How I Spent My Summer Stay-cation

(A typical day writing on the sun porch)

I've learned that in this part of the globe, summer usually means three short, hot months bookended by two warmish months, while the rest of the year belongs to winter.  It seems to me that we just came out of a very long, very cold winter when -30 degrees wasn't uncommon, and most of the time the thermometer hovered close to 0, and that the lovely, lush green realm that surrounds our house only just arrived. But the truth according to the calendar is that today is the last day of August. I blinked, and summer was gone.

The one big thing I have to show for the time is a lot of completed writing.  Finished first drafts in desperate need of filing have piled up atop one of my two big lateral drawer cabinets, and with summer unofficially over in a few short hours, my plan for the first week of unofficial autumn is to get those stories filed.  Back in June (was it really that long ago?), on the first hot day I remember, I started a wonderful week of free writing, something I've done too little of, and the results were tremendous.  Several of the stories I produced during that time have since found homes.  The same week, an interview I gave to the fine folks at Grey Matter Press came out -- it can be read in its entirely here.  I also learned that my ghostly historical short story "Drowning" is set to appear in their forthcoming anthology Death's Realm, one of only seventeen accepted from over 2,000 submissions!

Many of my summer days started in my Writing Room, a place I love, and ended on the old sofa on our sun porch, with its beautiful views out six tall windows.  I am seated there as I write this, looking out two at the fiery red maple leaves of a tree in the neighbor's backyard, already showing the first color before September's arrival.  Out here, while penning westerns, mysteries, a long detective story, M/M romance, writing about robots and things that go bump in the night, I sipped copious amounts of iced coffee from tall, sweating plastic cups, as well as a brand of blueberry bubble water I discovered at the local grocery store in July.  I submitted to numerous markets, and a lot of my babies came home with contracts in hand.  In the thick of so many completed projects, I also wrote a screenplay, my second for the indie Hollywood filmmaker who filmed the first bearing my byline in June.  That first feature film is presently being color-corrected and edited for sound out in Tinseltown, and there are rumors of an autumn screening in the not-too-distant future.

As stated, Robots were a big part of my summer.  They have, in fact, been a prevalent theme since my boyhood, when iconic mechanical men like the Robinson Robot from Lost in Space and other

favorite TV shows forever influenced both my life and my pen. The release of my collection of three novellas, Tales From the Robot Graveyard, is another event I look forward to in the fall.  In my book, which boasts an amazing cover by Eric Chu, conceptual artist on the new Battlestar Galactica:
               

·                Two brothers—one human, the other manufactured—test the limits of family loyalty in a dead city that harbors diabolical secrets in “Ghosts and Robots”.

·                 Mad technology decimated the Earth.  Could an even madder one save it when mechanical emissaries arrive bearing gifts in “Robot Kind”?

·                 And in “The Long Frost”, on a planet of ice, somewhere between man and machine, lies one last desperate hope for survival.

In addition to the bling from Eric Chu, the book will feature a blurb from Amy Howard Wilson of Star Blazers fame, and an inaugural poem from my good friend, poet Esther M. Leiper-Estabrooks.  I'm beyond excited to see the book's release and have had so much fun writing the tales, one of which ("The Long Frost") dates back almost to the beginning of my writing dreams.

August was a delightful month, with not one but two Sunday writers' group parties/cookouts, and numerous weekend guests (in part to enjoy Yard Sale, the newest play written, directed, and produced by my friend and fellow writers' group member, Jonathan Dubey).  On the 1st, we spent a day beyond the notches in the town of North Conway, eating Chinese buffet for lunch, shopping for office supplies -- I picked up some great composition notebooks, which I've since used voraciously for my summer literary adventures -- and taking in the first showing of Guardians of the Galaxy, which we all loved.  

(Summer drafts done, edited, and submitted to be filed)

For the second summer in a row, we made due without the need for air conditioning.  Our house boasts lots of windows and four ceiling fans (one in my Writing Room), and the two box fans more than made up for days and nights when the temperature soared into the upper 80s (not once did we pass into the 90s). The smells of summer -- roses from the giant Lovecraftian menace in the backyard, newly mowed lawn, the green veldt that surrounds Xanadu, our home on the hill -- were welcome, and in abundance. There was even a bear sighting in late June, when a curious hulkster moseyed down from the woods behind our home in search of picnic baskets and, sensing we keep our garbage in the small shed attached to the back of the house, just beyond the far wall of my Writing Room, employed brutish strength to snap off the latch.  It was all very exciting and, no doubt, fodder for my future stories.

(Our very own black bear, seen crossing the neighbor's yard)

I'm sad to see the summer end. Forget the insane cost of heating oil that looms not far down the road, the oppressive cold that is surely coming, the short, gray days that define winters in the North Country.  I'm going to miss sitting out in the cozy, sunlit warmth of my other office, where so many of the season's stories were composed -- the short, long, and screenplay alike.  I loved the heat, what there was of it, and the green, and the occasional Sunday afternoon writing with the Red Sox game playing on the flat-screen. But winter has its own charm, too, and I look forward to the work I'll be doing nestled in my beautiful Writing Room with the cube heater on.  And first, there's autumn to enjoy, brief as it surely will be, with all those crisp days, falling leaves, and the mysteries of Halloween to enjoy and write about!                 

Interview with STAR BLAZERS' Amy Howard Wilson Part I

(An actual cel from one of the Yamato films of "Yuki", aka, "Nova" given to Ms. Wilson
by Meri Davis, chair of A-Kon)

I was fourteen that autumn, flipping channels in the basement TV room. Our set was hooked up to cable -- a new concept for the time. Gone was the static and snow of rabbit ears, and suddenly displayed in vibrant detail across the screen was an amazing image: that of a powerful space battleship as it readied to leave Earth's solar system on an as-yet unknown (to me) mission. Without any other fanfare or preparation, I entered the universe of Star Blazers, a timeless story of love, honor, and sacrifice that unfolds across deep space as the crew of the Earth Defense Force flagship Argo attempts to save the human race and our beloved Mother Earth from mysterious would-be alien destroyers. Over the course of the first twenty-six episodes in which the Star Force's Captain Avatar, Derek Wildstar, Nova, Mark Venture, robot IQ-9, et al battle to reach the planet Iscandar in the distant Magellanic Cloud for a machine capable of removing the deadly radioactivity unleashed by planet bombs fired by the alien Gamilons, I found myself captivated, stirred -- and desperate to know if the crew would succeed in their mission to save our planet and people from extinction.  It was fairly mature territory for an afternoon cartoon to explore (or any medium, for that matter), and I was forever changed as a result. Oh, the misery of Friday afternoons, especially when, upon her approach to Iscandar, the Argo's crew learn they're also traveling to sister world Gamilon and a trap from which no escape seems possible -- with no resolution forthcoming until the following Monday!  I routinely raced home from the bus stop to be sure I was in front of the tube by three in the afternoon.  When the fine folks at WSBK- TV 38 switched broadcast times to 7:30 weekday mornings, I routinely missed the bus.  No more so after the Star Force returned home with the radiation-removing Cosmo DNA device, only to find themselves under attack by the ruthless Prince Zordar and his mighty war machine, the Comet Empire, for the series' next run of twenty-six episodes. The emotion and gravitas of Star Blazers filled my days with thoughts of the world's bigger pictures, and still does.  There are scenes and scores from many of the episodes that conjure tears to this day. I'm listening to one now as I write this.

Star Blazers, adapted from the popular Japanese anime Space Battleship Yamato, remains one of the most powerful influences of my life.  Along with Gerry Anderson's brilliant outer space parable Space:1999 and the original Battlestar Galactica, the three series formed something of a trinity that turned my imagination -- and, soon, my pen -- in the direction of outer space.  I had Star Blazers dreams and wrote original fan fiction as a result, short stories and even novels in the Star Blazers universe, starting with Against the Legions of the Red Sun, a twenty-six chapter novel, my version of a third season, post-Comet Empire.  I eagerly awaited the real third series, which was promised but never delivered to our TV screens.  At my very first con in Boston right before I turned eighteen, I snapped up buttons in the dealer's room and attended a screening of the Arrivaderci Yamato movie in Japanese, up in the Gamilon Headquarters Suite.

I loved Star Blazers.  And I love it still.

(Season One, a beloved permanent addition to my Writing Room)

So imagine my glee when I connected with the brilliant actress Amy Howard Wilson, who provided the voice of Nova, one of the most beloved and heroic icons in all of Science Fiction. Ms. Wilson was kind and gracious enough to share with me her experiences -- and to take me back in time to the studio, on board the very Argo herself.

How did you land the role of "Nova" in Star Blazers?
AHW: In high school, I was bit by the acting bug and went to the American Academy of Arts for two years.  It was a great program.  I learned how to fence, dance, took vocal and voice classes, all that great stuff.  When I graduated, I still didn't have a real good idea of how the business side of everything worked, so I decided rather than to head for auditions off the bat I'd see if I could get work in related aspects of the industry.  I worked as a receptionist for a casting agency, and then as a sales rep for a jingle writer -- he wrote the jingle for 8 O'Clock Coffee.  When Star Blazers came around, I'd taken a clerical job working in the front office of the Weist-Barron School for TV and Commercial Acting.  I was answering phones and taking a voice-over class.  Tom Tweedy, who voiced "Mark Venture", and Eddie Allen, who voiced Gamilon Leader "Desslok", were also taking classes at the school.  A casting director named Kit Carter called the school looking for non-union talent for this new Japanese cartoon.  They didn't even have a working title at the time!  When they asked us if we were interested in auditioning, I shot my hand up. They did two days worth of auditions for the women, and I was the last one to go in. I don't remember much after that apart from a couple of days of anxiously waiting for the phone to ring.  And when it did, I was a very happy girl!  And here we are today.

What was the studio like?
The studio was called Film Sound, and was located between 41st and Lexington in New York City.  It was a tiny, tiny studio.  As I recall, it was only about fifteen by thirty feet.  In the booth, the only things we had room for were a small table and a chair.  The mic was mounted right on the table. There was a huge TV set outside the window so we could watch the time coding, the animation, the cue beats.  It was really, really interesting.  I had never experienced anything like that before.  All that technical stuff was a real learning curve.  We had to watch for the right cue, listen for the beeps in the headphones -- three beeps, and you had to start speaking where the fourth beep would have been.  You had to stay in character.  Our sound engineer, Jim Frederickson -- back then, we didn't have computers and nifty software packages to be able to fix things in post production -- had to rewind the tape every time we screwed up a line.  Jim had a tape of funny sound effects, and after having to rewind the tape thirteen or fourteen times, he'd know we were growing frustrated and would play one of these silly, crazy noises, like a duck quacking or a whistle, to break the tension.  And on the very next take, we'd get it right.  More often than not, each of us would do our section of the script, just our lines, individually.  It was particularly trying, dubbing from English to Japanese, because the two languages didn't always line up -- which made for some funny ad-libbing, depending upon how long the scene ran.  It was the most economical way of doing things.  For a big production house like

(The lovely Amy Howard Wilson, Center, with Kenneth Meseroll, " Derek
Wildstar", L and Eddie Allen,  "Desslok" R)

Disney or Warner Brothers, they can afford to have their entire cast sitting there, animating to the audio track. This was the reverse. There were quite a few rewrites that had to be done on the spot.  You could be speaking, emoting, and the little mouth on the big TV monitor would stop moving while you still had lines to record.  Or you'd finish your lines and the little mouth would still be moving.  Writers would then adjust the dialogue. To have the entire cast sitting around waiting for one of us to have our lines adjusted, they would have gone broke.  It was a very small production.

With far-reaching magic!
We were on the heels of all the big name shows that had been done before, like Speed Racer and Astro Boy.  But this was new, different.  It was a series where rather than being self-contained and episodic, where you could watch the show out of sequence, in the case of Star Blazers you had to watch every episode, which led to the one following it and referred to the one before it.  It was breaking new ground as far as Japanese imported animation.  We didn't know if anybody would be watching.

To Be Continued...

TALES FROM THE ROBOT GRAVEYARD

(The Robinson Robot in miniature)

The images were indelibly imprinted upon my brain at an early age. There was Underdog, fighting a hoard of giant robots with raccoon eyes in "March of the Monsters." And both Astro Boy and Gigantor, in glorious black and white. Robot John slogged across a lake of molten lava to save his human companions in Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, a bizarre Frankenstein of a movie cobbled together from spare parts -- about space sirens dressed in scallop shell bikinis that crunch down on raw alien eels come feeding time, the second most memorable element of the film. The first was Robot John's sacrifice, which left me a blubbering mess sitting cross-legged before our big, ugly box of a TV set connected to rabbit ears.  Ditto to Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, a frequent visitor via Saturday afternoon Creature Double-Features.  The final scene in which the giant Egyptian-looking servo-mechanism flies off to save the Earth became the equivalent of a tearjerker for untold scores of boys my age. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wanted a best friend like Giant Robo. And I'll admit it -- I still get a little bleary- eyed, even at forty-eight, when he and the devious Guillotine collide with that smoking meteor.

I never trusted or even liked Robby the Robot, who I first encountered on the brilliant "War of the Robots" episode of Lost in Space, when he battled -- and lost to -- the Robinson's beloved cybernetic pal, Robot B9.  In 1995, when my writing was first starting to reach a national (and international) readership, I got to stand beside and shake pincers with the original Robinson Robot, an iconic friend from childhood, at a science fiction convention in Boston.  Five years later, while writing a big retrospective on LIS for Cinescape Magazine, I interviewed the great, late Dick Tufeld, voice of B9.  He was kind enough to go into character with his classic, "Danger, Will Robinson!" shtick, and mention me by name.  I have the entire interview on tape.  In fact, that particular soundbite got played last summer during the documentary segment on my writing career and broadcast on TV's New Hampshire Chronicle.  Talk about time travel!

In my teens, there was 7-Zark-7 from Battle of the Planets, IQ-9 from Star Blazers, Doctor Who's faithful companion K-9, and a host of giant robot heroes in Force Five, which brought different adventures from Japan to the shores of New England Monday through Friday.  First up, there was Danguard Ace; Tuesdays, the fantastic Starvengers. Wednesdays was the throw-away Spaceketeers.  On Thursdays, Grandizer battled alien horrors.  Fridays was Gaiking, my favorite, about a powerful robot who launched from a flying fortress-carrier in the shape of a space dragon and defended Earth from invaders from the Zela Star Empire. I got so into the Force Five mythos that I began to have dreams about the giant robots and their sinister foes.  Those dreams made their way through fountain pen and onto paper, and the resulting fan fic stories remain, to this day, archived among my files of first-draft manuscripts.  There's still one from that time in my life remaining to be written.  And write it, I will.

(The 'cover', left, to one of my Gaiking fan fics; a sketch
of a Cylon from 1981; the longhand draft of my newest
robot novella)

And oh, how I hated the Cylons, those robotic baddies in the original Battlestar Galactica that made it their mission to hunt down humanity from one end of the universe to the next.  So much so, in the summer of 1982, between story projects, I opened a blank notebook and began to pen '1001 Ways to Insult a Cylon'. Looking back, I was bored, I think. But to my credit, I made it to Number Fifty.  In my twenties, I was mad about Optimus Prime and The Transformers.

Robots have been a significant part of my life from the beginning.  And they're about to become even more so in the weeks and months ahead. Last Saturday, two friends of mine who own the small press Great Old Ones Publishing paid a visit to our new home North of the Notches.  They took us out to a fantastic lunch at the local Chinese eatery downtown, and then, over coffee and cupcakes. asked me to pitch them on a novel idea as part of their upcoming front list.  I did, and the idea was contracted for.  My Tales From the Robot Graveyard (due out in Third Quarter 2014) is, in actuality, three novellas that will total novel size.  I intend to dedicate it to Mr. Tufeld, and to all those robots I loved from childhood.  And here's a nifty bit of news regarding the book's cover: it is being drawn by the talented Eric Chu, who did all the robotic and spaceship conceptual art on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.  Yes, the man who re-designed the Cylons will create the cover of my book about giant robots.  More details to follow!

The Number 1,000

(Upper Left, in honor of my 500th; Upper Right, for Number 100)

Though I have never been great at math, for me certain numbers are charged with as much power as the most magical of words.  311, for instance -- the number of men and women stationed on Moonbase Alpha in the late, great Gerry Anderson's outer space parable, Space:1999. From the moment I first picked up my pen, 311 or combinations thereof have acted as signals or portents around me. This past summer, the number in perfect sequence began appearing on license plates throughout my fair state of New Hampshire, at a time when I was gearing up for another number that has held awesome power over my life for a long time: the Number 1,000.

Many years ago, while watching a biography of the luminous Rod Serling, who wrote over 1,000 stories, short and long, and numerous scripts for both television and the big screen, that number lodged in my grey matter.  I had written some 200 short stories, novellas, and even a handful of novels by that time.  The impetus to reach 1,000 imprinted on my psyche, my soul, and for twenty-two years it became not only a goal, but a concluding point as well.  I believed that the millennium mark would punctuate the end of my journey, which I have so loved with all my heart.  It has been my reason for living.

On May 28, 1982, a humid and overcast Friday, I labored throughout that day's high school classes to complete my 100th work of fiction, a rousing Space:1999 novella called "Arrival to Palmeron."  Two stories earlier, I'd introduced a race of bellicose androids into my fan fiction continuation of the series. The Palmerons were based upon the many bullies and brutes who made my three and a half high school years miserable -- because they were artificial life forms, I could destroy them and bring them back, again and again (thanks to the Palmeron 'Personality Imprinter' construct), my own secret imaginary war against real world enemies.  I got in trouble for writing in Mr. Mills' chemistry class that afternoon.  I wrote on the bus.  I raced home and wrote, because my mother, bless her, was throwing a "Happy 100" party for me, complete with a guest list of my small but wonderful circle of friends. Diane Elaine Gauthier didn't have a lot of resources to draw upon, but she crafted an award certificate on a pilfered sheet of my typing paper, made the best cake in the history of cakes in celebration -- golden, with milk chocolate frosting, shredded coconut, and a cherry on top, the same cake I once mentioned was my favorite from boyhood birthdays growing up in the big woods of Windham, New Hampshire. And since this was a costume party, she had stitched together a mock-up of the uniform worn by Lorne Greene as Commander Adama on the original Battlestar Galactica, my second-favorite TV show.  To address the discrepancy of Adama's silver hair, she shook baby powder into my luxurious Lebanese Afro. Throughout that muggy May night, sweat poured, and liquefied baby powder ran out of my locks and down my costume.

(My Sweet 1,000 cake, in tribute to Number 100)

At the party, held in the basement of a house I haven't visited in a million light-years, I sat on the floor, careful not to drip onto the pages, and finished "Arrival to Palmeron" while records played on the record player, and my friends danced and ate and talked.  There was no alcohol involved, nothing illicit took place.  It was all very civilized when you consider it.  And incredibly fun. One for the history books, truly. It's part of my history that I am supremely proud of.

In February of 2000, during a horrible time in my life following my mother's death from the Big C, I reached what I assumed was the halfway point with another 1999 tale, a 300-page novel that again found the Alphans facing off against a new race of Palmerons on a vaster scale than ever before. Planetkill 6: Hands Across Space was the sixth installment of a monstrous eight-story series that tallied to nearly 1,500 pages by its conclusion.  All of my noteworthy numbers -- 1, 50, 100 -- had been 1999 fan fic stories, and so, too was 500.  My writer's group at the time commemorated the occasion with cake and an award plaque, which still hangs on the wall of my Writing Room, thirteen years hence.

In 2007, on the first of three weekend writer's retreats spent in the White Mountains with my group before resigning after sixteen years over the deplorable behavior of some new members, I penned my 700th, a 1999 novella called "Moon City".  Camped on a cozy sofa beneath my headphones with the show's emotionally-charged Year 2 soundtrack playing, tears flowed along with a continuous succession of fresh longhand pages.  The tears were misinterpreted for sadness by some of my fellow attendees, forcing me to put down my fountain pen long enough to clarify: I wasn't crying because I was sad -- I was supremely happy.  Writing is powerful stuff.

In 2010, during one of the most difficult years of my life, something as uplifting in contrast occurred: I penned 100 works of fiction -- six novellas, three novels, a short script, the rest a mix of flash and short stories.  Through a devastating medical diagnosis, loss of work, and a house foreclosure, I wrote nonstop. I sold numerous stories and all of the novels penned during that time.  Writing ultimately saved our small family, each of those contracts, the big and the tiny alike, coming in when needed most.  And in July of that year, I penned Number 800, my 1999 novella, "The World at the End of All".

After two productive years in a new rented home, the Number 1,000 loomed.  I have a lot of ideas. They're my babies.  I write a lot, and try to finish everything I start, those worthy of publication, and those I pen only for my own enjoyment.  In other words, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  At one point, I released the notion that the Number 1,000 was an ending point.  I didn't, however, let go of the desire to make my 1,000th a 1999 tale, as all the other Big Numbers were, despite having mostly written out the universe over the course of thirty-seven years.  Seated in my Writing Room with episodes of Space:1999 playing on my laptop, I asked myself if there was one story I had yet to write, one I wanted to in honor of that powerful equation.  And I soon had an answer.

(With my lovely lifelong pal, CathyAnn St. Jean-Lemieux January 27, 2013
at my Sweet 1,000 Party)

Toward the end of 1999's run, actress Alibe Parsons appeared in three episodes as the moon bases's communication's officer, "Alibe Kurand." Parsons, also featured in the early scene of Aliens where Sigourney Weaver's "Ripley" suffers the nightmare of an alien ripping through her stomach, delivered an impressive and layered performance in her sparse time on screen.  I would write Alibe's back-story, starting in her grandmother's home north of Boston, when she first dons her Moonbase Alpha regulation uniform, and is told she will do great things during what is believed will be a short tour of duty.  I wrote through the emotional devastation after Earth's moon breaks out of orbit, followed through by penning narrative to all of the character's individual scenes in her three episode appearances, and then placed Alibe, seemingly alone, in a no-win scenario against the Palmerons. The story swelled to novella length.  I shared the Palmeron pages of "Alibe's Story", some 3,000 words in all, to a packed house during my Sweet 1,000 party's reading portion, and life came full-circle. Decades in the making, one of the biggest blessings of January 27, 2013 was the surprise attendance of my wonderful friend CathyAnn, who was there way-back-when on that muggy May night in 1982 for my 100th.

And so, the Number 1,000 was made manifest, not with trumpets or special effects, but chocolate coconut cake and special friends, real and imaginary.  Members of my talented present writer's group arrived en masse. We ate from a magnificent buffet spread, we sipped sodas and iced coffees, laughed and read and celebrated this magical gift we all love so dearly.  And the next morning, I picked up my pen and started work on Number 1001.  Number 2000, here I come!