By the way; in response to questions about the way the names of certain people/dogs/places are pronounced, here's a phonetic list of some of the ones you'll most often encounter in the series:

"Abelyarde", Abel's first name as the Claire's captain, is pronounced "Uh-BELL-yurd".
"Caupoc" = "Cho-POCK"
"Lawrie" = "Law" rhymes with (appropriately) "chow", not "law".
"E-Etrusca" = "Aye-eh-TROOS-kah"
"Waraq" = "Wah-RAH-kuh"
"Marisco" = "MOUR (rhyms with "our")-iss-koe"
"Paruparo" (Coco) = "Pah-ROO-Pah-roe"
"Rube" (Cochrane) = "Ruby"
"Jadzsi" = "JAAHD-see"
"Mira" = "MEE-rah"
"Mount/Glenn Bracken" = "BRAH-ken"
"Espiridion" = "Es-peer-EE-dee-ahn"
"Tumac" = "TOO-mock"
"Ramon" = "Rah-MOHN"
"Kyeto Tlatli" = "KOY-eh-toe TLAH-TLEE" (This last name has a double "tongue-click" that's hard to pronounce; it's a sound common in Nahuatl, which is, by the way, pronounced "NAH-WATT").
"Lazario Belle-Aves" = "Lah-SARE-ee-oh BELL Ah-VAZE"
"Lucjan" (Cass's real first name) = "Loo-KAHN"
"BelCampo" = "Bell-KAHM-poe"
 "Anais" = "Ah-nye-EES"
"Akele" = "Ah-KAY-lee"
"Maiqui" = "My-KEE"
"N'Dolo" = "En-DOH-lo"
"Mbembwe" (Cyrus) = "Em-BEM-bway"
"Tia" ="TEE-ah"
"Mircea" = "MEER-shah"
"Miri (Burningwind) = "MEER-ee"
"Cholley" (Cap'n) = "CHAH-lee" (You'd be surprised how many people mispronounce "Cholley"!)
"Auguste des Anges" = "Ah-GOOST deh-SAHN-jas"
"Antwane Charbeau" = "Ann-TWAHN Shar-BOW"
"D'Senga" (the cabinetmaker) = "Doo-SHANG-gah"

AND: I should have listed it here, but comments regarding the DOPS series should come to Pilothead.Press@gmail.com; for info/comments regarding childrens' titles, the address is Sanderling.Shores@gmail.com.

This, by the way, is the Claire du Lac Cruise Line logo:

(The slogan, in French, roughly translates to "Set Sail & Celebrate!")

 

Below is the bow-art of the Claire du Monde, Abel's ship:

The latter half of July finds me with a new laptop, another HP Pavilion, which is lighter than the old one, and more importantly, runs much less hot; no more lugging that huge, 6-inch cooling fan pad around! The new machine also has more RAM, always a boon to those working with powerful 3D modeling/animation/graphics programs. The cons? WINDOWS 8.1. U.G.H.. While it only took a few minutes for me to learn the ins and outs of the new OS, I find it to be a tremendous nuisance; every time I'm working near the margins that silly column of icons flies out. There's probably a way to disable it but I'm too lazy after having to download and customize all that software to go hunting for it. The long and the short of it is that despite this machine's being easier to work with (and yes, I could reconfigure Windows 8.1 to look like Windows 7) I still like my heavy old workhorse better; it's outperformed Dell, Apple, and Toshiba (not to mention a geriatric IBM), and I give kudos to HP for this, despite the fact that their printers are not my favorite peripherals (ink-greedy).

This having said, I won't even go into what it took me to update the near-dozen Adobe programs I'm running; at the same time I "upgraded" to 8.1 Adobe decided to revamp its CC software (which is the online-only step above CS 6 versions) to CC 2014, which converted all my legit copies to trial-only versions...there went another 2.5 hours down the drain, chatting with the thank-God-helpful Adobe tech. Anyway...new computer, big deal, it's cool now, I'm cool now.

Since the release of all three versions of The Shadow-Dogs Journeys, work has continued sporadically on Collin O'Daurc, and DOPS VI (Nightingale). I've also done something I normally don't do, which is start on the D6 illustrations! Usually, I have to be pinned down and threatened in order to get me to draw anything, but this time I actually dove right in with a frontpiece of Kanga (who is "the Nightingale" introduced in D5). This was followed by a double-page spread of the captain's quarters of the Claire du Monde, with Abel and Baron; and a bonzer-fine crib it is, too! Then came the title page spread, which for the first time shows the top two DOPS "power duos", Cass & Lawrie/Abel & Baron, together. And, the Claire herself fills the page, behind Baron. This is one of the "really big things" to happen in the series so far, as it of course brings the Cass/Abel storylines together, and they thereafter continue for the rest of the series as an interwoven braid rather than two parallel but separate storylines.

 

Abel, Lawrie and Cass in Cormorant Atoll

(Baron, who's on the left, is on the other page, which isn't visible in this inset. This detail of the right-hand page of the title spread also give you a glimpse of the Claire du Lac logo on Abel's uniform, which insignia and slogan--"Celebrate & Set Sail" in French--also appears on the bows of all the Claire liners. A tiny bit of the Claire herself is visible as what appears to be a white building behind and above Abel on the left border.)

Readers have asked about character developments, and what happens to whom, and if there will be more major characters introduced; that last part I can't answer, since I've not gone beyond a rough synopsis for D7 and D8. I can't tell you the major things, because that would entail huge spoilers, but I can reveal or elaborate on the "minor" things, since most readers have already begun to note the changes.

Ramon, as everyone has no doubt realized, has become a more important figure than originally planned, as has Caupoc; Caupoc is at least as important as the Calderons (Evito & Tia), and Ramon even more so. (Caupoc's name is, by the way, pronounced "CHAH-puk".) However, in D6 you don't hear as much about Coco or Tumac, though Marisco figures as prominently now as Ramon, whose sidekick he becomes as unlikely as that seems. Marisco has been an interesting one to "flesh out", as he always seemed rather 2D to me, and it's been a challenge to "un-flatten" him and make him seem real. Which brings me to remark that Baron as a major character came out of nowhere; as far as I was concerned, as recently as the end of D4 he was just a leg-in-a-cistern (when he wasn't scaring the wee out of Gus at the beach). Well, THAT sure changed, eh what? He's catapulted to the front row, so to speak, and is now as important as Abel, Cass and Lawrie! 

Another character who's already been introduced but morphs later into a major player is Dr. John Birdee, the fiery Mohawk doc who can't resist piling into Lawrie every chance he gets. And, two important secondary characters who have yet to be introduced in person though I believe I've already referred to them (somewhere)--my guess is they'll become permanent in D7 though I'm not sure--are Marcus and Slate, an electrician and his apprentice who also turns out to be a talented welder/sculptor. Also, the Lawrie clan figures in the rest of the series, as does everybody's un-favorite pirate, Pilea. For other interesting folks like Auguste des Anges ("the Squire"), Pastor Musty and Captain Benjamin Silver ("Cap'n Ben") we can only wait and see. However, as you would imagine, Heidi and Lou Saperstein continue to appear as important "tertiary" characters (folks like Cato, Jon, Mario and Gus being "secondary" characters), and as the kids grow up, so do they, since adult-style tribulations loom...

So, that's the very latest in DOPS news, and as always, thanks for your interest and support, and God bless 'til the next time!

--CSW

July has been a busy month; Sally Lightfoot's Journey, a children's picture book for toddler thru elementary ages, has been reissued, hopefully in a better Kindle format thanks to Amazon's Kindle Comic Creator software which is still fairly new.

However, the publishing of The Shadow-Dogs Journeys was rather unexpected; it was a project I pulled out of an archived folder, said, "Okay, this isn't too bad, and the pics are fun", and issued in large-print, digital, and 6X9 trade paper format.

This one's quite unusual; we'll see what reviewers think. There haven't been any reviews yet as this is still a brand-new release.

Work on the C. S. Walkingheart web site continues--it has pages for Pilothead Press and Sanderling Shores, and the individual books issued by each.

AND--the first review came back for DOPS V! The reader said it was a "beautiful story" and I'm very relieved, because it was rather a departure from the action/suspense of DOPS IV, dealing as it does with Cass & Lawrie's relationship, which has always intrigued fans of the series. May it continue to be as well received...by the way, here's the D5 cover:

AND/AND...here's the tentative conceptual cover for Nightingale, DOPS VI:

The only problem is that it's quite a gloomy color scheme, and D6 is a happy book! So some adjustments may well take place.

By contrast, here's the cover for Collin O'Daurc, a fantasy that's much more a quick-read than DOPS:

By the way, you can preview Collin in the Preview Gallery at CreateSpace, which prints my books. This book is completely different from DOPS, a for the most lighthearted fantasy about a hair-stylist who has a stroke and wakes up to find himself in Tahiti and in the company of the presumably-deceased artist Paul Gauguin and his (historically undocumented) daughter, Jaune Brilliant. Although DOPS is quite funny in many places, this book could be classified Humor as well as Fiction or Fantasy. The book isn't finished, however, and I'm not sure when it will be.

That carries me up to the present; my main project at present is the web site, which will of course be linked to this blog. Also, I've started on the illustrations for D6 (witness the cover conceptual), which is unusual--because I don't particularly enjoy any type of art other than design work, I always have a fight with myself to get these books illustrated! However, of late it's been better, I'm almost enjoying the process, which is a big, positive thing!!!

  

Lawrie & Cass celebrating Cass's contract

 Last night's post was cut a bit short, as I was out of time. To continue my reflections on D5, Psalmsinger is mainly an intro to people, places and things that will figure prominently in The Drums of N'Dolo, (D7?) which will likely be another whopper like D4 (Espiridion). There has, however, been considerable interest in the semi-spoiler regarding D6 (Nightingale), which is that 6 characters will be getting married! And, more will be embarking on or rekindling broken relationships--so, D6 is indeed "the book of relationships". 

Mary Beth & Akele

   I should mention that D6 too contains quite a bit of previously-written material, which means that the book will probably be written fairly quickly, even though I'm also currently working on The Shadow-Dogs Journeys (the illustrated version, with the mini-paintings that inspired the Pilgrim's Progress-type allegory in the first place). The unillustrated digital edition is available for online reading at HarperCollins' Authonomy site, and is also available from Amazon as a 99-cent Kindle book. Also being worked on is Collin O'Daurc, a semi-fantasy which predates both DOPS and Shadow-Dogs by at least a decade. I've no idea when these two projects will be completed, as I work on them sporadically--as anyone who knows me is aware, illustrating things is my least favorite part of book creation!

The cover for the unillustrated digital Shadow-Dogs

Shadow-Dogs: Decision Crossing from 2003 (SOLD)

   But, now for a bit more about Nightingale...in D6 you learn a bit more about such semi-background characters as Anselm Cochrane, and his vintage feud with his father, who is of course Hiram Cochrane, master of the original Psalmsinger. And, as Cass and Lawrie are preoccupied by distractions such as modeling/moviemaking, you see the "Tunnel-Beast"-hunting shift over to the surprisingly intrepid trio of Heidi, Rachael and Annie. Who knew that sugar-and-spice Rachael had it in her? (Although Annie, who's full of piss & vinegar, and Heidi, proud owner of the "Saperstein Exploration Gene", obviously had it all along.) Which isn't to say, of course, That Gus and Rio are out of the running, by any means, and neither is Cholley (poor Justin, alas, will always be in it up to his neck, thanks to his job description). And Cato and Jon? Well, there are challenges and changes in store for them as well--as there are for Abel and newly-found sidekick Baron.

   Basically, that's the highlights so far. Of course there are plenty of details, but we'll just have to wait and see...

Falco Lawrie (Lawrie's 3rd-oldest sibling)

 

 

 

Just a note about the above graphic; as you've probably just figured out, it's actually Falco who's on the cover of D3, not Lawrie! Lawrie appears on the covers of D1, D4 (as a pissed-off teenager, along with an equally grumpy-looking Abel and a what-am-I-gonna-do-with-these-two-Aroyo), and D5. I happen to like this particular portrait as it has good reproduce-able qualities, and in its better-known half-face version, is even on one of my business cards (see below).

 Well, that's all for now...happy trails, my friends, until I think of something else hopefully witty to write!

DOPS V HAS ARRIVED!

   Well, DOPS V, Psalmsinger, (or "D5", as I and fans-who-have-become-friends call it) has been released, and is out for review!
   This book was a bit of an oddity to write, as I felt nearly detached from the process. I suppose this is in part because a lot of the material concerning Cass & Lawrie dates from about 2006 or so, and I was pulling in huge chunks of it, 25 pages at a time. Let me tell you, a lot of heavy editing was involved, mostly because when the material was written, there was no Mario, Gaston, Cap'n Cholley, Annie, Kevin--or Abel! So, those characters had to be worked into the storyline, and the season changed from mid-winter to summer.
   Inserting older material can be a challenge for a writer, for a number of reasons; for one thing, it's an odd feeling to have started a story and written about people when they're at a certain stage in their lives and personal relationships, and to have to go back and write a prequel. With the exception of the dilemma concerning the Cato/Jon relationship back in D2, D5 contains by far the oldest existing DOPS material. I hope the insertion/transition was seamless, and that there weren't any "blips". But the sentiment of such a large text-insertion is odd--you're thundering along writing about everybody as usual, and suddenly, you come to a canyon you have to leap. Only, there's actually a bridge, and it's the material you've just inserted, which you've written so long ago that even though the editing has it fitting the rest of the book like a glove, you've become emotionally distanced from it.
   I've been very much aware that Cass and Lawrie are the main reason most people keep up with the story, and D5 does deal with the next stage in their relationship. They're obviously very unique people, and therefore have a unique relationship which neither quite knows what to do with. Readers may get a bit annoyed with them in this book, as they do go back and forth exhaustively (pronounced, "Yeah, I'd like to smack 'em both about it.")...but as is generally known, Lawrie has to be absolutely certain about something before he takes a course of action, even while he's driving Cass, everyone else, and himself insane over it.

A MOST UNUSUAL SAGA OF MANY TIMES AND PLACES...

...Such is the nature of DOPS, or The Days of Pilothead Sound, as the series is called, though some people think the "D" is for "Dogs", since that's the name of the first book, The Dogs of Pilothead Sound. In truth, there wasn't meant to be more than one volume in the series, but we all know how that went, since we're currently at five and counting!

  For those of you new to the series, DOPS is a story of ordinary people who turn out to be extraordinary, extraordinary people who turn out to be ordinary after all, and animals who everyone thinks are ordinary, but somehow never are. Though the first book is set mostly in Maine with flashes over to an alternate setting in Bolivia, the series ultimately visits many countries in addition to the Americas, though familiar locations and characters are never abandoned.

  What is DOPS about? In a nutshell, it's an adventure series, though it has dashes of other genres (most of 'em, in fact) as well. It starts out with one man's determination to haul himself out of a bad case of artist's block which leads to one life-change after another, culminating in a scenario he would never have imagined in his wildest Edgar Rice Burroughs-type dreams. The people that he meets in the course of this journey are every bit as important as he is himself; he is only the starting point and, as he finally realizes, the catalyst to setting in place a number of seemingly impossible goals and manifestations.

  I'll say right up front that the books aren't for everyone; they're literature rather than quick-read fiction of the sort that's so popular these days. The language of the narration is at times archaic, as it would be right around the turn of the 20th century; but that gives it a whimsy all its own if you're willing to stick with it, and it certainly isn't without its moments of absurd humor. The attention given to character development is paramount, as is the delving into what those characters believe and why they do--or neglect to do--various things.

  The books are modeled after classic adventure series of the 19th/20th century, and it requires an investment of time and patience to get through them, though only the first is a bit slow in getting to the action...well, if you call driving off a bridge and encountering a pack of dogs who obviously have their own culture and digging pieces of a murder victim out of a cistern "slow". The writing has been compared to that of James Michener, Jean Auel, Ken Follet and Gary Jennings; I tend to think a mix of John Steinbeck, H.P. Lovecraft, and Albert Payson Terhune is more like it, as their voices and styles are a bit less modern.

At any rate, the first four published books of DOPS are as follows:


D1: The Dogs of Pilothead Sound
D2: The Song of Pilothead Sound
D3: Night-Trails Through Pilothead Sound
D4: Espiridion

  Currently being worked on are the following:

D5: Psalmsinger
D6: Lammergeier
D7: Camerlengo

  As you might gather from the titles, the first three are set primarily in Pilothead Sound, which is a quaint if touristy town with several districts (Greenleaf, Tidewater, Chapel) and earns most of its dollars from dog-related activities and the hiring out of its pilot boats with their Canine Rescue League. Also present, however, are glimpses into an alternate location with a parallel storyline in the Amazon Basin; as the series progresses the two storylines slowly merge.

  Assuming you're familiar with the series already, you might be wondering how DOPS got its start: Well, the whole adventure began with the glimpse of a Poodle out my bedroom window--! But, that's the truth of it; I was vacationing with my parents in Fenwick Island, DE, back in 1996. We stayed in a one-storey cottage up on 5' stilts; "Bauer House", I called it, after its owner. We rented Bauer House after Clark's Cottage, upon which the "Dancing Sailfish" of Sandpiper Beach in DOPS is modeled, was no longer available (it was ultimately torn down to make way for a mcmansion--appalling and sad). But, back to the Poodle.

  Another cottage stood next to ours, owned by a woman whose name I only recall as being "Jane" because she did rather resemble the Jane I best remember, Jane Goodall the Magnificent. Many fascinating things happened over at Jane's, such as the night when two-giant-mountain-men-who-were-twins played the fiddle until the wee hours of the morning. But, it was the visiting Poodle who got my attention.

  Jane had a small side deck, plain board with a white-painted railing; and there one breezy afternoon lounged a Standard Poodle, of the coat-coloration known as "parti-"; he was sandpiper-brown for the most, but with splashes of auburn, amber and salt & pepper  all through his curls. He wasn't a young dog by any means, nor was his coat particularly well-kept; he was in a freestyle summer-clip, and very content as he lay there with his wonderful liver-colored nose testing the roiling breezes.

  I alas had no camera; but it was an easy image to remember, and I did a sketch later which I still have somewhere squirreled away. I thought, If this were my dog, I would name him 'Sanderling', after the spritely brown and sand-colored water birds that poke and dodge along the water's edge. The title Sanderling of Pilothead Sound came to me in a chunk, as titles often do; it was a children's picture book that I anticipated, with watercolor plates. And, it was not to be, at least not yet.

  When I returned to my rented cabin in Scientists' Cliffs, I thought of getting to work on "Sanderling" but another title persistently nudged it out of the way; and that title was The Dogs of Pilothead Sound. Well, alright; so there were to bemore mutts than the Poodle alone. I myself had an Adirondack Dog, Mira, who of course is the matriarch of the Shoreland Pack in DOPS, and whom we meet in the intro of D1. But, it wasn't until 1998 that I actually began work on DOPS, and I began with sections that had to do with Cato and Jon, with nary a pooch in sight.

And the irony of it is that here I am fifty pages into the writing of DOPS V (which my circle of intimates and I simply label "D5"), and there STILL is no Sanderling! Oh, there's a Poodle, mind you, but his name is "Josta", short for "Jostaberry", and Cass is his Person. In fact, there are several noteworthy Poodles, Typhoon, Thunder and Raine, but still no Sanderling. Ah, well, I'm not worried; I'm sure he'll be along eventually!

  So, there you have the beginning of it, for what it's worth; each of the characters has his/her own little story of creation, but that's for a different entry, as I'm able to pull together more details from memory fragments (Abel, for example, started out as a mere reference to a cruise ship captain named "Captain Cruz" in what was previously-written material that will probably wind up in D6 or 7). May we enjoy the unlikely continuity of it all!