I will only be checking this site when I’m notified that someone has made a post.
Visit my new site: mortimusclay.com
There I’ll be posting podcasts of the chapters, photos of appearances by my personal secretary, Reverend Christopher Wiley, and you will even be able to buy a copy through Amazon.
Visit today!
Morty
With the publication of The Purloined Boy on April 2nd, this blog will be revived and renamed. The Weirdling will become mortimusclay.com
The new blog will feature a weekly post by Morty along with podcasts of Morty reading from book one of The Weirdling Cycle — The Purloined Boy.
We will attempt to import all the great posts from the Market-test for the book. There is some uncertainty about how to do this — but we’ll give our best effort!
Chapter Two is now available on-line. Just scroll down to the “blog roll” and click the link for chapter two. It should open right up in your Adobe Reader.
Morty
Mortimus relaxing at home.
Professor Mortimus Clay is the most prolific author writing posthumously in the world today.
Professor Clay is not given to sweeping generalizations but he has this on the highest authority. When living, Professor Clay was, unfortunately, a dismal failure as an author. Passed over by editors and snubbed by former schoolmates like Charles Dickens, Clay spent his life living like a character in a Dickens novel. When Clay wrote Dickens to this effect in the hope of at least appearing in print as a character in a book even if he could not see his name on the cover of one, Dickens is reported to have said, “Mortimus Clay? Never heard of the fellow.”
To this day Dickens denies saying any such thing. But Professor Mortimus has his sources and Dickens always was so full of himself. It gives one a chuckle to know the old snot has not written anything in over a century and here is his old shoe, Mortimus Clay, as dead as a doornail, still writing after all these years! How absolutely delicious!
While living, Mortimus Clay served as Professor of Arts and Letters at the Her Majesty’s Knitting College for Wayward Girls. After teaching Beowulf and The Faerie Queen to unappreciative knitters for 50 years in the backroom of a Manchester warehouse, Professor Clay died in 1882 a gray and wizened man.
It was the best thing that ever happened to him as his writing took an immediate turn for the better.
Professor Clay’s personal secretary – The Rev. Christopher Wiley
Rev. Wiley is a rather drab cleric living and ministering in Manchester, Connecticut. Not believing in ghosts has not hampered his interactions with Professor Clay. His relationship with the deceased began one spring morning when he turned on his computer and found a draft of the first chapter of The Purloined Boy: A Hint of Blue as an email attachment. The email was addressed to a Reverend C. R. Wiley of Manchester. It read:
Rev. Wiley, how are you, old boy? Still at it after all these years? What have you found, the elixir of youth? Regardless, old chum, do us a favor, would you, and drop this by post to the nearest publisher? There’s a sport!
Yours truly,
Mortimus Clay, DLitt.
Since that morning chapters have been appearing on Reverend Wiley’s computer with regularity. Pastor Wiley believes that Mortimus Clay has him confused with a clergyman the dead professor knew in Manchester, England. Every attempt to communicate this has been met with silence. Seeing it is the heart’s desire of the dead professor to see his work in print, Reverend Wiley dutifully compiled the manuscript and submitted it for publication. To his shock, and to the delight of Professor Clay, the work found a publisher – Finster Press of Hartford.
To download your copy just go here: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/393659/The%20Purloined%20Boy%20Chapter%201.pdf
I should download automatically to your Adobe Reader.
Let us know what you think about it! If you want chapters 2-7 go to Facebook and join, “The Mortimus Clay Fan Club!”
Mortimus relaxing at home.
Long-suffering fans — the wait is nearly over! The book is better than ever and is in the final stages of design.
Not only that, you can now keep up with Morty on Facebook! If you’re already a Facebook user just search for “Mortimus Clay” — I’m the one and only on FB. Not only that — you can join the growing Mortimus Clay Fan Club on FB!
As the club grows chapters will be released on the internet! We’re almost to the first numerical goal! Once we reach it I’ll post chapter 1!
Stay tuned! As chapters come back from my editor and interior designer, I’ll post them in a pdf format. The first 7 chapters will be available through this site for free!
That will only get you a third of the way through the book — but what do you expect for nothing!
Well, things are coming to a close. I’m planning on sending the manuscript to the editor next Monday, August 4th. Speak before then if you’d like any of your thoughts considered for the final wrap up of the manuscript!
Morty
Here are a couple of possible openings to the book.
Which do you like best? Perhaps this will help, imagine you’re a twelve year old boy — now, which do you like best? I’ll label them “A” and “B”
A —
All the doors were locked, and the nightlight was lit, and everthing was perfectly still the night the bogeyman came.
He came in the tradtional way — through the closet. Now, the closet was located in a bedroom, and the bedroom was located around a boy. He was a little fellow and on this particular night he was all tuckered out. He’d had a busy day filled with sunshine and watermelons and cousins running through the sprinkler. But when his closet began to stir he opened a bleary eye.
B —
There was once a boy who didn’t want to go to bed.
Now, I know what you’re thinking; but you wouldn’t want to go to bed either if your closet made noises in the middle of the night. His made faint, far away noises that sounded like hammers striking stone. they would go on for hours going: clink, clink, clink. Naturally, no one else ever heard them. The closet seemed to know when others were listening. And just as naturally his parents thought it was all just a phase and he’d grow out of it some day. Besides, they thought it was cute when he crawled into bed with them in the middle of the night.
Then one night, after a long day filled with sunshine . . ..
Go ahead and pick the one you like best and tell me why under comments.
Morty
The Weirdling 
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