Lord of the Flies - Welcome to the Fishydome

It's that time of year again, kiddos.
When the days grow long and sweaty and, for some reason that I still haven't figured out, I allow my old pal Julie to trick me into going on long hikes up big hills with her.

In her defense, I suppose, is the fact that if I didn't go on these long, sweaty, danger-filled hikes with her, I would most likely fritter my time away on inconsequential passtimes, like not sweating and being in pain and almost getting eaten by Bigfoot.

Julie is nearing the conclusion of her goal of climbing all the 4,000+ foot mountains in New Hampshire. It is alleged that there are 48 of them, but I do not believe that for a second. I have hiked at least 10,000 mountains with Julie and every time we finish a hike, she always says, "Well, just 10 left."

This summer's first hike was Mt. Cabot, which has the dual honors of being the farthest away, and the worst hike ever. Win, win!

Julie generally likes to begin the hikes early, so it's not uncommon for her to show up at my house at 6 or 6:30 a.m.  At first, I found this alarming. Being an author and illustrator, I had no idea that there even was a 6:00 a.m. Soon I got used to the idea and no longer found it alarming. Just annoying.

Julie insisted that this hike must begin earlier as the mountain is located somewhere in the very farthest reaches of the Canadian wilderness, bordering on The North Pole. To that end, she decreed that she would arrive at my house at 5:30 a.m.

It's even less pleasant than it sounds, my friends.

She dragged me to her car - a fancy new car, I might add; one with posh leather seats and all sorts of grown-up doohickeys - and I settled into the comfy leather seats and began 3 hours of incessant whining about how early it was. Julie ignored me and focused instead on bathing in the awesome splendor of her new car.

A few hundred hours later, we arrived at the Berlin Fish Hatchery, where our hike was to begin.

We were greeted with this not at all alarming sign.

If you don't get out by 4, we hope you have a sleeping bag.

"Oh, well," I said. "Looks like this isn't going to work out after all. How about if you just buy me some coffee, take me home, and I'll tell everyone that you actually climbed the mountain?"

Julie was as obstinate and unreasonable as ever and forged ahead, heedless of the fact that we may have to spend the night locked in a fish hatchery.

We passed an official looking vehicle and asked the Fish Hatcher about the gate. "We close it at 4," he said. "We lock it at 10, so you gotta be outta here before that or you're spending the night."

The accommodations did not meet my personal requirements of being dry and fish-free, so we resolved to be done with our hike before 10 p.m.

A fleeting moment of joy before the hike. Now, I no longer even remember happiness.

We parked the car and headed off into the damp, humid wilderness to spend the day sweating in nature. "You know it's supposed to be, like 95 degrees today?" I asked.

"Yeah," Julie said. "I do. Because you've told me that about a million times in the last 15 minutes."

"I just want to make sure that you don't die of dehydration," I said. "I'm not hauling your carcass down the mountain. I'm going to leave it up there to serve as a visual reminder to people about the dangers of hiking."

Julie must not have heard me because she charged ahead into the wilderness.

The name, Kilkenny Ridge Trail made me think of this:

And I'm sure that my constant repetition of that phrase amused Julie throughout the long, horrible hike. Because I am hilarious.

The hike to the summit of Mt. Cabot begins with a walk of creeping horror along a trail overgrown with weeds, brambles, man-eating vines, and snakes as big as school buses.

I can't even describe the horror of walking along this path.

I might have freaked out about this itching, scratching, claustrophobic, snake-infested path if I hadn't been distracted by the millions of biting, flying insects that accompanied us all along the trail for the entire hike.

When we passed this sign, I tried to convince Julie that pressing onward would be foolhardy and dangerous. "What if we get stranded at the top and freeze to death because we can't start a fire in the wood stove?"

"It's going to be 95 degrees today, remember?" she asked, forging onward.

We hacked our way through the underbrush and the trail opened up a bit to reveal the fine craftsmanship of a well-maintained wooden footpath.

"Look," I said, pointing to the splintered wood. "Bigfoot did that. Let's go get ice cream."

Julie must be losing her hearing. She kept walking, oblivious to the fact that we were no doubt being stalked by Bigfoot as we headed toward the wind-swept summit, where we would freeze to death because of the lack of woodstoves. If the bugs didn't bleed us dry first.

We soon reached a trail junction and Julie was undisturbed by the small square of wood that had been cut out around the arrow that showed the direction of our path.

"It's been cut out and replaced in the sign," I said. "Probably in the wrong direction. I'll bet that Bigfoot did this and that arrow points right to his lair. His family is probably all sitting around the table with napkins tied around their necks."

"Don't be stupid," Julie said. "Bigfoots don't use napkins."

"It's Bigfeet," I grumbled. " Not Bigfoots. And that's not the point. The point is that the sign has been changed and we are going to get eaten by Bigfoot and his extended family."

Julie charged onward, perhaps spurred by the ever-thickening cloud of biting flies that swarmed around us.

"I told you this was the wrong direction," I said through the deafening buzz of insects.

"What?" Julie cried.

"Look. It's a sign." I pointed.

"Well, duh. Obviously it's a sign," Julie sighed.

"No, I mean like, an omen."

"The Omen. That was a great movie. Did you see that?" Julie asked, ignoring my pleas for mercy and trudging ever upward toward the unmaintained summit.

We spent a delightful few hours sweating and swatting and soon reached a cheerful sign indicating a view which was probably still maintained.

And, indeed it was.

A view, still helpfully maintained by the state.

Even more view for your viewing pleasure.

A less well-maintained view.

A view of Julie trying to figure out how to work her camera. Blood loss from the biting insects has left us both woozy and confused.

After a delightful few minutes watching Julie futz with her camera, we plodded onward, propelled ever the more urgently by the incessant swarm of bugs who had obviously sent word to the relatives that a buffet was being served on the steamy slopes of Mt. Cabot.

"If I lose any more blood, I'm going to shrivel and die." I moaned. "Bigfoot will just have a dessicated slab of Marty jerky to eat."

Julie made a comment that involved the words "Marty" and "jerk", but I couldn't hear her over the buzzing of the bugs.

We staggered up the steep, rocky slope until we came to the Cabot Cabin, named after Mr. Cabot Cabin, who, in 1794, first stopped maintaining the trails on this mountain.

"HA!" I cried, my throat choked with dozens of bugs I had inhaled. "We can escape the bugs in there!"

We raced toward the cabin and yanked the door open. We were both blown backward by the thundering explosion of flies that erupted from the doorway.

"What the–" Julie might have said a very bad word except that she is a teacher and never uses such coarse language, so I obviously misheard her. She was probably talking about trucks or ducks.

We swatted away the flies and entered the cabin, which Mr. Cabot Cabin obviously stopped maintaining several hundred years ago, as well.

The initial cloud of flies, which numbered in the low tens of millions, was merely the welcoming committee, sent as emissaries, with greetings from the the billions of flies which remained in the cabin.

The kitchen, complete with flag, hung in the universal signal for "Send Cleaning Supplies".

The bedroom, viewed from the kitchen.

The kitchen table.

Bunk bed #1.

Bunk bed #2.

The bedroom window, festively decorated with thousands of angry flies, pinging off the glass in a desperate attempt to escape. I knew just how they felt.

The kitchen sink.

Directions to the nearby spring, where you can go to get some fresh water in which to drown yourself to escape the squalid horror of the kitchen sink.

Please don't leave food. The cabin might get messy.

The tool kit. Dustpan, shovel, torch for burning the cabin to the ground.

Julie poses amidst the flies. Note the spectacular sweat design on her shirt.

We were sorry that we missed seeing The Burntbear. Perhaps our paths will cross some other day.

When we decided that we had inhaled all the flies our lungs could handle, we ventured back out to the great outdoors to visit with the swarming clouds of other insects who had hovered about the door, patiently awaiting our return.

We raced to the trail and, still disoriented by the bloodloss from all our bug bites, may have lost the trail if not for this helpful signpost.

I was concerned that there was a need for these signs - that some hikers might not be able to tell the difference between the summit and a toilet. It did not bode well for the condition of the summit.

"What's it going to be, Julie?" I asked. "Summit or toilet?"

After a brief deliberation wherein we considered the condition of the kitchen sink and hypothesized about what the toilet might look like, we decided on a visit to the summit.

The summit was indicated by a stake in the ground and the thickest cloud of bugs we had seen yet.

We posed for a quick summit picture and raced downhill toward Bigfoot so he could eat us, with or without napkins, and end our misery.

On the way down the mountain, Julie took a fancy to a few of the giant rocks which littered the path.

"This would look amazing on the walkway outside my house," she mused.

"What are you going to do?" I snorted. "Carry it down the mountain?"

Julie did, in fact, carry the rock for a few hundred yards. Then she stopped and took off her backpack.

"Ha!" I barked. "Too heavy, huh?"

"No," she answered. "I found another one."

This one, too, went in Julie's backpack. Because Julie is insane.

She managed to stagger a few hundred more yards before she toppled over and her ankle made a very unpleasant snapping noise.

"That... had... nothing... to do... with... the rocks..." she gurgled as she lay sprawled across the path.

I sprang to her assistance and immediately started taking pictures of the beautiful view that she couldn't see because of her tears. Because I am a good friend.

This is the view you missed, Julie.

You also missed this view.

And this view. You're welcome.

Julie reluctantly abandoned her rocks WHICH HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH HER FALL and we hobbled our way through the ever thickening bugs which had gathered just to watch us sweat. They probably assumed that we were some new kind of self-marinating meal, basting in our own juices for their dining pleasure.

Which we were.

Julie had swallowed a few thousand milligrams of Tylenol and was completely untroubled by my constant weeping and crying. After a few hundred hours, we finally arrived back at the Trail of Tears and were on our way to Julie's swank new car so we could ruin the seats with pools of dank, mountain-based sweat.

We finally arrived at the car and I celebrated by not collapsing in a heap and sobbing.

My sweat designs are just as spectacular as Julie's, thank you very much.

We climbed back into her car and headed toward ice cream only to find this:

I refused to exit the car to open the gate on the grounds that I was tired and Bigfoot was no doubt still in the area.
 

Julie also refused to exit the car on the flimsy grounds that her ankle had swollen up to the size of a '54 Buick and was a lovely shade of eggplant and she was in excruciating pain from her fall WHICH WAS NOT CAUSED BY THE HUNDREDS OF POUNDS OF ROCKS SHE WAS ATTEMPTING TO CARRY DOWN A MOUNTAIN.

I am not getting out of the car, buddy.

I suggested something like this, but Julie is a party-pooper and refused. "We might scratch the paint on my fabulous new car."

I eventually broke down and, at great risk to myself, opened the gate so we could escape.

Now, I just have to remember to pack a fly-swatter in my backpack for the next hike. Maybe I'll make Julie carry it. She can squeeze it in right next to the rocks.

Blog Process Tour!

I was invited by two friends to participate in a blog tour that hops from blog to blog, giving writers and illustrators a chance to share their process.

Nancy Meyers is a new friend whose linework is fun and light and absolutely awesome. Check out her incredible artwork at nancymeyersdesign.com.

Dave Biedrzycki is a longtime friend, a wonderful author and illustrator, and a really swell guy. Check out his amazing work at his website,  davidbiedrzycki.com.

What am I working on now?
 
Right now I’m working on several different projects. It’s not my personal ideal way to work, but I’m happy to have the work to do. My biggest, most exciting project right now is a book that I wrote and illustrated called, A Cape!.

It’s the first book that I’ve self-published for myself. After 17 years of working with traditional publishers, I wanted to try doing one for myself. I ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to cover printing costs and I just finished up the layouts and will be getting it off to the printer in the next couple of days. 

A Cape! gave me a chance to work completely at my own pace and do everything creatively in exactly the way I wanted to do it. It was an exciting process and I’m thrilled with how the book came out.



How does my work differ from others of its genre?
 
I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never considered this question too deeply before. There are thousands of talented children’s authors and illustrators out there, most of whom do a great job creating work for kids. 

I try hard to reach kids where they are. I don’t set out to write books that teachers and parents and librarians will swoon over (though I hope they do, of course). I write things that I think kids will really enjoy. I don’t try to instill values or teach lessons or morals. I want to share a moment of laughter with kids. I want their stomaches to hurt from laughing when they’re finished with one of my books - what better feeling is there than that?

Why do I write what I do?

 
I write funny books because I love funny books. It’s as simple as that. I love sharing my books at schools and hearing hundreds of kids roaring with laughter. As an author–someone who spends most of his time working alone–that’s a thrill that I never tire of.


How does your writing process work?
 
I suppose it’s very much the same as most other writers: weeping, wailing, black magic, voodoo, and a captive army of evil trolls slaving away in underground dungeons to produce my work for me while I sit around in a hot tub, swilling expensive champagne.

Isn’t that how everyone does this?

On the few occasions when my evil army of trolls is unable to produce anything worthwhile and I am forced to take pencil in hand, I generally start out with some very simple idea or situation. From that point, I decide how to tell the story - will it be first person? rhyming?

There are lots of ways for the same idea to be fleshed out into a story.

I will generally get to work on drafts then, spending a lot of time tweaking, revising, and fixing my story, often discarding lots of previous work when I come up with a better idea.

Once the story is basically fleshed out, I start on the illustrations, planning how to best show what will be happening on each page. I do lots and lots of thumbnail sketches, working hard to decide what I want the book to look like.

The story and the pictures will then typically develop together, one influencing the other until, eventually, I have a rough story complete with rough illustrations to accompany it. 

My final artwork is almost always pencil and watercolor. I love the look and feel of working with pencil and brushes. Creating the final artwork is certainly one of the most satisfying aspects of the job.


Next week, the featured artist will be the talented and delightful Gina Perry. 

Gina Perry lives under the tall pines in New Hampshire with her husband and two children. She graduated from Syracuse University, working in animation and the scrapbook market before happily (and nervously) making the leap to writing and illustrating for children. Gina has been illustrating for children’s books, magazines, and products since 2006. She starts her illustrations with gouache and pencil and finishes them with top-secret digital magic. You can see more of Gina’s work here: http://www.ginaperry.com

Audience Participation.

Live music shows are always an adventure.

Today, we had 3 - count' em - 3 people walk up and start talking to us. Mid-song.

It's a new record for us.

It started during our first song when this guy wandered up and started talking to Steve. Mid-song - did I mention that? He said that he was a musician, too. And played the guitar. And he had a song that Steve should learn. It was a song for kids. Kids love it. Could he play it. Now?

Steve, as always, was polite and professional and explained that we had just started our show and maybe the guy could come back later as there were a bunch of people sitting there, watching us play. Then the guy told Steve that his name was Steve, too. And he told him his website address and his facebook site, again mentioning that he was a children's musician. He then suggested, in a clear, ringing voice, that one of the audience members was "probably retarded".

How could this guy NOT have a Grammy for his children's music act, yet?

Hi. We're kind of right in the middle of a show here, buddy.

Steve eventually convinced Steve 2.0 to take a seat so we could continue. We plowed forward and, if I do say so myself, we sounded pretty good.

Later in the show a guy came up to the gazebo where we were playing, slung his arms over the railing and spent an entire song staring at me as if he was trying to take over my mind. Which he might have - I'm still not sure. He was covered in festive neck-tattoos that had a distinctively home-made feel to them. As the song wound down, he started hooting, "Do a drum solo! Do a solo on the drums!"

Steve, naturally, is disinclined to let me perform long, complicated drums solos on the flimsy pretense that I am so awful at the drums that I would drive the audience, screaming from the show.  I politely declined the fellow's offer and he yelled "A Metallical drum solo!" before wandering off toward the corn-dog stand.

Freed from his hypnotic gaze, I performed with my usual ineptitude through a few more songs. As Steve was announcing one song, a kid, maybe 13 years old wandered up to the front where Steve stood and handed him a frisbee.

"Wanna frisbee?" he asked, interrupting Steve.

"I love frisbee," Steve answered, ever the gentleman and consummate performer. "Thank you so much."

The kid lumbered back to his posse of friends, who staggered around for a moment, convulsed with laughter at their brilliantly witty idea of giving a frisbee to Steve mid-show.

Before anyone else could rush the stage, the show ended. Joe and I began packing up instuments as quickly as we could, fearing that if we didn't, people would rush the stage and begin playing them.

Sure enough, Steve 2.0 sauntered up and said that he was going to play his song now.

"Noooooooooo," Joe hissed. "Steve - Just say NOOOOOOO."

I cringed and awaited the inevitable moment when Evil Steve would start pointing out more audience members who  he thought might be "probably retarded".

"Hey, Steve," Joe said, in a brilliant attempt to stave off the horrible end that loomed over us, "They cut off the power, already. Sorry."

Evil Steve commandeers the guitar and sings his song. Our Steve high-fives a young fan.

Evil Steve looked at my drum set. "Drums don't need power," he said.

I quickly yanked the snare off its stand. "Sorry," I mumbled, "Set's already torn down."

"I can play without power," Evil Steve said, heading for Steve's guitar.

"Noooo," Joe hissed again.

Steve, however, has his own set of guidelines for interacting with deranged lunatics - to wit - he is amazing with them. He smiled and handed the guy his guitar and stood back as Evil Steve sang his song about a class clown.

The lyrics that I caught, in my race to break down my drum set before the Metallica drum solo guy came back, went like this:

"Class clown. He's a class clown.
Class clown. He's a class clown.
Class clown. He's a class clown.
Class clown. He's a class clown.
Class clown. He's a class clown.
Class clown. He's a class clown.
Class clown. He's a class clown."

Repeat until entire audience rises as one and leaves.

Steve - our Steve, the good, kind, patient Steve, stood there with a genuine-looking smile spread across his face, clapping along.

Joe and I marveled at Steve's cool, calm equanimity.

Eventually, Evil Steve wandered off, probably headed to play songs at some kid's 5th birthday party - a party he hadn't been invited to.

Our Steve wandered over to us with a blissful smile on his face. "That was fun, wasn't it?" he asked, slipping his guitar into its case.

"Are you mental?" I asked. "He said that that kid was retarded! Out loud. On stage!"

Steve smiled again. "Awwww, he was a fun guy, wasn't he?"

"Steve?" Joe asked. "Did you practice patience with a monastery of Shaolin monks?"

He claims not to have, but I'm not sure. All I know is, he does a hard job well, and makes it look really, really easy.

Now, if I can just convince him to let me do a Metallica-style drum solo during the act...