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Tuesday, October 11, 2022

TO DIE TWICE_HAPPY ADA LOVELACE DAY!


"My brain is more than merely mortal." 
actual quote from
Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace



HAPPY 207th BIRTHDAY, ADA BYRON!

{From the pages of THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH}


       I am Ada Byron.  I died and willed myself back to a semblance of life.  I did the same for my lover, Margaret Fuller, she of the existential mind and passionate embrace.


       On this fine New Orleans morning, I may well die again.

 
  Odd.  I can almost feel young Victor’s eyes on me, his hand on mine, those laughing gypsy eyes telling me that he has a plan, that everything will be all right.

I smile demurely over my dining table at Margaret and my uninvited guest: Abigail Adams, President of America Corps, the ridiculous name for America’s Revenant Empire.

She sips her tea cup full of O Negative blood that I keep for Renfield and smiles with red-stained teeth.  She is dressed in a black business suit much like Margaret’s.  But her satin blouse has a frilly jabot like my own.

I know that her private quarters are done in an exact replica of the bedroom she shared with her husband, John, when he was the second president of the United States. 
 
I would have pity for her had she pity for any who stood in her way of Empire. As it is, I have only the guarded respect one has for a rattler coiled to strike.

Her smile broadens, cheapens, loses all authenticity.  “This need not end badly, Lady Lovelace.  We three here are each from the same era and morality.”

To my left, Margaret speaks harshly.  “This need not have happened at all, Madame President.  There was a time when you would not even have thought of invading another’s home at all.”

Abigail sighs.  “The times have changed.  All is adrift.  Humanity has lost its mooring.”

I laugh without pleasure. “Humanity, Abigail? You have not the slightest idea of what that word means anymore.”

“And you do,” smirks Abigail.

“Yes, because of Samuel I do.”

“It is you,” I continue, “that seems to have a broken compass, Abigail.”

“Life for Margaret,” stonily speaks Abigail.  “Or death.  Your choice.”

“No.  Yours, Madame President.”

“Yours,” insists my uninvited guest – and as a revenant, just how did she accomplish that feat?  Perhaps madness confers certain abnormal abilities in a revenant?

Abigail raises her haunted eyes to meet mine.  “All you have to do is convince that stubborn McCord to see the light and join my crusade to repel Empress Theodora’s troops from these shores.”

“All,” I laugh.  “Do you not want me to give him a Judas kiss while I am it?”

Margaret leans forward as if to convince with her not inconsiderable presence.  “You know Samuel as well as we do, if not better, for you have known him longer.  He will not consent for any armed or undead conflict in his city.”

Abigail goes even paler and statue erect.  “His city?”

“Yes, his city,” I whisper.

I gather my scattered wits and continue, “Your own husband made him swear to protect New Orleans.  Why do I have to tell you this?  You were there, hiding in the shadows, Madame President.”

There was a soulless giggle from the foyer door.  We turn.  I sigh.  Things have gotten … interesting.  I stiffen.

The ghoul, Alice Wentworth, looks at us with blue-fire eyes.

 I feel Victor near.  In this room.  But how can this be?

“President?” Alice sneers.  “Empress is the true title.  Empress of the American Revenant Empire.”

I look at Abigail’s narrowed eyes.  Eyes which have looked calmly at men being sucked dry of their blood by cruel, cold, efficient machines as she murmurs,  “I preside over America Corps.”

Abigail places down her drained blood cup with a deadly grace.  “So, ghoul, where is that perversion that would join his loins to yours?”

At those words, the scamp in question slips from the misty body of Alice.  And Victor Standish, the fourteen year old Ulysses, laughs that reckless laugh of his.

 Victor smiles, waving his fingers in front of his face as if they were a fan.  “Is it hot in here, or it is just me?  Joins loins with Alice?  Whew!  That’s a pretty hot image there, your worshipfulness.”

The smile drops from his lips.  "And if you haven't noticed, Your Hind-Ass, your moral compass doesn't exactly point North anymore."
 
{Then, of course, with the intrusion of Victor, things get even more interesting.}
***
More on the woman who wrote the first computer program a 100 years before the invention of the computer:



Tuesday, October 4, 2022

WOULD YOU WRITE HORROR? IWSG Post

 

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/blackrabbitkdj-13427895/

We are living in a horror movie.

The Russians are said to be deploying 
a Poseidon torpedo.

Fact is they may have already deposited one off our shores months ago


OCTOBER is horror month. 

It is popular to be scared then. After all, movies, shows, and months eventually end

Do you know what galvanized President Regan 

to work so hard for world peace? 

A TV movie.


I have been finding it hard to write about 

fictional horror, 

feeling too much like Nero

fiddling while Rome burned.


Scientific studies indicate that those

who are not so empathic

can enjoy horror movies more

than those who feel more

negatively about those in torment.

What do you think?

Stephen King wrote:

"I think people do kind of gravitate towards horror stories when times are tough, and times are scary."

Are you finding writing

harder these days?


Thanks to Damyantii, I have this month's IWSG question:


My favorite genre?

Historical fantasy

I get to right certain wrongs that have galled me in my historical research.

Alfred Hitchcock's misogynistic cruelty on set after set, I was able to let my sociopathic former O.S.S. agent deal with him in my 


Only $7.68 at the moment in hardcover!

I was able to spend nearly a year with my favorites, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Nikola Tesla in 1895 Egypt

while doing my own rendition of THE MUMMY!

Like Damyanti, I make setting and its history an actual character in my novels.

Unlike Damyanti, my historical novels have not been optioned for the screen.

PHOTO BY Gage Skidmore 

(Although I did dream that Tatiana Maslany emailed me wanting to portray the female version of my blood courier in BLOOD WILL TELL! )


MAY ALL YOUR WRITING DREAMS COME TRUE. :-)