the writing and the story, by all means, put them in.

Cartoon/Etc.

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OWED TO WINE

Tiny bawbles in the wine.
Makes me innards feel fine,
An to me out'ards adds,
A tinge of red design.
                -------  Oscar

Away, you cut-purse rascal! you filthy bung, away!
by this wine, I'll thrust my knife in your mouldy
chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with me. Away,
you bottle-ale rascal! you basket-hilt stale
juggler, you! Since when, I pray you, sir? God's
light, with two points on your shoulder? much!
               ------------  Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

Ye Gods! Me mouldy chaps be not clean,
Surely, my love, you shall not thrust thy knife hence.
Who is it, I say, that plays the saucy cuttle with my fair damsel?
It is not I! It is not I!
Tell me! Tell me, dear wife of mine,
Who plays the saucy cuttle with thy fair body?
His  life! His life! I will scuttle his cuttle perchance to do no more.
                                                ---------- Oscar

No more, Pistol; I would not have you go off here:
discharge yourself of our company, Pistol.
                  ----------- Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

Enough! Enough, I say, and lay off the wine from now on. Ye Gods, man!  

 I don't like it when somebody talks about me chaps!

All right! All right! Enough already!

What is going to happen?Revised author signings/cartoon

Esther, at the top of the pile of rocks, defending herself and her family was grabbed by Mahtoree, the Chief of the Sioux band on the wide, low, vacant, beautiful, hilly, grassy prairie in the middle of the night. This pile of rocks was supposed to be impenetrable and easy to defend and Ishmael had left the family there while he and his sons went looking for their animals the Siouxes chased away.

Doctor Battius had earlier escaped on his asinus, and then the old trapper, the bee hunter, the soldier escaped from the Siouxes just before Mahtoree latched onto Esther. Ishmael and his boys were on their way back to the pile of rocks, but will they make it in time? Will they evade the Sioux band? Will Esther be killed? Will her young girlfriends and the girls in the family be killed? Hurry up, Ishmael!

And that's where I was cut off in the story, The Prairie, by James Fenimore Cooper, as I sat in the car in the parking lot in front of Michael's while my wife bought some Xmas decos. I'm a little more than halfway through the book as I only read it when I'm stuck like this. I will have to pick up on page 240, Chapter 22, to find out the outcome of this bind they're in, but that may not be until next year, the way it's going. I'm surprised that I still remember what was going on before today. The little band of travelers, however, have not moved very much from the pile of rocks for many pages, in fact, they haven't moved very much at all since the beginning of the book. The writing style of Mr. Cooper requires beaucoup words placed in certain flowery terms and slows down my pace, but I say it is a well-written work and well-worth the time it is taking. Oh, woe is me! What will happen next? I can't wait.


The heading photo is more of northern Arizona country after a light snow. I think it is the Little Colorado River  before running into the Colorado, or it may be the Colorado before reaching the Grand Canyon.

Revised schedule of author signing at Bell Mar Plaza, 114 Ave &:Bell Rd, Surprise, AZ:

Dec 9 - Conrad Storad, 11:30 - ?
Dec 10 - Brenda Heyward, 11:30 - ? Fiction writer specializing in inter-racial romance stories
Dec 16 - Yours truly from  11:30 to 2:30 PM.
Dec 17 - Ellen Calvert, 12:00 noon 'til 3:00 PM, Ellen will share her young children's works

Enjoy the day. And this cartoon: