V is for VOYAGE as in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM

{ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM is now available to buy!}

{The cover for ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM, part II of RITES OF PASSAGE,

is courtesy of the creative genius of the British award-winning artist, Andrew Simmons.}

Can you remember how you felt when you ended FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING?

I wanted to give those of you who finished RITES OF PASSAGE quick access to Book II. It should be out this Thursday.

Book II of RITES OF PASSAGE {ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM} :

Like a ghost through a wall, Captain Samuel McCord, Texas Ranger,

has slipped from one year to the next, leaving a bit of himself with each hunt until he feels as hollow as his childhood's illusions.

It is the year 1853,

and he has tracked the only lead in a gruesome murder to the transatlantic steamer, DEMETER.

A young girl he raised from a baby has been murdered on the docks of Galveston, her face removed.

She was last seen in the company of someone only known as the Gray Man.

Now, McCord is on the hunt for this mysterious man aboard the steamer.

But hunter becomes hunted. McCord discovers that fully a fourth of the steamer's passengers are supernatural predators :

revenants ( the truth behind the myth of vampires),

Kali's nymphs (flesh-eating insects),

Kali herself,

the Amal (living shadows who drain men of their life force),

Coyote (Native American trickster and chaos bringer),

the Gahe (soul-drinking demons of Apache myth).

As the DEMETER enters the Bermuda Triangle,

each person and entity McCords meets assures him that discovering the identity of the young girl's true murderer will destroy him.

ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM is an epic historical fantasy, whose major players are --

Captain Samuel McCord :
His are haunted and haunting eyes.

He has seen too much and understood more than he wanted of it.

He appears in his late forties though his hair, turned moon-white by the trauma of seeing his parents and sister murdered,

makes him appear older to those who only glance at him. He is lean like the hunting wolf he is ...

hunting for the peace and love that always seems to elude him.

Lady Meilori Shinseen :

Born of stardust and the sea,
the alien from another dimension has lived longer than most nations.

She is on this voyage to end that long life, having lost all hope of love and peace ...

until she meets the haunted Texas Ranger that reminds her of the noble samurai she lost tragically centuries before.

There are disturbing depths of sad wisdom in her slanted jade eyes.

Depths in whose darkness swim the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both. They both call and warn at the same time.

Elu :

The Apache shaman who has been mentor and brother to McCord.

His mother is the dreaded Turquoise Woman, living projection of Earth's consciousness.

Becoming blood brothers to McCord cursed him to an existence in the Mirror World, a parallel dimension to ours.

The blood mingling also cursed McCord into becoming a drainer of the life force of others ...

if he touches them with the bare palm of his right hand. Hence, McCord always wears gloves.

The phrase "taking my gloves off" is only heard once by the outlaws who force McCord into saying them.

The Gray Man :

Many have been his names.
So many he has forgotten most of them. Dragon. Abbadon. DayStar. He goes now by Lord Hassatan.

Tall, eternally young, endlessly evil and cruel, possessed of a vast, complex intellect that makes the term "genius" pale by comparison.

A Hannibal Lector of supernatural beings.

He claims to be older than even the earth,

being the Darkness which existed when all was Void ...

until the arrival of Light and the Creation of all that is.

He wants his home back.

This voyage of the DEMETER is his way of either ending his tormented life or bringing an end to all life.

Only McCord, one lone cursed mortal, stands in his way of both goals.

The last voyage of the DEMETER is not a pleasure cruise.

It is not even the stocked pond that the undead aboard believe it to be.

It is the beginning of "The End of All Things."

Unless one cursed Texican can fight and win his own personal Alamo --

even though winning it will cost him all he holds dear.

Come aboard the doomed DEMETER

and sail with her into the depths of madness in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

{Of course, a review of this fantasy of mine will also garner you 5 entries in my Autographed Book Contest. So if you review all 3 books of mine, you will receive 15 entries in my contest. How cool is that?}
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BOOK PUBLISHING IS DEAD?

Don't forget to vote for my entry in Tessa's OUTSIDE THE BOX blogfest :
http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/

Reality is a harsh mistress.

Deny ugly facts all we want, reality will sit on our porch unfazed.

Ignore her long enough, and she ends up sitting on our chests.

1.) The corporate masters of publishing houses can’t afford literature.

A.) They seem to have worked themselves into a corner as dire as that of real estate.

Their industry got financialized, and it hyper-evolved to the point of collapse.

B.) The apparent logic of maximized profit creates a gray and chilly society

where nothing pays off but banks, guns and jails.

C.) The publishing industry is in trouble—

but not just because of the digital revolution.

The real trouble for the publishing industry

has more to do with the gradual unfolding of the economic transformation that led

to this structure of publishing,

where we now have five large corporate groups and a small number of retail chains

dominating the industry.

These corporations have to achieve growth year after year,

and when that top line revenue begins to fall,

as it did when the 2008 economic recession suddenly tipped the narrow profit margins into the red,

it had devastating impact throughout the industry.

And the only way that they can preserve the profit at the bottom line is

to push people out, and to reduce their overheads and costs dramatically.

D.) So that was the real crisis in the publishing industry in the autumn of 2008 to the present.

Now, it also happened to coincide with an upsurge in e–book sales.

E.) End result? A terminally ill book publishing industry.


2.) To witness the future is to rethink the past and learn something from it.

A.) Most people are only as good as their options :

How can a 22-year-old editor intelligently bid on a book?

What does a post-graduate $32,000-a-year, fresh-out of internship, know about

what will score a huge success with the public?

Does focusing on what is taboo to say in the face of superiors cut her off

from what mainstream America is feeling, thinking, and wanting to read?

B.) Why does this frequently appear to be a case of the asylum leaving the inmates to decide?

People in publishing (except those that are up top and doing well) are not really supervised.

Unsupervised inexperience is the formula for disaster.

3.) Literary agents are not like Hollywood agents.

Many literary agents are beyond frightened of angering the editors,

so they won't fight like Hollywood agents will for the clients.

They say things like, "Well yes, it's cheap money, kid, but think of it as an annuity."

Or, "I wish I could do more but they'll never budge" or this one : "You're lucky to get it."

Even if we are,

can you imagine a Hollywood agent (lawyer) accepting that without putting up some kind of resistence?

4.) Reading for pleasure is dying.

A.) According to the NEA, less than 1/3 of 13-year-olds read for pleasure every day,

a 14% decline from 20 years ago.

The percentage of 17-year-old non-readers doubled in that same twenty-year span.

If you're an American between the ages of 15 and 24, you spend 2 hours a day watching television,

but only 7 minutes a day reading, according to this study.

B.) Timothy Shanahan, a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago and past president of the International Reading Association says

that many young people say they don't read because it's lonely.

When they are online or text messaging, they feel involved with others, but they do not feel this sense of community when reading by themselves.

C.) Shanahan continued,

"The Harry Potter books were popular not mainly because of this wonderful story and the language,

but because it was this huge phenomenon that allowed young people to participate in it.

What was exciting was reading what your friends were reading and talking to them about it. People of all ages are hungry for that kind of community."

*) What do you think?

How can we create that kind of sense of community among young readers nationwide?

Is book publishing sliding into the sea of oblivion? Is there hope? How can we stem the tide?

When and why did English teachers stop trying to teach the correct use of our native tongue, which has a bearing on declining reading?

The two subjects are inter-related, like a dog chasing its tail.
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