Before there was an internet and after I graduated from college, I became more isolated and took to writing in the basement of an alcoholic house of over 40 yrs.  I created my own worlds despite the considerable scorn and indifference.  Stephen King envisions a scene of horror and writes a whole (often BIG) book about it.  In my case, I saw a picture only back in 1984 in an Omni magazine that looked like this link.  In Deviant Art, it is commonly called a jellyfish woman, but it is actually a ri.  After writing a long science fictiony tale about extraterrestrial mermaids before (now here in this profile), I wanted to write another long story about this then newly found creature - and DID in the winter of 1985-86.  It was called "The Ri's Sanctuary," and it cost me much $$$ to have commissioned/edited  for publication in 1987 -- which never happened.  Furthermore, a longer (about 70,000 words) sequel to this thriller called "The Source" was completed over the long winter of 1989-1990.  Again, not published, but saved in lovely longhand and typed slowly from a thick notebook.  In Aug. 1991, the internet is born as my Grandfather dies; it is not until late 2008 when I find and enter Deviant Art, where this material can at least be shown to an interested audience.  Oh, by then, my Mother dies in Aug. 2005, after being a working slave for the alcoholic (and government), before HE also dies of the same rare condition (myelodysplastic syndrome) in early 2007.  But who said, "Tis the Pen that makes Immortals of Men"?  For me, there seems to always be a counterbalance in life to attaining this attribute.  This tremendous effort might not have seen the light of "day," and I still cannot guarantee that it will here, BUT I will try with as much time as life provides me.  The next literature story then is at last "The Ri's Sanctuary," featuring action about this exotic anthropomorphic creature through time and space.  It is probably the longest saga about this thing ever written, and I hope any audience here would enjoy at least some parts of it.  Makes me wonder though how I would have written about a Drider, if I had known what it was way back then!  "Ri's Sanctuary" thus has three sections, and it's sequel "The Source" has six.  The first portion of the first story about this ri is seven parts long here so you know after so VERY long.  Before then however, a few (6) more drawings to colorize and reveal, followed by another "decade" of photography.  I have really never known a lucrative certain future upon college graduation (and being given the "walking stick" to unemployment by government on THREE levels), and thus do not also see any "retirement" except by death from whatever.  Not good, considering what should be better certainty and security after what Rush Limbaugh appropriately calls "scrool."  Graduate with "superior" honors (summa cum laude), and you are dubbed "insufficient, inferior," or even "dumb," as to be a continuing part of an academic racket.  And it is the educational bureaucrats that say, "don't be a follower," but rather, "blaze your own path into the unknown."  Thus, I can only see most clearly at what has been in my life, what I was only allowed, while what is to be exactly is unknown.  Aside from doing so by observing & recording the sunspots (almost 9,000 days), aurora, and weather from my rural isolated location for over three decades, this story of the mythical ri (akin to the mermaid) IS another such example amidst the calamities and cruelty of life's circumstances.  Hope to see you on the other side then.  Could I have beaten the great Stephen King at a "new" horror subject/idea?  North Dakota's rural isolation then and long hostile "winters" were conducive for doing such things -- the stuff of originality and eventual leadership.  

J.J.B/"NW"