A NEW TERROR BORN IN DEATH

 

ANCIENT EVIL NEVER LOOKED SO BEAUTIFUL

 

http://www.audible.com.au/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Death-in-the-House-of-Life-Audiobook/B00NLQSB0G

 

 

Older than the Sphinx

Deadlier than the Colors out of Space

 

Meilori Shinseen is the most

dangerous creature on this planet ...

 

And beloved to the cursed lawman,

Captain Samuel McCord.

 

What will he do when she

enters the desert wastes of 1895 Egypt

in search

of the lost facets of her nature

even she found reprehensible?

 

Join McCord and his companions:

Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain,

Oscar Wilde, Ada Byron

and

Winston Churchill

 

As McCord tries to walk the razor's edge

between love and honor.

 

Will he succeed?

 

Listen to Robert Rossman's

thrilling narration of

DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE

and find out.

 

"Oh, if when you died,

you were only dead."

- Meilori Shinseen

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED?

Have you ever wondered?

Monday, I noticed a tattooed man talking animatedly in the parking lot of the Eye Clinic to which I was going to get my new glasses.

He was walking in circles, talking into a cell phone – his left arm waving wildly like a rabid windmill.

As I got out of my car, I heard him wail to the phone: 

“Baby!  You gotta believe me.  I wasn’t drunk.   I wasn’t!  I promised you I wouldn’t drink, and I haven’t.  If I sounded funny to you it was ‘cause I was on dope!”

He went silent, listening to the phone.  And I almost walked back to him to ask  what his “Baby” was saying in reply. 

But I wasn’t suicidal that day so I walked into the Eye Clinic.  Yet, I wondered how did he think what he said made things any better?

Yesterday, I read a Wall Street Journal article about Putin seeking a “Double-Tier” solution to his woes about the shot down airliner: 

to apologize yet still be right.

I could feel a nose-bleed coming on so I stopped reading.

I remember reading what Winston Churchill wrote after completing his volume on his early life {1874 to 1904} in 1920.

“I have drawn a picture of a vanished age.  

The character of society, the foundations of politics, the outlook of youth, the scales of values are all changed –

And changed to such an extent I should not have believed possible in so short a time without any violent domestic revolution.”

I reflected on how much further his world changed after 1920 until the time in 1953 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  

Yes, LITERATURE not peace.  Politics was a dirty world in those days as well.  The “Lion in Winter” was a rival to be diminished in British politics back then.

Edward R. Murrow, the journalist who braced and shamed McCarthy, said of Churchill in 1940:

“He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

I wonder:

Do words carry any weight anymore?

Like Gore Vidal wrote:  Has this age gone from the Guttenberg era to the Dark Ages of MTV?

Are we destined to devolve not evolve in our society?

How much has society changed around you since you were a teenager?

Was the world simpler only because you, yourself, was simpler?

Or have we edited our memories, as Churchill did who was emotionally abandoned by both parents

yet enshrined them in his memoirs?

 

Oh, by the way –

Congrats to Justin Bieber for FINALLY getting an advantage in life by cutting lines at Disneyland by being pushed in a borrowed wheelchair by handlers for a bad knee.

Disneyland allows its disabled guests to cut the lines at any rides that can accommodate them.

Of course, Disneyland has a fast line for the famous, but the wheelchair allowed him to get in front of his famous peers as well.

I wonder what Churchill would say?

 

(I love the dialogue in this movie)

WEP_A picture is worth 1000 words: Haunted Desert

I am giving my entry for the WEP challenge this month a bit early

(Who knows the way my luck is going!):

{455 Words}

Excerpt from THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT

An illustrious company of adventurers are out to find the time-lost city of Amarna in 1895,

little knowing it a trap laid by Samuel McCord's most deadly enemy.

AT NIGHT, MAN IS NOT THE ONLY MONSTER

A sudden hush settled heavy on the sands.  I almost felt it weigh down upon my shoulders.  A physical silence like a roaring wind enveloped all of us.  The Ningyo bodyguards proved to be more than killers. 

They were as adept at desert clearing as much as Meilori’s diggers.  Particles of shimmering sand rode the Ningyo-made winds, looking nothing so much as mourning ghosts of some lost, accursed antiquity in the twilight.

Abigail Adam’s fingers went to her open mouth.  In fact, everyone stood stunned, looking at the desert sand being scoured in front of us to make a level plain large enough to contain some haunted mansion like the House of Usher.

Nikola Tesla stood death-still with some glittering machine in his large hands.  He aimed it at the heap of scarlet material that was our tent.  It slowly fluttered and fluffed as if it were some strange creature out of nightmare just awakening.  Tesla raised the machine, and the enormous tent spread out and up, its fabric wings flaring out with a leathery rustling.

Sammy Clemens’s daughters cried out and stumbled backwards.  Howard Carter made a sound much like them and followed their example.  Winston Churchill, his fist on the hilt of his sword, stepped towards Lucy.  Abigail noticed his movements with a grim smile.  She led Lucy back slowly a few steps. 

Oscar Wilde and Sammy, long grown used to Tesla’s marvels, just stepped back prudently, their eyes admiring the crimson fabric sweeping out and around.  The burnished, sharp stakes jutted abruptly from its bottom like a netherworld raptor preparing to strike.

Meilori flowed beside me, her Sphinx face glowing, “Is not my Wizard a wonder, Samuel?”

“Yes, he certainly is.”

But I was filled with wonder myself over something else entire.  Why had Meilori chosen this site to set up our tent?  We could have gone on for an hour more.

It was remote in the desert wastes this nameless ruin, crumbling and inarticulate with pillars wind-scoured of inscription, its low walls nearly hidden by the sands of uncounted ages. It must have been like this before the first stones of Memphis were laid, and while the bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked.

There was no legend so old as to give these ruins a name, or to recall that they were ever alive; but these ruins were spoken of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by Bedouins in their tents, praying softly to Allah for protection.

I have always known that I was an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.  But these ruins whispered to me that mankind was a stranger to the times when they were first shaped by hands that were not hands.

A KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR

No, I'm not talking about Paladin.

http://www.amazon.com/DEATH-HOUSE-LIFE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B00HIU5O38/

I'm referring to young Winston Churchill. He was perhaps the only true soldier/journalist of our times.


The Geneva Convention would not have permitted him to bear arms in a war he covered as a journalist.


But that is exactly what he did. And he took a soldier's training and mentality with him as a reporter.

Words were his bullets, and scarse was his ammunition. He made each word count. His prose was sparse and lean like his backpack.


In 1894, Winston became a 2nd lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars.

In 1895, he spent his first military leave in Cuba for a London newspaper, THE LONDON TELEGRAPH.

He spent the next year with his regiment in India. The following year he published his newspaper articles in his first book.

{For his fictional adventures in 1895 Egypt with Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla, and my Samuel McCord --

read DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE and the soon to be released THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT.}

His eye was keen. To stay alive as a soldier it had to be. To keep his prose living, his eye had to be just as discerning.


He kept that eye open for opportunity --

as when in 1898, he volunteered for a posting with the 21st Lancers just before the climax of the expedition to reconquor the Sudan.

In the Battle of Omdurman, he participated in the last great cavalry charge of the 19th century.


The following year he again published a series of newspaper articles he had written on the River Wars. He then resigned his commission to focus on journalism.


He went to South Africa to cover the Boer War where he promptly got captured.

And just as promptly, he escaped.

With a price on his head and not being able to speak a single word of Dutch, Winston made good his escape back to England.


And you nod in appreciation for his heroism, but what about his verbal prowess?


Churchill wrote his own speeches.

The speeches that, during the Nazi bombing of London, shook the British resolve to its core.

With his words and voice alone, Churchill bound England's bleeding heart and fanned the fading embers of courage to a roaring flame:


"You ask, what is our policy?


I will say:

It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us:


to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.


That is our policy.


You ask, what is our aim?


I can answer in one word:


It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be;


for without victory, there is no survival."

This is a writer we must listen to when he talks on how to write. If we can catch but a spark of his fire then we will become eagles of prose.


And what does he say of the art of writing?


A short word is good. A short, old word is even better.

And there is wisdom both old and new to that sentence. Short words flow easier in our minds as we read. Short paragraphs are easier on the eye.


And the new wisdom to it?


In Google Search, the engine will lock onto the shortest, most used word describing a subject.

If we want our novel, our words to pop up when someone Googles, then we should stick to short, well-used words.

And he spoke on a subject tender to most of us struggling writers:

Criticism.

"It may not be agreeable, but it is necessary.

It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things that will only worsen if not dealt with. 

Courage is what it takes to get up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen to criticism."


Winston had his thoughts on writing as a whole:


“Writing a book is an adventure.

To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement;

then it becomes a mistress,

and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant.

The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude,

you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”

Churchill also likened writing a book to swimming a river.


He described the stimulating and pleasant feeling of getting one's feet and ankles wet,

wading in waist deep, and finally kicking off the bottom altogether, striking out eagerly toward the opposite shore.


As the adventure progresses, however, the water can feel colder than it seemed at first and the current more swift than was initially estimated.


Thus, nearing the center of the river may include thoughts about returning to the shore left behind, but looking back confirms that it is now nearly as far away as the opposite shore.


Resolutely gathering up strength, the intrepid swimmer forges willfully toward the inviting but distant shoreline.


The "middle of the middle" is encountered, however, where both the shore left behind and the shore lying ahead seem much too far.

Hope drains away and is replaced with feelings ranging from frustration to fear (or perhaps anger or seemingly overwhelming discouragement).


This midpoint Churchill described as "the middle of the middle",

and he commented that it seemed to him the most demoralizing and depressing part of the entire journey for the swimmer

(or author, or anyone working through any significant sequence, time period or project).


From "the middle of the middle" on, one often has to rely on sheer strength and determination or other resources, as well as a more distant hope, to make it the rest of the way.


Finally, when the swimmer feels totally exhausted, cold, and bedraggled, the opposite shore is encountered

(or the hoped for better time that was originally anticipated comes.)


And the swimmer drags up on shore and collapses, not particularly caring whether or not the journey was victorious.


The paradox here is that by the time the goal is reached, or the season passed, the person doesn't really care much one way or the other --

at least in the immediate situation.


So take heart:

even a heroic spirit like Churchill's felt as you do now. You are weary, uncertain of success, despondent of finishing.

You will finish the course. You have paid too dear a price not to. And if success is denied you?


There is no failure.

Not to those who leap into the surging currents of writing and keep stroking until their numb feet touch the other shore. No failure. You will have completed what you started.


Your novel is finished.

And so what if agents and editors turn aside?

Time is a mysterious companion. What is rejected this year may be published next year or next decade.


Just take what lessons you've learned and plunge into the currents again.


Like Winston:

keep your prose lean, your eye keen, and your senses searching for new opportunites to step into the spotlight of new agents and new arenas of growth.

Can you smell that cigar smoke? A titan is watching you. Make him proud.
**********
Winston will also be joining my band of adventurers
as they are wisked to Ancient Egypt in the 3rd book in my Egyptian trilogy:
RED LAND, BLACK DEATH