My Story "Returning The Favor" Available - Warning: Idaho!

I recently put out a Lara & The Witch story called "On Your Side," which I believe I mentioned was a sort of two-parter*, even though I decided they're distinct enough to release separately.

In this tale, the time has come for Old Widow Holcomb to pay back another witch for a favor she did her.  She takes Lara on a road trip to find a mushroom . . . the magical (and impossible-to-find) Cordobese bone fungus.  Who knows what they do, but they taste great on pizza!

If you'd like to read it, check it out HERE.

*Enough that I nearly called this story "On Your Side: One Year Later" instead of its own thing.

"On Your Side" Is A New Lara Demming Story (sort of)

I'm doing my best to get publishing again.  In fact, I ought to crank-start my microphone and record another story right now (instead of blogging, I mean).  But first, let me mention that I put out another Lara and the Witch story, this one called "On Your Side."

I told Big I wanted the text to look like it had been carved in there, and holy Shenk, he pulled it off!

This story is only significant in that it introduces two characters that show up later, and establishes that Holcomb owes another witch, Calpernia Shenk, a favor.*  Other than that, it's just a little Mother's Day piece I wrote to get myself in the Lara & The Witch mindset.  And it worked.

As for whether the story itself is any good, I suppose the only way to find out is to go HERE and, you know, find out.

*One that will be called in a year later, in a story I wrote immediately after this one.

Rish Outcast 297: You're In Good Hands 4

So, here we are, the last segment of the 2019 "Lara & The Witch" novella.

Lara Demming has been targeted by a supernatural enemy, and what's worse, he now knows where she is.

Here's a link to the Collection Volume 1 audiobook, now available!

If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "You're In Wood Stands" Moretto.

Lara and the Audiobook

It took a minute, but I got the audio version of the Lara & The Witch: Volume I collection finished and out there.  I went through the first four stories like a fine-toothed comb, cutting out mouth sounds and finding a couple of flubs I had previously missed (I published "Here To Help" in 2024, so I skipped that one, for better or worse), so it took quite a while longer than the text version, but it's out there now, if you want to listen to it.

Shrooms . . . they're supposed to be shrooms

As I've said before, it includes the first five stories (chronologically): "Like A Good Neighbor," "You're In Good Hands," "Made Just For You," "The People We Touch," and "Here To Help"* and comes to just over ten hours of audio, which ain't too shabby.

In listening through these, I discovered a couple changes I wanted to make, and came up with a couple of ideas for new stories (currently writing a Mother's Day tale, and trying to determine the fate of the little glowing ball Lara gets in "Made Just For You," since it never reappears).  Trouble is, once those are done (as well as "Accept No Substitutes," which I still don't know how to end), they will all fall between the fourth and fifth stories in this collection, so what's a boy to do?

In the meantime, feel free to buy the collection on Audible HERE, and if you do, I'll make putting out the next stories more of a priority.

*There's also a little bonus extra called "A Short Interlude" in between the second and third stories.

Rish Outcast 295: You're In Good Hands 3

Rish talks about his car problems, and shares the third segment of his "Lara & The Witch" story.

Lara Demming has started to mistrust Holcomb and her power over her. Does her magical pendant work or not?

Buy "Lara: Volume I" at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVKZX9S9

To download this episode, Right-Click HERE. 

To support me over on Patreon, click HERE.  Go on, I won't tell.

Logo by Gino "Yer In Good Glands" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 293: You're In Good Hands 2

Due to car problems, Rish shares the second segment of his "Lara & The Witch" story.

Is Holcomb acting strangely, or is Lara's pendant not working? And if it isn't, what does that mean?

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

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

Logo by Gino "In Good Pants" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 292: You're In Good Hands 1

Just in time for something, Rish presents the first segment of his Lara & The Witch story, "You're In Good Hands."

Here's the link to the Lara & The Witch: Volume 1 collection: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DP7JZYVM

Here's a link to the first L&TW story, "Like A Good Neighbor:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbkHKDgjdxo

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support my vain efforts on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Urine Good Hands" Moretto.

Lara & The Book

Months ago, Big Anklevich got it into his head to help me publish a real, physical book with my stories in it (Female Protagonist, still available HERE).  And he suggested I put reference to a couple more at the beginning, if it would help motivate me to get them out there.  Then he focused on his own work for a while, and released an absolutely astounding amount of material (no exaggeration, he probably put out as many stories in 2024 as I have in the first ten years I was publishing on Amazon).

But now, he's gone back to my drying well, to help me get my second physical book out, a collection of the first five "Lara & The Witch" stories ("Like A Good Neighbor," "You're In Good Hands," "Made Just For You," "The People We Touch," and "Here To Help"*).  He even created a couple of cool illustrations to put in there, like this one of a snowglobe with a witch in it from the end of "Made Just For You."

It took half the year to get the second one done, but here we are, through very little work of my own.  He helped me find a couple of inconsistencies (like Lara's age and eye color), and created this cover for me, which I am quite happy with:

I'm leaving this on here,  but Big noticed a weird colored line going through the title and immediately sent me a corrected version.  I hadn't noticed...and likely never would.

Still, I must have missed the line about beggars not getting to be choosers, because I asked for about a hundred changes to it, until not only Blocked my number, but took me off his family blog mailing list (something he never, ever does).

But here we are, a second physical book under my belt, and strangely, after sending the files to Amazon, they were ready and up for sale the same day, something that wasn't the case just this past summer.

So, "Lara & The Witch: Volume 1" is available to purchase on Kindle, in Paperback, and crazily, in Hardcover.  If you like it, there are more where that came from.

*There's also a little bonus extra called "A Short Interlude" in between the second and third stories.

The Illustrated Man(boy)

The next physical book I aim to publish is the first Lara & the Witch volume, which includes five and a half stories, from "Like A Good Neighbor" to "Here To Help."  As a bonus to those who purchased the actual book (as opposed to the digital versions), I included a bonus flash piece (newly-named "A Short Interlude") and after looking at what Big was doing with one of his future collections (though at the rate he's going, it's probably already available), I wanted to throw some illustrations into it.

One of the ideas I had for an image would be of Old Widow Holcomb, young and beautiful, but with her true old woman face creeping in on one side, similar to how Steve Ditko would show Peter Parker with half of his face as Spider-man.

Anyway, I did my best to get an image of a young and vibrant black-haired woman, and then one of an old one, and see if I couldn't merge the two.  It didn't really work Dikto-style, but I was able to take part of the old woman's features, resize them, and paste them onto the young woman's.  And I thought it looked pretty good, so I sent it to Big.

Maybe add a streak of grey in her hair on the right side?

He thought it could look better, though, and revised it himself with a program of his that works surprisingly well at smoothing out edges or replacing problematic images (such as hands with eight fingers or cars not touching the ground or Rish Outfield with his arm around a woman).  It works great at expanding on what's already there (for example, he put out a book recently, but misjudged the page count, so he had to adjust the cover to be bigger, and he had the program extrapolate what would naturally be beyond the borders of the finished art), but not at creating stuff out of whole cloth (or whole pixels).

Big fixed the lips on the old side, because it bothered him that they didn't match.

Big Version 1

So, this one doesn't look too bad.  But what it looks to me is cool Eighties prosthetic makeup being applied to a section of her face.  Cool makeup, but not really a transformation or revelation, which was more my intention.

Big Version 2

Big smoothed out her forehead, and it looks a little bit less makeup-y, but I told Big that I had actually liked the dividing line between her young visage and the old one, and that the lips were not MEANT to match.

Big Version 3

So, he made it VERY obvious, a split down the middle kind of thing, so you could see beauty on one side, and ugly on the other.  I explained that, at least in my head, what I wanted was the idea of the youth and looks being an outer shell, with the ugly old self being the layer underneath.

Big Version 4

So Big did this one, which has more of an eggshell quality splitting the two, and does seem to have a false skin layer feeling, kind of like Diana on the 1983 V miniseries.

So, what did I do?  Like an infuriating sitcom character, I told him I liked the original just fine, and just to go with that.  Don't you despise that kind of person?

How Hard Is It To Levitate?

 I ought to ask sometime if you guys like these bad A.I. posts.  But it doesn't matter: I have to blog about something, and these accidents of God amuse me.

They also frustrate me, because it's a kind of magic that there's a program that can create cover art for me, but 75% of the time, there's something wrong with the image.  And with my story "You're In Good Hands," it's so far 100%.

I wanted what looked like a pencil drawing of a young teen girl floating over her bed, hovering over her bed, levitating over her bed with her legs crossed.  And so far, it always gets something wrong.

So, this one's not terrible--okay, wait--the face is terrible.  Plus, she seems to be hanging from the curtains rather than floating.

This one is worse: not only is the face deformed, and the feet misshapen, but she appears to be sticking her hand into a light socket.

I tried something different on this one, thinking I was asking for too realistic a portrayal.  And while, yes, the girl IS floating, and yes, she looks like a human being (you just wait), it's way too cartoony for my needs (also, her hair is yellow, right, despite me asking for b&w?).  "You're In Good Hands" isn't a children's book, though it does feature a child.  So, back to the Pencil drawings.

Okay, this one's on the right track--she's at least floating rather than hanging, but her hands are on backwards

So, it's at this point that I have to mention that there seems to be a tremendous Anime influence on this program.  Often, when I type "teen girl," they end up in school uniforms, and invariably (no exaggeration) one of the six images has visible panties.  And I'm not casting aspersions on the folks that like that stuff, it's just that I'm uncomfortable sexualizing Lara Demming, especially back when she's twelve years old.

Alright, this one got the levitation right.  Her legs aren't crossed, and it's not above her bed like I wanted, but it's definitely floating rather than jumping or sitting.  Her face is rather ugly, but that's probably fixable.  I don't *hate* this one, and that's at least progress.

So, this is the best of the bunch (so far)--she has a normalish face, appears to float rather than stand or jump, but she is dressed in some kind of ballet outfit . . . and her feet are hands.

And this is probably the worst of the bunch.  I'm not even going to waste words, except to say that this is the exact same prompt as produced the last two.

Nothing terribly wrong here . . . except she's just standing on the bed.  Again, my prompt was, "A teen girl levitates above her bed, her legs crossed"  Oh, and her feet are too small.

Just out of curiosity, I typed "her legs Indian-style" rather than crossed.  This was the result.  Whoops.

I went back to my original prompt, and this time, you could see panties in almost all of them.  One even had nudity.  This was the best of the bunch, and while it's not what I want--the pillows are floating too?--it's much, much closer.

This one's even closer.  It's almost exactly what I want, as far as what it depicts, the right number of arms and feet.  But she's making a Y in the air in front of the bed rather than what I asked . . . though I could be satisfied with this, if I had to be.

I had another odd one to share, and here it is.  Not an absolute abomination, but if you saw this in your room at night, you'd get no sleep, I assure you.

Again, not awful, though the girl's face is pretty bad.

oh my god

Okay, this is the one I settled on.  It had problems, so I tried to remove the portal to Hell at the bottom, make her face slightly less misshapen, and remove the third foot.  I realize the feet don't quite look right, but it seems to be the best I can do, especially considering how much time I've wasted on it. 

Oh, shoot.  Now I've wasted your time too, haven't I?

Uh Oh, Now I'm Committed

Or should be, anyway. 

I keep sending Big possible cover art for stories I've written, to see how they'd look.  Some have been so-so, some have been horrible abominations*, but some are rock-solid.

This one, though, that he just sent back to me, gives me pause:

This isn't the exact image he sent me, because I tried
 pasting a new mushroom into his hands, then
accidentally hit Save.  The sentiment's the same, though.

You see, it's one of many I've sent him and then dismissed, because it would be for a story, "Accept No Substitutes," that I haven't written yet.  It was the first of three Lara & the Witch story ideas I came up with in 2023, and the only one I haven't turned into a finished tale.  

In it, Lara Demming gets a new substitute teacher (for Mr. Seckler's Science class) and there's something sinister about him, something that sets off her admittedly-limited supernatural alarm bells.  Turns out, he's someone (or something) Old Widow Holcomb is familiar with, and happens to be  much more powerful than she is.  

Gosh, it sounds so good when I logline it that way.  But I never wrote it, only the first chapter or so (it's got to have a happy ending, right?  And not contradict the other stories I've written in the series, so I need to figure out where it's going before I just strongarm my way through it).

But now that Big has sent me this quite-excellent cover image (the original image had him holding an apple, but I like blue mushrooms), I feel like I'm semi-committed to.  If Big were to, say, send it to me again with the title, byline, and "A Lara & The Witch Story," I'd absolutely HAVE to write it.

Hint, hint.

*I've written an entire post with images like this one, of a young woman raking leaves:

Don't make me angry, Mr. McGee...

Or this one, of a teen girl hanging a banner in a high school hallway:

Well, that's sort of right.

The Sweetest Words Of All

No, not "I've been a very naughty girl!"  What kind of blog do you think this is?

Famous photo of Adolf Hitler writing "Mein Cramp" on his laptop.  He was fond of Lenovos, oddly enough.

Actually, I was talking about the sweetest two words of all, the ones every writer longs for during the process of planning, drafting, reorganizing, and pushing through the uninspired quagmire that inevitably comes.  I got an idea for another Lara Demming story in March, one where she goes to Colorado and gets to see Holcomb interact with other witch-types . . . and finally, I got to this bit:

I finished another story, and that's good.*  But is the story good?

Who knows, and maybe at this point, I should pose the question: Does it even matter?  

You get better at writing by doing it, which makes it pretty much the opposite of any sport where the younger you are, the better (of course, I'm not talking about a nine year old playing basketball--we're talking adults here)(or golf, where Donald J. Trump is a world champion despite being in his late seventies).  I have written excellent stories decades ago, I'll admit it, but now I can see places where they could be improved and discover parts that just don't work, because of my years of experience.

This is my tenth Lara & the Witch story, one that takes place between "The People We Touch" and "Here To Help," and it didn't turn out as dark as I had intended, mostly because Lara Demming is a nicer person than I am.  I also found that the ending I planned for it no longer applied, and had to be entirely thrown out (although I started on a story called "Accept No Substitutes" last year that could use that for an ending, so maybe not entirely). 

I don't have a title for it, but I did try to come up with cover art . . . and did not succeed.  But Big has gotten better and better at taking two images and marrying them into one image, so it might not be a bad cover after all.  You'll find out in a year or so.

This image was a mistake, of me taking a photo of the glowing mushroom I wanted to use on the cover, to send to Big, but it caught my reflection, and when I tried to do it again on purpose, either my face or the shroom ended up out of frame.

*I should've finished it ten or so days ago, but I am easily distracted.  For example, I started this blog post a week ago.

(Still) Here To Help

In case you're interested, the audiobook version of the Lara & the Witch story "Here To Help" is available over on the ever-contemptible Audible.com.  This is the story I wrote only last year about Lara meeting another witch, Perpetua Trevorly, who wants something rather indelicate from the girl.  Yes, you guessed exactly right.  It's not a lengthy tale, but if you're a fan of Lara and Old Widow Holcomb, I can promise you I did my very best with the performance (and that this story led to the one I'm almost finished with right now).

Check it out, if ye like, RIGHT HERE.

P.S. But Rish, I hear you ask, why buy the audio from Audible when I can just wait until you run it on the Outcast?  Good question, except that I have yet to run "You're In Good Hands" on the Rish Outcast, and that story takes place before this one.

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.

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.

Bundle This!

So, I recently published the text version of "Bundling Made Easy," a novella in the Lara & The Witch series,* but the audio version (of course) takes longer.  

But hey, that time is up, because Audible let me know that the recording--narrated by me--is available now at this link.  If you recall, it's the story where Lara Demming gets a boyfriend, and at one point, casts a spell so that everyone can be as happy as she is.  Unfortunately, I have yet to meet a reader that her spell was successful on.

Even so, both Lara and I would be pleased if you bought a copy.  If you don't, the next person will have to buy two.  Check it out HERE.

Audible insists that you provide square cover art, so Big made me yet another one.

P.S. Just today, I opened up my file for "When You Need It Most," the book that takes place during her Senior year, and was shocked to discover that it was nearly eighty thousand words.  If you want me to get started on that, let me know . . . but it will take a while.

*Because of Amazon's listing practices, it's considered Book 3 in the series, with "Made Just For You," "The People We Touch," and "Here To Help" considered side projects (since they're just short stories--not that they all aren't).  Which will maybe confuse people, if I keep the series up, adding Books and Adjacent entries as I write/publish them.  If it didn't confuse Stephen King's readers when he published "The Wind Through The Keyhole" (Dark Tower Book 4.5), my dozen readers should be fine.

Lara & the Witch Collection - Volume I

Like I said, in publishing "Here To Help," I had five stories that I thought made a pretty good presentation of the Lara Demming series, so I went ahead and put out "Lara and the Witch: Volume I," which collects those stories (as well as a new introduction).

This was something I challenged myself to do in the month of February, choosing "Here To Help" (which wasn't 100% finished) to end the collection, instead of "The Company You Keep" (which was finished and already out there).  I decided on five stories instead of six when I discovered that just the first four stories came to sixty-something thousand words (which seems like a great deal).  With the fifth story/introduction, that brought it to more than 81,000 words.

I struggled with the cover art, having picked this image (that I still like), but was much too low-res:

But I found a photo of two mushrooms on last year sometime (on Unsplash, where people upload photos they've taken and you can use them as long as you give the owner credit), and sent it to Big, which he used his own special magic on to make this cover:

I still like that one a lot.  Maybe I can use it sometime.

But since then, he and I have discovered that most pernicious of new technologies, image-generating A.I., and while I have dabbled in here and there (probably only wasting five or six hours over the past months), Big has absolutely gone wild for it, spending nights at a time on the website, not getting up to go to the bathroom (warning: that bottle of Mountain Dew he's got next to his office chair is NOT Mountain Dew).  You can read about his adventures here, if you like.  He's blogged about it, but he couldn't pull himself away from the A.I. siren song to publish the post yet. 

But using that program, I asked for a silhouette of a big witch and a small one, and here's the new 2024 cover, one I had a bit of difficulty getting to look right (I'll admit that the mushrooms are less prominent than I would've preferred).

So, now that I have published it (you can get your own copy HERE, if you like), I've started editing the audio for "Here To Help," and I keep getting ideas for new stories (just today, I noticed that Lara mentions that her birthday is in just over a month, and I thought, "Ah, that's got to be a story, what she gets/does for her fifteenth birthday"), but what do I do if I write them?  What I mean to say is, as of right now, this volume includes the first five stories, chronologically, in the L&TW series.  But if I write a story set in 8th Grade, or heck, one from back when she was even younger, where do I fit them?  And does that mean I need to revise the collection, so it's six stories?  Or keep it to six stories, but kick "Here To Help" to Volume 2?  

I've never done this sort of thing, so I honestly don't know.