My blog for 6/25/2013 Parrot Book Cover

Okay, this is what I'm going to send to the publisher as my idea for a book cover.
Remember there has to be a lot of blank space for words to be inserted.

Last time I tried this, the publisher couldn't use it because it wouldn't adapt to the photographic
software.  But I thought I'd try it again.  I'll let you know if it gets rejected.

My blog for 6/23/2013 New Picture Start Chattahoochee Dead

I've had to put the French Street scene on hold because I'm attempting to make a cover for my new book out this September, Chattahoochee Dead.  So this is a rudimentary start and remember that there will be writing all over it as well as the picture as background.  It's pretty grim right now, as it's just starting to be color blocked in and there is a long way to go on it.  And yes, the parrot will not be entirely in the frame, but just peeking in the side.  The parrot's book name is Epifanio Alejandro, and is an integral part of Chattahoochee Dead (which is why he'll probably be on the book cover.)
The real bird's name is Amanda.  I'll put a picture of her in here as well.  Check back as I will be working on this painting until I either like it or can it.

 

 

My blog for 6/19/2013 Fourth stage French Street Scene

I finally got to paint today for a little while, and the painting still looked scattered to me, so I put in the foreground and it helped pull it together.  There is still a long way to go on it, but it already is taking on a completion persona.

My blog for 6/13/2013 Third stage French St. picture.

I know this looks hopeless, but it'll come around.  It's just very large and requires a lot of detail.
The blobs on the sidewalk will be people (I promise) and the trees will have leaves soon.  The best part will be the last where the street gets put in.  A lot of this is still pretty rough.

My blog for 6/12/2013 New French Street Scene Painting Second post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know, there isn't much difference between my first post of this picture and this one, but there were some changes that were necessary the lower parts of my buildings were tilting incorrectly on the right side of the street, so they had to be completely redone.
I've started the buildings on the left in today's version. It'll start being more attractive when its foreground can be started.  But first I have to slog along with the background.

My blog for 6/10/2013 New picture start (about half done)

 

This is the next victim.  It's a bit of an albatross.  An impressionistic French thing.  I think I'll just keep going since the chickies are no longer staring at me with blank eyes.

I was liking the building on the right until the proportion got wanky.  There's another building on the left penciled in that I planned to have as background for a bunch of people on the street.  It's pretty large and the reason I started it was because I like the idea of a wet street reflecting the lights.  But it got all out of hand and I put in the back of the closet.  Melody sighs here.

 

 

My blog for 6/9/2013 Chicken Picture Complete.

 

I'm calling this done so I don't overwork it.  However, it's a curse when nothing is ever done.

 

 

 

 

Blog for 6/7/2013 Chicken Painting Third Stage

 

I'm not making a lot of headway today, but the yellow chickie is starting to take a little shape.

I bet you thought this was a fast process.  This is what happens when everything goes wrong and the picture has to wait a little longer for me to get my act together.

 

 

 

 

 

No chickies today.

We went to see my mom today and got home after three.  I don't paint late very well, so will have the next stage tomorrow.

My blog for 6/5/2013 Stage Two Painting of Chickies



 

 

The one chickie finally decided to show himself.  The other one still looks like a flower.

 

 

 

 

 

6/4/2013 Chickens painting on my blog.

Okay, this is the picture of a couple of chickies.  Only they don't know they're chickies yet.
It was started long ago, so we're already past the drawing and perspective thing.
It looks like a big mess because I've only "color blocked" it in so far.

My blog for 6/4/2013 Mall Knees -- A very short story.

MALL KNEES

by

Melody Scott

 

I have a husband who has a little known disease he has named Mall Knees.

This is a disease that manifests itself by causing dull aching calves and knees primarily in the male of the human species.  A two-hour foray through Home Depot tool departments does not cause Mall Knees, especially the area surrounding table saws, skill saws, reciprocating saws and band saws.  Even chop saws.  The viewing of limitless automobiles at car dealerships does not cause Mall Knees. 

The exploration of the back aisles of Outdoor World, plundering perusal of sports equipment and clothing, canoes and associated paraphernalia used to keep one dry while under water, does not cause Mall Knees.  Unlimited wandering for days among sleek and/or rugged motorcycles, helmets, gloves, leathers, riding boots and chaps, maps and trail guides, amazingly, do not cause Mall Knees.

The direct association with tractors, it seems, also does not cause Mall Knees.  Actually, quite the opposite effect.  I've noticed a long-acting revelation of accelerating stimulation to occur, and have myself witnessed marathon days of tractor ogling with no sign of Mall Knees making an appearance.  Motor homes and other RV types seem to have a similar effect.  Ditto marina sweeps where boats are apt to hang out.

However, after thirty minutes of wandering calmly through a mall, the victim carrying nothing heavier than a Starbucks coffee, the pain begins somewhere around the ankle.  It's not really very bad at that point.  But breathe the air inside a department store's (female) clothing department and excruciating cramps will occur beginning from under the kneecaps and running down the gastrocnemius muscles.  I'm talking cramps very similar to those of a dehydrated marathon runner lacking potassium, lacking electrolytes.  At that point, the victim must be taken home at once, his legs rubbed and he (remember the victim is always a he) is forced into bedrest with TV.

I've researched this, people.  That's how I know.  I have a male person I use as standard bearer for their percentage of the human population.  I've seen this happen before my very eyes.

My blog for 6/3/2013 Creepy-a very short story.

CREEPY

by

Melody Scott

 

What has menacing eyes, big sharp teeth, can change its form to slide through a paper bag and gleams with ugly?   A cockroach, of course.  And I had one threaten to maul me from right there on my just-washed kitchen floor.  The sucker was a half a foot long.  Yuck.

I should have used Clorox in my wash water.  I should have used Raid in my wash water.

I was afraid to take my eyes off the thing, but I had to do something before it charged.  So I dashed into the bedroom and pulled the shotgun out from between the mattresses and ran back to the kitchen.  Obviously, that wasn't going to work—blowing a hole in the floor would be hard to explain and would hurt my ears.

Somewhere in the back of my memory banks I'd seen my mother-in-law go after a roach with a broom, so I automatically slithered along the wall to the corner where my broom rests more than it should.  But, wait.  My mother-in-law's roach had been very spry and eluded her that day in her kitchen, even though she had chased it around and beat it with an alacrity that reddened her face and made her hair stand up in the back.  So I leaned the broom up next to the shotgun while I had a chilling stare-down with the roach.  After all, it couldn't leave while my eyes pinned it in place.  They only leave when you blink.

My mind raced.

A two-pound coffee can was within reach, so I quickly poured the coffee out onto the counter—so what?  It was clean.  And I could put the coffee into a ziplock bag after this caper.  Slowly I crept toward the creature, all the while hypnotizing it with my eyes.  I reached out with my inverted can and quickly slammed it to the floor.  The roach laughed and lumbered toward the stove where it turned and crouched at me.  The coffee can rolled across the floor, sprinkling coffee grounds in its wake and ticking me off.

I lurched for the vacuum squatting in the back of the utility closet, plugged it in and removed the attachment on the end of the tube, still keeping the creature pinned to the floor with my eyes.  That sucker wouldn't escape THIS time.  I heard myself exclaim, "aha!" as I vaulted over the coffee can, holding my weapon out before me.

The roach issued an epithet as it darted between my legs to the other side of the room, almost making me pass out, and plastered itself to the floor in front of the dishwasher.  I had to rethink this.  It could run up the whining tube I was holding, then up my arm into my armpit where it could find an artery and I'd be dead.  My eyes glazed over at that thought.  I needed a longer tube on my vacuum.  Eight feet would be about right.  Didn't have it.  Shoot.  Just as I jumped up onto the counter where I could sneak across to the dishwasher and drop the cookie jar on the roach, a big boot came out from behind the trashcan and smashed that sucker flat. 

My husband looked at me, eye level from the counter, and said, "what are you doing? Playing with a roach?

I nearly fainted with relief.

My blog for 6/2/2013 Spokane Serial Final Episode.

            Madrigal continued, “Chris could have been working at the casino all along and somehow found out about the supposed stock certificates.   Anyway, a corporation was initiated to issue stocks.  A bazillion people wanted his machines.  Indian casinos were a different story because they couldn’t pay him with tribal funds.  So they paid him with Coca Cola Stock valued at way less than 5%.  Also I heard they paid him in gold!  Only nobody knows where those certificates or gold are.  They couldn’t get them from your father while he was alive.”

            “By the way, I’m sorry that he died from cancer.  Everybody in the business loved him.  And I never got a chance to meet him.  Anyway, they couldn’t get information from your mother, who probably didn’t even know about the gold certificates.  Your dad wasn’t supposed to die.  Your ex-husband was a piece of work.  He must have made the killer a deal that he’d get you to sign over the stock options.”

            Belinda wanted to grab her aching forehead, but her shoulder hurt too much to raise her opposite arm.  “Come to think of it, I think Reedy was about an eighth Nez Perce.  Maybe he thought that had some weight here in Spokane?”

            “Well it wasn’t enough weight to make a grab for my casino.  It’s good it’s not publicly traded.”

            “So that’s why everything I own or love has been raped.  They can’t find the stock certificates.”  A lightbulb went on inside Belinda’s head.

            “What about the gold? Isn’t it in a safe deposit box at his bank?”  She remembered the key she’d found with the certificates--Coca Cola stocks?  Yikes.

            “Might be gold certificates.  I don’t know the intricacies of the U.S. law vs. tribal law regarding that.”  The killers think you have it and they’re not going away till they get it.”  Maddie shook her head.

            “But I don’t know where it is either!”  Alarms went off in Belinda’s head--she needed to go back to the loft and read those certificates discreetly hidden behind her painting.  And she needed to see if the damn key fit anything in the warehouse.  But what if somebody was lying in wait?  Maybe he’d give up?  Nope, not after two murders.       

            Belinda waited till Maddie had gone to work to call Phillip.

#

            Phillip answered, “Hello?” with a sob in his voice that actually wrenched Belinda’s heart.  “Pop Phil? This is Belinda.  I’m so sorry about mom.”  More sobs.

“I think we need to talk about mom’s funeral pretty soon.”

            “Eric and Gary went with me to the funeral home.”  Snif. “Then Gail and Kitty went back to the house for me and got some clothes for Rachel to wear--you know...”

            Yes, she did know that Phillip’s daughters would choose the dress her mother would be buried in.  She wanted to scream.  But she had something more important in mind.

            “I’m going to go to the loft and work I guess.  I can’t do anything else right now.”  Like get those certificates. “Tell your kids if I learn the coroner’s release date for mother, I’ll call you.”

            She texted to Chris.  am going to mom’s house to get dress for mom’s funeral.  He immediately responded, ‘k, let me no what u find out.  That should keep him out of the way.

            First more pain pills or she’d never get through today.

            Driving with one arm was worse than it seemed.  Muscles, tendons, bones and nerve endings were in the middle of her shoulder, she discovered.  The pills gave her a floating sensation like an out-of-body experience.  “Ha!” she laughed.  Nobody better get in front of me todaaaaayyy.  I weel run you over like a bug.

#

            She started the Toyota and drove to the loft.  She also called Sam and left a message.  “I wish you would answer.  I think I know where the certificates are and I’m going to get them from the loft.”  Well wasn’t that special.  On her own, as usual.

            No cars, especially blue ones, were parked anywhere on the street or parking lots.

Maybe minus two degrees had something to do with that.  Heavy from three layers of clothing, it was hard to bend her already aching arms.

            The two deadbolts on the door now could only be opened with keys that hung around her neck on a chain. 

            Upstairs she went to the painting, took the envelope off the back and pulled out one of the papers.  She knew what they would be but she shook when she realized how valuable that stack of vellum actually could be.  She didn’t find gold certificates in that stack.  If the little key would somehow open the safe upstairs, she could end this whole affair.  The certificates fit inside her jeans against her body with a lot of ouching her way through the layers of clothing.

            She noticed a vase with long dead flowers she’d brought to the studio to paint sometime last summer.  They were so depressing she picked up the vase, headed for the trashcan which had been moved.  She’d forgotten how heavy that crystal vase was.  She looked around for the trashcan.

            Hair stood up on the back of her neck when one of the down stairs creaked.   Oh, God, not again.  She stepped to the inside door and opened it a crack.  A head covered with a huge coat was coming up, feet tip-toeing like a bad cartoon character.  Someone else was behind the first person.

            Anger took over what sense she had left.  Belinda heaved the vase of dead flowers at them.  Three hundred marbles popped out of the vase and pelted down the staircase like a Pachinko machine gone mad.  She gasped as the two bodies flapped their arms.  That’s when she saw the huge knife in the first one’s hand that stabbed into a stair as the body went sailing backward.

            She ran to her work table, grabbed a roll of blue painter’s tape and, hearing nothing from the pileup at the bottom of the stairs, hurried down, dusting marbles off the stairs as she went, panting at her own audacity.   She grabbed the first person’s arms, pulled back the coat sleeves and wrapped half a roll of tape around wrists and hands.  Then repeated it on the second person, shaking so badly she thought she wouldn’t be able to finish.  To make sure, she ran as fast as the marbles would allow back upstairs to the utility box, found duct tape and returned to wrap up their legs as well.  Then jerked the hoods off two heads. 

#

            Gail?  Holy Shit! And Chris.  Conked out cold.  She put some more duct tape around the blue tape then ran more of it down to their feet from the hands taped behind their backs.  She almost pulled the knife out of the stair it was impaled on, but tiptoed around it instead, calling 911 and Sam and Maddie and everybody else she could think of.

            After the place was scoured with policemen who fought the marbles with every step, Sam rolled up.  “I bet you’re hell on turkey trussing.”

            Still shaking, too angry to cry for once in her life, Belinda sat in the Toyota with its windows down and the heater blasting not very hot air.  She knew her sister-in-law and her supposed boyfriend would disappear if she took her eyes off them.  Imagine those two colluding--what a love match.  Bile rose in her throat.  She wondered if Phillip’s whole family killed her mother.

            After the crime scene was released, Belinda took a can of WD-40 upstairs to the last place she hadn’t been able to get into in the warehouse--the fake Red Cross door.

            “I’ve never seen a double door safe before,” Sam said.

            “We need one of my step-sisters to crack this lock.  I can’t believe Gail and/or Chris could open every single lock I put on this place.”

            “Not to mention her being a knife killer.  Now we know where she got the help to get Reedy up on the canvas.  Nice touch painting him too. Locks don’t keep out the bad guys.” 

            She tried another combination.  She’d been through all the birthday dates, anniversary dates, and holidays, famed war battle dates she could think of.  Then she took a leap of logic and tried the date the first Coca-cola stock certificate had been issued in the 1950’s.  The lock popped open.  With great anticipation she pulled the door on its rusted hinges toward her.  A safe-deposit box was concreted into the wall.

            “Forever more!”

            “Forever more?” Sam said as he grinned at her, dimples deepening.

            “My mother’s favorite swear word.”

            “Aha.  Now what are you going to do?”

            “I’m going to try this little key...She inserted the key that had accompanied the  stock certificates.  Inside was packed with stacks of plastic envelopes, each holding a solid gold one-ounce Eagle coin.  She couldn’t take her eyes off of that box.  “What did you say gold was selling for?”

 

                                                THE END

My blog for 6/1/2013 Spokane Serial Episode Seven

            Just then Madrigal, dressed in apple green, flounced through the emergency room cubicle curtain.  She read Belinda’s mind.  “Well, you’ve got no choice now but to come home with me.”

            Belinda didn’t want to live in a Lincoln like a bag lady. “No.  I’m going to hire a body guard around the clock.  Then I’m going to move to a new house.”

            “So you have bottomless pockets of money?”

            “Not really.  But my insurance agent called me.  I’ll have some left from the insurance money.”

            “Let me put this another way.  You’re coming home with me.  If you don’t cooperate, I’ll grab your shoulder till you squeal.”

            “Oh forevermore.”  Drugged on pain pills, the Lincoln didn’t sound so bad.

#

            On wy to Maddie’s Belinda texted Sam. Did u find blue car drvr?

Pain stabbed her shoulder.  The hospital sling didn’t help the broken collar bone at all.

            Of course, he texted back.  U didnt luk so gud last time I saw u.

            Well, who dz the blu car belong to?  She replied.

            A guy name of Sears.

            Texting set her arm on fire.

            “Sears?  That’s Phillip’s last name.”  Her stomach knotted, which made her shoulder hurt more. 

            “Do you think your stepfather is a killer?” Maddie said.

            “Heck no.  He didn’t even stand up to my mother when she was on a tear.”

            Sears my stpfther, she texted back.  U call me at Maddie’s OK?  2 much pain.

            ‘K he finished and ended the call.

            “There are probably a couple thousand Searses, you know.”

            “I don’t understand any of this. Where are we going?  Do you actually have a house?”

            “Sort of.  We’ll be there real soon.  Just sit back and try not to move.” 

            The Lincoln rode like it was on a cloud.  Must be the pills.  Too bad they didn’t work on the shoulder...

#

            Maddie pulled into a parking garage attached to the newest Spokane Casino. “Here we are, home sweet home.”

            “You lie.”

            “Nope, come on.  Do you want me to get you a wheel chair?”

            “Over my dead body.”  Belinda regretted that crack with every step to the apartment on the seventh floor which had its own private elevator.

            Maddie opened the door to a room done in beige and fifty shades of blue.  It was a suite actually, two bedrooms, with a view to Idaho.

            She waved Belinda into the suite with a huge smile.  There are advantages to being Native American.

            “All the Native Americans have their own casino apartments?”

            “Only the ones who own the casino.”

            Belinda’s mouth dropped open.  She gaped at every part of the apartment.  Everything upscale and brand new.

            “I was thinking you need to paint a picture for me, to go right there.”  She pointed to a recessed place on the wall.

            “Absolutely. She managed a grin for her friend.  But I may be out of business soon.  The destroyed painting I was working on was valued at $3200, and that was before it was finished!.  Now I can’t use my arm.  I may starve to death before the shoulder repairs itself.”

            Maddie walked to change the thermostat and tossed her serape over her head onto a soft lamb sofa.  “I don’t think so.  One of the largest stockholders of the original building conceptualization board was....well, sit down, we need to talk.”

            “We do?”

            “Yes.  I didn’t get a chance to tell you that your father was one of the originators and contributors to the casino.  Which is probably why all this is happening to you.  I just thought maybe I was imagining things.”  Madrigal stood and started to pace the room, her eyes on some horizon known only to her.

            “But my father wasn’t Native American.”

            “Right.  But previous to 1988 when the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed, the tribal councils didn’t have enough money to build a real casino and it was critical to the well being of all our tribes. 

            “Your father made the initial loan in 1986 to open the Child of the Sun Casino.  He was making gaming machines all over the country and had the only company that knew how to make the Cadillac of machines.  He knew that Indian Gaming actually was in action long before 1988.  The U.S. Congress made a mess of regulation, since their goal was obviously skimming. 

            “Your father explained to the tribal conference that they could buy his machines because the Supreme Court would allow the Gaming Act soon.   Meanwhile, his machines were sold all over the United States, first to states that allowed gambling and next to the tribes in anticipation of the regulatory act.”

            Belinda interrupted. “Wait a minute... I’m beginning to see why Chris was adamant about marrying me.  Somehow he must have found out about an inheritance I didn’t know I had.”  Was it Chris who had killed her ex and her mother?  So he could marry her, then kill her as well and inherit a possible fortune?  Or was it Reedy who ran his mouth about an inheritance he could claim until somebody (Chris?) stepped in.

            “No, not puppy-eyed Chris.”   He was adamant a bout marriage, but he wasn’t mean.