Pics
New Novel: WHIRLYBIRD ISLAND
(Scheduled for publication in August 2021 by Plaidswede Publications. Note that the image is NOT the cover, but just a digital drawing by yours truly.)
When I was a kid growing up in New Hampshire I loved watching the "whirlybird" seeds of maple trees half fall and half fly off the trees. I never thought in those days that the whirlybirds of memory would find their way into a book I would write, nor that I would come to equate the human soul as something like a whirlybird, its fate determined by earth, wind, and various forms of metaphorical fire. The object in the image titled "UNKNOWN" also comes from memory, the "dog tags" issued me when I was a soldier in Uncle Sam's army. Soldiers, maple trees, an island on a pond in Darby, NH, and whirlybirds all play roles in my new novel.
My Dad
WHIRLYBIRD ISLAND is dedicated to my dad, Elphege J. Hebert. Like so many servicemen and women my dad was traumatized by his experiences in war. I'm happy to say that he got over his trauma and went on to be a good father and provider for his family. I always wanted to write a novel about the aftermath of war, how trauma is passed on to the succeeding generations. I had to wait until all the old folks had died. That time arrived 2017 when I committed to writing WHIRLYBIRD ISLAND.
G.I. Keepsakes
These are tracings of some of the things I had with me when I returned from my hitch in the Army--rosary beads and a St. Christopher medal that my mother gave me when I went off to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, one of my dog tags, and a couple of standard medals. These things didn't mean much to me at the time, but they took on some significance when they were returned decades later by Edward Grimason, an army buddy who drove me home. I'd long forgotten that I'd left these items in his car, which turned up when he was cleaning out his mother's house upon her death. Eddie, who was an artist and a friend, died 2020. The "lost links" title and broken rosary refers to my identity as a lapsed Roman Catholic.
Whirlybird Island Setting
One of the entities that plays a big role in Whirlybird Island is the 1970s vintage Red Shift Commune. Osgood "Uncle Oggie" Stone, the leader and founder of the commune, makes his office/home in the converted school bus.
The Hebert Boys
That's me on the right and my brother Tony (Omer Antoine) on the left with our father, Elphege Hebert. Brother Paul hadn't been born yet. The photo was taken in Epping, New Hampshire, where my mother moved from Keene to be near her mother and brother after dad was drafted into the Navy.
Eight Novels
These are not the real covers, just my imagined spines in black and white of the first seven novels of Darby Chronicles, which I drew before I wrote the eighth novel, WHIRLYBIRD ISLAND. The phrase--life, death and laughs in a small town--I think is a fair summary of the stories. Note the bookends portraying the old man in the mountain. It was just a rock formation that collapsed in 2003, but it was also the symbol of my state and I'm determined to keep the spirit alive.
Sites in the Darby Novels
The geography of Darby is very much like Westmoreland, New Hampshire, across the Connecticut River from Putney, Vermont. Culturally, Darby is mix of many towns in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire. Note Darby's motto, Town Meeting Spirit 1753 to Doomsday.
I imagined Darby to contain four villages: Center Darby where you'll find the town common, town hall, library, school, post office, and fire station; River Darby, dominated by farms in the river bottom soils deposited over time by the Connecticut River; Upper Darby, where wealthy people established estates and built grand houses; and Darby Depot where most of the poor people life. Abare's Folly Mountain is a composite of Mount Monadnock in southwestern New Hampshire and Mount Ascutney in Vermont.
All the listed place names on the map pop up in plot elements of the Darby novels.
It Still Works
I wrote THE DOGS OF MARCH, my first published novel, on this standard Underwood typewriter. It belonged to the Rev. Ernest Vaccarest, my uncle, a Catholic priest, and the man I am named after. I don't know exactly how old this machine is, but Father Vaccarest died in 1956, so go figure. A typewriter is a word processor that saves directly to paper.
Scrabble Poem
The "octogenarian" referred to in this poem is Howard Elman, the protagonist of THE DOGS OF MARCH (when Howard was in his fifties) and HOWARD ELMAN'S FAREWELL when he was in his eighties. The poem was inspired by a scene I wrote in an unpublished novella I wrote featuring Darby's hermit, Cooty Patterson. In that scene a barrel full of Scrabble tiles spills off a truck and thousands of tiles litter the roadside. Cooty collects the tiles and uses them to write messages to himself.
Book 1 Darby Chronicles
Viking Press accepted THE DOGS OF MARCH for publication in May of 1978, the same week that Lael Scott Hebert was born, the first of our two daughters. It was the best week of my life; I had a book and baby. What surprised me was that the excitement of the baby was greater than the excitement of the book. I always wanted to design my own book covers, but of course book publishers won't let you do that. So the image is a faux cover, a lot of fun to make. Note the poster advertising the New Hampshire Sweepstakes of the 1970s. The text in the bubble where New Hampshire's Old Man in the Mountain speaks reads, "Wish I could play."
The book title phrase "the dogs of March" refers to events I wrote about when I was a news reporter in the 1970s. In those days there were no dog restraining ordinances, and many people let their dogs roam free. Some of those dogs turned temporarily wild, joining other dogs to run down and kill deer.
The connection between human-hunted deer in the image and the "dogs of March" is made clear in the novel.
Book 2 Darby Chronicles
This faux book cover of A LITTLE MORE THAN KIN, first published in 1982, refers to the opening scene in the novel when Willow Jordan, son of Ollie Jordan, parades naked on the ridge pole of a Billboard that says BASKETVILLE, advertising a shop in Putney Vermont. The sign, long gone these days, used to be lit up at night and visible from Interstate 91. In my fictional version, behind the sign are shacks where members of the Jordan clan live.
The pose of the figure comes from one of my favorite paintings, The Swimming Hole, by Thomas Eakins. I drew the tar paper shack in Sketchup, a 3D app.
The starry night is derived from Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, another of my favorite paintings by another of my favorite painters.
Book 2 Darby Chronicles
A more minimalist version, which syncs better aesthetically with the other faux covers that I've drawn.
Book 3 Darby Chronicles
This faux cover of WHISPER MY NAME (1984), a book whose main plot deals with an important political issue that divides the town, is centered on Darby's town hall bulletin board. "Mall yup or nope" says it all about the theme of the story. The other notes on the board feature items not found in the book but that say a lot about the culture in Darby.
Book 4 Darby Chronicles
Much of the action in THE PASSION OF ESTELLE JORDAN takes place in Ike's Auction Barn. Estelle's apartment is on the second floor in the upper left corner. The '80s peep show business is advertised in my drawing. Back of the Barn Adult Books and Videos plays a big role in the plot of the book. In the background is Abare's Folly Mountain.
Book 5 Darby Chronicles
The title LIVE FREE OR DIE comes from New Hampshire's motto, but also from Frederick Elman's home-made camper truck that Frederick named The Live Free or Die.
Book 6 Darby Chronicles
This drawing features the presumed home of Frederick Elman a.k.a. F. Latour in SPOONWOOD. In the foreground is an old-fashioned "shaving horse," a kind of vice where a woodworker can hold wood to be carved with various tools including the two-handed knife show on the seat of the shaving horse.
Book 7 Darby Chronicles
The junked car in this drawing is traced and changed from a photograph that I bought from Adobe Stock.
Howard Elman with Voice in his Head
This is a complex image. The figure on the left is my idea of what my character Howard Elman looks like in that cusp between middle and old age. I got the idea when I was waiting for Medora at Louis Armstrong Airport outside of New Orleans. I spotted a man in a wheelchair with a downcast look on his craggy face. My first thought was that this was a man who was tough and tender who looked very much like the mental image in my head of Howard Elman. I quickly snapped a picture on my iPhone. I wanted to go over and introduce myself, but I was distracted by something (can't remember what), and when I looked over at my "Howard Elman," he was gone.
The figure on the right is of New Hampshire's symbol, the Old Man in the Mountain, a rock formation that collapsed in 2003. The images inside the "Old Man" are from Howard's thoughts as portrayed in various books in the Darby Chronicles. The "Old Man's" sarcastic comment, "Ain't you Smaht" is an echo of Howard's words of exasperation to his son Frederick, spoken in his local accent.
First Snow
Cooty Patterson is Darby's hermit, and this is his cabin. It's rumored that Cooty's stew pot has medicinal properties and is never emptied. Cooty just keeps adding veggies, road kill, and water to keep it stocked. The cabin is based on a 16-by-12 foot cabin I built of rough-cut pine boards from Cote & Reney Lumber Co. in Grantham, NH, in the 1970s. I drew the cabin in Adobe Photoshop. It took me forever to make the boards.
A figure just barely visible in the crooked window is copied from a drawing by Brugel the Elder who in my mind resembled Cooty. The three red apples in the tree represent the three generations of Elman men--Howard, Frederick, and Birch Latour. Cooty was a friend and sometimes mentor to all three men.
Model for Cooty Patterson
This is Perley Swett, a self-described hermit and sometimes poet. I took this picture in 1968 at Perley's place in Stoddard, New Hampshire. I was accompanied by my then girlfriend Medora Lavoie and my college roommate Dwight Conant and his then girlfriend Dale Bogart. Perley had an eye for the ladies. I was fascinated by him, and later imagined his life through my character Cooty Patterson, Darby's hermit. But my portrayal of Cooty was nothing like the real life of Perley Swett, so I learned after reading Perley: The True Story of a New Hampshire Hermit, written by his granddaughter, Sheila Swett Thompson.
Cooty's Front Door
This image of the entry in Cooty Patterson's cabin obviously is not realistic. It's something in my mind or in Cooty's mind (Is there a difference?). It belongs in a part of the Darby Chronicles that I have yet to develop that I call Darby Doomsday, which appears in HOWARD ELMAN'S FAREWELL as a video game developed by Geek Chorus Software, a Darby business lead by Birch Latour (Howard Elman's grandson), Tess Jordan (Birch's wife), and Missy Mendelson (Birch's childhood friend). Darby Doomsday is an outgrowth of a kind of museum that I call The Exposition of the Uncanny, which appears in my novel MAD BOYS (published in 1994). The protagonist in that book, Web Clements, reappears in Howard Elman's Farewell as one of the writers of Darby Doomsday, the video game.
The note on the wall "Failure is the Norm--Poor Norm" is among Cooty's sayings. The "Stay Loose" welcome mat comes from Ken Zwicker, who was assistant publisher of the Keene Sentinel when I was reporter there in the 1970s. Like most people who knew him, I loved Ken. He was a mentor to me. I'm guessing, but I believe that like so many World War II veterans he suffered throughout his life from what we call today PTSD. The illness may have tormented him, but it also gave him a peculiar strength that played out in his editorials and in his deep humanity that he imparted to us young reporters.
The sticks hanging from the wall are sticks that I hung from the walls of my home office when I lived with my family in West Lebanon, NH. I built that office within my garage to get away from my kids and their friends who had no respect for my literary pretensions.
Cooty's Stove and Cabin Heater
When I was coming up with an idea to draw Cooty Patterson's stove, I knew it has to include his stewpot which he keeps under a fire outdoors in the warm seasons and inside during the cold seasons. Also, I wanted to draw a stove that I hadn't seen before, something home-made and a little dangerous. This is what I came up with. The idea for the plank floors and board walls comes from the cabin I built in the 1970s in Sullivan, New Hampshire.
The clock on the wall is from Darby Doomsday, the video game produced by Darby's premier business, Geek Chorus Software. Instead of "12" at the top of the clock is the word "Doom," which echoes Geek Chorus Software's main product, the video game Darby Doomsday.
The sticks on the wall are derived from sticks I cut and hung on my home office wall back when my family and I lived in West Lebanon, NH.
Stick on Cooty's Wall
Motto for Darby's Land Trust
The Salmon Nature Conservancy was established in WHISPER MY NAME by Raphael Salmon after "The Squire," as he was known in Darby, sacrificed his family fortune to accumulate properties for The Trust, which is what everybody in town calls it. The Trust plays a huge role in the later novels of the Darby Chronicles and, indeed, in novels not yet written, but that exist only as artifacts in the runes of my brain. Or maybe the word is not "runes" but "ruins." I like it: at my age, creativity arrises from the ruins of my brain.
The motto, Save Our World Before Ourselves, was adopted by the Trust board at the urging of its chair, Birch Latour. Birch is my attempt at a character who acts as a cross-over figure from his working class paternal side to his upperclass maternal roots. Later, a terrorist organization adopted the name Save Our World (SOW) for its own purposes. SOW originated as a antagonist group in the video game, Darby Doomsday, but morphed into the real world. This explanation doesn't make a whole lot of sense as I write these words in July of 2020, but it might after I write the damn book.
Multiple Meanings
This black and white image, commissioned by Birch Latour, was produced by a local sculptor and inspired by sticks that Cooty hangs from the walls of his cabin. The Christian symbolism is derived from Book 4 of the Darby Chronicles, THE PASSION OF ESTELLE JORDAN.
The piece hangs in Birch's office in the mansion on the Salmon estate. Birch inherited the property upon the death of his grandmother, Persephone Butterworth Salmon. Birch converted the mansion into work spaces for the business he heads, Geek Chorus Software, producers of the video game, Darby Doomsday.
Cabin
Cooty Patterson's Cabin, which appears in most of the Darby novels. Cooty is Darby's resident Hermit
Diner
The Four Aces Diner in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, is one of my favorite eateries. This image is from a tracing of a photo I took in 2020. The women on the stools are servers on their lunch hour. Darby of course is my imaginary hometown.
Found
This tractor abandoned in the woods of Westmoreland, NH.