readers can read as many books as they want from a certain subset of the ebooks sold by Amazon.
It also includes a limited number of audio books from Audible.com.
Here is how the numbers break down:
– 2,769,500+ ebooks in Amazon – 645,790 books in Kindle Unlimited (about 23%) – 2,157 audio books (about 0.3% of the Kindle Unlimited Books – 2,773 books in KU are free (even if the reader isn’t subscribed to Kindle Unlimited) At $9.99 a month, Kindle Unlimited is the most expensive of the three services. Scribd is $8.99 and Oyster is $9.95. The Kindle Unlimited platform will feature such blockbuster titles as The Harry Potter series, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Hunger Games trilogy, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and Flash Boys. Several of these big titles aren’t available on Scribd or Oyster, which have around 400,000 and 500,000 ebooks to choose from, respectively.
BUT HOW DOES THIS AFFECT US AS AUTHORS?
The fee we will get is about $2 when 10% of our book is read. If your book is in Kindle Direct Select, it is automatically entered into Kindle Unlimited. Amazon is allowing you a chance to withdraw your books now. Amazon is also GIVING A FREE ONE MONTH TRIAL.
Free. I would suggest you see what Kindle Unlimited does for you in the next month before you withdraw any books. Unless you are a best selling Indie author like Hugh Howey, your book must be EXCLUSIVE WITH AMAZON. It's REAL LIFE folks: If your books make lots of money for Amazon, you will be accorded special treatment. Life is what it is. But protests howled when Kindle Direct Select first came out ... and then, the Indies discovered that those first who entered, got the best rewards. I suggest trying Kindle Unlimited as an author. You can always withdraw. Check out my books. Many of them are in KINDLE UNLIMITED. And for those of you who do not want to spend $10 a month -- FOR A LIMITED TIME -- THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH http://www.amazon.com/LEGEND-VICTOR-STANDISH-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B005NCUTAG/ and RITES OF PASSAGE http://www.amazon.com/RITES-PASSAGE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B004XQVPYM/ ARE FREE!
Each person we meet wears a mask. Beneath that mask lies several faces ... all true in different seasons. But those seasons are known only to the heart of the one wearing the mask. We have to guess.
Life is a masquerade. The dance steps are complex. And sometimes our feet get stepped on.
Why should they not? Each person dances to the music they alone hear.
Of course, my use of "mask" is a facade itself. I use it in one sense to mean symbolism.
Do you use symbolism in your novel? Do you use the interweaving of names, objects, and experiences to stand in for universal truths in your story?
You don't have to. I do it for me. I do it for those who would re-read my novels and discover something new with each new visit.
The names in my novel mean something: Samuel from the Hebrew 'Shemu'el': heard of God. Those in crisis and pain cry out to God in my novel, and in stalks Samuel.
Is he the answer to their prayers? I do not say.
By the time of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, Samuel has become agnostic. The irony is that he, no longer having the heart to believe in God, is still the answer to the prayers of those in pain.
Meilori means 'beautiful laurel.' The irony there is that the eternal woman feels neither beautiful nor a winner
{laurels were used in Ancient Rome to fashion victors' garlands.}
Google 'DayStar and Isaiah' to find the possible scope of Samuel's enemy. Another irony when you realize Samuel's eventual disillusionment with the being he calls the Great Mystery.
The irony increases with FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, when Samuel's very lifestyle becomes Renfield's, the vampire-priest, main reason for clinging to the faith his best friend no longer has.
The transatlantic steamer Samuel finds himself on is the DEMETER, the name of the Greek Corn Goddess who in myth contends with Hades.
Samuel befriends a little psychic girl on the voyage whom he likens to a small Corn Goddess. And she is instrumental in fighting DayStar.
The ship's voyage in itself is a symbol for the journey all of us take on the unpredictable seas of fate.
Many of the doors aboard that ship take people to places far different than they expected ... just like the doors in our own lives.
Phrases are repeated throughout the novel. I will only state one example . Twice, once in the middle and again at the ending,
DayStar gestures to Samuel when he means to sacrifice him and sneers Pilate's words, "Behold the Man."
Masks.
They, too, are used as symbols in my historical fantasy: the young girl, Rachel, is murdered and her face removed to be used as a mask by the killer.
Masks are worn by the passengers to hide their true motives for being on board. Some remove them. Some change masks. Others see through those of others.
Still others realize that the face they thought was their own was, in fact, a mask worn to protect and conceal their fragile illusions.
At the end of the novel, Samuel has been run through with a broadsword. He is on his hands and knees, alone and dying. Elu's face appears to him in the spreading pool of his own blood. And the Apache shaman speaks to him:
Elu’s words were cruel whips. “Where is the Dyami I remember? Or was he but a mask you wore when the battle was easy?
Are you going to die like some beat dog on your knees? Or are you going to stand on your own two feet like the warrior Meilori believes you to be?”
His voice thickened. “What is it to be, Dyami? A beat dog or a warrior who bares his teeth at the approaching darkness and pulls his enemies down with him into that last night?”
I managed a crooked smile and croaked out, “Woof.”
Elu stiffened, then smiled so sad it was a pain to see as I used the butt of my rifle and lurched to my feet. Still I would have fallen if I hadn’t had the Pope’s broadsword to use as my second crutch. I swayed and almost fell. Somehow I stayed on my feet.
Taking in a ragged breath, I took one weak step. Then another.
My heart became stone as I heard Elu again. But he wasn’t speaking. He was singing. Singing my deathsong. I nodded to the growing shadows.
“Reckon so,” I said to the darkness. ***
Those aren't all the symbols I used, of course. I don't want to bore you. I just wanted to ask:
Do you use symbols in your novel?
Are you aware of the underlying themes of your novel?
Those themes, those symbols are the rudders that direct the flow of your novel's story. If you are unaware of them, you are not in control of your narrative. And that's how novels run aground. Don't let yours be one of those that do.
Symbolism, themes, ironies -- they all work best when not noticed. Our major task as a writer is to tell a rousing, entertaining tale. Our main goal is to keep our reader on the edge of her/his seat, so caught up in the tension and striving that they find themselves lost in the narrative.
And when they look up at the clock, they are amazed at how much time has flown by.
The symbolism, themes, and ironies mixed in artistically will add depth to their enjoyment of their reading without their ever really noticing them. They are the spices of the meal ... not the meat of it. The teacher in me adds them for my own pleasure. The artist in me strives to introduce them subtly and gently. I just wanted to ask you if you added symbolism, themes, and ironies to your novel as well.
hunting a murderess wearing the face of her victim
and sailing into the Bermuda Triangle
aboard a ship filled with the undead.
For a limited time, you can catch up on E J Wesley's Moonsongs series for just .99
cents (regularly $2.99) - Moonsongs Anthology 1 (books 1, 2, & 3) is on sale
October 15th - 20th at Amazon and Barnes & Noble!
After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s.
Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
But not in my mythos. Oscar is all too alive, holding court in his own chambers deep within the haunted jazz club, Meilori's.
Here is an excerpt of Sam McCord visiting him for what may be the last time from CREOLE KNIGHTS:
I looked around me. Everyone was so caught up in their own words and thoughts that they hadn't even noticed my arrival.
Oscar, dressed as always as the most colorful of peacocks but as tall as an ostrich, was bending his head next to the hot sunset of Cora's hair.
He laughed. Then, he smiled and spoke to both the courtesan and de Morny in a gossip’s whisper.
"You ask what I stole from the good Captain. Why his words, of course. One evening I spied what he was writing to his beloved Meilori and quite brazenly used them in my letter to my wife, Constance, that I was writing at the same time."
Cora hushed, "You actually read one of his love letters to Lady Meilori?"
"Indeed and borrowed from it quite boldly. What were those words now? Ah, yes:
'What can I tell you by letter? Nothing that I would tell you in person. The message of love travels not by pen and ink. Your presence here would not make you any more real, for I feel your fingers in my hair, and your cheek brushing mine. The air is full of the music of your voice, my soul and body seem no longer mine but mingled in some strange way with yours. I feel incomplete without you. Always and Forever, Samuel.'"
"Of course I signed my own --"
Oscar tilted his head, stiffened as he heard the chiming of my spurs. His eyes met mine. He turned pale.
"S-Sam, I meant no harm."
"None taken, Ostrich. In fact, I'm honored that a poet like yourself didn't feel diminished borrowing from an weary pilgrim like me."
Cora's fingers went to her mouth. "Sam, you look --"
"--like hell? You just came from the Demeter. Me? I came here through my night club in New Orleans ... a few years after that voyage."
Comte de Morny wasn't called the shark of Paris for nothing. His mind was quick. His eyes even quicker.
"How few would that be, Captain? Your face seems about the same. But your eyes ...."
"They've seen a few more sights than they wanted, Comte."
Oscar looked uncomfortable. "You can't blame them for being curious, Uncle Sam. It never hurts to ask."
I made a face. "Unless you ask for hurt."
Oscar looked pained. "I would not have had you heard me talk about Meilori, Sam. I know when she left you seven years ago --"
Cora looked shocked. "S-She left you? But you and she are so much in love."
Oscar snorted, "Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
Cora frowned, "You two are married? And still she left you?"
I shrugged. "She seems to think my heart left her first."
Cora's long fingers tenderly touched my cheek, staring up at me. "No one who could see the loss in your eyes would believe that."
Oscar sighed, "One of the many things you learn in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be."
DeMorny cocked his balding head. "Meaning?"
"Meaning that selfishness is not living as one wishes but demanding that others live that way as well. Meilori wanted Sam to be both what he is and what she wanted him to be. An impossible demand."
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe I threw away a treasure because I wasn't smart enough to find a way to keep it."
Oscar's sad eyes bored into mine. "Ordinary riches can be stolen or lost. Real riches cannot. In your soul, Sam, are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. Not even by you. The love you still have for Meilori is one of those things."
I grasped his shoulder firm. "That's why I come here, Ostrich. You help put things into perspective for me." ***
Make her ghost smile by writing just a two sentence review. Eric keeps threatening to write: "This book didn't suck. Read it, and I bet you agree with me!"
1.) ONE NEW POSITIVE REVIEW
can be the one thing that encourages a potential reader into buying. And one new sale can make the Amazon Sales Ranking go up considerably.
And many buyers want to buy what everyone else is buying.
2.) THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST:
Amazon sales rank is generated by a proprietary algorithm. The more copies a book sells on Amazon, relative to other books, the higher the rank---
or, the lower the number. So, a rank of 10 is higher than a rank of 257,090.
3.) ENOUGH ABOUT ME. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT ME?
Link to the Amazon page for your book in the signature line of the emails you send. Then, everyone who receives email from you will be exposed to your book. The chances are that at least some of them will click on the links.
No, I don't do this ... I have so little free time with my job as a rare blood courier that sadly I send very few emails. But many of you do send many emails. Make them count.
4.) REMEMBER PANDORA AND THAT CURIOUS CAT?
"Search Inside the Book" is an important property to put in place for your book. It allows customers to actually browse through parts of the book. They'll be more likely to buy a book that they've been able to flip through.
5.) A PATH TO HIGHER SALES THAT MAY MAKE YOU FEEL UNEASY:
Write Listmania Lists that include your book. These are lists of books that fall under a particular topic and include links to the Amazon page for each of them. Write lists for as many categories as your book could reasonably fall under.
6.) LIST FOR FREE:
It may translate into higher sales AFTER the free period stops. If your book is priced at 99 cents, others may take note of higher sales rankings and take a gamble on your book.
7.) DON'T INDULGE IN AMERICAN IDOLism:
Amazon Sales Ranking is a popularity contest wherein your book's sales are compared to the thousands of sales of its neighbors.
Statistics say you will have to keep your day job. Or in my weary case, my day AND night job!
Write because you love it. If you touch one heart, then you have succeeded.
8.) Enough about me ...
I cannot know if I have touched that one heart unless you post a review. Please do so for RITE OF PASSAGE. It is a lonely dark road for most of us as we struggle in self-publishing. One sale, one supportive review can light the dark and warm a lonely heart.
Do it, not just for me, but for others toiling in the shadows of meager sales.
Have a lovely weekend. Me? I will be driving lonely rural roads all weekend and into the week. Darn that storm! :-) Roland
I tried for subdued hints of violence and mystery. It is a truth of human nature: we are drawn to the forbidden and the sensual.
The mysterious Greek physician, Lucanus, and Captain Samuel McCord are both reflective protagonists, chaffing at the violence and darkness in the hearts of those around them.
Luke Skywalker would not be so interesting without the ominous Darth Vadar.
The Victorian ghoul, Alice Wentworth, is clutching her gypsy love, Victor Standish, with sharp teeth bared.
Their world is dark. Their enemies foul and supernatural. Their love a beacon in the shadows. Their laughter their shield against despair.
Perhaps we do our teens no favor if we paint the world in false gilding of Pollyannish cliches. Perhaps we do them good if we show them
struggling teens combating the darkness with the light of sacrificial love and laughter thrown in the teeth of the wolves on the streets.
Closing our eyes does not make the evils disappear. Showing heroes who refuse to give in to the darkness and insist on finding laughter in their pain may be the best thing we can do.
{A fantasy TITANIC which details the FIRST MEETING of Samuel McCord with the mysterious Meilori, William Faulkner, Father Renfield, and the demigod, DayStar.}
Its new cover is by the talented Leonora Roy.
Herbert Bayard Swope wrote: “Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.”
What do you think about that?
Wondering about the title to this post?
Edith Hamilton wrote of Aeschylus, a long deceased friend of Lucanus:
"He was, first and last, the born fighter,
to whom the consciousness of being matched against a great adversary suffices and who can dispense with success.
Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens.
The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory."
Those words fit both Lucanus and Captain Samuel McCord ...
and if we are worthy as authors, they might one day prove true of us.
But it needs to be if you want it accepted by an agent and loved by readers.
You suspend disbelief when certain things in the book you're reading rings true :
Clothes :
Hamlet doesn't wear gold chains and zoot suits. Samuel McCord is a brooding, reflective man who does most of his fighting at night.
He, like Hamlet, wears black. Mark Twain, Sam's life-long companion, wears his all white suit to stand apart from his brooding friend -- as he does everything in his rebellious life.
{Twain's eventual death sends Sam into a spiral of depression from which it takes him years to recover.}
Maija, Meiliori's contemptuous of society twin sister, wears a skin-tight "Dragon-Lady" scarlet outfit -- even in 1853, when the mere showing of a bare ankle was scandalous.
She, like Twain, is rebellious.
But unlike the humorist, Maija is cruel and sadistic -- which is why whenever she arranges to meet Sam after her sister has left him, Maija wears an exact copy of the retro-Victorian dress Meilori wore on the night she stormed off into the darkness.
SPEECH :
Do all your characters sound the same? It might surprise you that they do.
Close your eyes. Have a friend read a rather common sentence from two of your characters from two different parts of your novel. Can you tell who is talking just by their speech patterns? You should.
Reporters and policemen both talk tersely. The reporter tends to go for the dramatic. The policeman keeps objective. In public at least.
Out of public view, the policeman usually is cynical of everyone's motives, having seen too many at their worst. The reporter tends to go for the underdog, having seen big business and big government swallow the little guy much too often.
Not all teens talk the same. The nerds have their own phrases. And jocks their own vocabulary, matching their interests.
The shy mumble. The quarterback smirks. Yet that can be overdone into a cliche. The thinking, reflective quarterback from an abusive home could be the magnet that holds the interest and heartstrings of your readers.
It is a novel of a caring psychiatrist treating mentally bruised soldiers from WWII, told with wit and compassion.
But there are other mindsets among physicians. And it is understandable why they develop that perspective.
They're trained to prioritize, to emotionally detach themselves from their patients' pain and trauma, and to deal with crises as problems to be solved ... the solutions to be broken down into their component steps. Such a mindset works for them professionally.
In their personal lives, that mindset can be destructive. For many to become emotionally detached takes its toll. To step back from the trauma around them, they must cut loose in another phases of their lives.
On the other hand, become emotionally detached long enough, and you find it spreads like a drop of ink in a beaker throughout your whole life. You awaken one day to find yourself a stranger to your friends, your family ... even to yourself.
A few latent sadists are drawn to the profession. They channel their anti-social compulsions into socially approved actions. But like with scratching a mosquito bite, the more they stroke their sadistic natures, the stronger, the more demanding it becomes.
To make a physician real in your novel, you must incorporate all the above into that character and his/her environment. The same is true with every walk of life you have in your story.
CULTURE/CUSTOMS :
Now, this one is a bugger. There's real. And then, there's realistic.
I wrote a historical fantasy. Historical fiction is not a time machine.
Should you and I go back to the world of 1853, we would find the physical hygiene appalling and the moral consensus even worse. We would be walking around with our mouths open and clothes pins clamped on our noses.
Indigenous races were not considered even human. Women were thought of as a second-class, intellectually deficient breed. Slavery was applauded in most corners. The "science" of medicine was part butchery/part unfounded, faulty supposition.
Still, we would understand only 2 out of every 3 words spoken by the aristocracy : their vocabulary was extensive and littered with Latin and ancient Greek proverbs.
The Divine Right of kings was accepted in a third of the civilized world. And democracy was in its infancy.
Speech was more formal even in casual conversation, more elegant even.
For RITES OF PASSAGE, I had to create the illusion of 1853 in such a way as to root my reader in the reality of that age without tuning him out.
I made Samuel McCord a man educated by his Harvard professor father and inhuman Jesuit priests. His travels across the world has made him a more open-minded man. He has the sensibilities of a 21st century man at odds with the 19th century world.
Therefore, the reader can identify with him as he locks horns with the accepted status quo that offends his compassionate reasoning and the reader's modern sensibilities. *** There was a TV series which highlights how the mindset and customs we take for granted are just a thing of the moment : LIFE ON MARS :
{McCord has entered a strange cavern within the depths of the ship to keep an old man from being tortured.}
I glared up at the darkness and said, “What the hell is going on? Is every demon from my past coming to haunt me at once?”
“Come in and we will discuss it,” a deep voice from the shadows said with an emphasis on the S's in 'discuss.'
“Only if you promise freedom to Aziza and her people.”
“The end of a Great Cycle is upon us, and all you can see are gnats. Have your precious vermin that would kill you at first sight. Now, are you satisfied? Come in!”
Tucking in Solomon’s knife, I bent down and picked up my Stetson, putting it on, and smiled, “Well, since you asked so nice.”
I started towards the yawning mouth of the chamber, then slowed. Like mists from hell, black fog boiled out slowly. It curled and creamed in the humid, hot air like an unspoken fear trying to form itself on the edge of my consciousness.
I smiled weary. I had to stop reading those letters from William James before I turned in.
Only I would have heard the crunch of the gravel under my boots as I walked in the huge, dark chamber. The smells of a rooster’s den and snake pit mixed unwelcome in my nose.
A faint click of large stretching scales sounded above me. Something big was moving along the ceiling. It moved off to my right, down the wall, then back up. A deep voice trailed from the movement.
“Your senses are good to pick up my body.”
“Something tells me I’m not in the Gulf of Mexico anymore.”
“Yes and no.”
“The story of my life.”
“Yes, the sipapu you stepped through is still aboard the Demeter. But, no, your body and mine are several ice ages back in the stream of consciousness.”
As he talked, he flowed along the ceiling right to left, down then up. “You like making me dizzy?”
“I would like to continue existence.”
“Why?”
“An excellent question, mammal. And its answer is you.”
“Not so I notice.”
“But that is the very beauty of it, that you do not comprehend it. Yes, I have gotten bored with building one empire, only to see it destroyed from within.”
Pepples dislodged by his passing above me hit my shoulders and Stetson. “And I’m the answer to that?”
“At first, I thought the Teotics would suffice. But they were consumed with bloodlust and petty rivalries. Then, I chose the Spanish. But they were too hot-blooded and easily led to endure. I toyed with the French. The British are just too insuferable. But you American mammals have just the right mixture of greed and cleverness to play the proper endgame to this last of Cycles.”
“I’m not much of a joiner.”
“Which is why you are perfect to tear down the empire I propose to build.”
His chuckle was hollow. “I am bored with others pulling down the civilizations I engineered. But it occurred to me that building one, then tearing it down myself might prove amusing.”
“Everyone should have a hobby.”
“Every race at the end refuses to see it, thinking foolishly that life will go on eternally as before. Did it not do so for that boy out there?”
I sighed, “Reckon you might be right. But thinking like that isn’t going to help me catch Rachel’s murderer, is it?”
I couldn’t catch a clear glimpse of Quetzalcoathl. Not that I was complaining, mind you. But it was unnerving to talk to a shifting shadow in the darkness that sounded as if it weighed a ton.
“You do know that several ice ages back in time as you are, not even the formidable Elu can reach out to you through his bond to your spirit.”
“Then, I guess I’ll just have to make do on my own. It’s why I get paid all of a hundred and fifty dollars a month.”
Right then, he sounded sad. “I would not have expected it. But I find I like you.”
“Like me enough to tell me who killed Rachel?”
“I like you enough to ask you to let that one question go. It will destroy you.”
“And if I’m destroyed, I can’t very well be your catspawn, can I?”
“Oh, you will not be able to help yourself there. It is your very nature to be the kind of man that will act the catalyst for my plans.”
“And what’s my nature?”
“Decency. Simple decency. I had not thought to find an adult mammal capable of such character.”
And should any foxes fall into your hands, let your fingers be gentle lest the fate of the Death Stone descend upon you.
Inari has an important place in Japanese legend.
She appears a seductive woman, going from life to life. Inari is a bewitching creature of alluring but destructive power, a Japanese version of Fata Morgana.
Here is how Samuel McCord met her aboard the cursed Demeter in RITES OF PASSAGE:
A voice both silky and dangerous spoke from the darkness to my right. "Laughter, Meilori? I have not heard that from you in so long I believed I never would a--"
The tall woman in the green and gold Victorian gown stepped out of the fog and stopped in mid-sentence. Her fingers went to the odd necklace of tiny, elegant mirrors about her neck. She stared at me. I stared back.
It might have been impolite, but it wasn't every day you saw a lady whose shadow told the truth behind the illusion.
Behind her head was a shadow, not of a woman’s long hair, but the wrinkling muzzle of a fox.
I forced the shock and fear from my face. She wasn't the first Animal Person I had met in my travels. But Elu had taught me in the Pajarito Mountains that the fastest way to get dead was to show weakness or fear in front of them.
I sighed. Elu had tried to warn me this hunt was different. But I never listened - until it was too late.
The fox-woman pulled herself up tall and bristled, "And what do you think you are looking at?"
Obviously, she had woven some spell that disguised her from humans. Unfortunately for her, I wasn't human. Not anymore. But there was no point in letting on I could see through her disguise, though her look said she had guessed I could. Best to keep her guessing.
"Reckon I'm looking at the Lady Inari your friend mentioned."
I saw her feral eyes narrow. I sighed as I looked deep into them. Though they glittered with the promise of violence, they held depths hollowed out by pain and grief.
She cocked her head at me, her eyes opening in more ways than one. "Compassion from a human?"
"Has that really been so rare, ma'am?"
"Yes."
I nodded. "For me, too, for what it's worth."
Lady Inari husked, "And how have you handled it, fleshling?"
"Badly. Got tired of being hurt, of being let down by hope. So I've retreated deep inside myself. Deep down where my spirit can't be destroyed completely."
Meilori asked low, "And does it work?"
"Not really. I got what I wanted but not what I needed. My blood-brother warned me if I keep on staying deep inside myself I’ll go blind."
Lady Inari frowned, "How blind?"
"Blind to all the things that make life worth living."
Meilori said, "I would like to meet this blood-brother of yours."
"He ... passed on."
She whispered, "Then, you, too, are alone."
Inari's head jerked up at that, and to keep things from getting out of hand, I said, "He's always with me."
Meilori nodded and looked tenderly at Lady Inari. "As with me as well."
That looked like it pacified Inari some, and Meilori turned to me. "It ought to be different for beings such as we."
"There is no ought," I smiled sad, "Life just is. You often time will find that things don't turn out the way you planned."
The two women looked at each other. The twilight seemed to grow darker around them, closing me out.
They seemed to have been born to live in the night. "Twilight Women" Elu called them. He had warned me to stay away from such. ***
The cursed transatlantic steamer where, in 1853, Samuel McCord first met the love of his life, Lady Meilori Shinseen and his Moriarty, DayStar.
Here is a scene that describes its fabled saloon:
I hushed in a breath.
Meilori chuckled soft. "Indeed, Demeter's saloon is one of a kind, Samuel."
Lady Inari, the fox woman, purred, "Yes, it has been said it is the most beautiful room yet seen on an Atlantic liner."
I had no words.
The place seemed fit for Queen Victoria. White marble vaulted ceiling, a marble dome pierced with scarlet stained-glass, and polished oak walls, adorned with gold-trimed runes and patterns from Assyrian myth. Long, white clothed tables, lined with plush, thick cushioned chairs. Mirrors, ornate and glittering from the spinning chandeliers, gleamed from the freshly varnished walls. Shelves of liquors, wines, and other beverages dotted the spaces where paintings from old masters left them room.
The room was enormous, at least 50 feet wide and a 100 feet long. The walls I would have guessed to be ten feet high. Their dark, polished wood were lightened by windows, mirrors, and vertical nicello panels.
The white marble ceiling soared up into a long, rectangular vaulting arch, peaking at what seemed about 25 feet. I studied the Renaissance-styled stained-glass windows which curled up and down across the arch.
They depicted much too graphic scenes of the war in Heaven, Lucifer being cast down, and fallen angels having rather a good time at the expense of mortals. Gas lights between the inner and protective outer windows gave them a nightmarish life of their own.
I felt a chill in the marrow of my bones.
At the half-moon of gabled space between the lower walls and the top of the arch was an enclove where a small group of musicians held court with classical melodies.
The sprawling saloon was dotted with clustered groups of the aristocracy of Europe and Britain and the elite of America. I recognized a few from my travels and reading.
Being what I was, I could see the fires of life kindle in hues of vanity, greed, and cruelty around their bodies. I barely gave them a moment of my attention.
My gaze was riveted on the other half of the occupants. The half whose bodies were without one flicker of life-fires.
The undead half.
Meilori saw the look on my face and misunderstood, smiling, "Breathtaking is it not?"
I nodded, not having the proper words.
Breathtaking was certainly the word for how I felt about the view. It made me fit right on in with the flat-eyed predators I was watching. They had stopped taking breaths long, long ago.
Elu had tried to warn me.
This wasn't a pleasure cruise. It was a stocked pond. And I had paid $2000 to jump into the middle of it. Kind of put a whole new meaning to the words : Let The Buyer Beware. ***
Peek from the the night's shadows upon the first meeting on a 1853 midnight of Samuel McCord and the one great love of his long life, Lady Meilori Shinseen, most feared of all the Ningyos. (399 words)
{Samuel's other than human senses have felt deep pain and hollow loneliness up on the midnight-shrouded deck of the transatlantic steamer, DEMETER.
He has used the teachings of his Apache blood-brother to render himself invisible by wrapping the threads of night around his lean, horseman's body. He goes to investigate.}
I slowed as I spotted a woman, sitting right on the wooden deck by the railing, huddled over something.
I wrapped the threads of night tighter about me and stepped closer.
The faint smell of jasmine tickled my nose. She was in a long, flowing scarlet and black Victorian gown.
I stiffened as the fog thinned enough for me to make out her slanted eyes, not quite Japanese, not quite Chinese, but a beautiful blend of the two.
Her long black hair was styled up, her eyes were cast down. She was stroking a dead seagull, its slender neck bent awkward. I guessed that it had hit the rigging in the fog and killed itself, tumbling to the deck.
The woman spoke, and it was as if her vocal chords were velvet. Her accent. It sent shivers through me. It was like human speech itself was a foreign language to her. What was I getting myself into? Her words were almost lost in the night.
"Poor little creature of air. Like last month, I came upon you too late. Too late."
She spoke as if the two words were a summing up of her whole life. She was one of those haunted-eyed women you attached your own hidden fears and silent sorrows to.
Close-up her eyes weren't cold jade as they had seemed farther away. They were filled with echoes of regret. The coldness had just been a bold front to hide the fact that they'd lost their way a long time ago.
Maybe mine looked the same.
There were disturbing depths of sadness in those eyes. Depths in whose darkness swam the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both.
Those depths whispered of age more ancient than the Aztecs, more dangerous than even my past. They both called and warned at the same time.
She stroked the bird's head tenderly as if afraid of waking it up
and sighed,
"Dreams drift like clouds,
I reach to touch the moon,
I grasp but empty night."
I couldn’t take her in such pain anymore and stepped into view. “Ma’am, you were a blessing.”
She stiffened at my sudden appearance, but said calmly. “How so?”
"That seagull got to die in the arms of one who cared and cried over its passing. How many of us get to die that loved?"
Her face flinched. "Not ... very ... many. And ... too many."
she said she would have to pass as she has recently SOLD an Urban Fantasy SERIES set in post Katrina New Orleans.
A colorful metaphor came to mind and a dense fogbank of depression rolled across my chest.
Someone else was going to publish a New Orleans Urban Fantasy set after Katrina before me --
if ever I would be picked by an agent and then a publisher.
But I told myself that four agents had asked me to send them my novel : two asked for partials and two for complete manuscripts. That said something positive, didn't it?
I sat in front of my computer brooding when Vasnetsov's painting appeared in my mind's eye.
I was at the crossroads. Did I choose the path of my fears? Or did I choose the path of my beliefs?
Following my fears would lead me nowhere I wanted to go. Choosing to believe in myself had seen me out of a burning home, dragging my 80 pound unconscious Elk hound across a blazing floor,
my own face and hands badly burned.
In fact, believing in myself had led me through so many dark valleys, I couldn't picture them all.
This unknown writer might have lived through Katrina on the streets of New Orleans as I had. But he/she didn't have my voice, my perceptions, and my take on human nature.
It takes more than details to paint a moving picture of a locale. I saw the ragged edge of New Orleans during Katrina through my own filter of meaning and worldview.
Then the soft voice of my protagonist, Samuel McCord, seemed to whisper a reminder that the man who cleared leather first in a gunfight wasn't always the one to hit his target and live.
Besides, the adventures of my undead Texas Ranger, cursed with the blood of Death in his veins, aren't limited to just New Orleans of 2005. I have finished two earlier novels already --
You can buy them on Amazon and read them on your computer or your Kindle. I have many more in various stages of completion:
RITES OF PASSAGE -
My Kindle historical fantasy details the haunted voyage of the DEMETER in 1853 from New Orleans, its destination Paris, a city it never reaches.
A fantasy TITANIC, it details how McCord's blood mingles with the blood of the angel of death and his first meeting with the great love of his life, the immortal Meilori Shinseen, and with DayStar, the being fated to be his life-long enemy.
ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM -
the sequel to RITES where the DEMETER finds itself becalmed in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, where every door to the ship leads to a different time, a different place. And McCord must learn how to tap into the power of his altered blood to bend the fabric of time to save those he can. This dark historical fantasy you can also buy from Amazon.
IN A WORLD OF SHADOWS -
describes the prison breakout of Oscar Wilde from Reading Goal and the literal Hell which ensues.
Of course it is McCord who does the deed, aided by his life-long friend Samuel Langhorn Clemens {Mark Twain}, the two having met Wilde during his American tour of the West in 1882.
And the adventures that follow Wilde's rescue give birth to Twain's famous saying : "No good deed goes unpunished." I have completed the synopsis and first three chapters of this fantasy.
HITLER's HERO -
set in 1929 Venice, it details the adventures of a reluctant McCord, Father Renfield, and Meilori attempting to derail a plot by Heinrich Himmler to switch souls with the Fuhrer based on a strange verse handwritten by Wagner himself on the composer's original notes for THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. I have completed the synopsis and first chapter of this fantasy.
FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE -
I have completed this Urban Fantasy,
detailing McCord's struggle with politicians, revenant empires, and his lifelong enemy, DayStar, closing in for a final revenge on the days following Hurricane Katrina.
CREOLE KNIGHTS ELEGY -
NOCTURNE's sequel that details the encroaching war between the American and European revenant empires
as McCord deals with a New Orleans struggling to survive the aftermath of Katrina and DayStar setting into motion his grand scheme to destroy the species of Man.
McCord must rescue the Angel of Death herself from the clutches of his lifelong enemy, DayStar, in the realm some call Hell. This urban fantasy is already completed.
THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH -
is a Young Adult fantasy told through the eyes of ten year old abandoned Viktor Standish as he is befriended by McCord and the Ranger's undead circle of friends in the days prior to Hurricane Katrina.
Picture it as AUNTIE MAME meets HARRY DRESDEN meets JANE EYRE. This YA urban fantasy is also completed.
VICTOR'S NOT JUST MY NAME -
The adventures of Victor Standish and his Victorian "ghoul friend" continues as Victor battles evolved raptors, Empress Theodora, the ghost of President John Adams, and the revenge of the Old Ones for his killing of one of their hybrid children. I am half-finished with this YA urban fantasy.
So, all in all, the scope of Captain Samuel McCord's adventures
spans over two hundred years, criss-crosses the major continents, and delves into the arcane reality of most of the world's diverse mythologies.
So I am going to follow the path of belief in myself. I truly feel that whatever publisher decides to pick up my series will more than get their money's worth.
Wasn't that a fantastic, mind-blowing book trailer? Not because of my book. {Well, maybe a little. LOL.} But mainly because of the artistry and extraordinarily hard work of : WENDY TYLER RYAN! Her Papyrus Productions -- http://lemontwistpress.com/BookTrailers.aspx An off-shoot of her Lemon Twist Press -- is a fledgling Book Trailer cyber business. But her creations are the polished, fine craftsmanship of a seasoned professional. Let's face it : Book Trailers can sweep up the on-lookers into the world of your novel. A GREAT book trailer can have the viewer saying out loud, "I WANT that book!" Such a dynamic, riveting book trailer as you've just watched is the result of intensive, time-consuming work. Long days are put into such a creation. Can you imagine laboring ten hours days that grow into a week's worth of finding just the right images & music, paying license fees for them, and then crafting them together dramatically into a hypnotic whole? That is what Wendy Tyler Ryan did for me. That is what she can do for you. Check out her web site -- http://lemontwistpress.com/default.aspx
Dreamer. Writer. Believer in the worth of each soul I meet.
It is not so bad a thing to have been born with the gift of laughter and the knowledge that the world is mad.
Book 4: Victor Standish risks all reality to bring back from the dead those he loves.
WOLF HOWL HAS HIS OWN BLOG!
VISIT IF YOU DARE
THE LAST SHAMAN AUDIO BOOK!
Mankind's time is nearly up. Can the last Lakota shaman save the soul of the assassin he loves before the end?
McCorkle Creations!
Let Heather McCorkle design covers and promo materials for you. You will be amazed.
ONLY $4.86!
Sometimes it is death, not life, that brings us love
A GHOSTLY WRITING MANUAL
Twain, Hemingway, Lovecraft & More!
An Age Is Ending & Ancient Evil Returning
Like PENNY DREADFUL? This is for you.
A SUPERNATURAL LONGMIRE
In Egypt, the dead never rest easy
NO ONE HEARS THE SCREAMS IN SILENT FILMS
An isolated Hollywood film crew is hunted by Nightmare
A SAMPLER OF MY HEROES
Mysteries Explained, Secrets Exposed
The Origin of Toomey Starks!
Hellhounds were never this much fun! Only $4!
VOODOO & LOVE IN THE FRENCH QUARTER
Now available in PRINT!
FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE AUDIO BOOK!
The supernatural predators come out after Katrina. Can two undead legends stop them?
AFTER KATRINA, THERE IS NONE BUT TWO TO STOP THE UNDEAD
ONLY $1.99 WHEN YOU BUY THE KINDLE BOOK!
LISTEN to GHOST OF A CHANCE
Can an author be drawn into his own fictional world and killed by his own characters?
HIBBS HAS FOUND HIS VOICE!
A tale of enchantment
Souls At The Crossroads
Where do you need to be?
THE DEADLIEST ENEMY IS WITHIN
What if Stephen King wrote of the life of a blood courier?
Listen to this haunting tale of horror and love
It is 1853. An undead Texas Ranger is on board a cursed ship in search of a murderer who is wearing the face of her last victim as a mask.
Listen to the LAST FAE
When the world is mad, there is little else to do but show them what true insanity is!
Can a man marry both the moon and the sun?
In the eclipse of myth, he can
What Defense is an innocent soul against the Powers of Darkness?
Let Hibbs, the cub with no clue, show you
Before Indiana Jones or Allan Quartermain
There was Sam McCord and his doomed love for Meilori Shinseen
Alice and Victor in 1834 New Orleans
Do a review and have a 1 in 13 chance to win a Johnny Depp autograph!
Buy_FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE
Hurricane Katrina has cast New Orleans into darkness. Predators, living and undead, close in on the helpless survivors. Can Samuel McCord and a vampire priest keep the French Quarter from being drowned in blood?
Buy_LET THE WIND BLOW THROUGH YOU
Enter the dangerous world of a Native American Noir thriller where forbidden love clashes with the politics of crime
You will never see the end coming
In his beginning is his end
My 1st SERIAL TRILOGY continues
There are none so lost as those who refuse to see
The 1st SERIAL TRILOGY!
In the dark, we are all orphans
In Memoriam - Maukie my cyber friend
RITES OF PASSAGE link
The earliest Samuel McCord adventure: Dare to board a fantasy Titanic as it sails into the Bermuda Triangle
VICTOR'S HERE!
BOOK 1: No one talks openly of the misty figures seen walking along New Orleans' iron-laced terraces, casting no shadow. Of the shapes seen rising from sewer grates. And no one willingly visits the crypt of Marie Laveau at midnight. Into this strange world arrives the street orphan, Victor Standish, from Charon's Greyhound. Charon has to keep up with the times ... the End Times. And the teen destined to be called the "Ulysses of the French Quarter" has come just in time for Hurricane Katrina, the End of All Things ... and the deadly love of the Victorian ghoul, Alice Wentworth.
VICTOR AND ALICE ARE BACK!
BOOK 2: Victor's a street kid. Alice is a Victorian ghoul Their love breaks the chain of reason. Their new adventures bring the French Quarter back from the brink of nightmare.
THE RIVAL
BOOK 3: Victor & Alice are in the French Quarter of 1834. Voodoo. Demigods. Revenants. And the hilarious Menage a Trois of Death! Oh, and someone we love dies at the end.
END OF DAYS is here!
St. Marrok's. The most eerie high school in which you will ever die. Its curriculum? The End of Days. Alice Wentworth plans to get an A+.
ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM link
SEQUEL to RITES OF PASSAGE: Come aboard the doomed DEMETER with undead Texas Ranger, Sam McCord, and sail with her into the depths of madness in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.
Buy_CREOLE KNIGHTS
SEQUEL to FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE: The dead rise. Elder Beings strain to enter our world through Katrina devastated New Orleans. And the Angel of Death is kidnapped to clear their way. Can Sam McCord stem the tide of madness in time?
Buy_THE LAST FAE
Once there was an age undreamed where legends walked this earth … and nightmares, too. Terrible were the battles, tragic the outcome of the wars. Until finally there were only two survivors : the nightmare and one bruised legend. These are the legend’s stories, each one a different facet of the same priceless gem – a jewel that has come to believe herself worthless. So come. Listen to her. Listen to THE LAST FAE.
GHOST OF A CHANCE
What if what you wrote became real?
BURNT OFFERINGS
When dreams are sacrificed, it is the soul that burns.
CHECK OUT THE FUN!
Explore if you dare
Buy_THE LAST SHAMAN
Journey with the last Lakota shaman, Wolf Howl. The white govenments call him Drew August. Those who hunt him call him Death. The last day of Man has dawned. Watch as Wolf Howl turns to meet his human hunters. Shadow, the love of his life, returns to aid his hunters. Then, Mankind's death descends. Can he save Shadow before the world's time runs out?
BRING ME THE HEAD OF McCORD!
Only 99 cents. C'mon. Take a chance.
GHOST WRITERS IN THE SKY
LEARN TO WRITE BETTER AND LAUGH ALONG THE WAY
LAST EXIT TO BABYLON
At the dawn of the End of All Things, the Last Fae finds there is no hope ... but love.
IT'S HERE TO BUY!!
The trilogy concludes. Not even the eclipse of myth is forever. But love is. And eclipses return. Listen. The voice of Blake, son of Man, is calling across the night skies.
Buy THE PATH BACK TO DAWN
Only in the eclipse of myth can a young man find himself with both the Moon and the Sun as his brides. Can he survive what follows?
Buy_LOVE LIKE DEATH
From the pages of THE LAST FAE springs this paranormal romance/thriller. Fallen, the last fae, discovers the name of the young teenager to whom she lost her heart : Blake Adamson.But she also discovers what happens when you believe your fears over your love : heartache and loss. And so Blake Adamson finds himself torn between two loves : one fae, the other an alien drinker of souls. Their love is deadly, but love, like death, will have its way.
THE BEAR WITH 2 SHAD0WS link
Based on the stories my Lakota mother told me as a child when I was deathly ill in a freezing Detroit basement apartment. Think a Native American LORD OF THE RINGS.
FROM THE GREAT BEYOND HOP!
You dare not miss it!!
ZOMBIE PREPAREDNESS!
LISTEN TO THE CDC
Thanks, Alex!
THE WORLDS OF ROLAND YEOMANS
Donna Hole astonishes with her insights on my linked worlds
FANTASTIC REVIEW OF THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH
Michael Di Gesu does a masterful review. I am honored by his friendship
LIFE LESSONS taught me by GYPSY
Dedicated to GYPSY
PAPYRUS PRODUCTIONS
Have Wendy make your book into a trailer that wows the reader!
HELP THE HURTING
100% of the profits for ALL my books this FEBRUARY are going to THE SALVATION ARMY. My Valentine's gift to the hurting.
Buy_BLOOD WILL TELL
One lone telepath finds himself a helpless spectator as the race of Man is subjugated into mindless drones by the very blood within their bodies.When the war is over, and he finds himself totally alone ... How can he go on and why?
CALL ME TOMBS
The last Lakota Heyoka faces voodoo and ultimate evil in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania with his Hellhound, Puppy
CATCH FIRE!
BLOG TOUR FOR ALEX J, CAVANAUGH'S NEWEST NOVEL
SIV'S BLOGFEST!
The Norse Gods Are Watching You!
NERDY IS THE NEW SEXY!
BECOME A JEDI KNIGHT FOR TEENS
THE SECRET OF SPRUCE KNOLL
Help save the endangered species of Earth by buying THE SECRET OF SPRUCE KNOLL!
AMAZON KEEPS SELLING OUT!
Written by the author who could very well turn out to be the new William Faulkner, Elliot Grace
FABULOSITY GALORE bookstore
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