Whimsy & Woe
@whimsy-woe
The author of the Grumble & Gasp series, Brude Bowyer writes dark, whimsical tales of questionable heroes, felonious puppets, doodling gods, and things that go bump in the night. Welcome to the Illuminated Earth.
Chapter 3 of the Grumble and Gasp prequel is now live! And as promised, here’s your behind-the-scenes look at the real medieval marginalia art that inspired this week’s episode. Behold… the mighty chicken knight. This brave warrior was drawn in the margins in France during the 13th century. Now tell me, can there be a nobler steed than an overgrown chicken? I think not. Just look at this magnificent creature. It comes equipped with a built-in alarm clock, will do the strutting for you even on your least confident days, and is fully capable of going full velociraptor on your enemies with those heel spurs. Come to think of it… I may have been a little hard on the riding rooster in this week’s chapter. Those heel spurs have me reconsidering everything. www.wrizzit.com/post/grumble-and-gasp-of…
If you’ve read any of the Grumble and Gasp stories, you may have noticed they take place in a world where the drawings from medieval illuminated manuscripts are entirely real. Killer rabbits. Snails as horses. The whole delightful mess. But here’s a little secret: With the exception of Grumble and Gasp themselves, every single character in the series is taken directly from the realest of really real marginalia illustrations! So I thought it might be fun, each week when I drop a new chapter, to share the original artwork that inspired one of the characters featured in that chapter. But first… Here is the villain from chapter 2. Behold the Danse Macabre. Medieval marginalia is full of examples of everyday people partying down with death itself. These illustrations were meant to remind us that death comes for us all, whether pauper or prince. Madame Marrow from chapter 2 is a lovely woman, who just wants the best for her kids. She can be quite the pain in the neck sometimes!
If you’ve read any of the Grumble and Gasp stories, you may have noticed they take place in a world where the drawings from medieval illuminated manuscripts are entirely real. Killer rabbits. Snails as horses. The whole delightful mess. But here’s a little secret: With the exception of Grumble and Gasp themselves, every single character in the series is taken directly from the realest of really real marginalia illustrations! So I thought it might be fun, each week when I drop a new chapter, to share the original artwork that inspired one of the characters featured in that chapter. But first… Here is the beast we saw in chapter 1. Behold The humble man eating snail! No one knows why medieval monks had such a thing for drawing snails, but whatever the reason, the Mad Monk was no exception. Marginalia is full of examples of giant snails battling everything from knights to a dog riding an archbishop. Apparently the only thing more dangerous than snails in the middle ages was rabbits!
Grumble and Gasp's new adventure is live! www.wrizzit.com/post/grumble-and-gasp-of…
With the first Grumble and Gasp adventure now flying free as a bird on Amazon, I find myself in a strange and unfamiliar position. I suddenly have nothing to obsessively edit. For months my days have been filled with formatting, tinkering, proofreading, re-proofreading, and occasionally staring at commas like a suspect coin. Now the book is out in the wild and my hands don’t know what to do. Which means big announcement time. I have officially begun work on a Grumble and Gasp prequel! Set fifteen years before the first book, it will explore how these two dubious gentlemen first met during the Second Rabbit War. I’ll be releasing the story chapter by chapter here as a serial so I can hear your reactions, your theories, and your constructive criticisms before the whole thing is set in stone. The first chapter will appear this Monday, and I’ll aim to release a new chapter every Monday until the tale is told. I'm so looking forward to diving back into this world with all of you!
Yesterday I submitted the final draft of Grumble and Gasp to the publisher for printing. A culmination of six years of sporadic work and a lifetime of dreaming. When I told the wife, she celebrated in her own wee, charming way. She clapped her hands and cried out in Arabic, “My sisters, my sisters, he has killed the dead lion!” Which I’m sure makes much more sense as an Egyptian idiom than it does to my weird hillbilly brain. To me it brings to mind a fellow who wanders across a cold, dead beast, lops off its head, and then runs back to his friends to brag about his bravery. Still, I deeply appreciate the sentiment, and the frankly adorable delivery.
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1The Red Sea as seen from my back door... Well, ten minutes from my back door, anyway.
Love the ability to filter my feed. No more being force fed politics from countries I don’t even live in! No more nonfiction how-to be a writer who writes about how-to be a writer manuals! Yes please!