The story of A Bone to Pick’s Cover

Release day is September 15, 2021! Pre-orders available. Cover artwork is © 2020 by Jody A. Lee.

By Jan S. Gephardt

It’s way too late for this to be a “reveal,” but the story of A Bone to Pick’s Cover deserves telling. Because it was not an easy—or short—journey!

Late update: I unfortunately timed this post just when Jody had retired her old website and hadn't quite gotten her new one ready. If you're reading this in late 2021, her links may not work.

The Artistry of Jody A. Lee

For most of my adult life it has been my secret fantasy that someday my books would have Jody A. Lee covers. She and I have a rather long history, and through it all, I’ve cherished an abiding love and admiration for both her, and her artwork. From the very beginning, long before it seemed like even the remotest possibility, I harbored a fantasy. I dreamed that one day Jody could illustrate a book I had written. It seemed like a crazy pipe dream, back then.

Jody and I met through ASFA, the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists, back in the 1980s. For quite some time in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, my husband Pascal and I acted as her agent for sending her fine art prints to science fiction conventions all over North America. I also created a couple of printed promotional brochures for her, in an early effort to help market her work directly to fantasy art lovers.

Even though those markets have changed, and changed, and changed again, We’ve been friends since then. In recent years we’d grown more distracted by family and career issues. But when I went to her and asked if she’d ever be willing to paint a cover for me, she said yes! My crazy-pipe-dream-fantasy actually came true. Twice, so far! How many people get to say that?

Jody has range and vision and amazing skill. All of these cover paintings are ©Jody A. Lee (image source credits below).

A Memorable Moment in the Book

Jody reads the current draft of my book before she conceives the cover illustration. She builds it based on a memorable moment. In our first outing, for the cover for What’s Bred in the Bone we considered several scenes. Jody’s portrayal of Shiv and Rex in the Five-Ten worked best. But then came a bunch of those devilish details.

Jody doesn’t normally read a lot of science fiction, especially not “hard” sf. I’d had several readers who were old hands at sf go through the work and have little reported trouble with the descriptions. But Jody was having a devil of a time visualizing some of them. We went round and round on the helmet and background and how to portray them. What did I mean by this or that term? What did one of those things look like?

But eventually we arrived at this characteristic moment for Rex and Shiv, a man who was at that point in the story his SBI “frenemy.” And helping Jody visualize it helped me understand ways to (I hope) make the story more understandable and accessible. I like to think that others are intrigued by the idea of a sapient, talking police dog, even if they primarily read other genres. And maybe they will enjoy the stories more, thanks to my consciousness-raising from Jody.

Two highly characteristic moments from the novels. Artwork © 2020 and 2019 respectively, by Jody A. Lee.

A Fantasy Painter Tackles Futuristic Tech. Twice.

When you read A Bone to Pick you’ll almost certainly recognize “The Scene” that inspired the cover. That scene unfolded somewhat differently in the early (2019) draft Jody read, but it’s definitely still in there. Many of those who’ve read the manuscript as beta-readers or critique partners also pointed it out as a favorite moment. I was tickled by the idea that it would end up on the cover. And I think she has realized it beautifully.

But that beautiful painting didn’t happen without long, hard effort.

First problem: Jody knew she wanted to show Rex in the car. But what did a futuristic self-driving car on a space station look like? It needed to look sleek and science-fictional. The boring little auto-nav boxes that most people utilize on Rana wouldn’t “read” well on a book cover at all! That’s how the Citron Flash was born. In later drafts, it developed into something of a “character” in its own right. If you enjoy that minor subplot when you read the book, chalk up another “thank you” to Jody.

But this wasn’t the first time Jody had approached science fictional tech with initial trepidation. Remember Shiv’s helmet and his weapon on the first cover? That gun-looking thing is an EStee. It’s a dual-function service weapon used by law enforcement officers on Rana. But for a fantasy artist who specializes in painting swords, a futuristic firearm wasn’t part of the normal toolkit. For the underlying EStee design, she and I owe a debt of gratitude to Jeff Porter. He helped me with some initial character development artwork, and he reportedly enjoyed designing an EStee for me.

Artwork is © 2020 and 2019 respectively by Jody A. Lee, and @2016 by Jeff Porter.

Envisioning the Inside of Rana Station

Unfortunately for Jody, that was not the most daunting science fictional aspect she’d have to tackle. The story of A Bone to Pick’s cover involves a particular, peculiar twist. Or should I say “upward curve”? The infernal perspective of the habitat wheel posed a far steeper challenge. This peculiarity of the toroidal space habitat landscape is so marked, it provided an opening for What’s Bred in the Bone, where it bothered the newly-transplanted, planet-reared Rex:

Jan’s novel What’s Bred in the Bone, the first book in the XK9 “Bones” Trilogy, is available right now. Cover artwork © 2019 by Jody A. Lee.

“Damn it, no horizon should bend upward.

“XK9 Rex Dieter-Nell flinched away from the “scenic overlook.” He clenched his jaws on a quiet whimper, but the shudder down his back made his hackles prickle.

“His human partner, Charlie, met Rex’s eyes. I’m sorry. I know you don’t like it. His words flowed through their brain link on a wave of empathy.

“Rex lowered his head, wary of insulting his partner’s beloved home. . . . I guess we’ll see how things work out. He hazarded another look. Ugh. It was freaky-unnatural for a river to run down the wall at one end of the vista, as Wheel Two’s Sirius River did. Even worse for it to run back up the wall at the other.”

--Chapter One, "A Walk in the Park," from What's Bred in the Bone.

 

Rex has since reconciled himself to the view. (background ©2020 by Jody A. Lee; Rex and Shady portrait heads ©2020 by Lucy A. Synk).

The infernal perspective of a habitat wheel

God bless Don Davis and Rick Guidice. They were the first artists to grapple with the technical complexity of painting a landscape as it would appear inside something similar to a massive bicycle wheel in space. They were an essential part of the early NASA Ames Research Center project. In the summer of 1975, they helped a think-tank of genius scientists and engineers develop detailed plans for a habitat in space based on a wheel-like structure, a basic plan first proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1903.

Drawing the thing from the outside was far easier than drawing or painting images of the inside. But Davis and Guidice brought it memorably to life. You’ll notice that two of the three are cutaway views. As the middle image from 1975 demonstrates (below), it’s really challenging to get such an image to “read” clearly. Bending their brains around the crazy view cannot have been easy. But ever since then we’ve had something of a “cheat sheet” to go by.

And also a challenge for their successors. If they could do it, then it can be done.

Visions from the Ames Center in 1975: © NASA; artwork left and center by Don Davis. Artwork at right by Rick Guidice.

An Alien Landscape

Early in the story of A Bone to Pick’s cover, I sent Jody these images from 1975 (she’d already found them for herself, too, I believe). When she sent her first developmental color study, she accounted for the “bent” horizon. Other aspects of Orangeboro’s topography, though? Unfortunately, not so much.

That was my bad. As a writer, it’s easy to airily refer to “the verdant terraces of the Sirius Valley” and go on with whatever is happening in the scene. But an artist has to show it. In considerably more detail than the writer must devote to the subject. No matter how “impressionistic” the artist's technique may be. And you’ll have noticed already that Jody has a beautiful style, but it’s not notably “impressionistic.”

So, okay, Jan. What do you mean by “the verdant terraces of the Sirius Valley”?

Rana Station is supposed to be a self-sufficient space habitat that is home to more than eight million souls. Those are eight million souls who need not only room to live and work, but who also need to eat. Self-sufficient means they need to grow it all on-Station. And that means they need to maximize their food-growing space. Don Davis gave us a rolling, but basically single-level landscape that didn’t include nearly enough growing space for what I had in mind. Rana Station needed something different. This led me to agricultural terraces and river meanders.

Rice terraces in the Philippines create crop land on a steep hillside (photo © by Allyson Tachiki), and rivers naturally meander (photo by Google via Robert Hodgin).

The Terraces of the Sirius River Valley

I needed a “horizontal space multiplier,” if I was going to feed all those hungry fictional mouths. I also needed to account for some of the natural patterns we know will develop over time, because: physics. Humans have been “making more arable land” for centuries, using agricultural terraces in naturally-steep terrain.

And even from early on, it was pretty clear that there’d be a river running through the torus. If you water the plants in gravity, where does the water go? Check the Don Davis landscape above from 1975.

Moreover, if water flows, it naturally meanders. My Rana Stationers would have to allow for that, too. I also realized that an undulating valley structure, winding in and out, rather than running arrow-straight along the insides of the torus also would be a “horizontal surface multiplier.” For an unscientific example of this, fold a paper fan. Your fan has the same surface as a flat piece of paper, but the flat paper is much longer. The folds condense the surface area.

Thus, I told Jody not only were “The verdant terraces of the Sirius Valley” built like giant stair steps. They also rippled in and out. So, is that clear enough?

Say, what???

The story of A Bone to Pick’s cover grew kind of complex at this point. The superb horticulturalists of Rana Station don’t tolerate unproductive weeds in any precious cubic centimeter of Ranan soil. But at this point Jody and I wandered off into the tall, jungle-thick, metaphorical weeds of trying to communicate with each other. No. it was not clear enough. Not at all.

Frustrated, I resorted to the same expedient Davis and Guidice had, back in 1975: I started making pictures. More accurately, I started making models. I created what I thought were interesting simulations of the perspective. But my models still didn’t communicate what Jody needed.

At left is Jody’s first color study. Center and right are Jan’s attempts to use 3-D paper maquettes to describe the terraces, switchbacks, and a model of Corona Tower cut-and-pasted behind the sketch of Rex in the car. No, they didn’t make sense to Jody, either. (artwork © 2020 by Jody A. Lee and Jan S. Gephardt, respectively).

Something Like Wavy Layer Cakes

It’s a good thing we had started working on this project well before I needed it, or the story of A Bone to Pick’s cover might have turned tragic at this point. It took me a long time to produce a drawing that more clearly communicated what I needed to convey to Jody (see below left). It’s not great art, and since my studio was mostly in boxes while we put in a new floor, I wasn’t able to develop any kind of perspective for the buildings beyond “eyeballing” the angles. It was crude. It was stiff. Frankly, it was an embarrassing drawing.

But once I sent it, we were finally on ever-more-synchronized wavelengths. I had begun to fear we’d never get there. That she’d tell me to take my stupid job and shove it. But Jody is a pro, and she stuck to it. And when it comes to visualizing something that is purely hypothetical and may never exist in real life, I guess you can’t beat a fantasy artist.

I was startled and distracted by how much my terraced hills looked like layer cakes, but by now Jody had a firm vision and a much less meandering route to the finish line. She took things masterfully from there. We exchanged a series of sketches, and she got to work on the final painting.

A “conversation” between artists: evolving views of the “verdant terraces of the Sirius Valley.” Artwork © 2020 by Jan S. Gephardt, Jody A. Lee, and Jan S. Gephardt, respectively.

The story of A Bone to Pick’s Cover

So that’s the story of A Bone to Pick’s cover. I hope that this collaboration has not only produced a cover to make you smile (and buy my book???). I hope that the whole process of working through questions of “exactly what do you mean by that?” and “what does that look like?” has made A Bone to Pick a better book.

You can find out for yourself it it did, on (or after) the release date, September 15, 2021. If you’re interested, you can pre-order a Kindle version in either the USA or the UK. After release, it’ll be available from a variety of booksellers in a variety of formats.

IMAGE AND OTHER CREDITS:

The excerpt from What’s Bred in the Bone is © 2019 by Jan S. Gephardt, published by Weird Sisters Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Of course, the vast majority of the artwork in this post is © by Jody A. Lee. The EStee sketch is © 2016 by Jeff Porter. There also are some sketches that are © 2020 by Jan S. Gephardt. And the “head shot” portraits of Rex and Shady are © 2020 by Lucy A. Synk.

The book covers at the beginning come from a variety of sources. That first cover, for The Black Gryphon, is courtesy of Amazon. The covers for A Study in Sable and By the Sword are courtesy of Goodreads. And the cover for The Hills Have Spies is from Penguin Random House.

Imagery and all kinds of rich information from the NASA Ames Research Center makes my life as a science fiction writer infinitely easier, and continues to yield more treasure each time I explore it. And I can’t begin to express the impact the artwork of Don Davis and Rick Guidice has had, both on my work, and on the conception of Rana Station. Seriously, guys. It’s a debt I can’t ever repay.

Farther down, the photo of the Batad Rice Terraces in Banaue, Philippines is © by Allyson Tachiki via Flickr. It offers a great example of how humans have learned to “make more land” out of very steep terrain. The satellite photo of an unidentified river meander originated from Google. But I found it on Robert Hodgin’s fascinating exploration of river meanders. Do yourself a favor and check out that web page when you have a minute. It’s pretty amazing.

Call me Irresponsible

 By Jan S. Gephardt

Call me irresponsible if you will, but I spent the day writing.

Writing fiction, that is, not a blog post. Even though it was “Blog-or-Die Day.” Even though I had scheduled and set aside time to work on a blog post. Yes, even though I hate, hate, hate missing deadlines. The journalist/commercial graphic designer in me detests missing deadlines.

But instead of blogging like I was supposed to, I spent this week's designated blogging day writing fiction. Specifically, I spent it finishing a brand-new short story set in the universe of the XK9s. Call me irresponsible, but I’d do the same thing again, if I had this day to do over. The story had to come out. Now.

Courtesy of Quotefancy.

Order versus Chaos

I sometimes see the struggle to use my time well as a balancing act between order and chaos. As someone with a small creative business, there are certain things that I must do regularly, in a systematic and orderly way. But there are other activities it’s harder to stuff into an orderly time slot.

Each week, I need a Plan/Review Day. For me, that’s Monday. Long and bitter experience has taught me that I must stop regularly to take stock, to check my progress. I ask, “What did I plan to do? Did I get it done? All or some? What contributed to my success? What kept me from meeting my goals?”

I’ve learned that if I don’t do this every week, I never get my bookkeeping done. I miss deadlines. And I spend a lot of time wondering what I did with all that time, since I “didn’t accomplish a darn thing.” Even if I actually accomplished a lot. I’m really good at forgetting or downplaying things I did. And also at mourning grandiose dreams that didn’t turn out the way I envisioned them.

Courtesy of Rescue Time Blog.

 

“Blog-Or-Die” Day

My small creative business requires other kinds of orderly, regular, systematic days. I already mentioned Blog-or-Die Day, which is Tuesday (or else). If I don’t write and/or produce a blog post on Tuesdays, my blog will be off-schedule. It might not even happen at all. So, you don’t have to call me irresponsible if I miss Blog Day. I’ll call it that way myself.

But so what if I miss a Blog Day, you might ask (some days I do, too). Well, a regularly-updated blog on one’s own website provides ever-renewing material. Even during the long “pregnant” periods between the publications of my books, stuff is happening on my website. I have subscribers, with whom I feel I’ve made a kind of pact: I’ll write about my creative journey, and they can ride along with me. It could be fun! Better yet, it can become a creative conversation.

For the past year and more, It’s become an expanded conversation, with my sister G. S. Norwood added to the mix. She brings things to the blog that I can’t, such as her depth of knowledge about music or her unique take on books or history. It’s worth doing. But it won’t happen by itself.

Even if I don’t write the material for that week, I format and illustrate it, which takes a good bit of time in itself. When I observe a weekly Blog Day, I make enough time (usually) for that important blog post each week.

Courtesy of Be Yourself via Medium.

Marketing Day

Especially since G. and I formed Weird Sisters Publishing and started producing books, there is always marketing to do. Some of ours is paid advertising. Some of it is appearances at readings or science fiction conventions, social media, or other things. But all of it must be strategized, planned out on a tactical level, executed, and then the results must be measured. For me, Wednesday is Marketing Day. The rest of the week I focus elsewhere, but on this one day I review as many of our promotional efforts as possible.

For instance, only on Wednesdays do I allow myself to look at the Estimated Royalties from Amazon. I know some authors check it daily (or even hourly), but that can quickly drive a person around the bend. It also can devour massive amounts of time. Only on Wednesdays doI check to see how pre-orders are accumulating. As I write this, the accumulating number of pre-orders for A Bone to Pick is a “high-interest topic” for me. But looking at it more often won’t change the numbers.

I do those and other tasks every week. I do others once a month, such as analytics on particular ad campaigns, keyword list-building efforts, or writing my monthly newsletter. If I didn’t regularly do these things each month during a designated time, some of them might never get done at all. You would definitely need to call me irresponsible if I didn’t hit all of these marks in a regular, systematic way.

Support a small business, by Adria Adams Co. via Sparksight on Twitter.

Random Variables

But I can only stand to slot myself into orderly, prescribed, (and often statistics-based) activities for so long. Pretty soon, you’re gonna have to pry my fingernails out of the ceiling if I do too much of that.

My heart’s desire, and the thing I’ve so loved doing as much as possible since I stopped needing to work outside the home, is the creative work.

Sometimes it’s artwork, sometimes it’s writing fiction, and oftentimes it’s a blend of both. It’s been about a month since I finally wrote “THE END” on the manuscript for A Bone to Pick and sent it off to the proofreader. Since then I’ve slotted myself into more “production days” (to get the book ready for publication). I’ve also started working in earnest on development for the XK9 “Bones” Trilogy’s third and final installment, Bone of Contention, but mostly by thinking about it, rather than writing.

But fiction-writing is an uneven process. For me, it’s also a discovery process. And one of the things I discovered as I worked on the developmental phase of Bone of Contention was that I had another story to write first. I needed to know more aboutwhat happened during an incident that’s obliquely mentioned in The Other Side of Fear and may be briefly revisited in Bone of Contention.

Courtesy of Quotefancy.

The Story Digs in its Claws

I didn’t think I’d write it as “share-with-the-public story” at first. It started out as a background sketch. But sometimes a story takes on a life of its own. Things began to fall into place. And the more they did, the more I wanted to write it in a more complete form. As something I could share.

I’ve been working on it sporadically for about four weeks at this point. I’d go for a while, hit a snag, set it aside and do something else (there’s always stuff to do), and pretty soon I’d be back at work on it.

Then, toward the end of last week, it dug its claws in real deep. I schedule regular writing times each day, but it was a greedy baby story. It wanted all of my time. All of my attention. Call me irresponsible, but I gave in.

“I haven’t been on social media for a while,” I’d say to myself. “I ought to check in and catch up.” But I’d find myself writing instead. “I should check my email,” I’d tell myself. “Okay, but I’ll work on the story first.” Hours later, I’d still be writing. I’m almost afraid to check my inboxes at this point.

Courtesy of Jade Abaya on Twitter.

Call me Irresponsible

Yeah, yeah, I know. It is really rude to ignore my emails. And I had a whole different blog topic I was going to tackle this week—one that involved research and analysis and . . . never mind. I intended to work on the post last night.

I wrote the story instead.

And then I seriously needed to work on the blog post . . . um, at this point, that was all day yesterday.

I wrote the story instead.

It didn’t want to let go. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over decades of fiction-writing, it’s don’t put it off if it’s flowing, because you may never get exactly that flow back again. And seriously, what is my current job-description? (Hint: “blogger” is an “also” that’s several notches down on the list.).

So, call me irresponsible, but I spent every bit of Blog-or-Die Day this week on the story. I now have a first complete draft of a 6,500-some-odd-word story that I’m currently calling Beautiful New Year. It’s not done, of course. A lot of sharpening, focusing and listening to critiques lies ahead. But I finished the first draft. That’s a milestone.

And, whoops! Would you look at that? Somehow* I managed to finish a blog post, too.

Courtesy of Quotes Wiki.

IMAGE CREDITS:

Double thanks to Quotefancy, which provided both the William Faulkner quote about stories that need to come out, and the quote about chaos from Ameila Atwater-Rhodes. I really appreciate it! My gratitude also goes to Jory MacKay’s post on the Rescue Time Blog for the quote from Henry David Thoreau, and to Chad Brockius on Be Yourself via Medium, for the Edmund Burke quote.

I deeply appreciate the graphic on “How to support your friend’s small business,” from Adria Adams Co., via Sparksight on Twitter, the “Time to write a story” quote/image by Jade Abaya on Twitter, and QuotesWiki  for the “First Drafts” quote. Many thanks to all of you!

* = “by not sleeping much and posting late”

One Schedule-Change

By Jan S. Gephardt

One schedule-change. That’s all it technically boils down to. One simple scratch-out on a calendar. I’d planned on going, but now I’m not.

Except, it’s not a simple thing at all. Not simply one schedule-change. No, it’s actually a whole end-of-summer tipped upside-down in a cascade of if-this-then-that change, after change, after change.

This is one schedule-change I didn’t want to make. (Credits below).

Deciding not to go to FenCon, it turned out (as I knew it would), led to way more than one schedule-change.

I Love FenCon

Okay, so, what’s the big deal? Well, several things. First, I should explain that FenCon is a regional science fiction convention that’s been held in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area since 2004. It’s a friendly, fan-run convention that’s been the subject of several blog posts since Ty and I decided to try it out in 2018. We tried it, and agreed we didn’t want to miss out on any future FenCons!

It quickly become one of my favorite cons. Not that I go to any bad ones, mind you. I love going to science fiction conventions. But there are just some where the appeal is like instant chemistry, and going back each time is a small version of “coming home.” For me, FenCon is one of those special conventions.

Glimpses from FenCon in 2018 and 2019. (Jan S. Gephardt).

FenCon also has the added attraction of being in my sister’s neck of the woods. Each FenCon I’ve attended so far has been followed up by a “Corporate Summit” of Weird Sisters Publishing LLC. That means G., Ty, and I get to hang out and eat, schmooze, and then G. and I discuss, face-to-face, our plans and ideas about where our little publishing venture goes from here.

So, there are lots of reasons why I love going to FenCon. And lots of reasons why I did not want to make that one schedule-change.

This Year was an Extra-Special FenCon

Of all the years I didn’t want to miss FenCon, this year I especially didn’t want to miss it. Above and beyond “I love FenCon.” In addition to the Corporate Summit opportunity. This year’s FenCon was going to be my first con “post-COVID.”

And this year,  Chaz Kemp is the Artist Guest of Honor. How could any con be more perfect for my big return to con-going? Chaz has become a Very Important Person for Weird Sisters Publishing. He’s the man who’s created the Deep Ellum covers. He’s the illustrator whose work will give Warren’s Windhover series a vastly improved set of covers when we release them in 2022. Chaz created G.’s official Author Portrait. So, yes. I wanted to be there to celebrate Chaz.

Artwork made for Weird Sisters Publishing, © 2019-2020 by Chaz Kemp.

On top of all that, this year I was going to debut A Bone to Pick at FenCon. If a book’s release is anything like a debutante’s first cotillion, FenCon was supposed to be A Bone to Pick’s “coming out party.”

It’s not as if book releases happen all the time for either me, or for Weird Sisters. This is my first book since before the pandemic lockdowns started. This is the first Weird Sisters release since last September.

I literally timed the release date to coordinate with FenCon!

So, Why this One Schedule-Change?

Of all the conventions, in all of the places, with all of the Guests of Honor—FenCon XVII was the one schedule-change I least wanted to make!

But I made it anyway. Why? Well, if you have to ask, perhaps you’ve lost your Internet connection to your hermit cave for most of the summer. (I mean, everyone fortunate enough to afford to self-isolate has been living in a hermit cave for more than a year, now. The hermit cave is kind of a given).

But just when we were all looking forward to leaving our hermit caves, people started opting out of taking the free, widely-distributed, highly-effective COVID vaccines that had been giving us grounds for hope. They tore off and burned their masks, declared premature victory, and went to Sturgis for a motorcycle rally (or to some other super-spreader-event).

Many came to Sturgis. Few wore masks. (CNN/Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

And they did this just as the Delta variant of the virus was getting a solid foothold throughout the United States.

The Delta Variant (and its Proponents) are Messing with Texas

Personal responsibility matters. Lack of personal responsibility kills. Regular old COVID-19 had already killed more than 600,000 of us before the vaccines were widely distributed. But those high death counts had plummeted . . . until recently. Once people stopped getting vaccinated, and once Delta took root, the numbers did a U-turn and started to skyrocket.

This is especially true in Florida and Texas. Those two large, populous states seem to have been perversely extra-cursed. They have governors who, in the face of Delta’s surge, appear hell-bent on killing or compromising the health of as many of their citizens as possible.

In Texas the anti-mask contingent has gubernatorial support. (Click2Houston).

Texas Gov. Abbott isn’t the only homicidal maniac on the loose in Texas, unfortunately. The Texas Supreme Court recently sided with him. They’re incited and cheered on by certain parents, sad to say. This hamstrings school districts, such as the Dallas Independent School District, that are trying to avoid killing the children who attend their schools.

Does my Language Offend You?

There may be readers who think I’ve used hyperbole, or judged Gov. Abbott and his friends too harshly. But how else should I describe the situation and stay on pace with the facts? There are no available pediatric ICU beds in the Dallas/Fort Worth region, and many smaller, rural hospitals have reached capacity. In the face of these facts, it’s hardly hyperbole to say children are dying. Others may try to be more polite, but I’m sick of that.

Anti-mask, anti-vaccination rhetoric and misinformation inevitably results in more people dying. Hundreds and thousands of people dying. Children are dying in ever-growing numbers. Young, healthy adults are dying. Even vaccinated people are suffering breakthrough infections, and some of them are dying.

Recent weeks saw a sharp spike in Texas COVID cases. (Chart from New York Times).

This is last year’s movie. We were supposed to be done with this by now. Last spring, when the organizers decided to hold FenCon and I signed up to go to it, we all thought we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. We thought we’d soon be in the clear.

But the “light” is a headlamp on a locomotive called Delta Variant. And the train is driven by anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. I speak for many when I say that the responsible folk who locked down, masked up, and got their vaccinations as soon as we could are furious.

Don’t anyone dare tell me I’m overstating this situation. Honey, I’m holding back how I really feel.

Ripples from That One Schedule-Change

I had been eagerly designing and ordering new S.W.A.G. for FenCon. Guess there’s less of a rush on that, now. I’d been worrying about getting print-edition copies of A Bone to Pick ready to publish in time to have physical books at FenCon. Don’t need to sweat that one, either, I suppose.

I’d been updating my wardrobe, trying to produce new artwork, starting to make checklists and signs. Guess those aren’t as urgent now, either. The party’s canceled. I’m grounded again. Gotta take my ribbons and my bookmarks and my shiny new copies of my happy new book, and go schlump on back inside my hermit cave. Dammit.

But wait! There’s still Archon!

Yes, I’m still scheduled to go to Archon 44 in Collinsville, IL on October 1-3. At least, so far I’m still scheduled to go to Archon. But it’s six weeks away. Six weeks ago, I was still planning to go to FenCon. So, we’ll see. I’m growing more dubious by the day, but I still hope that’s one schedule-change I won’t have to make.

IMAGE CREDITS:

Many thanks to FenCon XVII for their logo, from the header on their website. The "Raindrop" background is from Facebook. The “COVID-Canceled” symbol is a combination of symbols from “uspenskayaa” and “bentosi,”obtained via 123rf.

All of the photos in the FenCon montage (also assembled by Jan S. Gephardt) are from Jan's 2018 and 2019 archives.

The covers for Deep Ellum Pawn and Deep Ellum Blues, plus G. S. Norwood’s Author Portrait were all commissioned for use by Weird Sisters Publishing and G. S. Norwood. They are © 2019-2020 by Chaz Kemp.

We appreciate CNN for the photo by Michael Ciaglo of Getty Images, taken at the 2021 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Much gratitude to Click2Houston, for the still image captured from a video of anti-mask protestors outside the Texas Supreme Court in Austin. Many thanks also to the New York Times for its chart showing the rise and fall of COVID-19 cases in Texas. This post wouldn’t be the same without you! 

What’s Your Comfort Food?

 By G. S. Norwood

For a while there, it looked like we might be out of the woods. The rate of coronavirus infections had begun to fall as the vaccination rate was on the rise. The CDC said it was okay for us to go out again, hit the Farmers Market and maybe even take in a movie. But then came the Delta variant. Now we’re all headed back to the bunker again. And what do we crave? Comfort food!

Remember those crowded venues we dreamed of last June? The COVID-19 Delta variant has canceled them for now. (Credits listed below).

What is Comfort Food?

I define comfort food as that special meal you turn to when you need emotional support as well as physical sustenance. Maybe it’s chicken soup, when you have a head cold, or ramen noodles when you’ve just been dumped by the love of your life. It’s the Chinese food you must eat while you study for your finals, or the midnight waffles you and the rest of the cast opt for when the performance is over.

Sometimes there’s a ritual element to it. As a kid, if I got a sore throat, I wanted ice cream. But not just any ice cream. For a sore throat I needed vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup, served in a coffee mug. I’d smush the ice cream up with the syrup until it was like a thick milk shake, then eat it with saltine crackers. Nothing beats it for childhood strep. It’s classic comfort food.

Grilled Cheese sandwiches just naturally pair with Tomato Soup, while Homemade Ham and Bean Soup is classic comfort food.( Dallas Grilled Cheese Co./G. S. Norwood).

More adult-oriented comfort food often includes stuff that’s super simple to prepare after a stress-filled work week: eggs and bacon for supper, or a grilled cheese sandwich with hamburger dills on the side. Leftovers make excellent comfort food, particularly when you’re only cooking for one. Ham and beans that can feed you for a week? The endless possibilities of Sunday pot roast come Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday? There’s comfort in every bite you don’t have to cook.

The Twenty-Four Hour Breakfast

Eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, cinnamon toast, and waffles are staples of the comfort food menu. There’s a reason round-the-clock truck stops and 24-hour diners make bank on this stuff. People who stumble in, weary from the road, don’t need to deal with exotic food. They need basic carbs and protein that their stomachs will recognize and accept without controversy. It’s the International House of Pancakes for a reason, right?

Some years back, G. and Warren (shown here on lap harp and ukulele) wrote an ode to the likes of food from Whataburger and IHOP. (Credits below).

Warren and I even had a song about late night comfort food. The Texas-based fast food chain Whataburger is always open. There was an outlet conveniently positioned between our home in Parker County and the Fort Worth concert venue where we got to see Guy Clark, Joe Ely, and numerous other Americana greats. Once, as the clock neared midnight, we hijacked the tune of the old Doc Watson song, Crawdad Hole, and came up with this ode to comfort food:

Carbohydrates, grease and salt, honey, honey
Carbohydrates, grease and salt, babe.
Carbohydrates, grease and salt:
Top ‘em off with a rich, thick malt!
Honey, oh baby mine!

The Rules

Comfort food is different for every soul who needs comforting. Your choice will depend on your age, your culture, and what your mama fed you when her sweet baby didn’t feel good. Whether you turn to tea and a danish when you need a spiritual boost, or head straight for a quart of Ben and Jerry’s, there are rules we should all observe about comfort food:

Let these “Comfort Food Rules” guide you the next time you need a “food-based hug.” (Credits below).

1. You don’t get to make fun of anybody else’s comfort food. Elvis liked peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwiches. Some people toast their grilled cheese with mayonnaise instead of butter. A fried bologna sandwich on white bread can be your best friend in a crisis. It takes all kinds. Let people find comfort where they can.
2. Don’t go all gourmand about it. Macaroni and cheese with spinach penne, a dollop of truffle oil, and four kinds of cheese that aren’t Velveeta may be delicious. But a moment of crisis is no time to insist you must make your pasta by hand using that massive stand mixer with the extrusion attachment.
3. Don’t try to make it healthy. Comfort food is loaded with fat and salt. That’s what makes it comforting. If, in your hour of need, you crave tuna casserole the way Mom used to make it, beware. Making it with egg white noodles, low sodium mushroom soup and 2% milk will only plunge you back into despair.
4. There is no substitute for bacon. You know I’m right.

Mac and Cheese for the Win!

When it comes to comfort food, we each have our favorite. But, after a completely unscientific survey of the friends who still take my weird questions, it has become clear to me that one comfort food rules them all: Macaroni and Cheese.

We won’t judge you, however you prefer your macaroni and cheese (well, maybe a little, if it involves truffle oil). (Credits below).

Different generations approach this classic in different ways. When Jan and I were young, our mother made macaroni and cheese from scratch using whole milk, medium pasta shells, and—yeah, gotta fess up here—Velveeta pasteurized, prepared cheese product. Jan was a bigger fan than I was, but she loved it, hot out of the oven with burned cheese on top, or cold the next day in her lunchbox. We made a pact about it. I would get all the tuna casserole leftovers if she could have all the mac and cheese.

By the time Jan and I hit college, Kraft had cornered the market on comfort food mac and cheese with convenient boxed mixes that were supposed to feed the whole family. But c’mon! That little box was single-serving size for famished youngsters for at least the next two generations. Jan’s two children learned to cook it for themselves at a rather tender age, and still reach for it when emotional times are tough.

Classic Comfort

These days, macaroni and cheese comes ready-made in custom-sized servings from individual microwavable cups for your lunch box all the way up to genuinely family-sized casseroles tucked in next to the frozen lasagna at the supermarket.

My cat, Gift, is also great when I
need comfort. (G. S. Norwood).

Grandmothers, hard working parents, busy young singles—they all name macaroni and cheese as one of their top five comfort foods. I even know a four-year-old diva—who should not yet know the need for comfort food—who names it as her #1 go to.

Serve it as a meal. Serve it as a side dish. Dump a whole bunch of it into your favorite bowl and eat it on your couch in your pajamas. However you like it, macaroni and cheese will not let you down. Unlike that user/loser ex-boyfriend of yours who . . . Well, never mind. Take comfort in the fact that macaroni and cheese is a universally understood food-based hug.

What are your go-to comfort foods? Leave a comment below to let us know. We promise not to laugh.

IMAGE CREDITS:

The “Crowded Texas Venues” montage from our prematurely-hopeful “What’s it Gonna Take?” post in May brought together six photos from pre-COVID times. Many thanks to The Dallas Morning News, for both the photo of the Dallas Cowboys game from 2019, by photographer Tom Fox, and the Shed at the Dallas Farmers Market, by photographer Ron Baselice. We thank Second Baptist Church’s Facebook Page and Wide Open Country for the photo of people at a service. Our gratitude goes to Texas Hill Country for the photo of rides at a county fair after dark, and Travel Texas for the undated photo of the unidentified barrel racer. Thanks also to The Dallas Observer and photographer Brian Maschino for the photo from the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

This and all montages in the post are by Jan S. Gephardt. She made the "Canceled by COVID-19" symbol from symbols created for 123rf by "upenskayaa" and "bentosi."

All Those Comfort Food Photos (and a couple of others)

We deeply appreciate The Dallas Grilled Cheese Company (check them out, when you’re in Dallas!) and G. S. Norwood herself for the Comfort Combo montage featuring grilled cheese with tomato soup and ham and beans, respectively. G. also included the “cat cuddle” pic at the end. We also want to thank Whataburger on Twitter for the picnic pic, Margaret Norwood Donnelly for the Family Archive photo of G. on the lap harp and Warren on ukulele, and City of Aiken, SC Tourism for the photo of menu items from the International House of Pancakes.

Many thanks for the “Da Rules” cartoon image, courtesy of Formula Student Austria. The photo of colorful scoops of ice cream came from The Mom Collective’s Kansas City Ice Cream Guide. Those nachos came from “Picuki’s” Instagram gallery. And the cookies are Peanut Butter Kisses from Scrapality’s “Christmas Cookies Galore!” article. Our gratitude to all!

Far from least, we marvel at the mac-and-cheese munificence from Dinner at the Zoo (bacon mac & cheese) and Benjamin McCormick on Medium (square white dish). We’re particularly grateful for double yumminess from Spend with Pennies (the round white bowl, and the cheddar topping), and Dallas Grilled Cheese Company (again), with the two grilled mac-and-cheese sandwiches. We’re not worthy, but we’re definitely hungry. Many thanks to each of you!