…and over at The Horror Tree!
Get into the winter spirit by checking out my latest batch of posts I brewed up for the season! (Click on the picture to be taken to the post.)
And *drum roll*…The premiere of my Spooky Six interviews! Head over to Horror Tree to see who the opening act is!
Thanks to Stuart Conover for the fantastic cover art!
I’m now doing author interviews for Horror Tree! If you’re interested in becoming part of the “Spooky Six with Willow Croft” crowd, I can assure you that your head will remain very firmly attached!
So, what are you waiting for? If you’re a horror, sci-fi, fantasy, cli-fi, or a romance author that writes in any of the spec fic or paranormal genres, reach out to me at croftwillow [at] yahoo [dot] com. Don’t see your genre listed? Reach out with any questions!
More “rolling heads” news. Twitter. Sigh. I realized that I may need to keep the account for a wholly unexpected reason I didn’t even think about. I still don’t have the heart to reconnect there, yet, but it may be inevitable. How’s everyone else’s Twitter move going?
P.S. I reactivated my account just to see, and every…last…one…of my followers/following were gone. Just like that. Poof. So, that’s that. Ha!
I put up a website for my not-so-secret other identity!
It took a while to get there, behind the scenes, for sure.
I just wanted there to be a place where I could redirect people to if they wanted to know more about the services I offer.
I wasn’t even looking for anything fancy; a simple page that was more like a profile or a placeholder or whatever you call it.
I was having such problems with the complexity of the web design process (to those of you who helped with prior incarnations of the attempted website adventure–thank you! If you’re reading this, you know who you are!).
I didn’t want to go through WordPress for this, as it felt like overkill for the simple site I wanted, and I wasn’t looking at taking on another blog, and I just found using both Wix and Weebly to be a headache of a different flavour (yes, again, you think I would have learned from my first go-round with both platforms, but apparently not! Ha!).
And then an email from Mailchimp popped into my inbox when I was catching up on emails, telling me they were now offering website design through them.
What the heck, I said. And I gave it a try.
It was exactly what I needed at this juncture, when I’m trying to bring in some $$$ as cheaply as possible (I chose the free version, of course) but it was perfect. I can go in and reedit it as I need to, I had just the stock photos I was looking for, and I could have the simple, basic, one-pager I needed, and I can upgrade when I get some income coming in and I continue to grow my preexisting business.
I don’t get up to a lot of promo stuff on this blog (well, except for books and nonhuman animal- and environmental rights, that is!) but holy cow, I would completely recommend Mailchimp website feature!
I have been so stressed and overwhelmed and so oddly emotional and I just needed to have this free website process be easy and uncomplicated–a page I could just set it and leave it and I wouldn’t even have to maintain on a regular basis. And in this world where all this tech that should be making our lives easier instead feels like it makes our lives 100 percent more complicated, Mailchimp was like an oasis.
For real.
I can’t speak for the expanded and paid versions, but I feel that if my initial experience using Mailchimp’s free web design feature is anything to go by, Mailchimp is innovatingly mindful in this chaotic world.
Here’s the link to the simple website I did–please let me know what you think in the comments below!
(Honestly, though, I’m just so relieved to have it done, finally! It seems like a website would be such a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but it felt like a mountain-sized load!)
A big shout-out once again to Mailchimp!
https://kirsten-lee-barger.mailchimpsites.com/
We’re not only going green in this week’s “Eco Tuesday” interview, we’re going (werewolf) grey!
It should be quite the adventure!
(We all need an adventurous escape at this point, wouldn’t you all agree?)
With no further ado, please welcome traveler, poet, and writer, Marc Latham!
Biography
Marc Latham was a vegetarian in his late ‘70s teens before lapsing until his late ‘90s university years. He has now been veggie for over twenty years. In the ‘80s he followed Kerouac’s hobo traveling path while keeping a journal. Over the last twenty years he’s cut down on his carbon footprint, and in the last two taken up cold showers, inspired by Wim Hof.
An eco theme was central to his core writing decade of 2005/6 – 2015/6, with a wolf symbol and protagonist star
inspired by the WWF panda…
which he likes to think may have inspired Greta!?
Missing Link movie may be more likely, as that was a bigfoot searching for its roots from America’s north-west, as the Greenygrey werewolf had done a decade earlier; becoming the enlightened greenYgrey along the way!
The Interview
Willow Croft: In your trilogy of books, you write from the perspective of a vegetarian werewolf called greenYgrey. What’s their favourite veggie-filled foodstuff or recipe they tried on their journey?
Marc Latham: Being a werewolf on the road, the greenYgrey just ate what it could. This usually consisted of foods inspired by place names, traditional local food newly discovered, or foods I remembered and fed it from my travels. In Oz it remembers the berries of Beridale (with a McCandless/Krakauer’s Into the Wild warning) and buns from Bunbury’s buried bunneries with particular fondness.
In your current home state of Kansas it enjoyed smoked Red Hot Chili Peppers from the Red Hills and Smoky River, with musical inspiration. In Tartu, Estonia, it had a ravishing rhubarb tart, while in Moldova it discovered the national dish was mamaliga from a hospitable mama; who wasn’t in league with anyone.
Willow Croft: If you could travel through time where (or when, rather) would be your first stop, in terms of a more nature-orientated era?
Marc Latham: Growing up on Western movies I liked the ‘Indians’ (later defined to Lakota Sioux and Crazy Horse in particular!) with their wild horses culture, and then learning about Native Americans I was impressed with them being at one with nature, and especially nomadically traveling the plains with the seasons. Recently I’ve liked learning about how ‘star people’ are part of Native American culture, so it would be great to meet them too! So their last great era in the early 19th century would probably be my first stop; if I was to be welcomed, and not cause harm through disease! The California ‘60s movement was partially inspired by them and their attitude to nature, so it would be good to spend time there also, ending with a trip to Woodstock!
Learning more about European tribal culture in university I found they had a similar respect for nature and animals, with totems and tree worship, so I guess most places were okay with nature before industrialisation. They were still cutting trees and clearing forests though; although nothing compared to today’s mass clearing.
The further back in time, the more nature (and danger, thinking of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine!, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Land That Time Forgot or Michael Crichton’s Jurassic World) generally, although they’re finding many lost civilisations in the American jungles, so maybe in the future nature will reclaim everything?
Willow Croft: I enjoy your sunrise/sunset photos on your blog. Have you ever seen a green flash at sunset?
Marc Latham: Yes, funny you should ask that, as I have once. It was a year or two after first hearing about it through watching The Green Ray (Le Rayon Vert) French movie. It was set in Brittany, and when I visited there in 2013 I think I remembered it, but had forgotten about it on the evening I saw the green flash.
I was getting cold on the beach waiting for the sun to go down, to finish off my photo sequence, when I saw the green light flash as the sun finally went down, and thought that must be it! I didn’t get a photo as I’d just taken one of the last of the sun, and wasn’t expecting anything else. A photo from the sequence; of a seagull flying past on the beach; and the sunny Saint Malo panorama in the distance, became the cover shot for the blog (link below), so it was quite a special night. As was the first night of that holiday, when I bought a box of beers and drank them sat against a tree watching the sun go down on the edge of town, reliving my hobo travels on their 25th anniversary; which basically started in France.
Thanks for this interview, which has been the writing equivalent of a trip down memory lane.
~~~~
Want to continue the trek down memory lane with Marc Latham and the greenYgrey? Catch up with them via these internet pathways:
Smashwords – About Marc Latham, author of ‘Werewolf of Oz: Fantasy Travel by Google Maps’ and ‘242 Mirror Poems and Reflections’: Free to download in July, 2022.Amazon page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Marc-Latham/e/B004SP40J0/
Blog post about the green flash light night: Saint-Malo Beach Sunset Photos, Brittany, France | Travel 25 Years… and more (wordpress.com)
fmpoetry poetry hub: mistYmuse | Art, Poetry, Writing Winter Festival (wordpress.com)
Kansas episode of the Greenygrey in North America: GreenyGrey Rambles Around the World: Can suss in Kansas
Main greenYgrey website for a decade: greenygrey3 (wordpress.com)
Join author Ellen Hawley and I as we go digging for treasure and getting into lots of trouble in Anglo-Saxon England!
Willow Croft: If you unearthed a treasure chest on your property, what would you hope would be in it, and why?
Ellen Hawley: Instructions on how to fix the structural problem in the novel I’m working on. I mean, why be greedy in a fantasy?
Willow Croft: Sometimes I see mention of historically based foodstuffs on your blog (like cake!). What would be your favourite recipe of yore (either mentioned on your blog, or not)?
Ellen Hawley: I can’t help wanting to be around when oat cakes were first made. I want to watch over some woman’s shoulder as she makes them over an open fire in the middle of a stone-walled house with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out.
Then I want to run outside to get a few lungfuls of smokeless air.
Willow Croft: Imagine you’re getting together with friends or family on a weekend—what’s the board game you most love to hate?
Ellen Hawley: All of them. I grew up playing board games with my brother, who was (and oddly enough, still is) a couple of years older, so I always lost. It left me with a lasting dislike of them all. I’m the person who’d curl up in the corner with a book and try not to look too grumpy.
Willow Croft: If you created a fictional city of your own, and had to design a tourism brochure, what would be the main selling points of your city (and what would you call it)?
Ellen Hawley: Hang on. I create the city, right? So who gets to tell me I have to design a tourism brochure? I’m designing a city that doesn’t need a tourism brochure. Cancel the brochure. Let’s go out and eat cake.
Willow Croft: Some of your blogs takes a closer look at Anglo-Saxon law (Example: https://notesfromtheuk.com/2021/08/13/law-in-anglo-saxon-england/). What would you have done back then that might have gotten you outlawed or punished?
Ellen Hawley: That’s a tough one, since Anglo-Saxon England was–well, basically, it was a mess. It was one kingdom, it was five kingdoms, it was seven kingdoms, it was probably more kingdoms than that but I lost track somewhere in there. And part of the time large parts of it were run by Vikings, so it stopped being Anglo-Saxon and became Norse. And if that doesn’t confuse the picture enough, part of the time it was Christian and part of the time it was what Christians like to call pagan, which as far as I can make out is a Christian word for not-Christian, not something any group ever called itself. Let’s say it was pre-Christian, although that’s also a problematic label, since it uses a different religion as the reference point.
That’s a long-winded way of saying that the laws changed from one period to the next and from one kingdom or king to the next. But I’m sure I’d have found a way to get in trouble.
In Christian Anglo-Saxiana, it could easily have been for not being a Christian. I’m not sure that was illegal, but it wouldn’t have made me popular.
In any Anglo-Saxon period, although free women were way freer than they were under the Normans, I doubt I’d have kept within the bounds.
Slavery was widespread. I don’t imagine myself as the Harriet Tubman of Anglo-Saxon England–I’m too old to kid myself about having her courage–but whether I was free or enslaved, I’d have had a few problems with it.
And then there’s that awkward business of being attracted to women instead of men. I’ve never read anything about how they felt about same-sex relationships–there may not be any record of it–but again, I doubt it would’ve made me popular.
So many ways to get in trouble, and gee it’s hard to choose.
Free cake at Ellen Hawley’s blog! (I’m kidding. I made that up. But there are blog posts over there that are just as delicious as cake, I promise!) https://notesfromtheuk.com/.
Want more than just cake? Glad you asked!
Ellen Hawley is an American novelist and blogger living in Britain. Her current novel, Other People Manage, was just released by Swift Press: https://www.waterstones.com/book/other-people-manage/ellen-hawley/9781800750975.
The “Five Things Friday” interviews have resumed!
We’re getting things “rolling” (do hay bales even roll?) with horror author Priscilla Bettis, whose spooky novelette The Hay Bale was recently released on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hay-Bale-Priscilla-Bettis-ebook/dp/B09P4PJQLT.
Willow Croft: I read on your Amazon author page that you now live on the northern plains of Texas. I think that every geographical locale has its own inherent spookiness to it; so what defines the Plains area of the country in terms of creepiness?
Priscilla Bettis: The wind is constant, first one direction then the other, like a Lovecraftian entity breathing in and out. Sometimes the breath hisses through the trees. Sometimes it just howls.
Willow Croft: I’m always very curious when it comes to science and other fields; could you tell me what sort of projects you engineered as part of your work as an engineering physicist?
Priscilla Bettis: We live in a world where nuclear war is a horrible possibility. My job was to ensure nuclear survivability of military airplanes. It means I had to be well versed in electromagnetic fields and radiation and all sorts of dire subjects. On the positive side, I met a kind, brilliant, sexy man who was a reliability engineer for the same airplanes. We’re now married. 🙂
Willow Croft: I see in one of your interviews (https://marciamearawrites.com/2022/01/19/tenthingsyoumaynotknow-about-priscilla-bettis/) that you like dark chocolate and dark coffee, but I’d love to know what local Alaskan dish, since you grew up there, is your favourite?
Priscilla Bettis: Do drinks count? Because I’d pick hot Christmas eggnog. When I moved to the lower 48, I was astounded to learn everybody drank it COLD! There’s nothing like wrapping your hands around a warm mug of sweet, fattening eggnog at Christmastime.
Willow Croft: I love taking walks in cemeteries, especially when they are historic cemeteries! What’s the most interesting historic cemetery that you’ve visited?
Priscilla Bettis: In Lynchburg, Virginia, there is an old city cemetery with Civil War graves. Antique roses planted in 1860 line the wall of the cemetery. A cottage sits among the graves. It was a pest house in the 1800s, and the floor is deep with sand. It’s not like they had Depends and Maytag washers back then, so patients close to death lay on the floor, and the sand absorbed the, um, effects of dysentery and was easily shoveled away. It’s a beautiful cemetery with all the roses, and it’s a sobering cemetery with the War graves and the conveniently located pest house.
Willow Croft: Let’s talk about your interest in angels and miracles: have you ever received a visit from an angel-type being, or witnessed any miracles yourself, personally?
Priscilla Bettis: Once, on a sweltering summer day, my full-sized sedan broke down in bumper-to-bumper traffic. A handsome fellow with long, wavy hair pushed my car into the next driveway which was a church entrance that slanted UPHILL. I don’t know how he did it! Then he disappeared. I wonder to this day if he was an angel. Also, a kind lady stopped and gave me a bottle of cool water while I waited for the tow truck, so THANK YOU, kind lady, whoever you are!
Discover more about how Priscilla Bettis “rolls”–her literary adventures, book reviews, and more cemetery strolls here: priscillabettisauthor.com.
This week’s “Five Things Friday” interviewee/dragon is Nenekiri Bookwyrm!
Willow Croft: What’s the best convention you’ve attended? And what’s the oddest, fantastical, and/or wonderful thing that’s happened to you at a convention?
Nenekiri Bookwyrm: One of the best was Anthrocon 2018 for sure. I was only able to go for Saturday the previous year and in 2018 I was able to go for the full convention. It was also the first time I had been published and the feeling of getting to see my name in the contributors to the con book was something magical. It made my entire weekend and the con had just started.
I’ve had a lot of adventures in my many con trips, but this story from my first ever convention is still one of my favorites to tell. I had never been to a convention before but went with my group of friends to Magfest 2016. We had just gotten to the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center after checking into our hotel rooms and thought it would be a good idea to get something to eat. The problem was that we didn’t know the area very well. So after wandering around the streets just outside of the convention center, and nearly getting lost looking for a restaurant, we settled for Subway. We grabbed our sandwiches and headed back to find a place to eat them. We decided on sitting around the fountain that was set up next to the entrance on the lower level of the building. It was around supper when we sat down to eat our meal, close to 6PM but not quite. Everyone was glad to be off their feet for a while and the conversation was light and jovial.
Then the clock struck 6PM. And the music swelled behind us.
Instantly, we were all showered with water as the fountain came to life and started performing a laser light show while alternating spraying water from different fountain jets. There was screaming, laughing, and a good deal of soggy bread as we rushed to get out of the way of the musical water works. I tried to cover a friend with an outstretched wing, but the water just splashed off and into their face. We found out later that apparently the fountain turns on and does a show at set times in the day. It certainly made for an unforgettable start to my first convention!
Willow Croft: There’s a saying that dragons like their snacks “crunchy, with ketchup”, so–what’s your favourite snack, with or without ketchup?
Nenekiri Bookwyrm: I’ve been eating a lot of Cheez-its lately. Or really any kind of cheese cracker. I like the crunch (without ketchup) and it reminds me to drink more water to offset all the salt I’m eating. Some folks have a sweet tooth, but I’ve always had a salt fang.
Willow Croft: When you need a break from all the game-designing, salt-laden snack munching, and writing, where do you and your other dragon friends like to go for vacation?
Nenekiri Bookwyrm: Conventions are usually where I go to meet up with my other dragon friends, but outside of that I’ll sometimes take a trip to Pittsburgh to visit a long time friend and his fiancé. The last time my roommate and I were out that way they took us on a tour of the city that was lovely. We toured the Phipps Conservatory, rode the incline all the way to the top of the city at night, and walked around a college that looked like an old castle had sprung up in the middle of the city. There’s still a bunch of places I’d love to visit for the next time we get a chance to go out that way.
Willow Croft: Now that you’ve finally taken a vacation, what game (board game or video game) do you bring along while you’re “sunning your scales”?
Nenekiri Bookwyrm: Magic the Gathering is a game that a lot of my friends play, so I usually have a deck for that packed in my suitcase somewhere. Since it’s been around so long there’s a lot of different formats and play styles to choose from. I usually play a format called Commander with a deck that runs five different colors of dragons. It’s chaotic and silly and getting to see all the different color cards make a kaleidoscopic rainbow as I play them is a good deal of fun. And the idea of having a spellbook that you curate yourself over time, adding or subtracting pieces as you learn and grow is one that is very interesting to me.
Due to the portability of the Nintendo Switch, I’ll occasionally bring that on trips where I think I’ll have the time to play it. The game I play on it varies, but right now I’m snout deep in Monster Hunter. It has a very satisfying loop of fight big monsters->make snazzy new pants for outfit->repeat, that’s hooked me over the last few months.
Willow Croft: What’s your favourite song that you like to strum on your ukulele, and why?
Nenekiri Bookwyrm: I’m still a beginner when it comes to playing songs since for a long while I would just strum the ukulele idly as a way to relax. But recently I’ve been learning the basic chords and decided to start practicing One Big Bed from Not Another D&D Podcast. I’ve not heard the podcast itself, the song was a recommended video for me on Youtube based on my interests in tabletop. But as soon as I heard it, I knew I wanted to learn how to play it. There’s a gentleness to it that really spoke to me. Like a song you would sing to someone after a hard day as they fell asleep. The lyrics are a little silly but I find it has a nice balance of schmaltz to offset the message that rest is an important part of the adventure too. The chord progression isn’t too difficult as well, which gives me an excuse to practice switching my claws into the next note without too much trouble.
Nenekiri Bookwyrm would love to meet you! Visit their blog at https://www.nenekiri.com or on Twitter https://twitter.com/Nenekiri_Dragon.
And, Nenekiri Bookwyrm would like to remind you all to “curl up with a good book and be kind to yourself”.
The wisdom of dragons, right?
This week’s “Five Things Friday” interviewee appears to be quite the “busy bee” too–Diane Arrelle is an author, book publisher, and editor!
Willow Croft: One of the first stories I read of yours was before we even “met”—in an anthology called Crafty Cat Crimes: 100 Tiny Cat Tale Mysteries. How has your own cat(s) influenced (or hindered!) your writing?
Diane Arrelle: Wow, I grew up very rural on the edge of the NJ [New Jersey] Pine Barrens. We never used the term feral cats, they were just cats that came and lived in our garage, our yard, the woods all around us. I’ve had cats around since I was born and over the years, I always had my special kitties. I have always loved cats and I find them fascinating.
After college I traveled too much to have a pet and then I became the suburban wife and mommy and my husband didn’t want a pet. The cat from Crafty Cat Crimes was the sweetest kitten I found stuck in a tree one day while visiting a friend. We got her down and then I made my friend keep the kitten because we didn’t have pets. But I went over to visit my foster cat often.
One day I got annoyed at my husband so I took my kids to the animal shelter and brought home a six-month-old kitty, who just happened to pick us out. Just like that I became a cat person again. Bonny, who was a male, lived for almost 18 years and influenced many stories, most of them on the dark side. Seriously, where do they disappear to and how do they magically reappear like that?
After Bonny died, I decided to wait before getting another cat. Every time we heard a noise in the house my husband would say, “Cat’s back.” It was funny, but the man who hadn’t wanted a pet told me we needed another cat about two months after Bonny had passed. I immediately dashed out and got a rescue named Tabby, and she is definitely my husband’s cat. She is a very flighty animal with an intense stare that sometimes scares me and she likes to stalk me. I have to say she has inspired several scary stories in the four years we’ve had her. She, as well as Bonny, have hindered my writing in the usual way, sleeping on the keyboard, yowling when I’m writing, just being cats.
Willow Croft: I don’t know about you, but I always get the munchies when I’m writing. What’s your favourite snack(s) or comfort foods when you write?
Diane Arrelle: Oh no, I am the picture of self-control. I never eat and write. Ok, so I’m lying. I don’t eat and write. No, I eat and in between stuffing my face, I write. The year in quarantine changed my pattern completely and I have to have food nearby. On a good day I crunch on carrots and veggies, but mostly I eat about four pieces of sugar-free chocolate and lots of popcorn mixed with nuts. Oh yeah, I always have a Wawa coffee next to me which I reheat all day long. And for those who don’t know about it, it’s an Eastern convenience store that started in the Philly area. Wawa coffee mixed with Wawa cappuccino is just a wonderful, creativity-inspiring beverage.
Willow Croft: As an editor/publisher, you also host calls for anthologies by way of your co-owned publishing company, Jersey Pines Ink. How do you and your co-owner come up with the themes for your anthology calls?
We’re friends and talk a lot on the phone and in person. Just about every conversation one of us will say something offhand and the other will respond. “Wow, that would make a great story.” Sometimes that leads to stories and sometimes one of us will decide it would make a great anthology. Bev loved the idea of a mystery anthology and I fell in love with the term “crypt gnats” when we were talking about cemeteries. We both came up with the newest anthology called Trees while we were at RavenCon in Williamsburg, Virginia and were walking around the Olde Town taking pictures of some really creepy, gnarled trees.
Willow Croft: As one of the founders of the Garden State Horror Writers (as well as a past president), what’s the most terrifying and/or unexplained thing that has happened to you?
Diane Arrelle: Personally, I grew up in a house that had a spirit. It appeared when I was about twelve and stayed until I was about seventeen. I was scared of it and yet, when I was home alone it sort of comforted me. I wasn’t afraid of the other monsters I used to worry about once the spirit came into the house. I used to talk to it but I always begged it to never appear, which it never did. I don’t think I could have handled seeing a ghost.
As president of the GSHW we went on a field trip to a haunted house on the Jersey Shore and we saw bunches of socks on the beach. They inspired me to write a silly horror story that won first place in the Killer Frog annual contest. On another group trip we went to New Hope, Pennsylvania, for a ghost walk that creeped me out and I came home and wrote a story in about an hour. I was so inspired.
Willow Croft: Since you write both mysteries and horror, what’s the oddest or most disturbing thing that you’ve had to research, either online or in a library?
Diane Arrelle: Well, when I first started writing I went to the county library because I wanted to write a novel. Demonic books were popular and I wanted to write a demonic novel but I knew nothing about angels or demons and had never really ever thought about them. I started looking up hell and just went deeper into the mythologies surrounding the underworlds and afterlives until I scared myself and by closing time I quit. I was so frightened walking to my car I kept looking over my shoulder and I constantly checked the review mirror as I drove the ten minutes home. I was spooked for a couple of weeks and since I’d already started the book, I turned it into a comedy about angelic sex aliens landing on a hedonistic earth. It was fun to write and after a few years I threw it away. But I learned not to research something that frightens me too much. I just don’t need to add to all my neurotic list of things that terrify me.
Seek out more about Diane Arrelle at her blog, and check out the publishing company, Jersey Pines Ink, via the links below!
Meet Garon Whited, author and longtime D&D gamer, in this week’s “Five Things Friday”!
Willow Croft: You’ve written about vampires, dragons, ants, and…cats! If you could become any one supernatural, fantastical, cryptozoological, or non-human life form, what would you be, and why?
Garon Whited: Anything? Anything at all? We’re not even going to narrow it down a little? Oh, well, start with the softballs, sure. Ease into it. Don’t go for the tough questions right off. Pfft.
Let me think about that. [time passes] Okay, I think I’ve got it. While it’s tempting to be a Time Lord—and steal a TARDIS—or to be a dragon, or even a vampire, I think I’d have to settle on a third-stage Lensman. They were designed by the Arisians, true, but they’re about as perfect a creature as has ever been. While they may live an immensely long time, they’re not immortal—unless they choose; whether they can extend their lives indefinitely hasn’t been conclusively determined. Immortality isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. They have immense intelligence, profound powers, exceptional physical prowess, and basically every advantage ever found in the entire lexicon of human potential.
Unlike Arisians, however, they aren’t necessarily totally cerebral. They’re still humans, although highly advanced ones. And, when it comes right down to it, I’m a human. Mostly. Kind of. In many ways. I should probably go with what I know rather than try to figure out all the fiddly details of another species.
Willow Croft: Presto! You’ve just discovered you’re the next time lord . . . what bizarre food combination would your companion find you eating?
Garon Whited:
“Professor?”
“You pushed the ‘Talk’ button?”
“What is this?”
“Hey! Don’t touch that!”
“Is it some sort of experiment? Dalek repellent? Cyberman poison?”
“I can drop you off in Wales, you know.”
“I like Wales.”
“…Four million B.C.”
“So, you were saying about this delicious-looking bowl of…?”
“Chocolate chips in peanut butter.”
“There’s peanut butter in that?”
“I like the chocolate. And the peanut butter adds flavor. And it makes it easier to spoon it up.”
“But…”
“If you don’t want to eat it, I will.”
“Look, if you’re going to steal a food replicator from the Federation, could you at least program it with something else? I would like to eat, too!”
“It’s programmed for everything but tea. Ask for tea.”
“What? Why?”
“It’ll work out what you want to drink through taste bud patterns and neurological signals. It will then produce a liquid which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
“You’re weird.”
“I find it highly improbable you’re only just now noticing.”
“I was confused by your heart of gold.”
“I knew I liked you for some reason.”
Willow Croft: Logic and science aside, if you could travel back in time, what historical event would you change, and why?
Garon Whited: Sorry; I can’t ignore the logic and science part. Too many years playing role-playing games where the players need to have a consistent framework where things can eventually make sense.
However, if I’m going to change something, there are a couple of candidates.
Was there an Atlantis? Let’s talk about it not sinking—or, at the very least, playing tourist before the end. Did aliens build the pyramids? We’re going to need to talk about that—to the locals, and to the aliens. And so on.
But for documented historical stuff, allow me to mention the Library of Alexandria. While I acknowledge the place—for history’s sake—has to be sacked, would it really be such a bad thing to show up a couple of years beforehand, hire a hundred scribes, and make a backup copy? Or just spend my days in the library, pretending to read everything, while wearing newfangled glass lenses over my eyes? “Newfangled” to the locals, perhaps. The concealed high-tech video recording device I’m using to make copies of everything I pretend to read has to blend in. I’m not slapping the documents on a copier.
Willow Croft: Do you have a favourite pair of D&D/role-playing dice?
Garon Whited: No, I don’t. These days, I use my laptop. It keeps my character records, worldbuilding, magic items, custom spells, the works. I’m pretty good with Excel and the workbook I have is huge, holding dozens of cities, one Empire, three kingdoms, a bunch of races, and enough adventure ideas to keep a table full of players busy from now until my grandchildren are old enough to sit by the fire and mutter about how D&D was different in their day.
Sometimes I wonder if I should just publish the darn thing. Then again, there are so many useful tools out there on the internet, as it is. Up-to-date ones, I mean, covering lots of different editions. If you’re not big on editing spreadsheets, you’d have to play 3.5 to use mine. Then again, come to think of it, I updated it to 3.5 over time… it was originally for 2nd edition, because my 1st edition spreadsheet in Lotus wasn’t easy to export…
Man, have I been at this for a while.
I do have a few unusual dice, though.
Willow Croft: What’s the most frightening thing that has crawled out from the depths of your imagination?
Garon Whited: Look. [deep breath] If something crawls out of my imagination, the world is in real trouble, because I imagine a lot. So far, it’s all still in my imagination.
As for the most frightening thing in there, how about we stick with people?
Let me explain that.
Elder Gods may do awful things to the universe, inflicting madness and death on every puny life-form in much the same way as we pour gasoline on an ant mound. They do so because it’s in their nature to do so. It’s just how they are. Alien fungi turning everyone into zombies? Ditto. Hungry space vampires? Same. Devouring fog that weaves through the forests, puts people to sleep, and slowly leaches their blood out through their skin? All of these are creatures that do terrible things because we think they’re terrible, not because they do. We perceive them as horrible, nasty monsters. Their thought is more, “Meh. Humans. They would think that.”
But people?
We do good and noble things. We help each other. We raise each other up. We know what is good and we unfailingly do it. If we know something is wrong or evil or just plain unnecessarily hurtful, we would never do it! …right? Right? I hear an uncomfortable silence in answer.
Or, unlike the “monsters,” do we choose to do things to each other that we know are outright evil “because we have to”? Why do we have to? Is that what we tell ourselves as a handy excuse? Or did we screw up enough that we don’t dare admit it and take the blame—so let’s eliminate the problem by eliminating people who would blame us? Or, no, let’s just lie about it. We have intelligence. We have language. Let’s lie to each other, cheat each other, kill each other—and worse. Oh, so much worse!
Monsters—the scariest ones—aren’t the alien Things with tentacles and slime. They’re the ones that remind us of ourselves, because there is nothing more terrifying. We may fear the unknown or the unknowable, but we know what we’re capable of. What’s even worse is we only think we know… and really don’t want to find out how wrong we are.
So, the worst thing my imagination has produced? It’s sometimes plumbed deeper into the well of human nature than is technically good for it. That’s why most of what I write has a lighthearted air. I don’t like it down there.
Garon Whited’s Books and Author Page and More:
https://www.amazon.com/Garon-Whited/e/B00IX0NER0
This week, we have Miranda Lemon and Violet Plum from over at Violet’s Vegan Comics (https://violetsvegancomics.com/)!
Willow Croft: This question’s a two-parter! What vegetable and/or vegan dish is your most favourite? And what vegetable and/or fruit makes you go “Yuk”?
Miranda Lemon: My favourite dish is vegan Yorkshire pudding with chips and beans, and the fruit that makes me go “yuk!” is avocado, because I think it is like eating margarine.
Violet Plum: Ooh, what to choose? I guess chocolate’s not a vegetable – although it does come from beans. Speaking of beans, I think one of my favourite meals is beans on toast, especially with peanut butter and yeast extract on the toast. I’ve loved it since childhood, never tired of it and it’s so easy to make. Sadly I don’t have it very often any more because bread is no longer my friend, but it is a rare treat. And the yucky vegetable which immediately springs to mind is celery. Yuck!
~~~
Willow Croft: If you could be any animal (or plant) which would you “bee”, and why?
Miranda: I would like to be a koala because I think it would be lovely to spend all my time in a tree, eating leaves and sleeping.
Violet: If I could also wish away all human activity, I would be a Canada goose because I’d love to be able to fly, and fly great distances. They are mostly herbivorous so I wouldn’t have to eat anything yucky and I could see the world from a great height. The limit of how high Canada geese can fly is not known but they have been documented at 9km above the Earth!!! Amazing! I’ve no desire to ride in an aeroplane but I would love to be able fly myself.
~~~
Willow Croft: There seems to be a movement building around the practice(s) of urban (or wild) foraging at present. What you do think about this movement from an environmental and/or personal perspective? Which is more sustainable—a “backyard” or urban garden, foraging, or a combination of both practices?
Miranda: I think foraging is a fantastic idea, I would love it if we could find all our food that way. I don’t have a back garden, so I think it would be most sustainable if people with gardens foraged in their gardens, and everyone else foraged everywhere else. But there needs to be a lot of replanting of forests so that there will be enough for everyone.
Violet: I love this idea! One of my stories, The English Family Anderson, is about a family who live on a bus and do just that. It’s wish fulfilment for me because I’ve always fantasized about being able to live like that. Being self-sufficient. If we could all live closer to nature, follow the seasons and understand where our food comes from – be responsible for growing it and gathering it ourselves – it would feed our souls. I think both things – wild foraging and home growing – would be completely sustainable. The forest garden is the most productive use of land, as well as returning natural habitats to wildlife. I think we should turn all the agricultural land into food forests for everyone to share.
~~~
Willow Croft: Imagine the world ten years from now if we as humans don’t break our consumption-driven, environmentally destructive habits. What would the world look like?
Miranda: I think it would be not very nice, so I hope humans will break their destructive habits.
Violet: Have you seen the movie Idiocracy (2006)? With Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. That is the world we are fast approaching.
~~~
Willow: How do you see the world changing over the next ten years in regards to conservation and environmental awareness as driven by the latest generation(s) of kids/young people?
Miranda: I believe that if we tell children the truth they will do the right things to save the environment and conserve nature. Everyone deserves to know the whole truth, and once they do, they will know that being vegan will save the world, and so they will all go vegan, and the world will be saved. Hurrah!
Violet: Education is key. If children were told the truth at school, about meat, fish, eggs and dairy being unnecessary and hazardous to health; about animal agriculture and fishing being environmentally devastating; and about animal farming being the cause of human starvation and diseases like Covid-19, then I think they would lead the charge for an end to animal farming and a new beginning for the natural world. But sadly the governments who write the national curriculum are controlled by big businesses who make vast riches from these destructive practices so lessons aren’t going to improve any time soon. Thankfully, though, the internet has enabled more enlightened people to get this information out there, and the mainstream media picks it up and runs with it sometimes. So I think there is hope that a new generation of eyes-wide-open individuals might, through the power of their consumer choices, move the world to demand ethical, zero waste, organic vegan products, and abandon those which aren’t.
~~~
Willow Croft: And, lastly, what sort of environmentally friendly art supplies do you all use?
Miranda and Violet: Most of our art materials (pencils, watercolours, pastels and ink) have been found in secondhand/charity shops so we are re-using other people’s waste. But when we do need to buy anything new we usually get it from artdiscount.co.uk who have labelled qualifying products as vegan and have done a very helpful blog post (https://artdiscount.co.uk/blogs/artdiscount/vegan-vegetarian-and-eco-art-supplies) which explains what’s good and what’s bad for the discerning artist. There’s another helpful post, here: https://vegomm.com/vegan-art-craft-supplies/. And of course we only buy recycled sketch paper.
~~~
Visit Miranda Lemon and Violet Plum at https://violetsvegancomics.com/ where they have a wonderful selection of things for kids of all ages.
this love fairy fell in love with her ghost
An onion has many layers. So have I!
One Movie at a Time
A place where words come alive
Gonna fill this page with breathings of my heart 💞
Find Crime Fiction, and True Crime, from the best writers. Submit your own.
Blaze a trail and leave footprints for the world to visit and follow.
My life blog
Oh, the twisted stories to come.
Paranormal Mystery, Suspense
A place for those wandering the dark wood of life, writing, and spirituality
Making more meaning of our Past (history), Present (nature) & Future (technology)
Author
Tips, tricks, and treats for your best Halloween ever!
Selection of news
Accountant | Customer Services | Admin Support
“The Path of Light is a Darkness Illuminated by Faith, Hope and Charity.” ~ Mystical Prayers
Willow Croft 