Spotlight on a new work by K.C. Sprayberry

Welcome to book two of this series that is much like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

If you had the chance to read Paradox Lost: Their Path, you came to know DJ, Matt, and Elisa, and discover the path destiny has laid out for them. In Paradox Lost: The Ultimate Paradox, these triplets each have to make their way through a series of obstacles and prepare for a showdown with Rogues.

This new story brings out new information about the Sullivans and the destiny none of them was aware would be theirs to claim, along with several big surprises.

Paradox Lost: The Ultimate Paradox releases January 15, 2016!

Pre-order now! 

Paradox Lost The Ultimate Paradox

Blurb

The past changed the future …

                                    

                                        . . . the future must salvage the past.

Falsely accused of murdering his father, DJ faces a terrible penalty. That’s the least of his worries—Uncle Toby and his army of Rogues are bent on tearing history apart, and DJ and his allies have to stop them any way they can. But only a True Neutral can save their world, and The First, his family’s ancestor, is long dead. His brother Matt was killed by Toby’s actions, and his sister Elisa is fighting her own demons.

The past created by their uncle needs to be uncreated into what it was meant to be. And these three teenagers, triplets and direct descendants of The First, must learn to ally with each other to correct the errors made real in the past.

And the Gateways reveal themselves as something no one ever suspected….

About the Author:

Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.

She’s a multi-genre author who comes up with ideas from the strangest sources. Some of her short stories have appeared in anthologies, others in magazines.

Labels: Solstice Shadows, Solstice Publishing, K.C. Sprayberry, Paradox Lost, The Ultimate Paradox, historical, fantasy, time travel, 

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The (mostly) true story about the most bizarre lyrics ever written for a TV show

I propose that of all the weird and totally contrived television shows produced on the "other side" of the 1960s (that's before 1964 when the Beatles crashed through the front door of our culture) the most bazaar was The Patty Duke Show. When you really think about it, the premise is even less believable than Gilligan's Island, Mr. Ed, or even The Mickey Mouse Club. I mean, really, Mickey. "Because you like me?" You don't even know me. But let's not get distracted from TPDS (The Patty Duke Show). First of all, let's take the premise.

Sure, a talking horse or a four-hour tour that turns into a multi-year stay with complete laundry service and a transistor radio that never runs out of batteries are both stretching our suspension of disbelief to the limit. But identical cousins? How does that even work in a fantasy show?

The premise given by one of the producers years ago was that both Patty's fathers and possibly mothers were identical twins. That's a lame and greatly disturbing premise, but we need to go back to an actual (but imagined by me) production meeting at ABC's executive's boardroom. They were trying to figure out what to do with a hot property they had just acquired, Patty Duke. She was hot because she had just won an actual Academy Award for her fifth movie, "The Miracle Worker," and ABC needed to come up with a series that would fully capitalize on her acting ability, or at least mask it if it turned out that the full range of her actual acting ability was to flop around like a fish while screaming unintelligibly.

So, a couple of executives were sent into a small room with a pile of doughnuts and a pot of hot coffee and were told not to emerge until they had an idea. A good idea. A commercial idea, and no, it didn't have to make any sense at all.

Well, the guys struggled for a few hours, but couldn't come up with anything when the door opened and one of the "higherups" poked his head in and said something like, "Hey. Maybe you guys can do something with that "Parent Trap" movie idea. You know the one starring that British girl, um, what's her name? Something to do with a comet. You know, twin sisters separated so young they didn't even know each other, but then they go to this summer camp and..."

The guys cut him off with a "Sure, we'll work on it. Could you order another pot of coffee, and some more doughnuts...the pink frosted kind?" So the higherup closed the door and the two guys just looked at each other. The first one said, "I should have become an auto mechanic," and the second one said, "I could have gone to mortuary school like my cousin."

"Cousins! That's it," said the first guy. "TOTALLY IDENTICAL cousins."

Then the second guy said, "What in Hell are you talking about? There's no such thing as even identical cousins let alone TOTALLY identical cousins."

"Oh, there is now, baby. there is now," said the first guy. They used to use words like "baby" to show how hip and cool they were.

So the higherups let the two guys out of the room just in time for lunch at Sardi's, or some equally cool and expensive place where you'd go to be "seen" eating a fashionably light lunch.

Well, the higherups LOVED the concept, but the two guys weren't off the hook yet. One of the higherups looked at the two guys and said, "You know we're going to have to have a theme song that explains the whole thing."

"Great," the two guys thought. More work. But, the guys were up to it, and finished it just it time to have a stiff cocktail and catch the 5:45 train back to New Rochelle. It became, my friends, one of the most memorable yet crazyest theme songs ever written. It explains everything, and yet it contains the most bazaar line ever to reach the small screen.

Just sit back, close your eyes and remember it. It goes through a whole litany explaining how the cousins, both played by Patty, were identical, yet totally different. It's absolutely brilliant until, that is, until it gets to the following line:

"Our Patty loves to rock and roll, 
A hot dog makes her lose control"

A hot dog makes her lose control of WHAT, exactly? Sadly, none of the 104 episodes filmed during the show's three-year run featured Patty losing control because of a hot dog. Wouldn't that have been the best episode of all? Say, Patty's on the streets of Manhattan. She goes up to a hot dog vendor, one of those guys with the little cart full of steaming hot dogs, and orders a dog with mustard, onions, and maybe pickles. The vendor hands her the dog, and she totally loses control of EVERYTHING. She starts flopping around on the sidewalk. Someone calls for an ambulance, using the payphone on the corner (no cell phones back then).

The poor girl is convulsing, waving her arms around, banging her poor head on the cold, hard, unforgiving New York sidewalk. We can hear the sounds of an ambulance approaching when her identical, European cousin, Cathy, runs up yelling "Patty, Patty." Cathy tenderly cradles Patty's head as Patty's convulsions begin to cease, and poor Patty is, alas, gone. Everyone begins crying, some of them blaming the hot dog vendor, yelling things like, "You KNEW a hot dog would make her lose control. EVERYBODY knew that."

Then the crowd turns on the hot dog vendor chasing him up town and away from the sorry scene. The camera pans down to Cathy and the dead Patty. The scene goes slowly out of focus, and we abruptly cut to a cigarette commercial.

Now, I ask you, wouldn't that have been the best Patty Duke show ever filmed? I think so.

Complete collection of one of Disney's greatest artists being published

Little known, but read every day, Al Taliaferro's daily Donald Duck newspaper strips were published daily in hundreds of newspapers all over the world. Al drew a brilliantly crafted strip every day from 1938 until his death in 1969. That's a full 30 plus years of strips, day in and day out, and yet I'll bet most of you have never heard of him. That's because like all Disney print artists, he had to sign Walt Disney's name on each strip even though Walt had little influence on the design and characters of the strips.

Each of these little strips is like a beautiful jewel with unerring perspective, brilliantly crafted characters, and each one was a self-standing gag. The continuing adventures typical to that era were left to Mickey Mouse. Al had to come up with a funny gag every day.

Those facts and much, much more are why I love Al, and I suggest all of you look him up on that Interweave thing. Today's blog is about something Al and I shared. You see, Al spent most of his youth in a tiny Colorado town called Montrose. Guess what? That's the exact town I grew up in. We both left the little berg when we were about 13, so I can reflect on some of the aspects of that typical American small town that probably shaped Al's attitudes.

I think I can call him Al, too, since we practically grew up together -- well almost anyway. Al lived there from 1905 until 1938. I lived there from about 1953 until 1959. These were different eras, true, but little Montrose didn't really change that much during the first half of the 20th century. Let's take a look at the little berg circa 1905.

Yep, that's the old Main street I remember, minus the horses. It would have been very familiar to Al. Below is the way the little town looked from the air. Corse' it was a few years after Al was born that they had airplanes. My guess is this was taken right around when Al graduated from the 7th grade.

Oh, yea, before I forget, here's a shot of Al as an adult. Handsome, wasn't he? Must have been a real lady killer.

This is where Al and I could be found every Saturday afternoon (not at the same time, of course). It's still there, but sadly reconfigured as a three-plex. One thing for sure back then, it was the coolest place in town during the summer.

I don't know what neighborhood Al lived it, but this is a very rare aerial of my neighborhood. My house is on the left, just behind the church. Notice the DC3. It flew over every day at noon. Good, ole' Emerson Grammar School can barely be seen in the top left -- just part of the playground shows, but that was the best part anyway, wasn't it?

There wasn't much to do in Montrose except have parades for the high school homecoming. The few Indians who still lived there would come out. It must have been somewhat daunting for them to be totally surrounded by us palefaces. Everyone was always friendly, though. I loved seeing the Indians. I'll bet Al did, too.

Well, that's about it from me and Al. Check out his book on Amazon. It's the coolest thing out this fall.

Your friend,

W.H. Matlack

Little jewels that have fallen into the dark past

There are some things I have purchased in the past that are just too cool for me to give or throw away - even though today's technology has rendered them useless (sigh). I came across one of them the other day when doing an inventory of cool-things-that-are-now-worthless in my top drawer. It seems that my top drawer is full of little items like that, and I hadn't gotten too deeply into it when I came across one of the last of the Sony Walkman(s). (Walkmen?)

This little jewel probably dates back to the mid nineties or so. I couldn't find any real information on it, but I suspect it was one of the last models to be introduced before digital music completely rendered it useless. The engineers at Sony must have been given the mandate to produce a Walkman cassette player that would be barely bigger than the tape cassette itself. After what must have cost those engineers a lot of late nights in the Sony development lab, they completely succeeded. The "Radio Cassette Player WM-F701C" that I pulled out of the depths of my top drawer is almost a miracle of miniaturization. I'd actually call it a miracle except that the MP3 players that came along a few years later were truly miraculous. They could pack every album I ever owned into something the size of half a graham cracker. That's what killed off the WM-F701C. It could only play those small audio cassettes one at a time. You still had to carry a pocket full of them with you on a trip.

In spite of that, the WM-F701C was and is a miniature wonder. Just take a look at the photograph below. Look at how beautifully they crammed all those rollers, guides and springs into that exceedingly small space. It's all the more remarkable when you consider that the vast majority of space inside the WM-F701C had to be reserved for the tape reels of the cassette. To my eyes, it's a piece of engineering beauty, and mine is in perfect shape. Just one very small dent on the back where I must have dropped it one day on my way to work.

As soon as I found it, I rushed out to my sun room where I keep my extensive collection of vinyl records to see if I could dig up a cassette. I found a good one, plugged in a fresh battery, and snapped in my cassette. The result -- nothing. For as beautiful a piece of engineering the WM-F701C is, it has one major weakness: all the moving parts are powered by a little belt, and the little belt had spent all those years in my top drawer slowly deteriorating.

I thought about trying to take it apart and searching for a belt on the Internet, but really. All my cassettes are available as digital files, and with my new smart phone containing nearly every song I would ever want to listen to, I don't even carry around a dedicated MP3 player any longer. So, the little WM-F701C has been relegated to a pile of other past electronic miracles that don't actually work either. There's a small (for its day) Kodak Instamatic camera, one of the very first transistor radios that is in unused condition and even contains a nice little schematic. But, I do take them down and look at them once in a while.

Casting the leather jacket in movies, working man or trouble?

There are two main leather jackets worn by actors in Hollywood movies - the military-issued, aviator style A2, and the motorcycle style Schott One-star. Like every piece of costuming, the leather jacket is chosen to help establish the actor's character. Each jacket and its variants has a parallel history. Let's look at the A2 first.

Manufactured for pilots during WWII, this jacket came to symbolize the adventurous, daredevil attitudes of the combat aviator. After the war, great quantities of this jacket were available as war surplus items for less than ten dollars each, so  millions were sold. It seemed to be the perfect leather jacket for the working man. It was rugged, comfortable, and in Hollywood movies it became a symbol for the blue-collar man of action.

The Schott has a history that's even considerably longer than the A2, but instead of being associated with the wild blue yonder, it became a necessary motorcycle accessory. It's been around as long as motorcycles, and like motorcycles in Hollywood films it can either represent the good or the bad.

The A2 seems to get cast whenever a director feels the need to express a little intensity for a particular character. He calls up to the costume department and asks for a "leather jacket" to be sent down. This request always seems to be interpreted as an A2. If he wants much more intensity, or even a downright "outlaw" vibe, he'll ask for a "motorcycle jacket." He still might get an A2, but if he understands the formula, he'll send it right back and demand an actual motorcycle jacket.

Here's the formula:

An A2 is a leather jacket, It equals solid working man or at the very least, man of action. Once in a while a female will wear one, but the jackets are usually too big make the woman look cute. A good example of the man of action is Bob Cummings in Hitchcock's immortal "Saboteur."

The Schott motorcycle jacket means either "outlaw" or "cop." It has a sinister vibe. Put one on a woman, and you add an element of sinister sexuality. Like it's hot and she can hardly wait for somebody to take it off her. It's a great prop, but there should be at least one motorcycle in the scene. Motorcycle jackets in a movie without motorcycles is just wrong. In so many ways.

Marlon Brando literally made the Schott a motorcycle icon with the movie, "The Wild One." In that famous scene of Brando sitting on his bike, holding his purloined trophy, the Schott seems to melt into the bike making the bike, Brando and the Schott one-star seem as one.

Here's where things can go wrong, or right depending on the director, and probably the actor. Schott motorcycle jackets are almost always used the right way in movies, but the A2 often fills the role of the anonymous "leather jacket."

Take the Fonz from the simpering "Happy Days" TV show. He's supposed to be tough. He rides a motorcycle. He actually did jump the shark. He wears a leather jacket. But it's an A2. Not a motorcycle jacket. He looks anything but tough. Put him in a Schott, and he might have actually been taken for tough in spite of the fact that he never got into a pool cue fight.

So, the Fonz was a bad choice. What was a good choice? I think the Ramons were an excellent choice - all wearing Schotts, all with the same last name, all tough and troubled just the way motorcycle jacket wearing people should be.

 Brando! Ride, baby, ride.

 Don't worry, folks. He's got his A2 on. The Nazis. That's who should worry.

 What was he always saying? Aaaaaaaaey. Never cool. Thumbs up, baby, but where is your super-cool motorcycle jacket? You think you look like a tough guy? You don't. You look like the carny who set up the Tilt-A-Wheel and is now heading for some "shave ice."

The Ramones. Super cool, troubled, disenfranchised. I'm sure there are four motorcycles somewhere nearby. I say four because they would rather walk than ride tandem.

Uncle Albert and his crazy ideas

I wish Albert was still alive. I just know we would have been best friends. We'd be hanging out, eating nachos, drinking a little Diet Coke (to keep our wits about us), and discussing some of uncle Al's (I'm sure I would be allowed to call him that) formulas.

The thing about uncle Al and his formulas is that they were a lot simpler than some of those other guys' formulas. You go back about a hundred years, and you see blackboards all over the US and Europe covered in completely indecipherable formulas. Scientists would look at them, stroke their beards (since most of the scientists back then didn't shave -- too many formulas to write) and vigorously shake their heads while mumbling something in German, Hungarian, or even Russian. Sometimes shouting would erupt and many times chalk and erasers would fly through the air pelting any nearby observers with little chalk dust clouds.

There were a lot of arguments back then. Mostly about the speed of light. Some of those formulas indicated that the speed of light was a constant. It never changed. Here's one that illustrates it: 
Even if you don't understand the difference between permittivity and permeability, I think you would agree that the formula clearly shows the speed of light as a constant in our universe. I can't speak for other universes because I haven't yet figured out a way to visit them, although some ardent followers of the now defunct Grateful Dead band assure me with vigorous head shakes that they have indeed visited more than one other universe. However, when visiting those other universes, they didn't take time to perform even the basic experiments to determine if the speed of light is a constant. Or not.

So, along comes my BFF, Al. He says to all the other scientists that, yes, the speed of light is constant, and that we can begin using it in all our formulas. It seems that scientists love nothing better than shoving these constants into formulas. Because they never change. They're constant. And there are a lot of them, too.

Outside of the speed of light, pi is one of the favorites. It's a weird one, though, because you can never get it to stop giving you digits. Most people just resolve it out to 3.14159265359 and just give up. That means that no formula using pi will ever be completely 

accurate. Well, who cares. That's close enough, right? 

Al would just shrug his shoulders and say, "Ja, ja. Es ist glose enoughs." Then he'd light his pipe, 

blow out a cloud of smoke and stare at his chalk board. While stroking his hairless chin. Al didn't go in

for beards.

Al liked to simplify complex formulas. Take the one he is showing me in the photo above. "R = 0."

He looks pretty excited about, too. I didn't know that R equals 0. Did you? Did anybody? No. 

Nobody did until uncle Al drew it up there on his chalk board.

So right about that time I would ask Al about c, the constant speed of light. Al would shake 

his head, erase the R = 0 and scribble out e=mc2. He would turn to me and say, "zo, zat ees der 

speed limits vor ze whole universes. You can't go any vaster zan dat." Zee, der vormulas clearly

 shows dat time vould slowing down, und your mass would grow to take up ze whole universes."

That Al. He had some trippy ideas. Sometimes I wonder what he was smoking.