A continuation of my e-mail correspondence with the artist who did the covers to my books oh, so many years ago, who I just found.

Dear Duncan,


I'm Romas' wife, Allison, and I must tell you this little thing about Star Axe: You mention not noticing the ethereal head on the slab before your great warrior. That little element - not called for by the art directors but inspired by your manuscript - was Romas' first leap into interpreting the books he read, as opposed to simply painting what he was told. He managed to maintain that level of communication betweenwriter and artist for 27 years. Oh, and our son, Guy, made us turn the painting to the wall until he was 10, thanks to the ghostly head you missed! He's now 14 and will get a huge kick out of "Frog Axe".


It is interesting but not surprising that you've heard of the "Goofyfoot Gurl" series, but I was surprised you discovered it in a blog only yesterday. What blog was it and how/why did you find your way there? Are you familiar with PreTeena?


Since I have you and we're on my favourite subject: What comics/books/graphic novels do you love/hate? If you have time, I'd genuinely like to know. I grew up reading illicit, hidden Playboys in our drunken neighbor's garage; I used to tear out all the full-page colour comics and kept a portfolio of styles and jokes, beginning when I was about eight or nine years old. I loved the simple reduction of line (the rosy-cheeked fat exec in bed with the bursting ingenue: He says: "Of course I share everything with you -- that's a Mouton Cadet de Rothschild 1948 . . . ").


Does Pegasus of Bend stock the Vertigo series of graphic novels ("Lucifer", "100 Bullets", "Sandman")? I was and remain a big fan of "100 Bullets" and think it would make a fine TV drama for a cable company like Showtime or HBO.


Thank you for letting me blab about comics. My life-long aspiration is also my passion, and I love to exchange opinions (the more spirited the better) about the genre.


We will recover the paintings for your books. Ro is meticulous about preservation - not so much about cataloging. I think I know where they are.


Best,
Allison


To which I answered:

Well, howdy, Allison!

Yeah, I carry all kinds of books. Full runs of Lucifer, 100 Bullets, in fact every Vertigo title in print, I think. I try to have every good book I can find. I do lots of cartoon books, fantasy art, children's books (Where the Wild Things Are...), Edward Gorey, Silverstein, and lots and lots of pin up books. Think Bud Plant in a store. It's kind of a strange mix; packed into a very busy downtown tourist area, in a very active but isolated tourist area.

My wife, Linda, who I met in a writer's group 25 years ago, owns a used bookstore, called the Bookmark. She sticks strictly to used books, whereas I'll carry anything that interests me.

Lately, I've started carrying regular fiction, of course, science fiction and fantasy, but also anything else that catches my eye. The beatnik authors, Kerouac, Burroughs, the hip new authors, Palanhiuk, Eggers, the cult authors, Phillip K. Dick, Lovecraft, hippie authors, Robbins and Vonnegut. Just anything I think will catch the casual browser.

I have thousands of art books, which because of lack of space, are mostly carried spine out -- pretty ridiculous and hard to sell. I just consider them my collection until they sell, I guess.

I sort of threw out trying to choose which subjects to carry a while back.

I'll try to find Frog Axe for you, and get it scanned. Your son might get a kick out if.

I'm not very technical. I'm very, very active blogging -- it's where I can get my writing jones fixed. But you'll see it's all words.

Is your strip an online strip? Forgive me for not knowing -- but even our little art world is huge, if you know what I mean.

Haven't delved into the online strips, yet.

I check out Comics Reporter, Journalistic, and the Beat every day....that's probably where I heard about Goofyfoot Gurl. Ironically, I had just put the title into the notebook I keep by the computer of stuff I need to buy for the store.

Also not real conscious of current strips.

My favorites. I tend to look for authors more than artists. Garth Ennis, Gaiman, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, the usual. But I have very broad taste, and nothing is out of bounds.

I love kind of guiding people off the street from the material they recognize, the the material they've heard of, to the material that seems familiar, to the material that is slightly out of their comfort zone, and onward.

Like I said, check out my blog, Best Minimum Wage Job a Middle Aged Guy Ever Had, if you want to know where my head is.

Thanks for looking for the paintings...I can't wait.

Yours,

Duncan

And later;

Dear Allison,

Wow. Good stuff. Looked it up. I'm pretty sure our local paper doesn't carry your strip, the Bend Bulletin, and most every other paper I read online. I'll check tomorrow, for sure.

I get the bulk of my material from Diamond comics, but use Baker and Taylor every week now as well. I'll check for your books first thing tomorrow.

Sorry I wasn't up on your work. It looks interesting.

Duncan

And then this morning:



hello, ramos and allison,


The picture a bit sun-faded, because it was above my desk for years. I hope this is a big enough scan.� Maybe you can touch up the colors.


Our friend, Brad Lesher did this. (Sorry, don't know how to get it on the blog, folks.)


In a rather amazing coincidence, I had come across a review of Goofyfoot Gurls the very morning of the day I e-mailed you. Considering that I browse dozens of sites a day, and ignore most of them, I find it fascinating that I had written down the title in my notebook to order. I found it on a site called; Occasional Superheroine. And I noticed that Journalistica has a link.


I've got PreTeena bookmarked now.


Enjoy.


Dunc

Cool things happening. The exciting thing for me is at the end, so you can skip to that...

This is going to sound egotistical at first, but bear with me. It's anything but.

I googled my name last night, as I do on a monthly basis. Mostly, I want to know if my musings have been picked up by anyone else. Find them in odd places, a blog about airport security, Jay Leno's official site, a random business blog, a random comic blog, etc.

Anyway, what pops up mostly are my books that I wrote in the early '80's; Star Axe,Snowcastles and Icetowers. They seem to be all over the place, but interestingly enough, they are in England, New Zealand and Australia as much as the U.S. because they had an English publisher as well. I find my name on lists of books people have read.

And I get a fair amount of ridicule. Mostly, because it belongs to a genre, sword and sorcery, that get little respect, even among the fantasy and science fiction folk. Thud and Blunder. You know. So people will pick up things out of context, and make fun of it. That's fine, especially when I see that I'm in good company....many big name authors, who I enjoy, are roasted as well.

An example is a guy getting excited, (in a very snarky way), to have found a "cross between Conan and Star Wars!"

Well, not really. I actually had the title Star Axe before I ever heard of Star Wars.

But, it's O.K. It makes me much more sympathetic to other artists, actually. I think people can say pretty mean things about artists, and it never occurs to them that the artist might hear it.

Strangely, after this much time has passed, I have a pretty nuanced view of my books. First of all, I think the author's voice is very different from the author himself. If you come in my store and say you read my blog, I'll immediately say, "I'm so much cooler online," just to forestall expectations and possible disappointment.

And I've learned, too, just from my own reactions, but also from what I get from others, that people who know you.....probably won't like what you wrote. Whereas, a complete stranger just might. I won't go into all the explanations as to why I think that is.

Fortunately, early on I ran into enough people who had read my book before they met me, who genuinely seemed to like my books, a couple of them really, really liked my books! The majority don't say anything at all, and I take that to mean their mommy taught them right.

Still, I know that I was beginner, I poured my heart and soul into them, but what did I really know about writing? It is what it is. I still think that a 14 year old in England, who has read Conan and LOTR's and see's those great Ramos covers and buys the book, might really enjoy it.

There never were any real reviews of my books. I ran across just one a year or so ago that gave me a 2 stars out of 5 review. But since he gave a Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin a 1 star, I kind of laughed. The Song of Fire and Ice cycle by Martin is the best fantasy written since Lord of the Ring's, and as far as I'm concerned, Martin is the American Tolkien.

Last night, I came across two reviews on Amazon. One, by a guy named Blue Tyson, who seems to review every book in sight, was less than complementary:

A Two Star review, out of Five Stars.

"Pretty ordinary sword and sorcery style novel, with, you guessed it, a Star Axe.

Not much of a story or character to be found here."

Hurts me to the core. But the other review was pretty cool:

A Four Star review, out of Five Stars.

"A small gem of fantasy, November 24, 2005
By dissimulo
While this book is not ambitious or unique, it is a tight, engaging fantasy story. I'm surprised it has never been reprinted and that there are no other reviews here.

Star Axe is a coming-of-age, sword-in-the-stone, epic-fight-vs-good-and-evil sort of fantasy. It is a similar style of writing to what you would find in Sterling Lanier's books, such as Hiero's Journey and Menace Under Marswood. It is a fun and easy read, but memorable. Not a fantasy great, but well worth picking up."


Another interesting thing that's happened is that my books are being put online; by three or four sites. Not sure why. They don't seem to be making money off them. Seems like a lot of work. Since my publisher hasn't paid me anything in 25 years, what do I care? It's kind of flattering to know that my books will be floating around in bits on the internet...well, forever.

I've thought it interesting that my books seem to be more interesting to people 25 years later than they were when they came out. That there are myriads of sites selling the books -- and after all, they are only getting older and more historic. So they are still going to be around after I'm gone, I guess. And it shows, there really is no substituting for having a real, live national publisher, otherwise how could my books have made their way to places like Finland and Norway and New Zealand?

Anyway, this all preamble to this.

I finally found the last name of the artist who did the covers to my first two books. I loved the art on these books, and felt very, very lucky. In fact, if my books have sold at all over the years, it probably has more to do with Ramos's covers than my writing. They were 'sword and sorcery' in appearance, while I thought of my books as 'heroic fantasy' which isn't quite the same thing, but I couldn't very well make demands.

The artist's name is Ramos Kukalis, and it appears he's had a successful career since doing my covers. I was able to find his homepage and e-mail him.

The following messages have been exchanged so far....:

"I don't know if you'll remember this, but my name is Duncan McGeary. We never communicated. I suspect we were both near the beginnings of our career, and my career of writing pretty much ended when I got married and started a business in 1984. Star Axe was my first book, Snowcastles was my second. I suppose this is a forlorn hope, but you wouldn't happen to have the original art, anymore? Or know who has it?

I've owned a bookstore here in Bend, Oregon for the last 28 years, specializing in S.F. and comics, but carrying pretty much anything else, as well.

I was delighted with your artwork; amazed really. I certainly liked them better than what Lundgren did to the third book, Icetowers....

I know it's been a long time, but maybe you have the artwork squirreled away in an attic or something.

Let me know.

Yours,

Duncan McGeary

(If you want to know what I've been up to, I have a blog: The Best Minimum Wage Job a Middle Aged Guy Ever Had.)

Hope to hear from you, and glad that you're still doing your art. Good for you.

To Which he answered:Dear Duncan,


Well, memories came flooding back with your email this morning. "Star Axe" was one of my first major book covers and is one of my all-time favorite paintings. Whenever I give a talk or presentation, "Star Axe" is always the first image I show. It does indeed go back, and I have only the vaguest idea where I might have put it. I will look over the next few days through my "archives" (my wife has a less attractive name for it) and hope I can find it for you. If I find "Snowcastles", would you be interested in that as well?


By the way, my wife is a syndicated cartoonist ("PreTeena"), and has written a new graphic novel series called "Goofyfoot Gurl". The first four volumes are out, and she just completed V and VI. You might run across them in your capacity as a bookstore owner.


Thanks for getting in touch, and I'll do my best to locate the painting(s) for you.


Best wishes,
Romas

To which I answered:

Brings back the nostalgia, doesn't it?

Yes, I'd be interested in buying either painting, though I admit Star Axe is my favorite. Funny thing, I actually had to have someone point out to me that there was a ghostly head in the painting. too cool. Had a friend do a parady of the painting, with a frog, called Frog Axe. :>

Yes, I just heard about Goofyfoot Gurl reading some blogs yesterday. Has a Christian theme? I will definately order them for my store, thank you.

I am very very interested in getting the original art. Please let me know.

The name of my store is, Pegasus Books of Bend.

Yours,
Duncan

This is all very exciting to me. I'll let you know what happens.