Skook Words (and Pictures) #14

Good morning!

I hope your week has gone well. You deserve a good week. Heck, you deserve a good and happy life. I hope you’ve been having that.

Boosting the Signal

Speaking of things we deserve –

Back in 2020 I did the cover illustration for Spinning Karma, humorous novel by Joshua Samuel Brown. It’s a funny, well written book. You don’t have to believe me, here’s a review.


Joshua is not only an amusing writer, he’s also a friend. I got an email from him yesterday with his publisher’s sales figures for the book in 2020. According to them, no copies had been sold, period, last year. I understand that sales of novels by anyone who isn’t a brand name are way down but, dang, that’s worse than I thought. The book deserves more attention than that!

So, here’s a link to purchase the book via its publisher and another to purchase it via Amazon. It’s a good way to spend a few hours.

While you’re at it –


How Not to Avoid Jet Lag is Joshua’s collection of mostly true short stories. Each story features an illustration by moi. It’s currently only available as an ebook through Amazon. I like physical books so I’m going to have to convince him to put out a print on demand version. But, until then, the ebook version is light and easily carried.

Joshua started his writing career doing travel books. These are worth checking out whether or not you plan to visit the destinations described.

These Days …

I’m back at work delivering mail. Not much changed on my route while I was gone. One customer put a fence around her house so I no longer can walk across her tiny front yard to get to the next delivery.

We continue to be short handed. Yesterday we “rolled” three routes – that is, we only delivered the parcels for those routes. The mail stayed at the station to be delivered today. Next week, when more carriers have vacations scheduled, we’re expecting things to be worse. Our lack of staff has had one possible benefit: upper management called off the route adjustments that were scheduled to begin at our station this month. Upper management didn’t actually give a reason for calling off the route adjustments but trying to get an accurate count of how long it takes to deliver a route is hard to achieve when so many routes are getting split up and delivered by different people every day.

If you know anyone who is physically fit and ready to work 14 hour days (time and a half after eight hours, double time after ten), send them our way!

War and Recovery

I failed to scan the small amount of sketching I managed to get done this week. In lieu of new art, here is a gallery of illustrations from one of the scenarios from an unlikely to ever to be published Call of Cthulhu manual set during World War One. This adventure was set at a hospital for the recovering wounded. The poor bastards have gotten the attentions of both Nodens and Nyarlathotep focused on them. Things won’t go well.

And that’s it for this week. Take care of yourself. Spend some time with friends. Pet a squirrel and chat with a raven.

See you in seven!