Boughkin Grand Meister A. Service - historic post

For the first time in history a Boughkin has posted to the internet!

I recieved this yesterday and immediately floowed up in his request for me to post this to a page online. The Grabnd Meister then gave me the rest today. So here it is in it's entirety:

Everything you wanted to know about the fairy folk known as the Boughkin.

Absentee excuses

Whew! Sorry guys I've been so busy the last couple of months  I just haven’t sit still long enough to get a blog out. I did post one of my poems which was fun. I'll put up some more now and again but the real news is the new holiday book: The Christmas Wish Tree. It was released a few weeks ago! The audio book includes expanded production including sound effects and features voiceover work from my partner Pauline. It’s only online for a limited time so make sure to check it out soon!

While my publisher and I were getting The ChristmasWish Tree ready for publication we were also still in the middle of season two of Augmentia and preparing for season three. Just this morning Pauline came up with a great idea for another Christmas book so I’ll start working on that for next season. In the pipe is a seven book early teen series about a boy who find a warrior angel who has lost his memory and is trapped on Earth. The working title is Paladin and the planning is extensive! In addition to that, one of my first series The God String is still simmering in the wings! Of course The Shielding of Mortimer Townes is still online and enjoying an expanding readership. Please spread the word!

Hope you are all having an amazing Christmas! Talk to you in the new year!

The Western Voice

Mine is a western voice

Calling silently from the depths of the bath

Peering out from a surface that tears itself apart;

Minute tears driving upwards to join with cloud cousins

Who are always watching down, banding together to gather

The courage to tear apart and come down.

And I, in a huff of thought, submerge.

We sing as one, we western voices,

Though each to different moons.

It is to the paper now my whimsy serenades.

I have pinched this afternoon’s immersing

From garden’s seeding chore.

Instead planting perspective that now grows slow-mo visions.

I try to still that eye as I dry and fly

To the blank page. How much can I save

Of the precious prize that inspires and dies?

I, in a bathos brume, ablate.

No big words, sings the western voice

Booming in on board rattling spurs.

I just took a bath o’ and my woman works the brume.

Ablate of her good dinner is fuel for my tune.

And what’s all this of clouds and surfaces tearing and banding together?

Just say that it’s steam from the bath behaving like upside-down weather.

And I, in my western voice, agree.

Published 2014 The Open Mouse

©Montgomery Thompson All Rights Reserved

The Shielding of Mortimer Townes Book Trailer

Hatching the plot

Tapitty tap tap… my fingers try to distract my mind. I’m waiting again. It seems I’m always waiting. In the military one of the first things you learn is “Hurry up and wait.” That’s a tough lesson at seventeen, but it seems that it doesn’t get any easier with age. It’s all about gestation. Mothers, gardeners and writers know what I’m taking about. The seed is planted, the rough draft is done, but now it has to sit awhile.

For writers it’s especially frustrating because this is also the point at which we are most excited about the story. We want everyone to read it so they can experience that clever plot twist seen through the eyes of that well developed character…but we can’t. There’s no ultrasound picture or neatly sown rows to impress the neighbours with. Writers have to keep a lid on it, not a word.

There are important reasons for the secrecy. You see the first thing anyone (who is truly a friend) will say to a writer who tells them of their newborn book is, “Ooh, I want to read it!” Which is where the writer’s ego breaks the glass and mashes the ‘bypass the brain and go straight to the mouth’ button causing them to say, “Sure! I’ll send the rough draft to your email.” Face meet palm.

Once it’s out of the bag it can never be put back in. It’s guaranteed that if you let it sit awhile, when you return to it, you will find a thousand things to change in your story. Not only that, but every one of those changes will improve it. If you let someone read it, you will assuredly wallow in regret. There are even websites that encourage writers to let other writers read their rough manuscripts. Yikes! Feedback hell. So, how long is this ‘writer’s gestation period’? Well, everyone is different but I’d venture to slap a minimum one month time stamp on it, but don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it seems.

There are a couple of proven methods to cheating the waiting blues. One is to start a new project. Another is to keep notes of any new ideas you have for the gestating manuscript. My preferred method is to take a month long holiday around the Mediterranean on a super yacht and forget all about it, but I haven’t managed to pull that one off yet, so I use both methods.

I keep notes on a separate Word doc then open it up when the gestation period is over. In the meantime I break open my ideas folder and dive into another story. Of course that inevitably turns into another rough draft that needs gestation. And so it goes. But after a couple of rough drafts are in the incubator the first one is ready to come out.

Voila! Now where’s that super yacht?

Physic…phycisy…aw nuts!

Science fiction is responsible, in one way or another, for much of our world today. It is because of Asimov that discussions about robotics become more of a discussion about the ethics of robotics. I could go on for days dishing out other examples but the point is made; science fiction is ground zero for ideas that shape our future. It’s also one of the only ways I know to put completely ludicrous cartoon physics in the same scenario with hard science fact and emerge with plausible solutions to difficult plot traps.

A plot trap is where a character winds up in a no-win scenario. For the writer, it’s a scary predicament. Now you may think that something like ‘shooting J.R.’ is the way out of the plot trap, but that’s not even close. Shooting J.R. is purely intentional, as are things like the Red Wedding scene in Game of Thrones. What I’m talking about is like this: Superman just swallowed the kryptonite key that disables the nuke that’s been surgically built into his body and it going off in one…never mind, it went off.

The only way to get ‘Supe’ out of the soup is to employ something I call ‘quantum hogwash’, yeah, really. Check it out: In the instant that Superman is blown to bits his atoms are free of the kryptonite and return to their indestructible state. When a person dies his consciousness lives on (perfectly plausible and measurable by modern medicine mind you) for at least a minute, some say up to five. In that five minutes it is Superman’s will that drives his atoms to do what our human atoms cannot - fly. He flies himself back together and emerges from the explosion just in time to jail the mad doctor and plant one on Lois. But quantum hogwash is not done yet. The job of quantum hogwash isn’t to make the story work out the way the author wants, it’s to land in the brain of someone who needs a mission.

A lot of physicists are science fiction fans. A lot of them will tell you that the reason they are in their field of endeavor is because they knew that, given enough time, they could make a transporter or a lightsaber a reality and that’s great news. We need a transporter and I don’t know too many people who wouldn’t love having a lightsaber (even a small one that makes toast when you slice bread). It’s even better news because there’s no way that I’m even close to being smart enough to be a physicist. I had to use my spellchecker to even spell it right. So that really smart scientist who understands all of that math-y stuff is my go-to guy.

The title ‘science fiction author’ allows me to create new ways to travel through time and space or even remove the consciousness of a human being and put into an appliance without any reprisals from the scientific community. But I’m not like that. No, I convince myself that I’m am a step farther away from the cheese wheel by employing the mathematical formula of quantum hogwash: C=P (conceivable = plausible).

Is it plausible that an advanced civilization could write computer code onto the surface of molecules? Yeah, it’s conceivable. Oh, then that must mean that it’s plausible. I just read a scientist’s statement that said we could (in the future some time) conceivably convert a person’s whole consciousness into computer code. Hmm, so then what if we put that code on a collection of molecules that happen to be a refrigerator? Granted, it’s not as cool as a lightsaber but it is cool to think that someday, some real physic…phycisy… smart guy might read about it in my story and decide to make it a reality.  

File it under: Why I love being a sci-fi author.

Many ways to rock

I used to rock.

I started when I was eight years old and by the time I was fifteen I was busking in the streets of towns around Colorado with an impressive repertoire. Later came bands and tours, songwriting and recording. Venues grew larger and shows got more complex. One band even made to LA to showcase for record companies. We were pretty good (he said with a satisfied nod). As a vocalist I have received glowing reviews from major labels A&R guys, music magazines and newspapers.

In 2005 we opened for Smash Mouth at the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, AZ. I remember getting off the stage after playing this show for thousands of people. I had given it my all. I had ‘left it all on the stage’ as they say, and I felt fantastic. It was a feeling I remember so well that I compare all other accomplishments to it. I considered myself lucky to have experienced such a thing and I doubted it would ever happen again. I was wrong.

Understand that at that time of my life all of my expression went into writing music. I had a writing partner that handled all of the lyrics. He was an award-winning poet with a degree in English and a very talented man, still is. I wrote the music, he wrote the lyrics. I never thought I could write, especially when faced with the challenge of being compared to such an educated and talented writer. So, I put all of my efforts into the music. Tha band of course contributed heavily as a band should. It’s a collaborative effort after all and we were all proud of what we did, but there was something missing. I didn’t even know it. In fact, it has taken me years to figure out.

Bear with me, there is a reason for all of this back story.

After many years of trying to make it in the music business and achieving only moderate success I left the band. My life up to that point was the band so this was a big change for me. After taking some time to chill out and take a breath (some call it a sabbatical) I found myself once again bursting with creative energy. I began writing music again but these songs needed words. Once I started rummaging around I found that I had a lot of them.. Soon the blank pages started to fill, first with lyrics, then with poems. It was around this time that my dad called me and told me that he’d written a book. I was stunned. I had never known the man to be a writer. My day job for all those years had been as a graphic designer so I helped him layout his book. Then it occurred to me: if my dad can do it, so can I.

I started thinking about what I wanted to say and eventually the story started to form. Soon I was typing away furiously, learning and researching not only my story but the ‘how to’ of writing. There were many stumbles along the way and many, many times I did not think I was good enough. I didn’t have an English degree and even though we had parted ways I would always be compared to my old writing partner; the genius, published poet. Still, I kept on. Winston Churchill’s words became a mantra. “Never surrender.” I continued submitting works, taking harsh and hurtful but oh so helpful criticism, and learning, learning and learning some more. Finally, I got a small piece published.

Ironically it was a poem. It was the universe saying, “You are good enough.” Dreams. Those dreams may not come true in the way you thought. They will most likely break your heart several if not many times. But if you never give up on them, they will put it back together better than you ever could have imagined. Dreams grow with you and as you grow and change, so do they.

There are many elements of this story that are crucial to the outcome. The first and most important to me is my partner. Without her I would never had the peace of mind, and contented heart to put the world on pause and kindle the creative fires again. Some people create better when life is blackest, I’m just the opposite, I need peace and pause.

I still play, write and record music and enjoy it very much, but my art is expressed as a writer. In music, a recording is a carefully crafted snapshot. The performance personalizes that recording. Unlike a song, stories and poems don’t need a single moment in which to come alive. They are always on fire, right under the cover of that book.

Never. Give. Up.