Merlin's Charge

Go to Amazon and read the blurb of my exciting new Arthurian novel.

My Horror Short Story

To read a horror short story that I wrote, BLACK CANDLES & BLOOD, go here:

http://web.me.com/cnelsonncc/The_Laughing_Face_of_Madness/Your_Stories.html

It's at a new website for all things horror by a Gather friend, Christopher (Gather is a social network site for talking about anything.)

Tedoul is an Australian Teddy Bear

Alan Bond wrote 3 teddy bear poems telling 3 teddy bear tales. I did the pictures. Here's one. Tedoul is hiding out with a wombat to escape a brush fire that is blazing overhead.

From Stone Garden Publishing, available wherever books are sold.

Google "Tedoul" to find it and get it - for young and old !!!

A review of my novel

I got a review for BAD MOVIES from Kay M at Gather:

Bad Movies By Peter Joseph Swanson
December 02, 2008 12:58 PM EST


Bad Movies is the third and final book in Peter's Tinseltown Trilogy. If you've read Peter's Hollywood Sinners and The Joan Crawford Murders you might wonder if this book could get any wilder. The answer is yes. I will admit that I blushed more while reading this book than I did the others. Perhaps it is because this one is set in the 1970's, a time that I was alive, and so the 70's slang and situations seem more real to me. But blushing or no, I had to find out what happened to Jill.

Others seem to notice something different about Jill that she isn't completely aware of. When she has those fleeting and distant memories of Mexico and surgeries and a body part long gone, she brushes them aside and looks to her pretty manicure for reassurance.

She's a pretty girl who won the tile of Miss Milk in her hometown pageant and she arrives in Tinseltown believing that the modeling agencies will surely be impressed. But life is tough in the city and her new acquaintance, a pirouetting photographer, lets her know that she will have to pay some dues if she wants to be a star. He introduces her to the world of bad movie making, mobsters and her new boyfriend, a nudist named Bod.

While living in a shaky house near a nuclear power plant with Bod (whose name is actually Bob but thinks Bod sounds more studly), she works on the films that she believes will catapault her to stardom. How could a movie with a scantily clad cavewoman in a desert with giant turtles and simulated naughtiness not be a hit? It ended up being the kind of film that 70's SNL's Leonard Pinth Garnell would have deemed "exquisitely bad."

If bad movies were all that she had to worry about than life would be relatively easy. But no, there are murders and earthquakes and fires and a psycho in a leisure suit and rubber mask chasing her about. And those strange bits of fleeting memory........

This book is a smorgasbord of hilarious characters and outrageous situations. Read this book and you'll feel that you've taken a very entertaining walk on the wild side.

You can find Bad Movies in paperback at Amazon and at http://www.stonegarden.net

BAD MOVIES (is a book)

BAD MOVIES is my new novel

The third novel of my Tinseltown Trilogy, Bad Moves, is now out. Here is the first scene:

Bad Movies

By Peter Joseph Swanson


prologue

I was packed into the most expensive beaded gown that I'd ever been packed into. With my knees bound together, I hop-skipped up the wide steps to the vast glossy stage. I was accepting my 1976 Celluloid Intelligentsia award for best supporting actress in a comedy. The comedian host made a face at me like it was too amazing an upset to be true. I was now the world's biggest sex change star. I wanted to bolt the other way. I wanted to run to the bathroom. I kept saying to myself, "I really am worthy," though I didn't quite believe it.

Smiling graciously, I seized my award. It was far heavier than I’d expected. I felt the big block of metal slip through my greasy fingers. It caught against a press-on nail, which for a sickening moment I feared might pop off and fly across the stage. I turned to the crowd that was so big I couldn't see anybody. In my distinctive voice that could be a bit like a frog I went into a gushing litany of heartfelt thank-yous to those craftsmen who'd made me clever, beautiful, and almost always in focus.

The instant I was backstage, an incredibly beautiful young woman with the most ludicrous cotton candy hair skedaddled up to me. She grabbed my award and said, "We need this back. It's not your real award."

I questioned her. "What?"

"You have to return this. It's just a prop. We'll send you your permanent one. Let go! See? We'll get you one with your name stuck right there!"

“Huh?” I didn't hear her. I was so out of it. I was high on myself. I thought she was trying to steal it. Of course I held on for dear life. My nails popped all over the backstage floor as we both jerked this way and that with it. Then a heavy cinderblock fell from high above and struck the beautiful woman on the head.
I'd been a fool to think she'd been brainless.

Lights started falling onto the floor with explosions of glass. Sparks showered down, igniting the dust on a curtain. A man in a tux ran by. He was screaming and holding his bloody forehead. If he was a big movie star I couldn't tell. One end of a long metal catwalk dropped down and swung out and hit the backside of the set. It ripped a swath out of it. As it swung back in, the comedian host of the show was stuck to it. He dragged across the backstage floor. There was blithe applause from out front. The comedian host pulled himself off the catwalk and scrambled to get back on stage, but the fire curtain that sealed the stage away from the audience dropped like a guillotine. He was knocked on his belly. The audience screamed in alarm. All was dark backstage until rows of ceiling work lights finally clicked on. I looked up and spotted a man in a yellow leisure suit in the ropes. He was dropping, slowing his descent by keeping himself tangled in them. When his feet finally touched the stage floor, I saw that he was very ugly.

He pulled out a pistol and shot at a charging security officer, stopping him dead in his tracks, if not killing him. Then the ugly man quickly turned and looked straight at me. His eyes were cold. I was mortified. I watched his finger squeeze as he fired his gun deliberately at me. The bullet was stopped by the award that I wouldn't let go of. He aimed and fired again. I was hit in the shoulder but I didn't feel it yet. I just stood like a dummy. I must have been hoping someone would yell, "Cut!" They didn't. He aimed again – he fired again. I dropped the award. I gasped in indescribable pain as the award crashed down on my pedicure. When I looked at the gleaming block of metal on the floor, I could see two bullet dents in it. The man aimed at me again and all I saw were his tiny mean eyes.

Then, like one of those science fiction movies that have a budget, several men stormed in and shot the ugly man with strange long guns that set off electrical bolts. The man convulsed and fell. As people still ran around screaming, more curtain dust flashed briefly into flames. The men in black grabbed the electrocuted man and dragged him away, while the colorful "Singing While You're Swinging" backdrop fell over all of us like a long parachute. I somehow just stood there under the crinkled blue sky.

When I woke up, I was being wheeled through a white tiled hospital shower room. I was still dripping with water as I was being shoved off to somewhere else in a wheelchair. A grinning doctor stepped up to me. He handed me a glass of champagne. “Congratulations.”

"Bless you," I said, grabbing the glass. Then I grabbed the bottle. The bullet was dug out of my shoulder on local anesthesia. I was awake so the cops could ask me impossible questions. I meant to ask, "How did I get shot?" but it came out, "How did I get the award?" A frowning lady cop shook her head like I wasn't anybody and hadn't deserved either.

~

And then there's another scene, and then the story starts over (almost) at Chapter One, to find out how she got there !!!

You can check out the blurb and order it from the publisher, Stone Garden Publishing:

stonegarden.net

Joan Crawford and the wardrobe lady

She charged into the wardrobe building, blowing more kisses in the direction of the secretary at the lobby, then looked at the two giant 1930s pictures of herself - one in a gorgeous maid’s uniform and the other in a sleek black beaded little number, both Adrian designs. She ignored all the other framed stars. “Those were the days.” She invited herself into the main studio.

“Miss Crawford!” Helen Rose greeted, stepping back from an easel. “How lovely for you to come back so soon. My, aren't you raring to go.”

Joan blew a kiss. “What a beautiful dress you have on. But then you do have the best taste in dresses.”

“Thank you.”

Joan said, “They say there was just another Joan Crawford out there. But I think she sounded like a he. I’m sure of it.”

Helen replied, “Probably your stand-in. And the cold is always going around.”

“Oh, sure. Are you making me a big white dress like Adrian would have done? Are the 30s back in fashion?”

“No. Not at all.”

“No?” Joan grew worried again. “But she was just seen – and that’s what she was wearing. That wasn’t your dress?”

“God, no.”

Joan was flustered. “What do you think of my new shoes? Aren’t they adorable?”

Helen said, “Yes. Very cute.”

“Are you sure? You like them, really?” Joan pointed her toes out this way and that. “You’re not just saying that? I trust your opinion. You have the best taste. I’m so glad this studio has you while I’m here. It’s a comfort to me.” Joan plopped down the heavy alligator portfolio and loudly unzipped it. “We’ll make a great team. Designers always love to work with me because I give one hundred and ten percent back. But I haven't worked hard enough yet for you though and I don't want to look like a frump.”

“I'll take care of that,” Helen assured her. “You won’t look like a frump.”

Joan gushed, “I brought ideas! Ideas ideas ideas, I'm so full of them and I can't wait to start working. We gotta ponce me up good. I want miles of taffeta so that I look like I just fell out off a cloud. I want it to swirl around me like a great magical carousel in some fanciful ballet. I want it so great that the department stores can't copy it. Goddam them! I won’t look like I came off the rack!”

Helen frowned. “But the department stores have always copied your wardrobe. You’ve been the biggest fashion influence on America. People certainly weren’t running out to wear what Gloria Swanson wore.”

“Sure – Adrian and I were the first great fashion team and we used to make fashion in the world. But now I'm too big a star for that. If you want the girl next door - go next door. This picture has to look bigger than it is, goddamn it, and it can't be sold in a department store. The script is a bit two-dimensional. I'm a bulldozer on gams. So we'll just distract them by pounding them over the head with dresses. That's how I got through most my past MGM weepies - making them look like a million bucks! Have you seen the script? Ain’t it a riot? I just yell at everybody and they call it a Joan Crawford picture. Goddam MGM!”

The rest of the THE JOAN CRAWFORD MURDERS is out in paperback at http://stonegarden.net/ (in general fiction)

a bit from my new novel (in paperback)

Joan washed her hands and then picked up the phone to dial her secretary to find out how much fan mail had arrived.

Henry Rogers, Joan’s publicist, stepped in the door. Mad at him for not getting enough newspaper coverage, she decided to make him wait and listen to her phone call, hanging up and redialing to get someone else, instead. “Marilyn, sweetheart, wake up. It's me. Joanie. I know you have nothing to wear, are you naked now? Are you laying on top of your bed naked? Are your breasts covered with your sheet? Tell me! I have some pink pantyhose you can have. Are you awake? Hello?”

“What?” Marilyn Monroe asked.

“You can have 'em!” Joan offered, winking at Henry. “Hey! They're all the wrong color for me and I didn't even pay for them. MGM did. I was going to wear them for my Two Faced Woman number, but we decided I'm going to play a black woman - just to make it exotic. Pink is all wrong. And it's a bright pink. It'll go with your coloring quite beautifully.”

“Pantyhose?”

“Yes.”

Marilyn asked, “Have you worn them already?”

“What?”

“Did you put them all the way on – all the way up?”

“Of course,” Joan assured her. “I thought it would be very very exciting for you to have a few pairs of pantyhose I've already worn, for good luck, you see, since I'm such a big star and you're just hoping to get established.”

“No, thank you, Miss Crawford, but I really don't want any pantyhose that have already been worn by somebody else. That's just … ”

Joan imperially insisted, “I am NOT just any ol' somebody else. I am Joan Crawford and I am offering you Joan Crawford pantyhose. I thought that would be exciting for you - being that you're so disadvantaged right now and I understand how that is. When I came to Hollywood I had nothing but the few clothes I stole from some friends in Kansas City, which is neither here nor there right now, I needed something! I was winning all those dance contests and had to wear a dress! Nobody was kind to me! Everybody was waiting their turn to kick me back down. I had to scratch and claw for everything I have now!”

“No thank you Miss Crawford. That's so very sweet of you to think of me, but I don’t know … ”

Joan slammed the phone down, gulped her drink, and turned to Henry. “I try to help. You just heard me try. I know what it’s like to be just starting out in this town and not have much. Can you believe the little starlets today? Back when I was just beginning I'd have taken a pair of silk stockings if they were offered to me and I wouldn't dream of asking if they'd been used, I'd just look for the run! What is it with people today, the young people - they're so damn SPOILED! They won't even take a perfectly perfect pair of pink pantyhose that goes well with their coloring. How does she know she won't need them someday? Why doesn’t she just let me help her get started? I know I sure needed help when I first came to town. I was grateful! If it wasn’t for Bill I’m sure I’d be a blah housewife somewhere right now.” Joan squinted at the publicist. “And why are you here? What is it that you do?”

THE JOAN CRAWFOD MURDERS can be found in general fiction at http://stonegarden.net/