Pests in the Garden aka Bigfoot sighting

  And I thought I had seen most of the local pests before. I am definitely going to have to get a larger Hav-a-Hart trap if this one keeps invading. Imagine my surprise, going out to check for eggs, and finding this guy hiding out in the shed. I'm six-three, and he was looking down on me.
  Even though he gave me the heebeejeebees, he turned out to be not such a bad guy. Did have a chat with him about staying out of the grow boxes though, he left two bigfoot tracks as he strode across one of my square foot garden boxes.
  Once he left I thought, hey why not make the most out of a bigfoot compressing my garden box, so I made up some Plaster of Paris and scooped it into his tracks. I should have  photo of the cast in a day or two.

New Tribe Appears. It's right out of the pages of REVELATION!

Wow! I saw this story on abc news. It so reminded me of a similar account in my book Revelation, I wanted to share it. The story is like watching part of my book coming to life. (I'm sure that's what abc had in mind)

Tribe Emerges From Brazilian Jungle Possibly for First Time

abc News, Jul 31, 2014, 2:53 PM ET  By MEGHAN KENEALLY

A remarkable video shows a group of indigenous people seen for the first time by the outside world as they emerged from a Brazilian jungle while fleeing illegal loggers and drug traffickers, according a Brazilian group that tracks such jungle tribes.

The group of men are believed to be natives of Peru but they were filmed in northern Brazil on the banks of the Envira River which runs near the Peruvian border. The encounter took place within the last two weeks, but the video was released today by the Brazilian indigenous authority FUNAI.

The tribal men are naked except for belts and loincloths and carry different weapons, including bows and arrows and spears in the 8-minute video.

A few of the tribal men are seen with markings on their faces and they all have styled their dark black hair in a similar bowl-cut fashion.

I'm excited - Revelation published

It's been a long time coming, but I finally published my Young Adult novel, REVELATION. It's available on Amazon. Way excited about it.
Now it's time to get serious about the second book in the Almost Human series, RETALIATION.
In the meantime, I am building two Square Foot Gardening boxes in an area of my garden that nothing seems to be able to survive in. Since these boxes don't use the existing soil, I hope the plants will survive.
I spend an hour or two working in the yard/garden in the morning, then head to my corner in the secret underground writer's lair to write, or think about writing, or researching, or trying out new ideas, or listening to my characters tell me about their day.

Faerie, Almost Human, and Gardening?

Wow, I'm not usually a faerie kind of reader, but I enjoyed Ballad immensely. Maggie Stiefvater imbued her mythical creatures with so much depth. One of the reasons I don't often enjoy woodland characters is they seem to have no real personality, but in Ballad, the creatures are so lifelike and rich with traits I could suspend disbelief and enjoy them. The author did a seamless job of weaving make-believe and the real world into a story that blurred the boundaries between the two and blended them into a single story of... naw, that would be too revealing. Suffice it to say, this book has a wide range of emotional appeal, intimate but not offensive, violent but not gross, and tender in a "I'll rip off your face if you tell anyone about my soft side" kind of way.

On a personal writing note, it has been a great week. Almost half-way through what I hope will be a final (?) edit and rewrite of my first YA novel, Almost Human, Revelation.

My garden is flourishing now that I have dissuaded the varmints who had been ravaging it to stay away. I have already harvested spinach, strawberries, and turnip greens. I had to transplant one of my artichoke plants. Apparently I had the audacity to plant it on top of a gopher/mole superhighway and they managed to construct enough holes under it that the roots were hanging in mid air. I went out on Sunday and the plant was wilted. The one next to it looks great. So I moved the wilted one a few feet to the west. On a side street that hopefully the burrowers won't develop anytime soon.

We are awaiting the arrival of baby hawks from the couple who have made a nest in our 25 year old cottonwood. We're hoping this year the babies stay in the nest until they at least have feathers.

Signs of the Thymes?

Sometimes I come across a sign that doesn't look quite right the way it is written, like the sign at the gas station that read,

No Checks Excepted

That one made wonder exactly what the station was trying to tell me. Could have been they accept any check, good, bad, written on the back of a bottle label. A few weeks later their intent became more clear,

No Checks Excepted

Balance had been restored. But there are other signs that make me wonder what the originator was thinking, like the small cardboard sign at the side of the road,

Huge Women Sale

That one perplexed me. Not enough to visit, but it had me wondering what they were selling. Then there was the group of Boy Scouts in a vacant lot filled with cut evergreen trees I believe it was about December 23. One young man stood at the edge of the road with a sign,

Boy Scouts - FREE

Already having my own children, I wasn't interested... but there is that whole trustworthy, brave, and loyal thing, maybe I should have inquired.

 

What started my reminiscing about signs? Today I followed a dump truck along the road. On the back of the truck painted in large, easy to read lettering it said,

STAR NURSERY

Good advertising. Readable from about 200 feet away, in a contrasting color to the truck body, all in all, an effective sign. 

On the left side of that well lettered sign was a small square vinyl sign that had been applied post-painting onto the dump gate with lettering about one-fourth the size of the business name. I followed with traffic at a safe distance for our speed, about fifty feet, and at that range, I could read the top line,

WARNING

Hmm, there must be some danger, perhaps a warning not to stand behind the truck while it is dumping material, that would make sense. Or warning that if you can't see the driver in his mirror, he can't see you. The truck stopped at a red light (way to go!) and I drove up behind it. As I got about thirty feet from the truck, the lettering under the WARNING became readable. In print designed to be read at about that distance it warned,

stay back 200 feet, NOT responsible 

for broken windshields

Now it could just be me, but if I am supposed to stay back 200 feet , it would be convenient if I could read the warning from farther away than thirty feet. I'm just sayin'.

One of the joys of being a writer is that I often watch for faux pas in signs, memos, letters, and other written media. I know, it's not right to have fun at another's expense, but since the author is anonymous, and I receive a little chuckle, I see no harm. And hey, it's good for a laugh - except maybe the dump truck - that one might be good for a damage suit - or at least a plaid suit.

Nightingale is a complex young adult fiction fantasy set in St George, Utah. Farlatd created not only complex and believable characters, but an entire parallel race without disrupting the familiar flow of life as most people perceive it. I especially enjoyed the progression of his main character and the internal conflict that begins to seethe in this book and left me expectantly waiting to see how he is going to deal with it as time and the future progresses. Tough choices for a teen drawn from nothing into - oops, almost gave away too much there.

Farland's style makes the story flow delightfully through a tale that in less capable hands might have been difficult to accept, but the author carries the reader along without a hint of letting disbelief drop from it's suspension over a world so familiar yet so unseen.

I found myself taking a closer look at those innocent looking cars full of kids, but I don't remember seeing anything out of the ordinary... but then, I probably wouldn't.

Vampires in Zion?

Not that Zion, the national park. Having finished C. David Belt's book The Unwilling, I thought, hey, if there are vampires running around Utah in the north, they might be Hunting down in southern Utah as well.

But, even thought I kept a keen eye on the passersby, none seemed to be of vampiric ilk. There were incredible trails, stunning scenery and some serious physical exertion involved in my research into Zion's possible blood sucking population. Not even a mosquito. Just as well.

I did enjoy The Unwilling. Belt's vampires were more realistic than many recent renditions of the type. I found his characters heroic, horrible, flawed, murderous, compassionate (a vampire?) and endowed with personality. I was pleasantly shocked that Belt had...(nope, not gonna say that, it would give away too much of the story)

I found his treatment of a vampire in Utah in conjunction with the predominant religion in the state complex and intriguing, though at times references to certain church-specific ideas tended to set The Unwilling as LDS fiction. He handled the conflict between being a good vampire and a good Mormon with dexterity and aplomb, especially when he...(again, don't want to spoil the story for future readers, but I think you will find it intriguing).

I don't know if Belt is a former military pilot, but if not, he did some extensive research into military flying and it thunders through his writing. The Unwilling was a sad, exciting, romantic, energetic, intrigue-filled fun flight of fantasy into the experience of an unwilling vampire's adventures. The only one in six-thousand years.

 

Almost forgot, although I didn't detect any vampires in Zion, there are plenty of places for them to hide during the day, and the squirrels might just be taste testers for them. No, I didn't find out firsthand, but if you go to the park, don't let your children touch the furry little rodents.