FRIDAY ROMANTIC CHALLENGE_THE NIGHT I DIED

Due to my work schedule, Thursday has become Friday!

Don't you hate when work does that to you?

Denise and Francine have given us the theme, LOVE HURTS :

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My 399 word entry is from CREOLE KNIGHTS :

Samuel McCord is walking deep into his club to face what he believes will be his last showdown. Before he dies, he wants to say goodbye to an old friend, Oscar Wilde.

Sam is wearing the spurs of Hephaestus. The first artifact the Olympian made. A gift for Aphrodite. A gift which maimed him. Finding them long ago, Samuel had given them back to Hephaestus, hoping the Olympian could undo the past.

Not even Olympians can do that miracle. And so, Hepaestus both loved and hated Samuel for the attempt.

In the chamber which is Wilde's eternal party, Samuel finds him speaking to the courtesan Cora Pearl and Count de Morny, old friends from his days aboard the cursed DEMETER :

I walked into the chamber. The piano changed tunes mid-chord. Beethovan's Moonlight Sonata began.

I turned to see who was playing. I saw grim features under shaggy brows. Hephaestus.

Oscar Wilde was bending his head next to the cold sunrise of Cora's hair. He laughed. Then, he smiled and spoke to both the courtesan and Count de Morny in low conspiratory tones.

"You ask what I stole from Samuel. Why his words, of course. One evening I spied what he was writing to his beloved Meilori."

Cora hushed, "You actually read one of his love letters to Lady Meilori?"

"Indeed. What were the words? Ah, yes :

'What can I tell you by letter? Nothing that I would tell you in person.

The heart of love travels not by pen and ink. Your presence here would not make you any more real, for I feel your fingers in my hair, and your cheek brushing mine.

The air is full of the music of your voice. My soul and body seem no longer mine but mingled in some strange way with yours.

I feel incomplete without you.

Always and Forever, Samuel.'"

Hephaestus glanced at my spurs as he played. The Olympian's fingers sparkled magic.

A day seven years dead echoed around me. The night Meilori left me. The night I died.

Hephaestus had been playing the Moonlight Sonata then, too. He must truly hate me to make me relive it.

Once again I smelled her jasmine perfume, looked into jade eyes narrowing in rage, heard her velvet voice becoming ice.

"You are leaving my side for her?"

"I'm only trying to make sure the adoption goes through, Meilori.Eve is Mossad. I'm having to pull every string I have left in Israel to insure ..."

" ... your whore has a family for you."

"No, Meilori. You're my family, my world."

"I ... I cannot give you children -- so you make that wanton ..."

"You know Eve's not that way."

"I know? I have seen how she looks at you. You must think me blind. Kiss me, Samuel. Kiss me the liar's kiss that says 'I love you' but means you only love yourself."

She slapped me and stormed out of the chamber and into the night, taking with her my soul.

I jerked at the memory. The pain jolted me back into the present. Hephaestus smiled.
***

A KNIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS

A KNIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS by Victor Vasnetsov has long been a favorite painting of mine.

It speaks to me now.

This morning I queried an agent for my Urban Fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

Thirty minutes, yes that's right, thirty minutes later,

she said she would have to pass as she has recently SOLD an Urban Fantasy SERIES set in post Katrina New Orleans.


A colorful metaphor came to mind and a dense fogbank of depression rolled across my chest.

Someone else was going to publish a New Orleans Urban Fantasy set after Katrina before me --

if ever I would be picked by an agent and then a publisher.

But I told myself that four agents had asked me to send them my novel : two asked for partials and two for complete manuscripts. That said something positive, didn't it?

I sat in front of my computer brooding when Vasnetsov's painting appeared in my mind's eye.

I was at the crossroads. Did I choose the path of my fears? Or did I choose the path of my beliefs?

Following my fears would lead me nowhere I wanted to go. Choosing to believe in myself had seen me out of a burning home, dragging my 80 pound unconscious Elk hound across a blazing floor,

my own face and hands badly burned.

In fact, believing in myself had led me through so many dark valleys, I couldn't picture them all.

This unknown writer might have lived through Katrina on the streets of New Orleans as I had. But he/she didn't have my voice, my perceptions, and my take on human nature.

It takes more than details to paint a moving picture of a locale. I saw the ragged edge of New Orleans during Katrina through my own filter of meaning and worldview.

Then the soft voice of my protagonist, Samuel McCord, seemed to whisper a reminder that the man who cleared leather first in a gunfight wasn't always the one to hit his target and live.

Besides, the adventures of my undead Texas Ranger, cursed with the blood of Death in his veins, aren't limited to just New Orleans of 2005. I have finished two earlier novels already --

You can buy them on Amazon and read them on your computer or your Kindle. I have many more in various stages of completion:

RITES OF PASSAGE -

My Kindle historical fantasy details the haunted voyage of the DEMETER in 1853 from New Orleans, its destination Paris, a city it never reaches.

A fantasy TITANIC, it details how McCord's blood mingles with the blood of the angel of death and his first meeting with the great love of his life, the immortal Meilori Shinseen, and with DayStar, the being fated to be his life-long enemy.

ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM -

the sequel to RITES where the DEMETER finds itself becalmed in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, where every door to the ship leads to a different time, a different place. And McCord must learn how to tap into the power of his altered blood to bend the fabric of time to save those he can. This dark historical fantasy you can also buy from Amazon.

IN A WORLD OF SHADOWS -

describes the prison breakout of Oscar Wilde from Reading Goal and the literal Hell which ensues.

Of course it is McCord who does the deed, aided by his life-long friend Samuel Langhorn Clemens {Mark Twain}, the two having met Wilde during his American tour of the West in 1882.

And the adventures that follow Wilde's rescue give birth to Twain's famous saying : "No good deed goes unpunished." I have completed the synopsis and first three chapters of this fantasy.

HITLER's HERO -

set in 1929 Venice, it details the adventures of a reluctant McCord, Father Renfield, and Meilori attempting to derail a plot by Heinrich Himmler to switch souls with the Fuhrer based on a strange verse handwritten by Wagner himself on the composer's original notes for THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. I have completed the synopsis and first chapter of this fantasy.

FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE -

I have completed this Urban Fantasy,

detailing McCord's struggle with politicians, revenant empires, and his lifelong enemy, DayStar, closing in for a final revenge on the days following Hurricane Katrina.

CREOLE KNIGHTS ELEGY -

NOCTURNE's sequel that details the encroaching war between the American and European revenant empires

as McCord deals with a New Orleans struggling to survive the aftermath of Katrina and DayStar setting into motion his grand scheme to destroy the species of Man.

McCord must rescue the Angel of Death herself from the clutches of his lifelong enemy, DayStar, in the realm some call Hell. This urban fantasy is already completed.

THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH -

is a Young Adult fantasy told through the eyes of ten year old abandoned Viktor Standish as he is befriended by McCord and the Ranger's undead circle of friends in the days prior to Hurricane Katrina.

Picture it as AUNTIE MAME meets HARRY DRESDEN meets JANE EYRE. This YA urban fantasy is also completed.

VICTOR'S NOT JUST MY NAME -

The adventures of Victor Standish and his Victorian "ghoul friend" continues as Victor battles evolved raptors, Empress Theodora, the ghost of President John Adams, and the revenge of the Old Ones for his killing of one of their hybrid children. I am half-finished with this YA urban fantasy.

So, all in all, the scope of Captain Samuel McCord's adventures

spans over two hundred years, criss-crosses the major continents, and delves into the arcane reality of most of the world's diverse mythologies.

So I am going to follow the path of belief in myself. I truly feel that whatever publisher decides to pick up my series will more than get their money's worth.

And speaking of Cowboys clashing with genres :