Prelude to Terror

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVFH1PF/

{Only $1.99 in Kindle}

What scares YOU?

What nightmare wakes YOU up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat

THE DEAD HAVE NO SAY –

 
In 1946, a former O.S.S. agent seeks oblivion and anonymity as a faceless prop master in a movie studio. 

One midnight, what he finds is an actress' severed hand and a deadly manhunt where the roles of predator and prey constantly change.

THE TOWN THAT HATED GOD – 

Four priests have gone missing in a rural Massachusetts village. The next priest sent is not there to hear confessions.

DEAD YET NOT – 

A Boston crime lord and a Lakota psychologist learn the things death can buy cannot be returned or refused.

MURDER AS A KINDNESS –

A dying woman is irresistible prey for her enemies … and one lost Lakota love.

A SHORE NEVER REACHED – 

A prodigal Native American son returns to the revelation you always bury the past alive, and soon or late it digs its way back up for its pound of flesh.

REUNION OF ENEMIES

 
The House Eternal. Its Viking caretaker finds doing the right thing is never appreciated.

IN TOO DEEP

 
An undead Texas Ranger and a dying author discovers he misunderstood the deal he made with the devil. 

 Ignorance of an unholy contract does not keep it from being fulfilled.

These are stories of a barren age filled with those who worship the new god of technology, 

and the old ones of lust, greed, and ambition that are as insubstantial as the beliefs of those who venerate them –

While ancient evils sneer in the shadows, picking off the self-blinded one by one by one.

Take a Halloween chance on my stories, 

will you?  

It is filled with evocative pictures ...

Even one of Midnight at the end requesting you be nice to his human with a review!

FLY WITH MARK TWAIN

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G9XZTDC/

 Now, an audio book!

Imagine a honeymoon aboard a flying Mississippi River boat.  

Then, imagine Mark Twain being a guest! 

Imagine him being a mentor to 11 year old Nikola Tesla.

Unwelcome passengers include 

a vampiric Benjamin Franklin, 

an insane Abraham Lincoln,

a vengeful General Sherman,

a pursuing Captain Nemo aboard his Nautilus, 

and a thieving Thomas Edison.

Add to that company: 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, 

Ada Byron (inventor of the 1st computer language a century before computers), 

Margaret Fuller, first American woman foreign correspondent ...

Well, things get interesting!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YTMNRG/

(Audio book under $10) 

Hurricane Katrina made landfall this day in 2005 as a Category 4 storm 

but still remains the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

What would have been its aftermath if supernatural and undead predators existed?

 

ALTERNATIVE To Twitter

Brendan Nystedt wrote 

an intriguing article on WIRED

https://www.wired.com/story/join-mastodon-twitter-alternative/

Luke O'Neil wrote
another in ESQUIRE
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/amp22777589/what-is-mastodon-twitter-platform/


Beth Skwarecki
another 
in Lifehacker
 https://lifehacker.com/a-beginner-s-guide-to-mastodon-1828503235

Mastodon

 mastodon.social

Mastodon is a refuge from the mean tweets 

and somewhat "unique" mindsets that hammer at your Twitter accounts lately.

 

Visit the site and me 

to say Hello 

will you?

@scifi.fyi 
mastodon.cloud

LET ME FALL_ WEP post

It's time for  the AUGUST challenge, 
CHANGE OF HEART.

 http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/

LET ME FALL 
{872 words}

"Let me fall,

Let me climb,

There is a moment when fear

And dream must collide."

 
I am the last of my race. I am Tuatha de Danann. And, no, human, that does not mean elf, or fae, or damned. I take that last back. 
I am damned.


"Someone I am

Is waiting for courage,

The one I want,

The one I will become,

Will catch me."


I have no memories of my youth. Youth. The word is a mockery to me.

Though I look a young woman, I have lived centuries which I do remember. I remember when the sphinx had a nose,

when the pyramids were caressed by shimmering limestone,

and when courage and honor were not hollow words.

Yes, that long ago do I remember.


"Let me fall,

If I fall,

Though the phoenix

May or may not rise."


Then how do I even know I am Tuatha de Danann? The knowledge sings to me from the depths of my spirit in the night.


Its melody mocks with teasing glimpses of a time long gone, yet unborn.


"I will dance so freely,

Holding on to no one;

You can hold me only

If you, too, will fall

Away from all your

Useless fears and chains."


How do I know I am Sidhe? It is the face which mocks me from the mirror.

High cheekbones which seem intent on bursting up and out of flesh which shimmers as if coated with stardust.

A living waterfall of honey-wheat hair, looking more like a lion's mane than any other earthly term I could use.

Large, slanted fae eyes, chilling even me with their lack of warmth or mercy.


"So let me fall,

If I must fall,

There is no reason

To miss this one chance

This perfect moment;

Just let me fall."


But enough about me. What do you think about me? On second thought, do not tell me.

What care I what humans think of me? But I lie. I do care. At least about what one human thinks of me.


Roland Yeomans. DreamSinger. 

He is Lakota myth come to life. 

He is the shaman who sings dreams to life. And he will tell me my beginnings or die.



"So let me fall,

If I must fall,

I won't heed your warnings;

I won't hear them."


My mind is churning with images humans could not comprehend as I sway up the steps of the Art Nouveau house,

that is just one of the doorways into Roland’s psyche.

Just its name alone is punishment to think, much less speak: Jugendstilhaus in der Ainmillerstrabe.

Once it had been the home of the infamous Countess Franziska zu Reventlow,

her erotic lifestyle and cosmic nonsense had inspired and broken the hearts of an entire generation in Munich.

Now it has to settle for being the most elite restaurant in the city.

No knocking on the door. 

This restaurant is much too elite for that. Only a rare electronic key will work … a key based on the silicon ingrams of Roland’s own brain.

I have mine in my longer than human fingers. Roland had sung this establishment into being along with most of Munich back when he used the pen name, The Brothers Grimm.

I slide the key through the black slot whose color matches my short-skirted version of a S.S. uniform.

True, I am some seventy years out of date. But what is seventy years to a Tuatha de Danann?

A mere hiccup in time.

I remember Wagner trying to teach me German ... among other things. I go cold inside. 

I remember too much, feel too little.

I enjoy the glares of the pompous patrons as I roll my hips to the back table reserved for DreamSinger alone.

The maitre d' nearly breaks his neck getting to me, but I am already seated, making sure my short skirt is hiked up suitably indecent to induce doomed desire.

He stands trembling over me as I take out my copy of The Spirit as Adversary of the Soul by old Ludwig Klages from my skirt pocket.

I am almost through with his nonsense. Seeing how close he can come to the truth, while stumbling right past it always makes me chuckle.

The maitre d' isn't close to chuckling. "Fraulein, you simply cannot wear that uniform in here!"

"Sure I can. What is the matter? Afraid those power brokers to our right will find out your grandfather wore this uniform for real?"

He spins around so fast he leaves an after-image. Roland clears his throat across the table from me.

“He cannot help his past.”

I study this strange man. His eyes. By the White Lady, his eyes. 

They look as if they have seen all the pain in the world … and have felt most of it.

“I’m tired of this dancing, DreamSinger. Who am I?”

Roland looks truly surprised. “I thought you knew. You are my muse, La Belle Dame sans Merci .”

"Is that my name or my nature?"

"Both."

I sit back in my chair. I had been right, after all. 

I am damned.

To read more adventures of Fallen, buy THE LAST FAE in Kindle, Print, or Audible:

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DQ9YBNY/

REWARD THE VALIANT HEART OF THIS NARRATOR

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G9XZTDC/

SETS SAIL TODAY IN AUDIO!

It is 1867 in an America a layer of existence 

from this one.   

General Sherman was denied his march through Georgia by forces beyond his ken. 

Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated, though he wishes he had been killed instead of his beloved Mary. 

The battered Indian tribes of America have a strange refuge courtesy of the cursed Texas Ranger Captain Samuel McCord.   

A global war of vampire kingdoms is going on beneath the noses of the living world - 

and it is interfering with the honeymoon of the alien empress Meilori Shinseen. 

She ruled the Aztecs when a political execution took place on Golgotha. 

Meilori commissioned the sphinx to take her mind off repairing her starcraft. 

The warring vampire rulers have mistaken her boredom with ruling the nations of man as weakness. 

They have made a grave error, emphasis on the word grave.   

What is a not-quite-mortal groom to do? 

Survive as best he can.   

Vampires, vengeful spirits of the earth, aliens among us, and 

a man with the blood of death in his veins trying to keep it from being spilled before his honeymoon is over. 

Come join the maiden voyage of the first air/steamship, the Xanadu, 

where murder, intrigue, and betrayal reign supreme...and that is just in the newlywed's bedroom.   
Joining the newlyweds are 

Mark Twain, 11-year-old Nikola Tesla, his faithful black cat, Macak, 

Horace Greely, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron, 

and the mysterious Greek physician Lucanus.   
 Lurking in the shadows, hoping to kill them, are 

the insane Abraham Lincoln, the crippled General Sherman, the vampires, Abigail Adams and Benjamin Franklin,

 Empress Theodora, ruler of the Unholy Roman Empire, and the vengeful Captain Nemo, following in his Nautilus.   

Steampunk intrigue 

and adventure 

was never so much fun.

The NEW McCarthyism

{Joseph Welch (left) being questioned by Joseph McCarthy}

Joseph Welch was the attorney for the U.S. Army as it was under investigation by Sen. McCarthy.

His confrontation with McCarthy during the hearings, in which he famously asked McCarthy 

"At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" 

is seen as a turning point in the history of the sad history of McCarthyism.

Nine years ago, James Gunn made some disgusting jokes on Twitter.  

NINE YEARS AGO.

At the time, he was working for Troma Pictures.  Walt Disney Studios it wasn't.  

He shaped his tweets to fit in.  

Hey, have you never tried to do that on the job?

Check the trailer for its Tromeo and Juliet 

on YouTube.

I couldn't make it to the end.  

But when you are starting out as a director, you take what jobs are offered you.

A person who objected to Gunn's political views shouted out those tweets 

from nearly a decade ago, and Disney literally fired him overnight ...

without giving Kevin Feige warning so that he found out from the news outlets.

Odd, in that Gunn had told Disney about his tweets when they first approached him to work for them.

Now, Ian Cheong on Twitter, 

has released photos that depict Gunn at what’s apparently a To Catch A Predator-themed party.

 Which, for those who don’t know, 

is a party based around a popular NBC investigative series that ran from 2004-2008.

Really?

Because I go to a movie-villain themed party does not make me inherently a villain, does it?

Poor Taylor Hamlin won her crown only to lose it a day later 

when an anonymous narc sent photos a year old from Hamlin’s social media to festival organizers.

I wonder if Anonymous was one of the runners-up or related to them?

Sigh. 

Now, Ruby Rose has been bullied off 
Twitter

due to the snarky attacks

that she is not lesbian enough?

What?

She came out when she was 12!

Bullies 

have tasted blood in the water.

When will this sadness stop?

Do we condemn people these days
 by social media?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?