The Only Instrument The Accordion May Mock

Last year, I wrote my Quardel Quell story "With A Banjo On My Knee," and while I can't claim that it won the contest, it was a winner in our hearts.

Okay, I legally can't say that either, but it was pretty alright.  

The short story tells of Garrett McClarren, who finds a beat-up banjo case, and discovers that the music of it soothes the savage beast.  

For the words I was given, I'd say it turned out more than alright.  If you'd like to read it, it's available HERE.

Lookin' Good, Good-Lookin'

A month or four back, I published "Bundling Made Easy," a Lara & the Witch story that, strangely enough, depicted Lara Demming for the first time since I created her in 2013.  Depicted her visually, I mean (although the cover for "You're In Good Hands" showed a girl's neck that was supposed to be Lara's).  I told it what to draw, and it came up with dozens of possibilities (some super deformed, but some super pretty too), and the one I picked (I know you've heard this before, but I don't care) looked a bit too lovely . . . but she also had three arms.

Perhaps a bit on the freak show side, but still crazy impressive.  And hey, let me fly my flag: I would totally date a girl with three arms.

I think this phenomenon cool, but also weird, and now both Big and I have dedicated many hours to it.  And if you told me I'm going to Hell for playing with A.I. art, I'd have to save you a seat on the bus.

Anyway, instead of writing or exercise last night, I sat up, feeding prompts into the program*, and then thought I would tell it everything I know about Lara Demming, to see what it would generate.

As you know, Kyle, it brings up six (you can have it do more or fewer) images for each prompt, and while some are inevitably deformed, this was the one I liked most for Lara (aged fourteen*):

This was the only one with circles under her eyes, and an almost haunted look about her.

I really like the image, but it doesn't take into consideration any of her magical abilities, though it SEEMED to have taken to heart that she's got a sadness to her.  

Even so, she's still so beautiful it reminds me of how teenaged Reese Witherspoon looked in her first few roles, where you might have understandably wondered if she was created with a computer:

When I did the search for this, Yahoo! said, "Uh, dude, are you SURE you want to make this search?"

But here we get to the reason I created this post in the first place.  I told it everything I know about Victoria Holcomb, and the result was this:

I know, I know.  And I ought not to even comment on it, for fear of offending the person who accidentally stumbles across my blog, looking for a chance to post spam links in the comments.  But hey, that is quite a picture.  I worry my laptop might burst into flames for posting it.

And she almost looks familiar, like some actress or model somewhere, though I can't quite place her.

Big and I are going to get together on Monday to record about these recent experiments, but let me give you a sneak preview when I say that this is simply and totally witchcraft.  Ironic, no?  That I could mention what I know about Old Widow Holcomb (including the stolen youth she uses to keep herself looking young and beautiful), and it could conjure up an image that's not only within a milimeter of what I had in my mind . . . but looks eighty to ninety percent real too . . . wow.

Is it worth burning in Hell, though?

Out of morbid curiosity, I typed "Writer Rish Outfield" into it, just to see what it would produce (who knew, maybe there were photos of me in its database and it would know what, more or less, I look like).  This was the result:

I was just going to include the woman (top left) and man in the center,
but hey, you might as well see all the results it gave me.

*I got these results when I submitted "Bossk in a swimsuit," and I hope to one day coerce Abigail Hilton into writing a story about these two:

**She was fourteen in last year's "Here To Help" and in the story I'm currently writing, which hopefully will have the word "craft" in the title.

But Will There Be Ghost Stories?

For my Christmas episode(s) of the Outcast this year, I ran my Dead & Breakfast story, "There'll Be Scary Ghost Stories."  Among all this publishing (and upgrading covers), I put it out for purchase on Amazon.

This is the story where the various employees of Noble Oaks tell real-life ghost stories for Christmas.  It's the last D&B story I wrote, and I may have just burned myself out on it (and the unpublished novel I set there), since I don't feel any pressing need to go back to Vernon, Idaho anytime soon.  Check it out HERE.

One thing that frustrates me is that, literally every time I do a search for one of these stories, it searches for "Rush Outfield" instead.  Underneath the "no results found," it always says, "Search for Rish Outfield instead?"

Then, after I get there, it STILL says, "Did you mean Rush Outfield?" with italics.  Bothersome.

P.S. Also, when I went onto Amazon to grab the link, it gave me an ad that said, "Wouldn't you rather buy The Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens?" and provided a link.  Yeah, I guess I would.  Thanks a lot.

The Person Falling Here Is Me?

I have been REALLY good to go to the library these past two weeks.  I ought to give Big Anklevich the credit or blame, since he just keeps writing and publishing and, I dunno, swinging from the monkey bars at the school playground without being afraid to look down.

Today, I was sitting at one of their little cubicles, typing away (or dorking around with A.I., or answering inane questions for eBay*, or reading about James Clavell's time in a Japanese POW camp, etc.), when I caught a whiff of something considerably foul.  It was the smell your clothes can get if you soil them, then forget to throw them in the wash (you know what I mean by "soil").  I've met homeless people before that smell like that, but I feel bad saying so.

Anyway, there are often lots of homeless folks here at the library, since they can come in out of the cold or rain (or sunshine, I guess) and sit around until the place closes, and hey, I take advantage of this place myself, so I'm totally not judging), but I looked about me and didn't see any around.  In fact, I didn't see any other people around.  So what was making that smell?

I couldn't tell, but I stood up and looked around the cubicle, looked down on the floor, and there was nothing.  Nobody else was sitting nearby, and I didn't see anyone walk past, trailing a stench behind them.  

It occurred to me that . . . jeez, what if it's me?  I've smelled bad a time or many, so I put away my laptop and went straight to the bathroom, just in case.  In the stall, I smelled my shirt, I smelled my shoe, and I did that thing where you scoop at the air around your butt to draw the bad smell up into your nostrils.  I checked my shorts too, you know why.  But nothing.  

Was it me?  If so, why hadn't the smell followed me into the toilet stall?

I went back to my desk, puzzled.  I figured it might be the area I'd been sitting in.  Someone may have, you know, stained the floor there below the cubicle, and it wouldn't hurt to sit someplace else.  So I did.

I started typing again (or more likely, surfing the internet, stupidly spending my very last moments of youth, like I was a teenager sleeping until one in the afternoon), and before too long . . . I smelled it again.  It wasn't as bad this time, but it was definitely there.  Nobody was around this cubicle either, and I really did suspect that it was me: For some reason, I smelled like a corpse that was found at the bottom of an outhouse.

It upset me quite a bit.  I'm not a vain man, quite the opposite, but except for my "buddy" Mark, nobody had ever told me I stunk before.  At least not since I was a kid.

I didn't wait for the library to close, but went straight home, meaning to shower away the funk, but when I did, the smell was totally absent, not even on my socks.  I sniffed the seat of my car too, and there was nothing.

So, who or what was it?  I've mentioned before that the library has a reputation for being haunted (one of the librarians approached me as it was closing--I HAVE to have blogged about this--and told me, "Oh, it's totally haunted."), so I suppose . . .  Nah, come on.

*"When you say that it's new, do you mean it's unused, or you took it out of the package and then put it back in when you decided to sell it?"

Stay Away, Don't You Invade My Home

Today we've got a new cover for "Who Can It Be Now?" one of my personal favorites, as I wrote it for my ailing uncle, who is no longer with us.

If you recall, this is the tale I told of a recovering addict, who goes to his friend's cabin in the woods, only to get a knock at the door in the middle of the night.  There's a little girl there . . . who can't come in unless invited.

Initially, I drew a picture of a girl looking through a doorway, then took a photo of the cabin door to frame the image.  Admirable, but it never really worked, bringing the total of successful covers with my drawings on them to, um, zero.

But now, with A.I., I could ask for a pale blonde girl standing in a doorway, and get, well, something closer to my vision (in this case, looking in a window).  As usual, it took dozens of iterations to get something I liked, including this image, that Big preferred to the one I picked:

I added orange to the eyes, which is subtle, but effective.

Ultimately, I went with this one, because it was a bit less terrifying, and more vulnerable (as well as looking more like a painting you'd have on an Eighties paperback).  To each their own, eh?

Just occurred to me that there's no question mark.  Hmm.

It's hard to pick my favorites among my stories, but this is one that came out feeling pretty much what I intended (plus, my Uncle Len seemed to like it).  You can check it out HERE.

P.S. Big did indeed update it with a question mark, which he totally didn't have to do.

Every Week Is Library Week

I was going through old covers to my stories, including this one from "Library Week," and when I went to replace it, discovered it had never been published in the first place.

Actually, that's a pretty good cover there . . . just needs a better logo.

So, "Library Week" was a story I wrote in L.A. about a man having his kids for the weekend, taking them to the video store, then punishing them by a trip to the library, where his best pal Max works.  Funny thing is, I've spent countless hours in a library since then (more than a thousand, by my math), and probably, jeez, less than a day in video stores.  A different world, I guess.

This is the updated cover art, where I combined (as poorly as always) two different images to hopefully make a creepy one, and (expertly as always) Big put in a nice logo.

I was going to post this a couple of days ago, but when I went to publish the story on Amazon, my Microsoft Word semi-crashed.  I say "semi" because only "Library Week" went down, the other files stayed open, and the error message Not enough memory to save, do you want to recover file ws3421_tilde)? appeared on the screen--not something I had seen before.

Well, I had created the file years ago, and saved it just that morning, so I hit No.  And suddenly, Library Week was gone--I mean, the whole document was gone from the hard drive.  It still showed up in Recent Files, but when I clicked on it, I got a File Not Found error.  So, I had to go into my old 2005 folder, remove the original file, open it and reformat it for Amazon . .  and then I had to rewrite my Author's Note, which, as you know Bob, always takes longer and never feels as fresh or genuine when you're writing it a second time.  

A bit like life, isn't it?

Check it out HERE.

Rish Outcast 274: Ten Thousand Coffins I

At long last, Rish presents the first section of his Sci-Fi/Horror piece "Ten Thousand Coffins."

Onboard her colony ship, Medtech Brook Lisst finds a sleeper pod that has become a coffin . . . but what will find her?

As always, you can download the file by Right-Clicking HERE.

And of course, you can support my Patreon by clicking HERE.  They've already got Part II!

Logo by Gino "Ten Thousand Kiwis" Moretto.

Adaptation Is The Sincerest Form of Flattery

 A few years ago, I wrote a fun THING/Who Goes There? homage called "From Another World" to run on the Dunesteef (actually, That Gets My Goat).  It was a little audio play with me, Big, and Bryan Lincoln voicing characters (seems like we had another voice on there too, but those three were the main trio*) who were on a space outpost that had been invaded by beings from . . . out there.

The worry was: what if one of those had gotten in there with them?

Anyway, I wrote it to finish off our 2014(?) "13 Nights of Halloween" podcast marathon, and I think it turned out, if not great, then at least pretty darn good.  Also, I entertained myself by naming all the characters after actresses I liked (Phoebe Cates, Cybill Shepherd, Jane Seymour, etc.), so I might have a bias. 

And then it drifted off on the ether, like all the sketches I write do.

Until 2020, that is.  Big Anklevich got it into his head that, if he adapted it into a prose version, then we could sell it, over on Amazon or on Etsy or something.  He suggested that I do it, but I wasn't going to get to it for months (if ever), so he took the initiative, and eventually put out the adaptation on the podcast.

If I recall, both Big and I reprised our original roles, which I had written for us anyway.  Instead of Bryan Lincoln, our pal Gino Moretto voiced the captain.

"They came from outside the gate, from the Wasteland."

Anyway, I guess I took offense at him doing something with my story, I dunno, because I said I wouldn't publish it myself, and he said, "You know, if you don't, that's kind of like spitting in my face."  

Walter E. Disney, that gave me pause.  I've been spit on before, and I don't really recommend it out of hand.  So, guess I gotta figure out what my version will be, and whether Amazon will even let me put it out.

Well, Big's put it out on Amazon now, so if you're curious about "From Another World (Taylor's Version)," check it out HERE.

*Turns out, it was Renee Chambliss.

You Deserve A Break This Winter

During the pandemic, I was writing a lot, and one of the pieces I wrote was called "Winter Break," a tale about a group of young people who go up in the mountains for a weekend, and after encountering a rock from the stars, begin behaving strangely.

After searching far and wide for an image of a meteorite lying in the snow, I had A.I. make it for me, and along with Big's cool text, is probably my favorite cover yet.

For this story, I need all the help I can get.  Check it out HERE.

Marshal and I Fear "Premature Burial"

I mean, don't you?  If the answer is no, then we should end our vacation right here.

Over at the Outfield Excursions podcast, Marshal Latham and I talk about Roger Corman's THE PREMATURE BURIAL, a movie he tried to do on his own, without American International Pictures (and hence, he couldn't afford Vincent Price in the lead).*  Of course, when he shopped it around, the studio that bought distribution rights was, you guessed it, AIP.  

Anyway, based(ish) on Edgar Allan Poe's story of the same name, this 1962 flick tells of Guy (Ray Milland), who is terrified of being buried alive, and the woman who tries to reason with him.  There's nothing to fear in that, right?  Check out our review HERE.

*There were seven films in the Poe cycle, and Price starred in six of them.

(NIGHT OF THE LEPUS reference)

In my plug yesterday for the Tales To Terrify episode "The Prairie's Song," I mentioned NIGHT OF THE LEPUS, the 1972 turkey made by a film crew that was used to doing Westerns, starring Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley, and Paul Fix (who both played the Chief Medical Officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, by the way).  

Anyway, if you've listened to the story, you may understand why I referenced NOTL, but even if you don't, I came across this disturbing bit of trivia about the making of the film.

Director William F. Claxton told his female lead, Janet Leigh, that there was a part for her two children, if they wanted to be in the film, and she refused, saying that she in no way wanted her kids exposed to horror films, even in the making of them.  

I found that pretty amusing, since one of those two kids was Jamie Lee Curtis, who remains THE Scream Queen, today, and forever.

Rish Narrates "The Prairie's Song" on Tales To Terrify

Once again, the Tales To Terrify podcast has given me a story to perform, and while I appreciate their thinking of me, did you ever see the 1972 classic NIGHT OF THE LEPUS?*  Apropos of nothing, I'm sure.

Anyhoo, "The Prairie's Song" tells the tale of one Leland, who travels across Kansas to homestead a plot of land, which will be legally his if he can manage it for five years.  But as soon as he sees the thick grasses, and hears the whistling of the wind across it, he is unsettled, all alone out there.  But IS he alone?

The story was written by Emily J. Weisenberger and can be found AT THIS LINK.

As I've often observed, every new project offers new challenges, great and small.  This one was the character name Justicia.  Unfortunately, I pronounced it differently practically every single time, giving different sounds to both the J and the U, but never the -cia, which I suppose I never did get right.  But it's not a name I've ever heard before, and my brain kept interpreting it as a Spanish word, so . . . sorry?

*Well I saw it, and it scared the shit out of me.  It scared the shit out of every man in America!

What's Troubling You?

So, you may remember my story "Troubled Child," one I wrote for a Journey Into... contest years ago (the Journey Into Journey contest).  I had to write a story using the title "Troubled Child," and incorporating two lines from the song in there.

What I wrote was about a baby that was drawn toward people who were sad or suffering, and you know, it was pretty good, considering the contest stipulations.  I may never win one of those Journey... contests, but you can be sure I'll keep trying.

So, I went ahead and made that available for purchase, encouraged by Big's prolific output recently.  You can check it out HERE.

This is the cover Big made for me last year, that I just got around to using this week, but what I'd really like is to get an image of a baby or toddler reaching toward somebody in a wheelchair.  I see it in my head, but I wasn't able to get a cover generator to do that for me.  

Now that I've been doing this for a couple of weeks (give or take ten years), I sort of wish I'd thought to put "A Short Story" on every one of these covers, to warn people that's what they are.  I'd hate for somebody to buy one, thinking it was a novel, only to discover that I'm not a novelist.  Ah well, maybe next life. 

It's Easy M'Kay (Threepio)

Hasbro, the toy company, is renowned for doing cheap repaints of their figures, in order to maximize a return on investment.*  Often, these are extremely lame or ill-advised.  But sometimes, like with the various Prequels clones, or the assorted droids, it's not only expected, but encouraged by the fans.

A very minor character in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (technically, an extra) is K-3PO, a white protocol droid killed during the attack on Echo Base.  Or "killed," if you want to be that guy. 

It's a figure that would be very easy for Hasbro to do (in their 6 Inch line), but one they never have bothered to make (there's also a red protocol droid called U-3PO that I'll set my sights on later).  So, when I saw a very cheap C-3PO for sale a few weeks back, I scooped it up with a quick repaint in mind.

Unaltered TFA figure

Three weeks later, I finally finished it.

The above pic was my first try, using one white paint on one arm, one on the other (the pearlier white did not coat at all, so I ended up using the other white, then doing a recoat in the pearly, almost glue-like white).

I did the whole upper half, and I thought it looked pretty good (still do, even though when I used that same white on a different figure, it looked like I had tried painting the darn thing with a piece of chalk).

This is the whole thing painted white (first coat).  Am I taking too many pictures?

And here it is with the second coat.

I took a picture of it with all the paint covered, including the stomach, but the flash was on and the photo's unusable, but here's one I took out in the snow with my Mandalorian repaint.

(I realize the snow looks fake)

And here's the finished product:

Big thinks I need to do a black or grey wash, to bring out the detail, and he may be right, but I'm not sure it will work in this case.  In the past, I've used an oil-based wash that is essentially paint thinner, and I worry it will just undo the white paint layers I've laid on.  I could experiment with another item, but in the meantime, I'm happy with my K-3PO.

Which means Hasbro will announce one tomorrow.

*The molds from which their figures are made cost a fortune, so if they can reuse them over and over again, the toys become exponentially cheaper to produce the more they do it.

Rish Outcast 273: Lara & the Witch and Me

Rish does his annual episode about the Lara Demming series, specifically talking about "Bundling Made Easy" and "Here To Help."

Note: Recorded over three sessions in two different months, expect plenty of repetition in this one.  Yay!

If you'd like to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you would like to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

If you like piña coladas, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "The Itch and Me" Moretto.

Walk Or Run, You're Coming With Me

A bit a trivia for you: The only one of my stories that we did on both the Dunesteef and the Rish Outcast was "Know When To Walk Away, Know When To Run."  

It's one I've never been thrilled with, because I couldn't make the story itself as scary as it was in my head.  But I did rewrite it and try it again, then put it up on Amazon.  I worked really hard on the cover art . . . and it was ghastly.

(only not in a good way)

But I went online and spent a full half hour asking for a pair of scaly alien hands/tentacles holding cards at a Blackjack table.  

It's available HERE, and I think this cover is better . . .  but man oh man, I couldn't get the hands, the cards, and the casino to look right, so I had to compromise (and like the story, it's still not quite there).  Ah well.

Another bit a trivia for you: TWISTER was the first movie released on DVD.

You Know You're Getting Old When...

I had something of a milestone today, but it wasn't a good milestone, like paying off a house or sleeping with your daughter's friend.  No, this was more along the lines of throwing your back out for the first time, or finding a white chest hair, or, I dunno, pooping your pants for pleasure rather than by accident (you know what I'm talking about).

I went to Ross (Dress For Less, doncha know) and bought a few cheap toys, and the guy behind the counter gave me my total . . . then pressed a button and gave me a new total--a lower total.  I asked what had happened, and he said, "Tuesdays we give a senior citizen discount."  I said, "Uh, what?" but I paid my bill and then looked at the receipt.  Sure enough, there was a ten percent Seniors discount.

Won't be long now, kids.

Olivia Redux

I wrote a story called "Olivia Redux" a year or so back . . . then changed the title to "Olivia Rewinds."  I still like both titles, but went with the latter.*

 After an argument with her boyfriend, Olivia finds a strange pendant that enables her to go back in time to before it happened.  This was inspired by actually finding a strange pendant one morning (and finding it gone in the afternoon), and trying to come up with a story for a "Be Careful What You Wish For" writing contest--one that I ultimately lost, but not with this story.

Maybe the tale isn't great, but the cover art by Big Anklevich sure is.

This guy ought to charge for his services.  

If you think the same of me, go HERE to buy the story.

*If I ever write a story called "Octavia Restarts," I'll let you know.

Still Fighting It

I keep trying to replace covers and publish stories that had been sitting around, waiting their turn.

Next up is "Sleepless Afternoon," the prose version of a sketch I wrote for the show in 2010 or so.  It was a semi-amusing* piece where a vampire child awakens his father with fears of daylight, old English professors, the sun, Southern California vampire slayers, etc.  I had never released it on its own, so I tried to get an image of a little boy hiding under the covers.

I even went in and put vampire teeth on this one, but felt that less was more (although I did add a bit of orange to his eyes in the other, less angry kid).

But the first image worked a little better . . . though maybe not perfect for the story's tone.  Hey, you be the judge.  You can find the story HERE, if you like.

It's been a while, but I'm fond enough of that old sketch that I might record a video of myself reading that one and put it on my Patreon too.  We'll see--I do hate to edit videos.

Oh, that reminds me, I opened up "Bundling Made Easy" the other day, to add a link to "Here To Help" at the end (Abbie suggested I put a list of the other entries in a series on every one, and I'm going to assume that it has helped me sell copies), and I discovered that I had somehow pasted my About The Author page in the middle of the document.  So I removed it, and while I was at it, replaced Chapter 6 with an extended Chapter 6 I had started last year and never included in the final version.  I wish there were a way to let anybody who bought a copy simply switch it out Walmart-style for the newer version, but I suppose they could simply let me know and I woul--

What's that?  Nobody bought "Bundling Made Easy?"  Nobody?  So, Big was right?  Oh.

Never mind then.

*Your kilometridge may vary.

New Clerk, Old Story

This was my mock-up of what I wanted for a cover, using a free stock photo.

As I mentioned earlier (although I've been posting these out of order, so maybe I mentioned it later), I've been republishing stories with superior covers this month, and publishing stories that I somehow failed to put out there over the years.  And the one I'm plugging today is called "Meet the New Clerk, Same As The Old Clerk."  It's a story in the Dead & Breakfast series, and deals with Meeshelle Lovett, a one-time employee of the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast, who quit working there, and is now coming back.

And this was Big's improvement on it.

For a year and a half, maybe two, I was knee-deep in the Dead & Breakfast stories, cranking them out as fast as I could.  That time seems behind me, but I'm still fond of the series.  I like this particular story because I like Meeshelle, and that she's afraid to come back to the haunted motel, but forces herself to do so anyway.  

Check it out HERE, if you like.

This was the 2024 version I came up with--which is much closer to what I wanted in my head.

And this was the finished product Big gave me.

Went To The Ninth Sector, And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

This week, my buddy Big and I finally got together to talk about cover art--specifically, the bad art I've had on my stories that he's seen fit to improve for me--and we talked so much that we ran out of time and will have to do it again next week.  A lot of time, the images I picked were good, but my text looked unprofessional, or worse, like recently-microwaved walrus dung.*  Other times, it was just bad, top to bottom.

And while we were looking over old covers, I stumbled upon the image Sonny See created for us back in 2014 for my story "Greetings From The Ninth Sector."  That was a story I wrote for a contest where I had to use the words "Squad," "Reports," and "George Lucas" in there somehow.**  In it, Corporal Bruce Otterson, onboard the IFS Lucas, sends messages back to his girlfriend Mandy, as their ship enters the mysterious Ninth Sector, which many onboard think is haunted or cursed. As his transmissions continue, Bruce becomes more and more concerned that his shipmates may be right

Big added the star field and the text.  Not sure why he picked that shade of blue.

Big said he could make the logo on the image look better than what I had done myself (goes without saying), and to my surprise, I discovered I had NEVER put it out on Amazon.***  So, today I remedied that.  The story is available HERE, if you never read the longer version.  I plan on publishing other stories in the next couple of weeks, so I'll keep you posted.

I also thought I would sit down one evening this month and video myself performing the story, then make it available on my Patreon.  And if people like that, do it again.  And again.  What do you think?

*Looking forward to the episode yet?  I know I am, and I haven't even started editing it.

**I figured I could just go look up the words on the Dunesteef page . . . but the Dunesteef page is long gone.  :(

***That's not technically true; it was part of a collection that's no longer available.  I really ought to put together five or eight story collections in case somebody somewhere wants to buy them.  But I probably won't.