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

WHAT MAKES A GOOD BOOK?

Or what makes a book good?

What is the criteria you use to gauge whether a book is worth the read?

Does a book have to be good to make a difference in someone’s life? Why or why not?

Victor Standish:

"For me, if it grabs my interest, makes me think, or helps me learn something then it is a good book."


Samuel McCord:

"A good book is a treasure trove of humanity so that no matter where you open a page and start reading, there is something new to be discovered."


Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace:

" I can more easily say why I don’t like certain books and to be honest, it is often the result of the author.

Of the most recent books that come to mind: one author I simply don’t like due to her style of writing and how her characters are always women who can’t take care of themselves."

So?  What do you think makes for a good book?

Action.  No action.  Romance.  No romance.  A bit of both?



I believe there are some universal facets that make a book good and a good book (the two are sometimes not the same.)


1.) AN INTERESTING VOICE

If you don't connect to the voice, then no matter how spell-binding the plot, you will drift away from the book ...

that is if you even buy the book at all.

Why?

Because the Voice, like the wind in a ship's sails, is what carries you through the book's journey. 

Like an aroma, it permeates each page, each word of the book.

The voice is what will make a page detailing even a train ride something memorable or witty or both.


2.) MEMORABLE CHARACTERS

The sparkling character of Tony Stark made IRON MAN.  Hannibal Lector dominates each page he is on.

The characters in the world of Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz kept me turning the pages to meet more of his one-of-a-kind neighbors.

Memorable characters bring the story to life.  They make you itch to get back to their banter when the world draws you away from their adventures.

In a way, they become friends you can come back to.  They let us see and feel the world in a new way, expanding our minds, enriching our lives.


3.) A VIVID SETTING

It doesn't have to be a fantasy setting.  No matter the genre, however, the world around the characters must feel "real." 

Great settings "ground" the story.  They highlight in the larger world, the tragic or comic elements in the smaller world of the lead characters.

Settings in good books become actual characters in the story either nourishing or preying, sometimes doing both.

After Katrina, New Orleans' streets killed the children/teens who roamed them.  Their souls went before their lives.

Take 1895 Cairo:

 the common man fared even worse.  Their servitude was to multiple masters: taxes, poverty, landed aristrocrats, British prejudice.  They were always in the crossfire of conflicting demands.

A well done setting breathes life into the story you are reading.


4.) A GRIPPING STORY

In essence, the plot has the reader asking, "What happens next?"

What is riveting to you may not be riveting to me. 

But the bottom line to the gripping plot must be PERSONAL and PRIMAL to the reader.

The neighbor of a police detective has her baby kidnapped.  The child is being returned to her one finger, one toe at a time.  No ransom demand.

Did the cleaning lady see something she shouldn't have?  Did she throw away the wrong thing?  Or is it about the detective's past, something to punish him?

Whatever the plot, the reader is invested in it and is staying up longer than she should to see what happens next.

What do you think is essential in a good book?

Inger Wiltz wrote me that my latest book was good -- which made my day.


"Reading helps me so much. I felt that The Stars Bleed at Midnight is the best of your books I have read to date.

So full of wisdom, less battles with creepy critters, and marvelous conversations and bantering back and forth between your characters.

I loved it and I'm looking forward to the continuation."

Why not go to my book's Amazon page 
and try the LOOK INSIDE feature
and see if it interests you?

 

 http://www.amazon.com/STARS-BLEED-AT-MIDNIGHT-ebook/dp/B00N758R96/

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.

B is for BYRON, Ada Byron_Death Wears 3 Faces

A LOOK AT THE WORLD OF VICTOR STANDISH

THROUGH THE EYES OF ONE HE CARES ABOUT :

{In the mythos of THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH,

Abigail Adams controls the shadow confederacy of American revenants (think vampires on steroids.)

She hates Samuel McCord, for she believes he robbed her of her husband. A promise to her dead husband prevents her from taking direct action against McCord.

But to hurt a long-time friend like Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron, would bring her much delight.

Sister Magda's only allegiance is to her former husband Father Renfield.

All others must tread warily around this gypsy who is rumored to be the thief who stole the fourth nail from that infamous centurion two thousand years ago.}:


I am Ada Byron. I have died and willed myself back to a semblance of life. On this fine New Orleans morning, I may well die again :

I smiled demurely over my dining table at my two uninvited guests. I will not die alone.

Abigail Adams sipped her tea cup of O Negative blood and smiled with red-stained teeth. "This need not end badly, Lady Lovelace."

To my right, Sister Magda spoke softly, "This need not have started at all, Madame President."

There was a soulless giggle from the foyer door. We turned. I sighed. Things had gotten ... interesting. The ghoul, Alice Wentworth, looked at us with blue-fire eyes.

"President," Alice sneered. "Empress is the true title. Empress of the American Revenant Empire."

Eyes which had looked calmly at men being sucked dry of their blood by cold, efficient machines narrowed. "I preside over America Corps, ghoul."

The window suddenly raised from the outside, and the scamp, who had won my and Alice's heart, climbed into the room.

And Victor Standish, the thirteen year old Ulysses, laughed that reckless, gypsy laugh of his.

"That's Miss Ghoul to you. And don't be silly. Call it whatever you want, but if it goose-steps and Sieg Heil's, it's a Nazi."

Alice flowed to his side, clutching his right arm. "Oh, Victor, you shouldn't be here. Adams wants you dead."

He patted her hand lightly. "No. She wants Captain Sam hurt. And you know me, Alice. I always have a plan."

Abigail studied him with slit eyes. "So this is the infamous Victor Standish."

I fought a smile as Victor bowed with a mocking flourish. "At your disservice, your majesty."

Sister Magda growled, "You mentioned a plan."

Victor placed a not-so-humble hand on his chest. "Not my plan. DayStar's, whoever the hell he is."

Sister Magda husked, "Apt way of putting it."

I had never seen Abigail frightened before. It suited her. She swallowed hard.

"What do you mean, boy?"

Jerking a bold thumb his way, Victor said, "Me, being me, I've just found out that this DayStar is in the midst of planning something final for Captain Sam."

Sister Magda shook her head in disbelief. "And this saves you from Abigail just how?"

I whispered, "What she said."

Victor walked up to Abigail. "By all means, kill me."

Alice trilled, "Are you insane?"

Victor leaned forward, hugging a stiffening Abigail around her rigid shoulders. "Kill me, and, of course, you throw Captain Sam off his game."

She glared at him. "You call this a plan to save your life?"

"But you also take the thrill from this DayStar when he defeats Captain Sam because he really didn't do it all on his own."

Victor winked at her suddenly hollow eyes. "Imagine how pleased he'll be with you."

Abigail's eyes became windows into Hell. "You think yourself clever but are not. I will not move against you nor Samuel McCord."

She leaned forward. "Death wears three faces, Standish. Bad, worse, and worst. You have chosen the third."

Though it was summer I shivered.
***
More on the woman who wrote the first computer program a 100 years before the invention of the computer :

DANCING WITH THE STARS ... at MEILORI'S

DANCING WITH THE STARS …

At MEILORI’S! {New Weekly Feature}

(From UNDER A VOODOO MOON) :


In his room at Meilori’s, Victor Standish has been told that three dooms are descending upon New Orleans. His friends are shaken. Victor decides if he is to die, he’ll do it with style …


Sfumato with this! I had to change the mood to this party. The tune had changed down below. I recognized the artist. Jim Stubblefield. He was playing the gypsy tune, “La Selva Negra.”

It was just starting up with all the sound effects and everything.

I twirled Alice around with a flourish. “If it’s the end of the world, then let’s go out doing a danse macabre!”

Alice sputtered, “A what?”

“Well, a salsa actually.”

She slapped her sides with her arms. “I cannot do any of these modern dances, you dunce!”

“Sure you can.”

“I cannot!”

“Since you merged with me in your mist form, some of me rubbed off on you.”

She pressed her lips together like a fired-up librarian. “I suddenly feel like taking a bath in Listerine.”

I laughed, “After the dance. I lived for awhile in the back of a dance studio. I learned enough to make a few dollars teaching dance steps. So your body knows those steps, too.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “What a scamp of a life you would have us believe you led. Is there anything you didn’t do? ”

I smiled wide. “I never made my bed. ‘Course I didn’t have one! But that’s just silly details.”

I grabbed a startled Sam. “C’mon! You, too.”

“Whoa, son! Who do you think I’ll dance with?”

I winked at Ada Byron. “You get the honor of dancing with Lady Lovelace.”

Margaret Fuller glowered at me. “And just who would you suggest I dance with, Marshal Hickok?”

“Great idea!, I laughed. “Glad you came up with it!”

She snarled through clenched teeth, “You street rat, I didn’t come up with it!”

“Sure you did,” giggled Alice. “Oh, do dance with the poor lovesick Marshal. He took that wound for you. The very least ….”

Ada chuckled at the outrage and cornered look in her lover’s eyes. “Oh, do that little for the poor man.”

Margaret gave me a look that I actually felt. “I will remember this, Standish.”

Magda had a faraway look to her violet eyes. “It has been too long since Renny and I danced. Yes! I shall tell him now!”

And POOF! She was gone. I shook my head. Last month all this would have struck me strange. Ah … it still did actually.

I hurried Sam and Alice down the hallway before Jim Stubblefield finished his tune. Ada bubbled in laughter beside a glowering Margaret. We reached the head of the stairs in no time at all. A beaming Magda and a ruffled Renfield stood waiting for us. I guess the Padre didn’t care for teleporting at the drop of a collection plate.

He glared at me. “I take it this is your hair-brained idea?”

I nodded. “Yup. There are folks down there who want me dead. I plan to dance on my grave right in front of their eyes.”

I winked at Alice. “And make them jealous over my dance partner.”

Renfield shook his head and laughed, “You and your stunts, Victor. Sure, but you’re going to be making another tale to add to the collection told of you.”

“So as long as they get my dance partner’s name right I don’t care.”


CHAPTER THIRTY
STRANGE, I’VE SEEN YOUR FACE BEFORE.


I stood at the top of the velvet staircase, looked down, and smiled. Jim Stubblefield was still playing “La Salva Negra.” He and his band were really putting their heart and soul into it … plus an avalanche of sound effects. I smiled wide. Whoever those other Two Fates were, me and Alice were going to show them some steps.

Sam looked over to me and winked, “Race you to the bottom!”

Ada gave a surprised but delighted squeal as Sam swept her up into his arms and blurred down the stairs. I’m not being poetic. He and Ada actually blurred Sam was moving so fast.

“Oh, Captain,” gasped Ada. “You are quite taking my breath away. And I thought never to say that to a man again!”

Alice smiled mean. “Oh, so it is to be that way, is it?”

I yelped (in a manly fashion, of course) as she picked me up like I was balsa wood. I kept forgetting how much stronger than me she was. The lower half of her did some blurring of its own as she became mist and flowed so quickly down the stairs the world became all foggy.

It was a tie as she and Sam made it to the dance floor at the same time. Sam was grinning from ear to ear. That soft-hearted wolf. He let her catch up to him on purpose. I smiled wide myself. I had never seen him so happy.

Magda was suddenly beside me with a re-ruffled Renfield. “It is you, you scamp. You and your gh….”

I saw Alice begin to stiffen in preparation for the insult. Renfield raised an eyebrow. Magda sucked in a deep breath and finished ….

“… your Gothic love.”

She spun Renfield in an intricate Salsa twirl. “And for the record, scamp, I can teleport. I let you and Sam win.”

Alice looked at Magda’s dancing body and paled. Her voice became like that of a little girl’s. "I cannot move like that!"

I laughed, slowly swaying up to her, lightly pressing my lower body against hers. "Of course, you can."

“I can eat the lips from your face if you do that move again.”

She suddenly giggled, “Oh, do look at poor Margaret’s face.”

I turned to the beat of the music. Margaret looked like she was swallowing a whole can of sardines. She approached the table of the glum Hickok, wrenching the surprised Marshal to his feet.

“This is never to be spoken of again, Hickok. Understand me?”

“N-No. But I surely am not gonna argue with you, pretty lady.”

Margaret looked at him with a Medusa glare. “You do know how to Salsa do you not?”

“No, ma’am. But I am the best faker you will ever meet.”

Margaret snorted, “Of that I have no doubt. And watch those hands!”

Alice giggled at the sight of them and the exchange of words like crossed sabers. She was so caught up in her amusement she wasn’t realizing how expertly she was doing the Salsa.

Son of a ....

Sam glanced hard my way. Son of a gun. My guess had been right. I felt just like Elu. At the thought of him, I looked at the closest mirror. He was glaring at the front door to Meilori’s. Uh, oh. Trouble was coming.

Alice caught my look so I caught her up in fancy stagger step of my own before the smile left those pretty lips. Her eyes widened, but she giggled as her feet moved with a life of their own to match me step for step.

Stubblefield started to strum a wild gypsy riff as I smiled, "The Salsa is several dances melted into one. The guaracha --"

I gyrated my hips in a way that made Alice’s neon blue eyes get even wider. "The Cuban Bolero ---"

I swirled around her, tapping my, ah, bottom against hers. "And the rural Rumba, which is really a dance of exhibition, not of participation."

Alice stopped dancing to glower, "I do not know, Mr. Standish, your gludius maximus seems to be participating with mine just fine. Too fine!”

I quickly swept her up beside a similarly dancing Renfield and a glowing Magda. I swirled Alice out, then swept her back into my arms. For the first ever, her face was flushed. I smiled wider.

"The steps are quite simple, Alice. Here, see? The rhythm is set in counts of four of equal time. Look, the basic footwork is even more simple. Three steps taken on the first three beats of a measure, with a hold ---"

"A what?," she frowned.

I moved in, kissing her lightly.

She nipped at my lips half-heartedly as I pulled away. "A hold, silly rabbit. No step on the fourth beat."

"Oh, certainly. I knew that."

I raised a skeptical eyebrow, sweeping her closer. She laughed throaty, moving her hips in a way that made me want Captain Sam to turn away.

"Of course, you did," I said out of a throat grown suddenly thick.

Her eyes grew heavy somehow, as her hips began to sway hypnotically. Alice moved closer and closer to me. She reached out to my hips, grabbed them, starting to move them in time to her own.

There was something else about Alice I kept forgetting. She was a woman in a teen’s body. And I had just awakened that woman. I might just have outsmarted myself this time. Mother kept saying there was one thing I didn’t know : enough.

"Let me help," she breathed. "That is right. Move, flow with the music."

"Wh-What music?"

"Can you not feel the pounding of the blood in your ears? Listen. Listen as I rub my hips against yours. Now? Can you not hear the music I am hearing?"

That was the trouble. I could. I could also see Magda’s and Captain Sam’s outraged eyes. And worse, the music was gone. I couldn’t hear the guitars anymore.

Stubblefield was gone. Grace Jones was in his place. Meilori’s was like that. The stages would become misty, exchanging one artist for another. I never got used to it.

Grace was singing, “Strange, I’ve Seen Your Face Before” to the tune of Libertango. Alice and I flowed to the new melody, the new steps, as if we were one. Two new dancers were beside us. I went cold. Ghosts. They were ghosts. And not just any ghosts.

Captain Jean Lafitte and the little step daughter of New Orleans’ Jill the Ripper, Madame Delphine LaLaurie.

They said as one, “She is coming.”

{SEND IN YOUR VOTES NOW FOR YOUR PICK OF DANCERS!}
***

WEEP NOT FOR THE UNDEAD

I am Margaret Fuller.

You may recognize my name from the adventures of Samuel McCord and that scamp, Victor Standish.

History has me drowned upon this date in 1850 aged forty. In 1853, when Captain Samuel McCord met me aboard the cursed DEMETER, I was still all too alive.

Shortly thereafter, I became a unique form of undead. But then, I have always been unique -- alive or undead.

My beliefs (feminist and Transcendentalist), accomplishments and fervent personality put me in the spotlight throughout my life,

but my "last" years, spent in Rome supporting the short-lived Roman Republic, reached an operatic level of passion and poignancy.

As foreign correspondent of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, I argued the cause of the Italian revolutionists in the dispatches sent home. In Rome, I assisted on the Republican ramparts and in their field hospitals.

I also married an Italian nobleman who was prominent in the Republican cause, and had a son by him. With the ramparts fallen and my husband in jeopardy, I reluctantly decided to return to America, despite premonitions of disaster and warnings from Emerson and other Concord friends that my socialist leanings and doubtful marriage would provoke public disfavor.

As if I have ever cared what the rabble thought. When my boat ran aground just off the New York coast, I chose to stay with my husband, who could not swim. Both of us were washed to sea and never found, (so history reports).

But Henry (David Thoreau) found me washed upon the shore not far from my young boy’s body.

The memorial to me put up by my family reads,

“Born a child of New England, / By adoption a citizen of Rome, / By genius belonging to the World.”

My genius has never been in question.

Edgar Allan Poe thought me such. He believed that the fallacy in my lobby for women's rights was that

"She judges woman by the heart and intellect of Miss Fuller, but there are not more than one or two dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth."

Poe’s evaluation is echoed in comments by Emerson and Hawthorne — though they let slip that their attraction might be more than intellectual (as it was) when they both referred to me in print as “Margaret Fuller, the Sexy Muse.”

I now know all the people worth knowing in America,and I find no intellect comparable to my own except for dear Ada (Byron, Lady Loveless - author of the first computer language a 100 years before the invention of the computer itself.)

McCord has his moments, but he is restrained by his Victorian ideals and code that he will not cast aside. I love him for his nobility. It will be the death of him.

What will be the death of you? I wager your friends know even if you do not. I leave you with a bit of my own verse :

“Let me gather from the Earth,
one full grown fragrant flower,
Let it bloom within my bosom
through its one fragile hour….”

Of my past, I neither rejoice nor grieve, for bad or good, I acted out my character.
***

T is for TEASE or RITES OF PASSAGE comes out this Saturday_Samuel McCord's first recorded adventure!

T is for Tease ...

{Cover courtesy of my good friend, Nicholas Savant}

RITES OF PASSAGE

Captain Samuel McCord's first recorded adventure comes out this Saturday

on http://www.amazon.com/

Think :

A fantasy TITANIC.

QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER meets a supernatural HANNIBAL LECTOR.

TOMBSTONE meets DIE HARD meets HELLRAISER

Some dangerous souls lead lives like loaded guns.

Captain Samuel McCord is such a man. His nature is that of a poet and a philospher. His family dying in a Comanche raid right before his eyes changed all that.

Violence and death has stalked him since that day. Becoming blood brother to a not fully human Apache shaman changed McCord further. He sees around the corner in reality.

By 1853, he has become a pariah among the Texas Rangers, assigned certain death assignments. Traveling the world, McCord saves Princess Victoria's life, sets Napoleon III on his throne, and fights against both sides in the Chinese Opium War. Every crown prince of Europe and the Orient has set a bounty on his life.

McCord could care less. Someone has murdered the young girl he raised from a tiny baby. The murderer took the girl's face to wear as a mask. She was last seen in the company of someone only known as the Gray Man.

McCord tracks the Gray Man to the transatlantic steamer, DEMETER. As the ship enters the waters of the Bermuda Triangle, McCord learns that fully a fourth of the passangers are undead in some form or other.

It is not a pleasure cruise. It is a stocked pond.

An elite stocked pond : Ralph Waldo Emerson. His first wife, Ellen Tucker. Ada Byron. Horace Greeley. Sir Robert Peel. Margaret Fuller. Daniel Webster. Count de Morey. The courtesan Cora Pearl.

And only half of these illustrious luminaries are undead.

But revenants, flesh-eating insects, soul-draining shadows, and other forms of madness will not stop McCord. Not even the mysterious Gray Man.

McCord will catch the murderer of the young girl who reminded him of his murdered sister. There is no fail.

Then, the one thing he never expected comes into his life : love. Love in the deadly form of an alien born of stardust and the sea. McCord can fight any enemy, but can he survive the love of a deadly goddess?

CHRISTMAS EVE AT MEILORI'S

My arms were filled with packages for my friends.

On top of them was a small gold box for Alice, containing a silver garter with one word stitched in scarlet thread, "Rubicon."

The little joke would make Alice groan and Victor snicker.

But underneath it was a finely crafted broach of one single black rose,

reminding them both of the time they were reunited by an enemy ...

that something good can come from a hurtful act ...

as Easter taught us so long ago.

Each package contained both a gag gift and a meaningful one. It was tradition with me. Samuel, Renfield, Magda, Ada, Margaret, Hicock, and Toya were all taken care of.

I stood on the corner of Royal and St. Peter, waiting for the sun to set on Christmas Eve ...

and for Cafe Royal to be transformed into the CrossRoads of Worlds,

Meilori's.

There was a hollow moaning of music soft and eerie all about me. Ghost demons swirled from the billowing mists layering the street.

Black wings rustled angrily as a tall being with three slowly revolving faces suddenly stood by my side. The eagle face cawed at the spirits.

"Not tonight. Begone!"

They went. Very, very fast.

"T-Thanks," I managed.

The lion's face wrinkled with an emotion I couldn't read. "We did not do it for you. Enter. You are expected."

I shivered, promising myself I would add a lump of coal to Samuel's package next year. I entered as the lamb's face winked at me. My shivers picked up goosebumps for company.

I walked through the saloon doors that once belonged to the bar owned by Hicock in Deadwood. I set my face to be prepared for anything. Like always when I did that, I got the one thing I didn't expect.

The place was empty.

Its shimmering, slowly spinning chandeliers illuminated gothic furnishings straight out of a Victorian Gentleman's club. Scarlet wall hangings fluttered from a breeze I could not feel. Portraits of lovely ladies turned their heads in the paintings to wink at me.

"Come. Sit. Drink some of this horrid stuff."

I turned to the bar and to the sound of the deep voice. I frowned. A short, muscular man in a plaid shirt, faded jeans, and hiking boots. His hawk nose said he was Jewish. His sparkling eyes hinted that he was friendly.

He patted the stool next to him. "Put those packages on the table next to you and sit yourself down before you fall down."

I sat down on the stool. Man, I towered over him. He had to be five foot six inches at the most.

"Five, eight," he smiled. "Jewish males when I was born were usually five, five."

His smile gleamed white in his bronzed face. "I was a giant among men then ... in some circles."

He touched the scars on the back of his hands softly. "Not so much in others."

"Joshua," I whispered.

"Right the first time," he laughed. "Only Greeks should call me that other name."

"But you don't have a beard."

His face sombered. "After the soldiers half-pulled it out, I shaved off the rest of it."

He sipped from his glass, filled with thick white liquid and grimaced, "Why do you people drink such a terrible tasting beverage in honor of my birthday?"

"White Russian?," I winked back at him, hoping to bring the light back to his eyes.

"Ha. Ha. Egg Nog. My last earthly beverage had more kick than this."

"You turned that down as I remember."

"Yes, I should have taken a sip to take the edge off this egg nog. Yuck!"

"You come here often?"

"Every Christmas Eve for one drink of egg nog with Samuel. Of course, I don't show up in this body. He must make up his own mind about me."

"Where is he?," I asked.

"Getting into fatal trouble with Victor and the others as we speak."

I started to get up when He waved me down. "Sit. I sent reinforcements."

His smile flashed like dawn through the trees. "My present to you."

"Th-Thanks."

"Da nada," he chuckled as if at some private joke.

One eyebrow raised slowly. "No questions on your future? No requests to become the next J K Rowling?"

I shook my head. "I don't have the pretty legs for it."

He snorted, "Always a joke when you are scared, isn't it?"

"That or a White Russian."

"You dress better than the Dude, and you don't drink," he smiled softly.

"With the trouble I get into sober, can you imagine me drunk?"

He sipped his egg nog. "Yes, I can. And even being me that is scary."

I nodded to the empty tables. "Where are the other customers?"

"I made them uncomfortable. Can you imagine that?"

"Perhaps it was their pasts," I said.

His face grew sad. "Or their futures."

I had to remove that sadness somehow. "Joshua, what did the zero say to the eight?"

Joshua, being Joshua, spoke the answer with me. "What a lovely belt you have on."

He massaged his temples with his long, strong fingers, and I saw the small scars on his forehead from the last present humans had given him.

He shook his head. "That has got to be the worst joke told for the best reason I have ever heard."

He winked. "Catch you later."

And He was gone.

"Looking forward to it," I whispered.

I sipped my own egg nog and grimaced. Jeez, He was right. This stuff did taste terrible.
***

DEATH WEARS THREE FACES

A LOOK AT THE WORLD OF VICTOR STANDISH

THROUGH THE EYES OF ONE HE CARES ABOUT :

{In the mythos of CAPTAIN OUTRAGEOUS,

Abigail Adams controls the shadow confederacy of American revenants (think vampires on steroids.)

Tomorrow's post will detail why she hates Samuel McCord. A promise to her dead husband prevents her from taking direct action against him.

But to hurt a long-time friend like Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron, would bring her much delight.

Sister Magda's only allegiance is to her former husband Father Renfield.

All others must tread warily around this gypsy who is rumored to be the thief who stole the fourth nail from that infamous centurion two thousand years ago.}


I am Ada Byron. I have died and willed myself back to a semblance of life. On this fine New Orleans morning, I may well die again :


I smiled demurely over my dining table at my two uninvited guests. I will not die alone.

Abigail Adams sipped her tea cup of O Negative blood and smiled with red-stained teeth. "This need not end badly, Lady Lovelace."

To my right, Sister Magda spoke softly, "This need not have started at all, Madame President."

There was a soulless giggle from the foyer door. We turned. I sighed. Things had gotten ... interesting. The ghoul, Alice Wentworth, looked at us with blue-fire eyes.

"President," Alice sneered. "Empress is the true title. Empress of the American Revenant Empire."

Eyes which had looked calmly at men being sucked dry of their blood by cold, efficient machines narrowed. "I preside over America Corps, ghoul."

The window suddenly raised from the outside, and the scamp, who had won my and Alice's heart, climbed into the room.

And Victor Standish, the thirteen year old Ulysses, laughed that reckless, gypsy laugh of his.

"That's Miss Ghoul to you. And don't be silly. Call it whatever you want, but if it goose-steps and Sieg Heil's, it's a Nazi."

Alice flowed to his side, clutching his right arm. "Oh, Victor, you shouldn't be here. Adams wants you dead."

He patted her hand lightly. "No. She wants Captain Sam hurt. And you know me, Alice. I always have a plan."

Abigail studied him with slit eyes. "So this is the infamous Victor Standish."

I fought a smile as Victor bowed with a mocking flourish. "At your disservice, your majesty."

Sister Magda growled, "You mentioned a plan."

Victor placed a not-so-humble hand on his chest. "Not my plan. DayStar's, whoever the hell he is."

Sister Magda husked, "Apt way of putting it."

I had never seen Abigail frightened before. It suited her. She swallowed hard.

"What do you mean, boy?"

Jerking a bold thumb his way, Victor said, "Me, being me, I've just found out that this DayStar is in the midst of planning something final for Captain Sam."

Sister Magda shook her head in disbelief. "And this saves you from Abigail just how?"

I whispered, "What she said."

Victor walked up to Abigail. "By all means, kill me."

Alice trilled, "Are you insane?"

Victor leaned forward, hugging a stiffening Abigail around her rigid shoulders. "Kill me, and, of course, you throw Captain Sam off his game."

She glared at him. "You call this a plan to save your life?"

"But you also take the thrill from this DayStar when he defeats Captain Sam because he really didn't do it all on his own."

Victor winked at her suddenly hollow eyes. "Imagine how pleased he'll be with you."

Abigail's eyes became windows into Hell. "You think yourself clever but are not. I will not move against you nor Samuel McCord."

She leaned forward. "Death wears three faces, Standish. Bad, worse, and worst. You have chosen the third."

Though it was summer I shivered.
***
More on the woman who wrote the first computer program a 100 years before the invention of the computer :