Issue #12 of Flurb is out, with astonishing tales by fifteen writers: Byrne, Callaway, Di Filippo, Ellwood, Gunn, Hayes, Hogan, Moore, Rucker, Salinas, Shirley, Skaftun, Sterling, Tambour, Webb!

This makes five years of Flurb since the first issue, by the way, with 153 stories published thus far.

Go to flurb.rudyrucker.com and be among the first of the sixty-five thousand people who’ll be checking out our new issue over the coming six months!

Seek the gnarl, dear readers, seek the gnarl.

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I’ve been away from the blog for the last few weeks because I was on a trip out to Wyoming and Wisconsin to visit our two daughters and their families.

Isabel lives in Wyoming, where she runs her business, Isabel Jewelry, which exists both online and as a storefront in Pindedale, WY.

And Georgia is in Wisconsin, running her business Georgia Rucker Design, where she’s mostly designing books these days.

Isabel has accumulated an amazing amount of tools and know-how over the years. It’s sort of alchemical, the way she turns bits of stone and metal into adornment. I’ve always loved cluttered workbenches.

I didn’t get any photos of Georgia’s office because mostly we were at her house with her husband, Courtney, their two kids, and the kids’ toys. I gave my little grandson that “Cow and UFO” painting I was talking about in the previous blog post. He likes it.

“Jumping Man,” (C) Georgia Rucker, about 18 by 24 inches, oil on canvas. Click for a larger version.

I got a photo of a nice, somewhat cubist painting Georgia did of me a few years back—it’s based on a photo of, she says, me in mid-air, jumping off something. I get kind of hyper when we go swimming.

“Cloud Spirits II,” (C) Isabel Rucker, about 6 feet by 1.5 feet, November, 2010, Latex paint on wood. Click for a large detail view of the picture.

Isabel is a painter too, and, as well as her jewelry, she’s been making fairly large paintings of clouds—the one above is called “Cloud Spirits,” and is quite awesome.

This is a cool picture of a reflection in the Santa Cruz Harbor. I think I’ll do a painting from this. I already did a painting of the harbor with a young seal or sea lion, shown below.

“Santa Cruz Harbor,” by Rudy Rucker, 20 x 16 inches, September, 2011, Acrylic on canvas. Click for a larger version of the picture.

Now that I’m back in California, I’ve been putting together the next issue of my webzine FLURB. It’s a doozy. I’ll be rolling out the new issue early on Tuesday, September 6, when everyone’s back from the beach and at their computers. I’ll do a special post announcing it.

I like to use certain simple images when I’m scribbling a drawing for my children or grandchildren. Over the years, I’ve honed my favorites down to clean, cartoony icons—such as the “Cow and UFO” shown in my latest painting. Back to basics!

“Cow and UFO”, 24″ x 18″ inches, August, 2011, Oil on canvas.” Click for larger version.

More info at my Paintings page.

On the local publicity front, the Santa Cruz Weekly is featuring a profile of me with an excerpt of my new novel Jim and the Flims. You can find a PDF of the Santa Cruz Weekly online. It’s mainly the same article as was in the Silicon Valley Metro last week, but this version features two of my Santa Cruz paintings as illos.

Department of Prophet Receives Honor in Home Town:

I’m the cover story in the Silicon Valley Metro this week, with a profile by Dan Pulcrano, an appreciation by Gary Singh, photos by Felipe Bultrago, and the entire first chapter of Jim and the Flims! I’m really happy about it.

The Metro is a free weekly newspaper, widely distributed around San Jose and the South Bay, and you can view a free PDF of my issue online.

It’s cool that they showed some of my paintings in the article—the one on the cover is “The Clone Garden” which I did while working on Jim and the Flims.

I’ve been painting more than usual lately. It’s because I don’t have a novel or even a short story to work on, and I like to have some kind of creative outlet during the day. A way to lose myself in the process of craft.

“Noon Meeting”, 40″ x 30″ inches, August, 2011, Oil on canvas.” Click for larger version.

So here’s the latest one, called “Noon Meeting.” I started out with a set of pebble-glass windows that I like. They went into the background, the grid of green and yellow rectangles. And I put three characters in front of the windows, happy to be getting together in the daytime, let’s say it’s at noon. A woman, a dog, and an octopus.

By the way, I feel like I’m accumulating too many paintings in my basement, and I’d really like to sell some. So check out the summer sale prices on my Paintings page!

Coming back to “Noon Meeting,” my artist friend Paul Mavrides had suggested that I try using an impasto medium to build up more of a texture on my pictures and I did this with this new one, and it looks good.

This is one of those pictures that is a bit like an unknown parable. But I feel like the three friends are people I know. Indeed, I might be the dog in the middle, bringing the two others together. We used to have a dog who looked a lot like that, his name was Arf.

I told my other artist friend Vernon about the theme of my new picture and he said, laughing, “Ah, yes, the three fundamental elements of any successful painting: a woman, a dog, and an octopus.”

I never got to hang out with cephalopods, only glimpsing them when diving, but I often put them in my novels. They’re, like, the ideal aliens.