There is even a street called Mystery but that is a 20 minute bus ride from there in an area called Mid-City.
If you are feeling brave and adventurous, you may choose to stay in the French Quarter's Mystery Hotel. 4 stars even.
You know you want to.
The French Quarter, also known as Vieux Carre {Old Square in French,} has long murmured a siren call to extreme personalities -- one such was the Sultan, whose famous ghost is said to haunt the halls of the 4 story house on 716 Dauphine Street.
In the latter 1800's, he rented the house from the Le Prete family. A dark day for everyone involved. The Sultan, a cruel and dangerous man, was not above kidnapping women off the streets, torturing them into submission, and then adding them to his harem.
One mysterious day, the Sultan met his fate in an ironic, cruel and hideous fashion. A neighbor strolling by his house stiffened in horror. She saw tiny rivers of blood trinkling from beneath the front door.
When the authorities broke down the door, they found a scene from a nightmare. Body parts and blood were everywhere. Every member of the household had been horribly murdered. Only the Sultan was missing. Where was he?
They discovered his body in the backyard in a shallow grave. He had been buried alive. The murderers were never discovered. It remains one of the city's most haunting, intriguing mysteries.
Friends have asked how the jazz club, Meilori's, is enchanted. It is the crossroads of three major ley lines, mystic lines of energy, allowing it to be the portal to another plane of existence. What exactly that plane happens to be is a matter of heated conjecture by many in New Orleans. It is much like the question of who or what is answering the questions on a Ouija board.
At first glance, New Orleans appears but a hodgepodge of streets. Look closer. First laid out by the French, the city bears the mark of Masonic training : the city's plan is based on phi {the proportion of life}. A walk down Bourbon Street triggers your chi {life force} with the ley line extending from New Orleans to Dublin, London, Brussels, Kosova, Haifa {Israel}, and Amman Jordon. If you are versed in the paranormal, you know that New Orleans connects dimensionally like no other city in the world. Or so it is said.
Some believe that the theory of dark matter implies the existence of alternate universes. Think of it. Between your nose and this computer screen could exist heavens, hells, lost dimensional wanderers, or entire galaxies. Impossible? Right now, dozens of radio and television waves are coursing through your head. You just can't see or feel them. A much more detailed explanation of New Orleans' mystic importance is written by Peter Champoux. Check his site :
“Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.” - Frederick Langbridge
There are epic events in each person's life. What we make of them determines what we make of our lives.
Shelley F. Blatt
Laila Knight asked for a little personal information. I try to focus on writing and what can help all of us become better writers. But I said I would make a stab.
Hopefully, I will not sound like that starlet who said to an ear-weary Groucho Marx : "Enough about me. What do you think of me?"
Hurricane Katrina and Rita swept through New Orleans and Lake Charles. Neither city has fully recovered. And those of us who survived are changed forever by it.
Five years ago, Hurricane Rita was a category 5 hurricane. I spent the morning running rare blood to scrambling hospitals.
I drove back home to wolf down a hurried lunch. A mandatory evacuation was issued. I went downstairs.
Someone had siphoned the gas from my car. All the gas stations were shut down. I was stranded in the path of a killer hurricane.
Alone.
Or not so alone.
Freddie, my supervisor, called checking in on me. He offered me a ride in his car as he drove beside his wife's car containing his two children.
So with the clothes on my back, my laptop on my lap, and Gypsy in a carrier, I rode with my friend into the darkness.
The highways were shut down. We drove the back roads, the cypress trees bending down over us in the blackness as if listening to our whispered voices. Freddie's eyes were hollow.
As we passed his wife's car, I saw she was frantic, on the verge of panic.
I winked at the pale faces of Freddie's two children, Allison and Abigail, pulled Gypsy, my cat, out of the carrier, and picked up her front paw as if she were waving at the two girls.
They giggled. And the grip of panic on their mother seemed to break.
She waved back and gave a valiant smile with a thumb's up salute.
Freddie studied me for a moment and said, "Dude, you're like Job."
"How so?"
"I mean you got your gas siphoned out of your car just when you needed it most."
"I bet a lot of people did."
"Yeah, but if Rita hits Lake Charles, this will be the second time you'll have lost everything.
You lost it all when your home burned. And before that you closed your business. Your mother died before that. And before that your fiancee died. And your childhood best friend died before Kathy. Damn, it's like you're Job."
I nodded, smiling sadly, "As I recall Job ended up pretty well."
"You've got a strange way at looking at life, dude."
"You're not the first to say that."
We made it to Baton Rouge where I worked delivering rare blood to all the hospitals reeling under the impact of Katrina.
I drove to the hospital of Metairie, the first suburb of New Orleans. (It is a French term for a tenant farm.)
I saw people who had only thought they knew what having nothing meant. I smelled the stench of decaying human flesh on the breath of a too silent city.
I saw young boys in uniform trying to be men under impossible conditions.
Late at night I typed the first draft of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, alone in the spacious suite afforded me by the blood center for which I worked.
It had been leased for the board of directors to oversee the new center in Baton Rouge.
So for two months I slept in a prince's suite. Gypsy was, for once, satisfied with her accommodations, she being a princess and all.
I barely saw the suite. I was always driving it seemed --
down long, unfamiliar roads to strange hospitals protected by hollow-eyed young boys with automatic weapons and dry mouths.
On my days off, I would volunteer to drive vans for the Salvation Army, Red Cross, church groups, or out-of-state relatives frantic to find lost loved ones. There are stories in that time that haunt me still, but they belong to shattered, valiant hearts.
Finally, the blood couriers were allowed back to our devastated city.
It was like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. But these ruined streets and gutted homes I knew. Our city has never truly recovered. But my friends are a hardy bunch.
Me? I just fake it.
I've only mentioned one snippet of my life, and look how much I have written. Sigh. Like Freddie says, I tend to talk a lot.
He wrote AMERICAN GODS and is somewhat of a literary demigod himself ...
at least to me. And I owe him two debts :
1.) THEA GILMORE : His blog introduced me to her and her, at that time, latest album, LIEJACKER, with her incomparable song, THE ICARUS WIND.
2.) FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE : By the time of AMERICAN GODS, I had already written RITES OF PASSAGE and ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.
But his AMERICAN GODS with its Gothic horror, dark fantasy, age-old legend, ancient mythology, and biblical allegory in modern-day settings gave me hope that there was room for my mixing ancient myth with the Old West of Louis Lamour.
Neil Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS has been hailed as a myth for the modern world, exploring with sophistication, complexity, and evocative prose the meaning of what it means to be human in an often inhuman world.
SAM McCORD : As I wandered in enforced exile from my home during Hurrricanes Rita and Katrina, Neil Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS sparked the thought
of how my undead Texas Ranger, Sam McCord, of the 1850's would fare in the New Orleans of Katrina.
And it made me wonder how the supernatural world he had come to know would have changed with the times.
All of this made me think to ask all of you, my blog friends, what music inspires you as you write? What author(s) sparked you into writing a novel or into writing as a means of creation? I'd like to know. *** Here's Thea doing a tribute to AMERICAN GODS in her EVEN GODS DO :
has awarded me THE STYLISH BLOGGER award where I have to reveal 7 things about myself.
Sigh. Considering how long-winded I get, this may not be easy. Let me do it like Jeopardy, couching my response in the form of questions.
Question One : WHERE WAS I FIVE YEARS AGO?
Five years ago, Hurricane Rita was a category 5 hurricane. I spent the morning running rare blood to scrambling hospitals.
I drove back home to wolf down a hurried lunch. A mandatory evacuation was issued. I went downstairs.
Someone had siphoned the gas from my car. All the gas stations were shut down. I was stranded in the path of a killer hurricane.
Alone.
Or not so alone.
Freddie, my supervisor, called checking in on me. He offered me a ride in his car as he drove beside his wife's car containing his two children.
So with the clothes on my back, my laptop on my lap, and Gypsy in a carrier, I rode with my friend into the darkness.
The highways were shut down. We drove the back roads, the cypress trees bending down over us in the blackness as if listening to our whispered voices. Freddie's eyes were hollow.
As we passed his wife's car, I saw she was frantic, on the verge of panic.
I winked at the pale faces of Freddie's two children, Allison and Abigail, pulled Gypsy out of the carrier, and picked up her front paw as if she were waving at the two girls.
They giggled. And the grip of panic on their mother seemed to break.
She waved back and gave a valiant smile with a thumb's up salute.
Freddie studied me for a moment and said, "Dude, you're like Job."
"How so?"
"I mean you got your gas siphoned out of your car just when you needed it most."
"I bet a lot of people did."
"Yeah, but if Rita hits Lake Charles, this will be the second time you'll have lost everything.
You lost it all when your home burned. And before that you closed your business. Your mother died before that. And before that your fiancee died. And your childhood best friend died before Kathy. Damn, it's like you're Job."
I nodded, smiling sadly, "As I recall Job ended up pretty well."
"You've got a strange way at looking at life, dude."
"You're not the first to say that."
We made it to Baton Rouge where I worked delivering rare blood to all the hospitals reeling under the impact of Katrina.
I drove to the hospital of Metairie, the first suburb of New Orleans. (It is a French term for a tenant farm.)
I saw people who had only thought they knew what having nothing meant. I smelled the stench of decaying human flesh on the breath of a too silent city.
I saw young boys in uniform trying to be men under impossible conditions.
Late at night I typed the first draft of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, alone in the spacious suite afforded me by the blood center for which I worked.
It had been leased for the board of directors to oversee the new center in Baton Rouge.
So for two months I slept in a prince's suite. Gypsy was, for once, satisfied with her accommodations, she being a princess and all.
I barely saw the suite. I was always driving it seemed --
down long, unfamiliar roads to strange hospitals protected by hollow-eyed young boys with automatic weapons and dry mouths.
Finally, the blood couriers were allowed back to our devastated city.
It was like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. But these ruined streets and gutted homes I knew. Our city has never truly recovered. But my friends are a hardy bunch.
Me? I just fake it.
And there you have at least 7 things you didn't know about me. And I've answered only one question. Like Freddie says, I tend to talk a lot.
But he smiles good-naturedly when he says it.
Oh, and that time in Baton Rouge was the first time I saw my soon-to-be Viking friend, Eric. There is a tune by Muse that fits with Fallen in Tara's HOT KISS BLOGFEST :
EXCERPT from my YA urban fantasy, VICTOR'S NOT JUST MY NAME.
(The follow-up to THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH.)
NO MORE BAD DREAMS :
The smell of death was overpowering the moment I cracked open one of the hospital chapel’s wooden doors.
Inside, more than a dozen bodies lay motionless on low cots and on the ground, shrouded in white sheets.
Here, a wisp of gray hair peeked out. There, a knee was flung all awkward. A pale hand reached across a blue gown.
Mother, in a shimmering black robe, gently tucked the knee back under the sheet. She turned to me.
"Victor, you are wondering why I called you here, are you not?"
I forced my throat to work. "I was surprised is all. I figured Katrina would have the Angel of Death really busy."
Shadows swept over her like a shroud to flicker away, revealing her in blood-stained linen wrappings. Her face had become a skull.
I knew she was testing me. It made no difference. No matter the face she showed me, I only saw Mother.
Her forever-smile parted and she rasped, "Busy? You have no idea. Is Alice, your ghoul love, here?"
"You asked me to leave her behind."
The wrappings became a toga. One blood-stained wrapping clung to her eyes. She was holding high a golden scale.
"This hospital would have been too much temptation, Victor. Time for you to see shades of gray."
The room blurred, the 100 degree heat lessened. But not by much. I was in another room.
In the hospital bed in front of me, an elderly woman was crabbing feebly back from the weary doctor, trying to inject her.
"N-No. I heard what you done to them others. Please, I'm not hurting that bad."
The frazzled-haired woman doctor straightened.
"Mrs. Hebert, Memorial is cut off from the world. Our resources are down to critical levels. It is but a matter of time for you. There are others here who can survive ... but only if they have the medicines you are uselessly consuming."
"No! Please, no."
The doctor sighed and held up the needle.
"This is merely a mixture of morphine and the sedative midazolam. You will feel nothing. You will merely sleep."
"The big sleep, you mean," I said behind her, fingering my largest ball bearing.
The doctor whipped around. "Who are you?"
"I'm Victor Standish. And I don't give up ... not on me."
I winked at the old woman, hope suddenly lighting her eyes. "Not on anybody."
The doctor looked at the ball bearing in my fingers.
"You would kill one of the few remaining physicians in New Orleans?"
"No, but you'll really hate that broken knee-cap."
"Orderly!," shouted the doctor.
A burly man the size of Paul Bunyan lumbered in. I smiled wide. Two slender arms wrapped around his waist. He was wrenched back into the hall. The screams told me that Alice wouldn't be tempted for awhile.
A long time ago she told me that I would never go where she would not follow.
The doctor hovered over me, the needle trembling in her hand. "He was perfectly healthy!"
As the screams gurgled then ended, I smiled cold.
"Not anymore. And you try jabbing that thing into me, you better hope it's made of chocolate 'cause I'm going to make you eat it."
She stiffened. "I will not give Mrs. Hebert any further pain medication. Her agony is on your head."
She turned to the door but stopped. I called out.
"Alice, let the doctor go see her other patients."
As the doctor gathered her rationalizations about her uppity self and stormed out of the door, Mrs. Hebert gasped,
"You're not gonna help the other patients?"
I turned to her and shook my head.
"I don't have the medical knowledge to know how to tell if she's hurting or helping."
"But why help me?"
"You were here."
"And the others?"
"They weren't."
I walked to her bed, where Mother stood unseen by the head. I took Mrs. Hebert's hand in mine. I fought to give her my best smile and wink. I managed. I think.
"Sleep. I'll stand watch by your bed."
She smiled sad at me. "What about the pain?"
"I'm Victor Standish, and I do not lie. You will feel no more pain."
"I - I heard of you, son. You keep your word."
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
She smiled, closing her eyes and resting her head on the sweat-stained pillow. "Could you promise me one more thing?"
"What's that?
"No more bad dreams?"
I watched Mother bend over her, my eyes filling with hot tears. "I promise. N-No more bad dreams." *** Recent interviews and documents cast the story of Dr. Ana Pou and her colleagues in a new light. It is now evident that more medical professionals were involved in the decision to inject patients —
and far more patients were injected —
than was previously understood. When the names on toxicology reports and autopsies are matched with recollections and documentation from the days after Katrina,
it appears that at least 17 patients were injected with morphine or the sedative midazolam, or both, after a long-awaited rescue effort was at last emptying the hospital.
A number of these patients were extremely ill and might not have survived the evacuation. Several were almost certainly not near death when they were injected,
according to medical professionals who treated them at Memorial and an internist’s review of their charts and autopsies that was commissioned by investigators but never made public. {NEW YORK TIMES Published: August 25, 2009
{Many thanks to the extraordinary artist, Leonora Roy} ***
has awarded me the "Versatile Blogger" where I have to reveal 7 things about myself.
Amanda Sablan and VR Barkowski awarded me and tagged me with similar awards. Ouch.
For one, I had to tell 10 things you don't know about me, and for the other, I had to answer 5 questions with 5 answers about myself.
I thought I would combine the three. Probably won't work. But hey, it could be fun. I think Custer said that same thing about that infamous stroll through some valley.
Question One : WHERE WAS I FIVE YEARS AGO?
Five years ago, Hurricane Rita was a category 5 hurricane. I spent the morning running rare blood to scrambling hospitals.
I drove back home to wolf down a hurried lunch. A mandatory evacuation was issued. I went downstairs.
Someone had siphoned the gas from my car. All the gas stations were shut down. I was stranded in the path of a killer hurricane. Alone.
Or not so alone.
Freddie, my supervisor, called checking in on me. He offered me a ride in his car as he drove beside his wife's car containing his two children.
So with the clothes on my back, my laptop on my lap, and Gypsy in a carrier, I rode with my friend into the darkness.
The highways were shut down. We drove the back roads, the cypress trees bending down over us in the blackness as if listening to our whispered voices. Freddie's eyes were hollow.
As we passed his wife's car, I saw she was frantic, on the verge of panic.
I winked at the pale faces of Freddie's two children, Allison and Abigail, pulled Gypsy out of the carrier, and picked up her front paw as if she were waving at the two girls. They giggled. And the grip of panic on their mother seemed to break.
She waved back and gave a valiant smile with a thumb's up salute.
Freddie studied me for a moment and said, "Dude, you're like Job."
"How so?"
"I mean you got your gas siphoned out of your car just when you needed it most."
"I bet a lot of people did."
"Yeah, but if Rita hits Lake Charles, this will be the second time you'll have lost everything.
You lost it all when your home burned. And before that you closed your business. Your mother died before that. And before that your fiancee died. And your childhood best friend died before Kathy. Damn, it's like you're Job."
I nodded, smiling sadly, "As I recall Job ended up pretty well."
"You've got a strange way at looking at life, dude."
"You're not the first to say that."
We made it to Baton Rouge where I worked delivering rare blood to all the hospitals reeling under the impact of Katrina. I drove to the hospital of Metairie, the first suburb of New Orleans. (It is a French term for a tenant farm.)
I saw people who had only thought they knew what having nothing meant. I smelled the stench of decaying human flesh on the breath of a too silent city. I saw young boys in uniform trying to be men under impossible conditions.
Late at night I typed the first draft of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, alone in the spacious suite afforded me by the blood center for which I worked. It had been leased for the board of directors to oversee the new center in Baton Rouge.
So for two months I slept in a prince's suite. Gypsy was, for once, satisfied with her accommodations, she being a princess and all.
I barely saw the suite. I was always driving it seemed -- down long, unfamiliar roads to strange hospitals protected by hollow-eyed young boys with automatic weapons and dry mouths.
Finally, the blood couriers were allowed back to our devastated city. It was like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. But these ruined streets and gutted homes I knew. Our city has never truly recovered. But my friends are a hardy bunch.
Me? I just fake it.
And there you have at least 7 things you didn't know about me. And I've answered only one of the five questions. Like Freddie says, I tend to talk a lot.
But he smiles good-naturedly when he says it.
Oh, and that time in Baton Rouge was the first time I saw my soon-to-be Viking friend, Eric.
And another thing about me : Each time I enter my apartment, Gypsy pads to me in greeting, and I say, "The Force is with you, young Gypsy, but you are not a jedi yet."
She seems unperturbed. And here are some scenes you will not believe from George Lucas' new creation, THE OLD REPUBLIC :
My entry for Madeleine's blogfest is from my urban fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.
The man with death in his veins, Samuel McCord, and his best friend, the vampire priest, Renfield, have just walked from behind McCord's jazz club onto the flooded street the night after Katrina :
Renfield stiffened as we walked out onto the submerged sidewalk. “Dear God, Sam, did you ever think we’d see our city like this?”
I looked at the battered club fronts, the boarded windows, the two-by-four’s driven like crude knives into the very mortar of the buildings, and the crumpled remains of people’s lives floating down the flooded streets.
It was eerie. The utter blackness of a once bright street. The deep quiet of a mortally wounded city.
I looked about at the shattered world around and within me. Withered leaves of my soul seemed to fall away from me in the dark breeze of this night.
Shadows flowed through my veins. The night and eternity mocked me. They seemed to whisper : “This is all your struggling achieves -- Life runs, falls, and spindles slowly into the abyss.”
Renfield and I were standing on the threshold of something that befell every person, every civilization, but with each at a different cost.
I moved through the moments but was far them. And as the night descended, it felt as if I were leaving home.
I was swept up in a sense of the missed opportunity, the lost chance, the closed door. In my mind, I heard Bette Midler singing “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today.”
“Broken windows and empty hallways,
A pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey.
Human kindness is overflowing,
And I think it’s going to rain today.”
I sighed, “It’s like looking at the hell in the streets of London after the first Nazi bombing in ‘40.
The sheer quiet that follows a whole city being gutted, that stillness that comes right before it screams.”
He bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes eerily reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.
Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.
Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me and smiled as if it were a wound.
"Perhaps that doll will find the spirit of the child who lost it."
"You and I have seen stranger things, Padre."
He nodded. "Yes. Yes, we have. I will choose to think the child's ghost reunited with her doll."
The thought seemed to give Renfield some small measure of peace. I think Lincoln had it right : we have the peace we choose to have.
I dug around in the innards of his computer contraption and found this :
{After Katrina, Samuel McCord, the man who cannot die, and his best friend, Renfield, the vampire priest
are sloshing their way to be helped or be killed by the undead Marie Laveau} :
As we stepped out into the night's light mist of rain, the black fog curled and creamed in the muggy air like a demon from the Other Side trying to take shape.
Crucified high in the sable sky, the moon of blood admired its reflection on the dark waters of the still flooded street.
Ripples of its long bloody image flowed from the floating dead body of a dog, like tiny red streams bleeding from its lonely soul.
The night suddenly became colder than it should have been. Much colder. And in an odd sense distant. Cold and distant like the promises of lost love.
I turned to Renfield. "Still want to come with me to Marie Laveau's?"
He went paler than I thought possible, but said, "I can take care of myself, Sam."
I nodded but still felt as isolated as a lost ship at sea. The night had become as intimate as a knife fight -- and about as friendly.
New Orleans was a city of the dead and the dying and not much else. The stink of death was thick in the air. Dead creatures still floated down the streets and over the sidewalks. Bloated-bellied dogs, cats, rats, and even one dead drug addict, finally at peace.
I spotted one death-swollen deer as I waded beside a strangely silent Renfield. Flattened birds were feathered pancakes on some club fronts we passed.
What had Thoreau written? “Our lives revolve unceasingly, but the center is ever the same. And the wise will only regard the seasons of the soul.”
The seasons of the soul.
I looked up into the endless sable depths between the stars. I felt like the wolf staring up into the dark universe, who never learns why he must live like he does. But still he sings to the moon. One lonely spirit to another.
We were almost there, near Rue Burgandy and Rampart Street. The night was still not my friend. Too much recent death had set the night trembling with vengeful, wandering souls.
Spirits, lost and angry, were trudging beside us. Because of Death's blood in my veins, I could see them slowly circling us as they had that night as I walked to the Convention Center.
Their shuffling feet were heavy behind us then grew silent. They flowed inches above the flooded sidewalk until they paced us. I could feel the touch of their sunken, hungry eyes on my throat.
If these dead wanted to drink from the living, they had come to a dry well with me and Renfield.
My face grew tight as I spotted the strangely untouched building in front of us. The fine mist dripping from the brim of my Stetson, I stopped at the elegant house I had been looking for.
We were at the home of the undead Marie Laveau. ***
The poetry of the earth is never dead, yet Nature is red in tooth and claw. Those two facts clash over and over again inside the human soul.
And to spotlight that fact I have chosen this snippet from Roland’s FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. (It's worth the ride if you choose to take it.)
It the first evening following Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans.
Samuel McCord and his best friend, the vampire priest, Renfield, are stepping out from McCord’s supernatural jazz club, Meilori’s, to view the carnage Nature has left in their beloved city :
Renfield stiffened as we walked out onto the submerged sidewalk. “Dear God, Sam, did you ever think we’d see our city like this?”
I looked at the battered club fronts, the boarded windows, the two-by-four’s driven like crude knives into the very mortar of the buildings, and the crumpled remains of people’s lives floating down the flooded streets.
It was eerie. The utter blackness of a once bright street. The deep quiet of a mortally wounded city.
I looked about at the shattered world around and within me. Withered leaves of my soul seemed to fall away from me in the dark breeze of this night.
Shadows flowed through my veins. The night and eternity mocked me. They seemed to whisper : “This is all your struggling achieves -- Life runs, falls, and spindles slowly into the abyss.”
Renfield and I were standing on the threshold of something that befell every person, every civilization, but with each at a different cost.
I moved through the moments but was far them. And as the night descended, it felt as if I were leaving home. I was swept up in a sense of the missed opportunity, the lost chance, the closed door.
In my mind, I heard Bette Midler singing “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today.”
“Broken windows and empty hallways, A pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey. Human kindness is overflowing, And I think it’s going to rain today.”
I sighed, “It’s like looking at the hell in the streets of London after the first Nazi bombing in ‘40. The sheer quiet that follows a whole city being gutted, that stillness that comes right before it screams.”
He bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.
Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.
That splash said it all.
The world had always been dangerous and full of fear. It had only been the lights and the illusion of civilization that had kept it at bay. But the world was patient. It knew its time would come sooner or later.
And in the gamble called life, the House always wins. Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me.
“But the Blitz came from Man. This .... This is from God.”
I just looked at him. From God? I bit back the words that first came to my lips. It was plain he was hurting inside. And I put up with such talk from Renfield. He was my friend. And he was a priest.
Priests were supposed to see life through the filter of faith. Still, I had lost faith in the unseen long ago. It had slowly faded like mist on a summer sea.
But there is a toll to such a thing. I looked around about us, trying to see it through my friend’s eyes of faith. I failed. Not a first for me.
Renfield’s head was down, though his eyes followed the floating body of the plastic doll as the currents pulled it under the black waters. “Do you think He finally has had enough of us, Sam? Enough of our cruelty, our madness?”
I rubbed gloved fingers across my face. Like I said, I was at a loss at whether the Great Mystery even existed or not, much less be able to give a true answer to that question.
But Renfield had his own doubts about God. He was my friend, and I wouldn't push him over that dark edge.
“Hell, Padre, I don’t know. Could be.”
I smiled bitterly. “You know the Lakota Sioux call God The Great Mystery.”
“You call Him that, too, as I recall.”
“Yeah, ‘cause what He’s up to most of the times is surely a great mystery to me.”
He studied me. “You’re not ---”
He waved a hand around us. “ --- mad at Him for all of this?”
Mad at someone who might only exist in empty prayers to equally empty darkness? I saw the anguish in my friend’s eyes. I chose my words carefully.
“Hell, Padre, we all chose to live in a city seven feet below sea level right by the coast, protected by levees built and maintained by a corrupt government. What did we think would happen?”
Renfield shook his head. “We all denied. It’s what humans do.”
His lips twisted. “Even those of us whose humanity is only a memory.”
I clamped a hand on his left shoulder. “You’re human where it counts.”
His face twitched as if his tongue tasted bad. “And where’s that?”
“Your soul, Renfield, your soul.”
“I lost that a long time ago, Sam.”
I might be at a loss about God, mind you. But I was sure about the soul, for I had seen its lack often enough in too many eyes. Just like I saw its solid presence within Renfield's.
“No, you didn’t. Like mine, your soul is a cocklebur. You can’t shake it no matter what you do.”
He smiled wearily. “I must have missed that verse in the Bible.”
“Gotta read the small print, Padre. Gotta read the small print.” ***
There are two answers to that question, of course.
One that you believe in bright sunlight.
And the one that you fear is true in the shadows on a strange, moonlit street.
I know. I've had too many occasions to walk the dark streets of the French Quarter at night. I wasn't suicidal. I was broke as many were following Katrina. I saw street crime naturally. I also saw glimpses of things my rational mind refused to consider.
To focus my mind off those glimpses, I tried to make a list of movies with scenes involving lone walkers at night in the growing fog. Word to the wise. Don't do that. It really doesn't help.
Not at all.
New Orleans has been called a Twilight City, for it rises from civilized slumber to bustling life at night. Performers often line the streets, pushers sell their brands of death, prostitutes promise sex as if it were love, dancers weave through the partiers on the street, and music throbs through the veins of the French Quarter.
If the undead do exist, they walk lazily down streets in front of buildings dating back hundreds of years. In that sense, they would be at home. It is we the living who could be thought of as intruders there.
New Orleans is famous for its "Cities of the Dead."
Since the city is below sea level, it is filled with above the ground tombs instead of graves in the moist earth. One of the most famous of these "cities" is St. Louis Cemetery #1, established in 1789 and considered by many as being the final resting place of the infamous voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau.
But Samuel McCord would tell you differently. He still visits her occasionally if the situation is dire enough to warrant risking suicide.
Friends have asked for an encore of a dark scene of the supernatural from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.
Samuel is walking to the Convention Center the first night after Katrina. A wheelchair-bound woman has told him of the raping of women and young girls by drunken gang members. It is a tale he must check out for himself.
Long ago he was unable to prevent the murder of his own sister, and he is compelled to rescue each young girl he sees in danger ... trying to undo something he never can.
***
As I made my way down the flooded street towards the Convention Center, I looked up at the full moon. It seemed closer than civilization or any semblance of rescue. If there was to be any help for those suffering at the center, it would have to come from me.
I had heard the Superdome was in equally bad shape. I shook my head. To get there, I would have to head north where the water was still chest-deep over the streets.
It would take a miracle for me to help those at the Convention Center. The Superdome was on its own. I might be monster not man, but I was only one monster. And Maudie had bought my help with her bravery and her disregard for her own safety.
As I waded along into the night, the black mists curled and creamed in the humid darkness like an unspoken fear trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness. A trick of the thick air, the moon of blood leered down upon its reflection on the dark waters of the flooded street. Ripples of its long bloody image flowed from the floating dead body of a cat, looking like fingers caressing its kill.
The cat’s death apparently hadn't been pretty nor was its corpse. The night became colder than it should have been. Much, much colder.
Rind, the Angelus of Death, whispered in my blood. “At night the dead come back to drink from the living.”
I didn’t need Rind to tell me that the night was not my friend. Too much death had happened too recently.
Spirits, lost and angry, were walking beside me. Torn clothing. Hollow eyes of shadows. Sharp, white teeth. Long, writhing fingers slowly closing and unclosing.
Because of Rind's blood in my veins, I could see them slowly circling me, hear their trailing, splashing steps behind me, feel the heat of their sunken, hungry eyes upon my back and throat.
Were they soul-echoes, mere refracted memory of a will? Or were there such things as literal ghosts? Just because I could see them didn't mean that I understood what they were.
I turned the corner and came upon the startled, fragile grace of a too-white egret standing alert in the middle of the flooded street, staring back at me. Its long sleek neck slowly cocked its sloping head at me.
Then, gathering its huge wings, it launched itself into the air with its long black legs. I saw the spirits of the dead around me longingly stare after its curved flight of grace and freedom into the dark sky.
I felt a tug on my left jacket sleeve. I looked down. My chest grew cold. The dead face of a little girl was looking up at me.
Or rather the face of her lost, wandering spirit, her full black eyes glistening like twin pools of oil. Her face was a wrenching mix of fear and longing. She tried to speak.
Nothing came out of her moving lips. Looking like she was on the verge of tears, she tugged on my sleeve again and pointed to the end of the block. I followed her broken-nailed finger. I shivered.
She was pointing to her own corpse.
I took in a ragged breath I didn’t need to compose myself. The Convention Center would have to wait. I had sworn a long time ago that no child would ever ask my help without getting it.
A haunted singing was faint on the breeze. Somewhere the dead had found their voices.
I nodded to the girl’s spirit and waded to her corpse, the force of the rushing flood waters having washed it up onto the sidewalk and against a store front where it slowly bobbed in place. I saw the girl’s spirit out of the corner of my eye, studying the shell of flesh she had once worn.
Her head was turned slightly to one side. The expression to her face was sorrowful and wistful at the same time. She pointed again.
I followed the trembling finger. A rosary all wrapped up in the balled fingers of her left hand. She gestured sharply, then looked at me with eyes echoing things I did not want to see.
I nodded again and kneeled down beside the girl’s swollen corpse. I pried the rosary loose, wrapping it around the fingers of my own gloved left hand.
I looked up at the girl’s spirit. She just stood there frowning as if in concentration. Her brow furrowed, her tiny fists balled, and her jaws clenched. I could swear beads of sweat appeared on her ghostly forehead.
I jerked as suddenly guttural words were forced from the long-dead throat of the corpse at my boots. “T-Tell M-Mama ... peaceful now.”
And with that, she looked up into the night. I followed her eyes. She was looking at the retreating body of the egret slowly flying into a filmy, billowing cloud. I looked back to her spirit.
She was gone.
“I promise,” I said to the empty night.
Where had she gone?
Had her spirit held itself together just long enough to pass on those words of good-bye to her Mama? Was her soul flying alongside that oblivious egret slowly evaporating within the filaments of that cloud? Or was she finding out the truth about the Great Mystery that haunted me still?
I had no answers. Only more questions. Questions in the dark.
******************* The lovely and gracious Amanda Carr read of my mention of her in my post of the restaurant owned by the mysterious cat, Mesmer. http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/06/mesmers-i-had-lunch-with-death-today.html She sent me an autographed copy of her latest CD, SOON, in the mail today. As my own thank you, here is a snippet of it :
Shannon O'Farrell talked about my blog on her own. She's just starting out. So let's go to hers and give her a warm blogville welcome.http://shannonofarrell.blogspot.com/
I've had emails from some of my new visitors. They're unfamiliar with Samuel McCord. They ask : just who and what is he?
I thought I would answer in this post from the first chapter to NOCTURNE'S sequel : NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE. As we enter Samuel McCord's life, it is two months since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. He has emerged from his quarters in his jazz club, only just recovered from the injuries sustained in rescuing Death herself from a realm some call Hell :
CHAPTER ONE : IN THE HUSH OF A DYING CITY
Meilori's. Where death, life, and undeath sit at the same dark table. Still and all, it was my jazz club, and I loved her. Sort of tells you what kind of man I am, right?
Wrong.
Even I don't know what I am. All I know is that I can't die. Am I a revenant? Wash out your mouth and get that giddy look off your face. You really have no idea the horror that a true vampire is. Sadly, neither do they. Denial's not just a river in Egypt.
The blood of the entity called Death has mingled with mine. It was already an odd stew before then. Elu, my Apache blood-brother, was only half-Apache. His mother was the being the Apache called The Turquoise Woman and the ancient Greeks called Gaia. What did that make him, make me?
Screwed mostly.
Life isn't like Hollywood paints. Neither is undeath. There are no rules clearly written in some ancient, human-flesh bound book. Most children of the night don't know just what they are, what limits they truly have, and what secrets lay in their tainted blood. Life is never quite what you expect. Why should unlife be any different?
I stood in the shadows on the staircase leading down to the main floor of Meilori's. It twisted a bit so I was still hidden from those waiting for me at the front tables. I had maybe four beats of a living heart before they sensed me. I had known they were here from the moment they entered my club without my invitation. My club and I are linked like that. I drew in a deep breath that I didn't need to collect and center myself.
Somewhere in misty woods, lean wolves ran wild and free. Sitting on sandy shores, little children laughed at the lapping waves. Half a world away on mountain peaks, tall and unclimbed, the crisp winds sang their song of elusive eternity.
And standing here on these stairs, I was so weak from hardly healed injuries I actually trembled. I hurt all over. And the two leaders of the world's living dead waited for me at the bottom of these steps. Since they trusted each other about as much as I did them, they had brought their deadliest bodyguards.
I smiled like the wolf I was. Just another day for Captain Samuel McCord, eternal Texas Ranger. I had taken that oath some two hundred years ago. But I was still standing so it was still binding. Leastways, to my sense of honor it was. I suddenly pulled up straight and tall.
Down below, Diana Krall, Canada's queen of the piano, had changed from "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" to "You Call It Madness." The last tune was our signal for a deathtrap. I cocked my head and listened close. The keys were being hit by trembling fingers.
My friend was terrified.
I felt my face become stone. Let the rest of the world go to hell. But here in the French Quarter, in my club, no one preyed on innocents. No one.
I stepped down and around the corner as I smiled my death grin.
"Empress Theodora. President Abigail Adams. You've come a long way just to die." ******************
“Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.” - Frederick Langbridge
There are epic events in each person's life. What we make of them determines what we make of our lives. Amanda Sablan and VR Barkowski have awarded me and tagged me. Ouch.
For one, I have to tell 10 things you don't know about me, and for the other, I have to answer 5 questions with 5 answers about myself.
I thought I would combine the two. Probably won't work. But hey, it could be fun. I think Custer said that same thing about that infamous stroll through some valley.
Question One : WHERE WAS I FIVE YEARS AGO?
Five years ago, Hurricane Rita was a category 5 hurricane. I spent the morning running rare blood to scrambling hospitals. I drove back home to wolf down a hurried lunch. A mandatory evacuation was issued. I went downstairs.
Someone had siphoned the gas from my car. All the gas stations were shut down. I was stranded in the path of a killer hurricane. Alone.
Or not so alone.
Freddie, my supervisor, called checking in on me. He offered me a ride in his car as he drove beside his wife's car containing his two children. So with the clothes on my back, my laptop on my lap, and Gypsy in a carrier, I rode with my friend into the darkness.
The highways were shut down. We drove the back roads, the cypress trees bending down over us in the blackness as if listening to our whispered voices. Freddie's eyes were hollow.
As we passed his wife's car, I saw she was frantic, on the verge of panic. I winked at the pale faces of Freddie's two children, Allison and Abigail, pulled Gypsy out of the carrier, and picked up her front paw as if she were waving at the two girls. They giggled. And the grip of panic on their mother seemed to break. She waved back and gave a valiant smile with a thumb's up salute.
Freddie said, "Dude, you're like Job."
"How so?"
"I mean you got your gas siphoned out of your car just when you needed it most."
"I bet a lot of people did."
"Yeah, but if Rita hits Lake Charles, this will be the second time you'll have lost everything. You lost it all when your home burned. And before that you closed your business. Your mother died before that. And before that your fiancee died. And your childhood best friend died before Kathy. Damn, it's like you're Job."
I nodded, smiling sadly, "As I recall Job ended up pretty well."
"You've got a strange way at looking at life, dude."
"You're not the first to say that."
We made it to Baton Rouge where I worked delivering rare blood to all the hospitals reeling under the impact of Katrina. I drove to the hospital of Metairie, the first suburb of New Orleans. (It is a French term for a tenant farm.) I saw people who had only thought they knew what having nothing meant. I smelled the stench of decaying human flesh on the breath of a too silent city. I saw young boys in uniform trying to be men under impossible conditions.
Late at night I typed the first draft of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, alone in the spacious suite afforded me by the blood center for which I worked. It had been leased for the board of directors to oversee the new center in Baton Rouge. So for two months I slept in a prince's suite. Gypsy was, for once, satisfied with her accommodations, she being a princess and all.
I barely saw the suite. I was always driving it seemed -- down long, unfamiliar roads to strange hospitals protected by hollow-eyed young boys with automatic weapons and dry mouths. Finally, the blood couriers were allowed back to our devastated city. It was like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. But these ruined streets and gutted homes I knew. Our city has never truly recovered. But my friends are a hardy bunch.
Me? I just fake it.
And there you have at least 10 things you didn't know about me. And I've answered only one of the five questions. Like Freddie says, I tend to talk a lot. But he smiles good-naturedly when he says it.
Oh, and that time in Baton Rouge was the first time I saw my soon-to-be Viking friend, Eric.
And another thing about me : Each time I enter my apartment, Gypsy pads to me in greeting, and I say, "The Force is with you, young Gypsy, but you are not a jedi yet." She seems unperturbed. And here are some scenes you will not believe from George Lucas' new creation, THE OLD REPUBLIC :
"We live as we dream - alone." -Jospeh Conrad {Heart of Darkness} We all live in the solitary confinement of our minds. We reach out through the bars with feeble things like words, gestures, actions. But all those are seen through the windows of others, obscurred with the bars of their own unique perspectives.
This thought was reinforced this morning as I read of Mississippi Governor, Haley Barbour, who defended a fellow governor who had proclaimed April "Confederate History Month." Last year, Govenor Barbour did a similar thing in Mississippi, not once mentioning the horror of slavery. He is quoted as saying, "All this noise doesn't amount to diddly. I don't really see what to say about slavery."
Oh, really? And these are the men we trust to legislate for us? I can sleep better at night now.
Hurricane Rita scattered my friends and I all over the southern United States. A good friend, Debbie {her last name I will leave a mystery to protect any potential fallout from this story,} was in a church-run Katrina/Rita shelter. As a teacher, it fell to her to teach an English class of displaced urban high schoolers. The one book that the church shelter had multiple copies of was THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKEBERRY FINN. Many of her students were outraged at the portrayal and seeming acceptance of racism in the novel.
In an emailed plea, Debbie asked that while I was driving rare blood all over Southern Louisiana, if I could write a short story that would help her paint the times of the novel in such a way that her students would better grasp the mindset of that period -- and that for such a time, Samuel Clemens was actually a liberal humanitarian. And if I could make it a horror story that would be great. And if I could make it a horror story that wouldn't outrage the church leaders that would be even better.
"Was that all?," I emailed back. "You're sure that you don't want me to establish world peace while I'm at it?" She assured me that she had faith in me. That made one of us.
But I gave it my best shot.
I tried for a rural horror story that would present the actual timbre of the 1840's in a way that was acceptable to urban highschoolers. Irony is a great way to hook a reader. So I tapped my epic undead Texas Ranger, Samuel McCord, for the Mission Impossible. His scholar's mind, philosopher's spirit, and poet's soul made him an uneasy fit for the Texas Rangers. A man whose belief in the worth of any human, no matter the skin color, made him perfect to espouse values readily accepted in today's culture but made him a pariah in his own. And for good measure, I threw in a 12 year old Samuel Clemens and a monster whose natural habitat was the dreamscape of humans. And to top off the irony, I focused on the painful problem of how did a lawman, who despised slavery, keep true to his vow to uphold the law when slavery was legal.
Debbie emailed me that my story held her students captive and led to a week-long discussion of what the times must have like, what Manifest Destiny was, and how difficult it must have been to live honorably in times when compassion to minorities was a crime. Debbie assured me it was my story that made her teaching HUCKLEBERRY FINN possible.
Here is a small excerpt from the short story, DARK WATERS. I now use it to show the good governor of Mississippi what there is to say of slavery. {McCord is in the bedroom of the dying Judge Clemens whom he had brought in from the forest where he had found him} :
Mrs. Clemens gave me a hard look, then nodded and called out, “Jennie!” A black woman, her lined face a sad map of the harsh life she’d led, came hesitantly into the room. “Yes, Miss Jane.” “Please show Captain McCord to the guest bedroom.” She flicked uneasy eyes towards me, seeming to prefer being alone with a rattler than with me. “Will do, Missy.” As we walked down the spacious hallway, she edged as far from me as the hallway would let her. Her whole body quivered as if she wanted nothing so much as to run as far away from me as possible. I didn’t blame her. Fact was I felt much the same way, but I was stuck with me. She stopped suddenly. She swallowed hard once, then managed to get out her words, “Mister, there’s monstrous mean haunts in this world. And then there be some who are damn fool enough to try and do good, only they ends up making things terrible bad for everyone around them.” She forced herself to look me in the eyes. “Which one is you?” “The damn fool kind.” She almost smiled. “Leastways you be a truth-telling haunt.” “It’s a failing.” “That kind of thinking is what makes you a haunt.” She was wrong. But there was a lot of that going around. Why tilt her cart if I didn’t have to? I noticed as we walked that the walls showed clean squares where ornate frames had once hung, depressions in the wood floor where heavy furniture had once long stood. I said nothing. But my straying eyes had betrayed me to the slave, whose life I wagered had often counted on her being able to read the expression of the whites around her. “Miss Jane has gone through terrible, sad times. Mr. Marshal he done tried, but he ain’t got a lick of business sense. Me, I’m the last thing they own of any value. And if’n I hadn’t helped birth little Sammy and saved him from drowning that time in Bear Creek, I’d be gone like everythin’ else.”
I felt sick. Thing. She had called herself a thing. What kind of world was it when one race made another think of themselves that way?
I shook my head. “They don’t own you anymore.”
Her dusky face went as sick pale as it could get. “M-Mr. Marshall done sold me to dat devil Beebe!”
I reached inside my buckskin jacket and pulled out the hastily written bill of sale. “He was going to. But ... things didn't turn out like he planned. So he was forced to sell you to a stranger ... to me.”
I gave her the paper. She took it with trembling fingers. She stared at it hollow-eyed as if it were the parchment selling her soul to the devil.
“I - I can’t read, mister.”
“Get Sammy to teach you.”
She glared at me. “You is evil!”
“Turn it over, Jennie.”
“I done told you I can’t read!”
“But Sammy can. Show it to him. He’ll tell you that I’ve given ownership of you to --”
Jennie’s face became all eyes. “T-To little Sammy? Oh, bless --”
I shook my head. “No, Jennie.”
She took a step backwards, her voice becoming a soft wail. “Not back to Mr. Marshall? He’ll just be selling me again.”
I reached out with my gloved right hand that must never touch bare, innocent flesh and softly squeezed her upper right arm. “No, I gave ownership of you to --- you.”
“I’m -- I’m free?”
“Well, the judge said you were priceless.”
“Oh, you is one of the good haunts!”
She rushed and hugged me, stiffening as she felt how cold my whole body was. She edged back a step. I met her suddenly hollow eyes.
I smiled sad. “But still a haunt.”
We were silent all the way to the guest bedroom. She opened the door then her mouth. No words came out. But she did give me back my sad smile. I watched her walk away staring at the bill of sales as if it were holy writ. It was something. More than a haunt like me had the right to expect. Maybe my pillow would be the softer for it. ****** Later on in the story, McCord has projected his astral body inside the nightmare of 12 year old Samuel Clemens :
I slipped up far behind the boy. I stayed in the shadows to get the lay of the land. With his slight, shuffling gait, Sammy was making his way to a row of tiny log cabins. I smelled sweat and weariness. But I heard muffled, happy singing inspite of it. My guts went cold. Slave quarters. Sometimes I was glad I wasn’t human. It was on the far side of an apple orchard. I drew in the smell of the fruit. It might have been winter in the waking world, but I had a hunch it was always spring about these parts for Sammy. I realized then that I was standing at the edge of a thicket of hickory and walnut trees. Their scent caught me up with my own memories of a lost childhood. I forced them back. Memory Lane was a dead end street. Leastways for such as me. From the nearest cabin a figure appeared in the black, open doorway. Tall, muscular, his dark face strong and wise and kind. Only with the farthest stretch of language could you call the sorrowful accumulation of rags and patches which he wore clothes. I hung my head. How could I call myself a lawman and let this evil go on around me? Elu kept on telling me that what the white man called legal wasn’t necessarily right just because of the name he slapped on it. I could see his dried apricot face in my mind as I heard him sighing. "There is a difference in the white man’s world between justice and his rules. And that difference is as wide as the Mississippi you head to, as sharp as day is from night, and as simple as greed." Because I believed Elu was right and lived accordingly, I was an outcast among civilized folks, hell, even among the Rangers, for I made no allowance for the standing, class, or race of any man I dealt with. I felt my face go tighter. All I cared to know was that a man was a human being -- that was enough for me. He couldn’t get any worse than that. Except for me. I had become much, much worse.
****** And to show that while we are all alone in our minds, in our heartbreak and tragedy, we are all too much together, here is a music video that brings up echoes of my Urban Fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE :
Several readers have emailed me asking how to make the locale a character in their novels. I am hardly an authority, having published no novels. But what I do know I am more than willing to share. And what I know might just be so.
Just take what seems reasonable to you and leave the rest to the winds.
As for FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, I lived on the streets of New Orleans for a time so the images, smells, and despair were fresh in my mind. Which was a help and a hindrance. What one written detail brought into focus for me would not be in the memories of most of my readers. I had to enter the blank slate of the reader's mind. Evoke in him/her an archetypal detail of touch, taste, and sight that would paint a landscape of the mind. Every reading experience is a collaboration between reader and author in that way. No two readers will take away the same mental images from the same author's words because each reader has his own distinct treasure-trove of memories and beliefs.
Still every author must bring his readers into the "now" of the novel's locale. Not just by sight but by smell and by touch -- and even more important by the emotions evoked by each of those details. Go from the universal to the specific with words. Meld detail with the characters' emotions.
In FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, I used actual quotes of politicians at the time of Katrina to ground the reader in the reality of the hurricane's aftermath, slowly melding the fantasy aspects so that the fantastic became more acceptable. And at the same time, I used specific sensory details, blending them in with the main character's emotions to give the locale a personality of its own. As in the beginning of chapter five :
CHAPTER FIVE THEY MOVE IN THE SHADOWS “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” - Rep. Richard Baker to lobbyists. {as quoted in The Wall Street Journal September 9, 2005.}
An odd feeling came over me as I looked at the crowd in front of the Convention Center. For a fleeting moment, I saw the overgrown square of trees and brush it once had been. I remembered when I had been young, when every moment had been crisp and fresh, where happiness and heartache had quickly changed positions, and life was full of hope and promise. Now, things were crowded, ugly, and the only hope was for a good death.
What had Elu once told me? "When you were born, you cried and those around you rejoiced. Live your life, Dyami, so that when you die, those around you will cry, and you will rejoice."
I put my Ranger face on. The one that told onlookers that their deaths would make my life easier. And judging from some of the sullen, angry faces in front of me, sadly, that was probably true. It was a harsh look, but if it saved me from killing then it was a pretense I was willing to fake.
Most of those sitting, standing, and laying in front of the center were just scared and filled with uncertainty and dread. But those things quickly turned crowds into mobs. The water was only ankle-deep by the time I got to the front walk. But the shit I was about to walk into was much deeper.
I looked into their hollow eyes. Like most folks in this day and age, they had gone about their lives, quietly trying to swallow the fear that their lives had somehow gotten out of control and things were falling apart. Now, their worst nightmare had come to life before their eyes. Their predictable world had crumbled before their eyes. Their next meal was no longer certain, much less their safety. What did Al Einstein tell me during that last chess game?
"The true tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he still lives." Then, I heard the squalling.
I made a face. As I have stated before, I am not a nice man. For one thing, I hate screaming babies. The more of them I hear, the more I want to lash out and hit something. Maybe it was because I never had one of my own. Maybe it was my sensitive hearing. Or maybe it came from me being a man. Men just naturally want to fix whatever they see that is broken. And I couldn’t do that with a squalling baby. Most folks get downright cranky when you snatch their howling baby to see what is broken with the damn thing.
And there were a lot of babies crying as I stepped onto the water-covered sidewalk. I frowned, and those closest to me cringed. I have that effect on a lot of folks. Go figure.
My better self urged compassion. I found it odd that there was a me that I couldn't see, that walked beside me and commented on my thoughts, urging kindness when I would be cruel. I snorted. I was too old to go crazy. Hell, at my age I should already be there. *** Another route to making the locale a character in itself is to bring into sharp focus the essence of the particular times when you are bringing the reader to walk among your characters in their struggles.
Hurricane Rita scattered my friends and I all over the southern United States. A good friend, Debbie {her last name I will leave a mystery to protect any potential fallout from this story,} was in a church-run Katrina/Rita shelter. As a teacher, it fell to her to teach an English class of displaced urban high schoolers. The one book that the church shelter had multiple copies of was THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKEBERRY FINN. Many of her students were outraged at the portrayal and seeming acceptance of racism in the novel.
In an emailed plea, Debbie asked that while I was driving rare blood over Southern Louisiana, if I could write a short story that would help her paint the times of the novel in such a way that her students would better grasp the mindset of that period -- and that for such a time, Samuel Clemens was actually a liberal humanitarian. And if I could make it a horror story that would be great. And if I could make it a horror story that wouldn't outrage the church leaders that would be even better.
"Was that all?," I emailed back. "You're sure that you don't want me to establish world peace while I'm at it?" She assured me that she had faith in me. That made one of us.
But I gave it my best shot.
I tried for a rural horror story that would present the actual timbre of the 1840's in a way that was acceptable to urban highschoolers. Irony is a great way to hook a reader. So I tapped my epic undead Texas Ranger, Samuel McCord, for the Mission Impossible. His scholar's mind, philosopher's spirit, and poet's soul made him an uneasy fit for the Texas Rangers. A man whose belief in the worth of any human, no matter the skin color, made him perfect to espouse values readily accepted in today's culture but made him a pariah in his own. And for good measure, I threw in a 12 year old Samuel Clemens and a monster whose natural habitat was the dreamscape of humans. And to top off the irony, I focused on the painful problem of how did a lawman who despised slavery keep true to his vow to uphold the law when slavery was legal.
Debbie emailed me that my story held her students captive and led to a week-long discussion of what the times must have like, what Manifest Destiny was, and how difficult it must have been to live honorably in times when compassion to minorities was a crime. Debbie assured me it was my story that made her teaching HUCKLEBERRY FINN possible.
To show you how I used detail plus a character's emotions and thoughts to make a locale a character in its own right, here is a small excerpt from the short story, DARK WATERS :
Mrs. Clemens gave me a hard look, then nodded and called out, “Jennie!” A black woman, her lined face a sad map of the harsh life she’d led, came hesitantly into the room. “Yes, Miss Jane.” “Please show Capt. McCord to the guest bedroom.” She flicked uneasy eyes to me, seeming to prefer being alone with a rattler than with me. “Will do, Missy.” As we walked down the spacious hallway, she edged closer to me. Her whole body quivered as if she wanted nothing so much as to run as far away from me as possible. I didn’t blame her. Fact was I felt much the same way, but I was stuck with me. She stopped suddenly. She swallowed hard once, then managed to get out her words, “Mister, there’s monstrous mean haunts in this world. And then there be some who are damn fool enough to try and do good, only they ends up making things terrible bad for everyone around them.” She forced herself to look me in the eyes. “Which one is you?” “The damn fool kind.” She almost smiled. “Leastways you be a truth-telling haunt.” “It’s a failing.” “That kind of thinking is what makes you a haunt.” She was wrong. But there was a lot of that going around. Why tilt her cart if I didn’t have to? I noticed as we walked that the walls showed clean squares where ornate frames had once hung, depressions in the wood floor where heavy furniture had once long stood. I said nothing. But my straying eyes had betrayed me to the slave, whose life I wagered had often counted on her being able to read the expression of the whites around her. “Miss Jane has gone through terrible, sad times. Mr. Marshal he done tried, but he ain’t got a lick of business sense. Me, I’m the last thing they own of any value. And if’n I hadn’t helped birth little Sammy and saved him from drowning that time in Bear Creek, I’d be gone like everythin’ else.”
I felt sick. Thing. She had called herself a thing. What kind of world was it when one race made another think of themselves that way?
I shook my head. “They don’t own you anymore.”
Her dusky face went as sick pale as it could get. “M-Mr. Marshall done sold me to dat devil Beebe!”
I reached inside my buckskin jacket and pulled out the hastily written bill of sale. “He was going to. But ... things didn't turn out like he planned. So he was forced to sell you to a stranger ... to me.”
I gave her the paper. She took it with trembling fingers. She stared at it hollow-eyed as if it were the parchment selling her soul to the devil.
“I - I can’t read, mister.”
“Get Sammy to teach you.”
She glared at me. “You is evil!”
“Turn it over, Jennie.”
“I done told you I can’t read!”
“But Sammy can. Show it to him. He’ll tell you that I’ve given ownership of you to --”
Jennie’s face became all eyes. “T-To little Sammy? Oh, bless --”
I shook my head. “No, Jennie.”
She took a step backwards, her voice becoming a soft wail. “Not back to Mr. Marshall? He’ll just be selling me again.”
I reached out with my gloved right hand that must never touch bare, innocent flesh and softly squeezed her upper right arm. “No, I gave ownership of you to --- you.”
“I’m -- I’m free?”
“Well, the judge said you were priceless.”
“Oh, you is one of the good haunts!”
She rushed and hugged me, stiffening as she felt how cold my whole body was. She edged back a step. I met her suddenly hollow eyes.
I smiled sad. “But still a haunt.”
We were silent all the way to the guest bedroom. She opened the door then her mouth. No words came out. But she did give me back my sad smile. I watched her walk away staring at the bill of sales as if it were holy writ. It was something. More than a haunt like me had the right to expect. Maybe my pillow would be the softer for it. ****** Later on in the story, McCord is inside the nightmare of 12 year old Samuel Clemens :
I slipped up far behind the boy. I stayed in the shadows to get the lay of the land. With his slight, shuffling gait, Sammy was making his way to a row of tiny log cabins. I smelled sweat and weariness. But I heard muffled, happy singing inspite of it. My guts went cold. Slave quarters. Sometimes I was glad I wasn’t human. It was on the far side of an apple orchard. I drew in the smell of the fruit. It might have been winter in the waking world, but I had a hunch it was always spring about these parts for Sammy. I realized then that I was standing at the edge of a thicket of hickory and walnut trees. Their scent caught me up with my own memories of a lost childhood. I forced them back. Memory Lane was a dead end street. Leastways for such as me. From the nearest cabin a figure appeared in the black, open doorway. Tall, muscular, his dark face strong and wise and kind. Only with the farthest stretch of language could you call the sorrowful accumulation of rags and patches which he wore clothes. I hung my head. How could I call myself a lawman and let this evil go on around me? Elu kept on telling me that what the white man called legal wasn’t necessarily right just because of the name he slapped on it. I could see his dried apricot face in my mind as I heard him sighing. "There is a difference in the white man’s world between justice and his rules. And that difference is as wide as the Mississippi you head to, as sharp as day is from night, and as simple as greed." Because I believed Elu was right and lived accordingly, I was an outcast among civilized folks, hell, even among the Rangers, for I made no allowance for the standing, class, or race of any man I dealt with. I felt my face go tighter. All I cared to know was that a man was a human being -- that was enough for me. He couldn’t get any worse than that. Except for me. I had become much, much worse.
****** And to make the locale of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE more real, here is a music video :
CAPTAIN OUTRAGEOUS. That's the working title to the Young Adult novel I'm currently writing. Think Auntie Mame meets The Twilight Zone meets Hondo.
A twelve year old abandoned boy has become something of a Ulysses by necessity. A smart remark on his lips and trouble at his heels. Always one jump ahead of street gangs, foster home agents, and assorted petty criminals, Victor Standish finds himself in a strange section of the French Quarter where his fast thinking may not be fast enough. Two storms are coming. Katrina is one. The other is a brewing war in the Shadowlands where neither side may be the right one.
And in the center of them both is the mysterious undead jazz club owner, Captain Samuel McCord. Can the boy trust him? And can either one of them survive the coming storms? And what will be the price if they do?
The only things that are certain : Victor's knack for getting into trouble, his wise cracks, and the growing bond between him and the undead former Texas Ranger, Captain Samuel McCord.
Here is the first chapter :
Chapter One
WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE HUNGRY I was at the wrong end of a dead end alley in the French Quarter. But don't get any romantic images in your head. It was the kind of alley where wino's holed up in to die.
Which was fitting seeing as how I was going to die there.
I wasn't alone. There were four punks right in front of me. Butt ugly. Mean mad. My friends they weren't. In deep shit I was.
Story of the twelve years of my sorry gypsy life.
The leader {picture a phone booth with a head on it} cracked his meaty knuckles. "You're dead, shrimp."
Sad to say that wasn't the first time I'd heard those words. What was even sadder was how many times I had heard them. But in a way that was a good thing. I had thought my way out of each and every one of those other times.
But not this time. The game plan wasn't me living. It was them dying.
Phone Booth in front of me had killed Old Suze. Now, she and I hadn't known each other for very long. But the old lady had taken pity on me when Mother had dumped me at the bus station and split for the 5th time. I kept count. You keep track of those sort of things.
How Mother kept finding me from city to city I never knew. Why she dumped me I knew. A new boyfriend. She never kept one long.
Which wasn't surprising. She was attracted to bad boys. And guess what? Bad boys are ... bad. Duh. But she kept thinking each guy would be different. Did adults lose some of their gray cells when they lost their pimples?
Most times alone on the streets were bad. But not this time. Old Suze had shown me the ropes of the French Quarter, the gangs to avoid, the restaurants to visit late at night, and the streets to never, but never, walk alone after midnight. And this alley was on top of that list.
She had even told me why. I thought her crazy. Then, she led me here one hot night and let me see for myself. Then, we ran like hell. For an old lady she sure had been able to hoof it. But she had reason. We both had.
Now, she was dead. And as fast as life stops making sense, my fingers became fists. Phone Booth and his goons would pay.
"Didn't you hear me, shrimp? I said you were dead."
A part of me was already dead, for my voice didn't shake a bit. "You made two mistakes, Baboon Face."
His beady eyes became slits. "You talkin' to me?"
"You see any other Baboon Faces here?"
I flicked my eyes to his snickering buddies, then back to him. "Oh, yeah, you do. Well, you, the Baboon Face with the most teeth. You."
"You are so dead."
I smiled faint. This was the alley Old Suze had warned me that the shadows were hungry. The shadows that were moving all around us. The punks were too pissed to notice. Baboon Face had a huge shadow slipping right up behind him. He was all eyes for me. Good.
Now, to stay alive long enough to watch the shadows feed themselves on these murderers. 'I'm not asking to live, God. Just let me see these punks die.'
The shadow behind him rose tall, growing strange clawed arms that reached forward. I smiled wider. At least I'd see the coward who snapped Old Suze's frail neck get eaten. "You crazy? What you smilin' for?"
"You made two mistakes, Baboon Face. You killed my friend. And then, you chased me to this street before you got your fix."
"What the hell you talkin' bout?"
"Hunger. Fear. They draw the Shadows."
"What shadows?"
"The Shadows that kill."
"The only thing that's gonna be killed is you."
He lunged at me. I danced away. I'd had lots of practice -- from Mother's boyfriends, the perv's on the streets, and the cops. I dance real good. And fast.
Phone Booth was fast, too. Just not fast enough. The Shadow behind him swallowed him in a blur. It looked part glistening insect and part nightmare. Mostly nightmare. He screamed as it wrapped its jagged arms around him. He was lifted clean off his kicking feet, disappearing into the darkness as wet sucking filled the alleyway.
Funny. All of a sudden, his buddies weren't all that keen on killing me anymore. Screaming like little girls, they wheeled around to run. And they did run -- smack into the shadows that surged over them like a black wave of silent death. The shadows melted one into another until they were a black riptide that sucked the three punks under. It was creepy. I thought their screaming would be loud. But it wasn't. I only heard muffled cries that turned into whimpers. Whimpers and sobs that went on for what seemed like forever.
Then, nothing.
Mother kept telling me there was one thing I didn't know. Enough. This was one of those times I thought she just might be right. For a change.
The Shadows began circling me. The circle slowly tightened. Sometimes "oh, shit!" just doesn't cover it.
I frowned. I wasn't afraid. No, really. I'd had my fill of living on the streets always scared. To die right now would be a relief.
Besides, the punks hadn't seem to take too long to die. And that seemed way better than starving slow on the streets without Suze. And I sure wasn't hungry -- not after all I'd seen in the past hour. Then, why were the Shadows drawn to me?
The circle of insect-like Shadows drew in closer. Were they trying to scare me? Fat chance. Sure, it had sounded the way they killed hurt something awful. But I had been hurt by experts. Let them do their worst. I'd have the last laugh. I wouldn't make a peep dying.
It would all be over for me soon. No more running from perv's, cops, and gangsters. I felt my shoulders straighten from the weight that soon would be off them. It would be over for me. Over. I smiled.
The circle of Shadows tightened around me. I swallowed hard. This was it. Had I really been idiot enough to have said I wasn't scared of dying? I'd lied.
Then, suddenly he was beside me.
He you ask? I heard him called a lot of names in my times with him. Most the kind you don't use in church. But I always called him "Captain Sam." Even now, hearing those words in my mind, I smile. And my heart becomes so hollow it hurts -- for I remember.
Tall. Dressed all in black. From his wide Stetson to his long broadcloth coat, his silk shirt, his tie, his vest, jeans, and cowboy boots. His gloves were even black. I frowned. Gloves? In the heat of summer?
But his hair was moon-white, though his face seemed barely fifty. His eyes. God, his eyes. They seemed to have seen all the pain in the world and to have felt every scream. His wolf face hardened, and he spoke in words of distant, rumbling thunder.
"You know who I am. You know what I can do. Back off!"
And they did. Not just backed off. They ran clear away back down the alley. My mouth got all dry, and I couldn't seem to swallow. Who was this man who could terrify the Shadows that I'd just seen kill so quickly? I hadn't been scared before. But I got scared then.
He looked down at me, and his rock face softened. Those haunted eyes of his seemed to sparkle in the moonlight. And then, he winked.
"Next time, son. You might want to leave yourself a back door."
All at once, the weight was off my shoulders. I smiled. And I hadn't even had to die.
***********************************************
In a world that seems to have no place for honor, heroes are hard to come by. To me, one name will always mean hero : John Wayne.
Dreamer. Writer. Believer in the worth of each soul I meet.
It is not so bad a thing to have been born with the gift of laughter and the knowledge that the world is mad.
Book 4: Victor Standish risks all reality to bring back from the dead those he loves.
WOLF HOWL HAS HIS OWN BLOG!
VISIT IF YOU DARE
THE LAST SHAMAN AUDIO BOOK!
Mankind's time is nearly up. Can the last Lakota shaman save the soul of the assassin he loves before the end?
McCorkle Creations!
Let Heather McCorkle design covers and promo materials for you. You will be amazed.
ONLY $4.86!
Sometimes it is death, not life, that brings us love
A GHOSTLY WRITING MANUAL
Twain, Hemingway, Lovecraft & More!
An Age Is Ending & Ancient Evil Returning
Like PENNY DREADFUL? This is for you.
A SUPERNATURAL LONGMIRE
In Egypt, the dead never rest easy
NO ONE HEARS THE SCREAMS IN SILENT FILMS
An isolated Hollywood film crew is hunted by Nightmare
A SAMPLER OF MY HEROES
Mysteries Explained, Secrets Exposed
The Origin of Toomey Starks!
Hellhounds were never this much fun! Only $4!
VOODOO & LOVE IN THE FRENCH QUARTER
Now available in PRINT!
FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE AUDIO BOOK!
The supernatural predators come out after Katrina. Can two undead legends stop them?
AFTER KATRINA, THERE IS NONE BUT TWO TO STOP THE UNDEAD
ONLY $1.99 WHEN YOU BUY THE KINDLE BOOK!
LISTEN to GHOST OF A CHANCE
Can an author be drawn into his own fictional world and killed by his own characters?
HIBBS HAS FOUND HIS VOICE!
A tale of enchantment
Souls At The Crossroads
Where do you need to be?
THE DEADLIEST ENEMY IS WITHIN
What if Stephen King wrote of the life of a blood courier?
Listen to this haunting tale of horror and love
It is 1853. An undead Texas Ranger is on board a cursed ship in search of a murderer who is wearing the face of her last victim as a mask.
Listen to the LAST FAE
When the world is mad, there is little else to do but show them what true insanity is!
Can a man marry both the moon and the sun?
In the eclipse of myth, he can
What Defense is an innocent soul against the Powers of Darkness?
Let Hibbs, the cub with no clue, show you
Before Indiana Jones or Allan Quartermain
There was Sam McCord and his doomed love for Meilori Shinseen
Alice and Victor in 1834 New Orleans
Do a review and have a 1 in 13 chance to win a Johnny Depp autograph!
Buy_FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE
Hurricane Katrina has cast New Orleans into darkness. Predators, living and undead, close in on the helpless survivors. Can Samuel McCord and a vampire priest keep the French Quarter from being drowned in blood?
Buy_LET THE WIND BLOW THROUGH YOU
Enter the dangerous world of a Native American Noir thriller where forbidden love clashes with the politics of crime
You will never see the end coming
In his beginning is his end
My 1st SERIAL TRILOGY continues
There are none so lost as those who refuse to see
The 1st SERIAL TRILOGY!
In the dark, we are all orphans
In Memoriam - Maukie my cyber friend
RITES OF PASSAGE link
The earliest Samuel McCord adventure: Dare to board a fantasy Titanic as it sails into the Bermuda Triangle
VICTOR'S HERE!
BOOK 1: No one talks openly of the misty figures seen walking along New Orleans' iron-laced terraces, casting no shadow. Of the shapes seen rising from sewer grates. And no one willingly visits the crypt of Marie Laveau at midnight. Into this strange world arrives the street orphan, Victor Standish, from Charon's Greyhound. Charon has to keep up with the times ... the End Times. And the teen destined to be called the "Ulysses of the French Quarter" has come just in time for Hurricane Katrina, the End of All Things ... and the deadly love of the Victorian ghoul, Alice Wentworth.
VICTOR AND ALICE ARE BACK!
BOOK 2: Victor's a street kid. Alice is a Victorian ghoul Their love breaks the chain of reason. Their new adventures bring the French Quarter back from the brink of nightmare.
THE RIVAL
BOOK 3: Victor & Alice are in the French Quarter of 1834. Voodoo. Demigods. Revenants. And the hilarious Menage a Trois of Death! Oh, and someone we love dies at the end.
END OF DAYS is here!
St. Marrok's. The most eerie high school in which you will ever die. Its curriculum? The End of Days. Alice Wentworth plans to get an A+.
ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM link
SEQUEL to RITES OF PASSAGE: Come aboard the doomed DEMETER with undead Texas Ranger, Sam McCord, and sail with her into the depths of madness in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.
Buy_CREOLE KNIGHTS
SEQUEL to FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE: The dead rise. Elder Beings strain to enter our world through Katrina devastated New Orleans. And the Angel of Death is kidnapped to clear their way. Can Sam McCord stem the tide of madness in time?
Buy_THE LAST FAE
Once there was an age undreamed where legends walked this earth … and nightmares, too. Terrible were the battles, tragic the outcome of the wars. Until finally there were only two survivors : the nightmare and one bruised legend. These are the legend’s stories, each one a different facet of the same priceless gem – a jewel that has come to believe herself worthless. So come. Listen to her. Listen to THE LAST FAE.
GHOST OF A CHANCE
What if what you wrote became real?
BURNT OFFERINGS
When dreams are sacrificed, it is the soul that burns.
CHECK OUT THE FUN!
Explore if you dare
Buy_THE LAST SHAMAN
Journey with the last Lakota shaman, Wolf Howl. The white govenments call him Drew August. Those who hunt him call him Death. The last day of Man has dawned. Watch as Wolf Howl turns to meet his human hunters. Shadow, the love of his life, returns to aid his hunters. Then, Mankind's death descends. Can he save Shadow before the world's time runs out?
BRING ME THE HEAD OF McCORD!
Only 99 cents. C'mon. Take a chance.
GHOST WRITERS IN THE SKY
LEARN TO WRITE BETTER AND LAUGH ALONG THE WAY
LAST EXIT TO BABYLON
At the dawn of the End of All Things, the Last Fae finds there is no hope ... but love.
IT'S HERE TO BUY!!
The trilogy concludes. Not even the eclipse of myth is forever. But love is. And eclipses return. Listen. The voice of Blake, son of Man, is calling across the night skies.
Buy THE PATH BACK TO DAWN
Only in the eclipse of myth can a young man find himself with both the Moon and the Sun as his brides. Can he survive what follows?
Buy_LOVE LIKE DEATH
From the pages of THE LAST FAE springs this paranormal romance/thriller. Fallen, the last fae, discovers the name of the young teenager to whom she lost her heart : Blake Adamson.But she also discovers what happens when you believe your fears over your love : heartache and loss. And so Blake Adamson finds himself torn between two loves : one fae, the other an alien drinker of souls. Their love is deadly, but love, like death, will have its way.
THE BEAR WITH 2 SHAD0WS link
Based on the stories my Lakota mother told me as a child when I was deathly ill in a freezing Detroit basement apartment. Think a Native American LORD OF THE RINGS.
FROM THE GREAT BEYOND HOP!
You dare not miss it!!
ZOMBIE PREPAREDNESS!
LISTEN TO THE CDC
Thanks, Alex!
THE WORLDS OF ROLAND YEOMANS
Donna Hole astonishes with her insights on my linked worlds
FANTASTIC REVIEW OF THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH
Michael Di Gesu does a masterful review. I am honored by his friendship
LIFE LESSONS taught me by GYPSY
Dedicated to GYPSY
PAPYRUS PRODUCTIONS
Have Wendy make your book into a trailer that wows the reader!
HELP THE HURTING
100% of the profits for ALL my books this FEBRUARY are going to THE SALVATION ARMY. My Valentine's gift to the hurting.
Buy_BLOOD WILL TELL
One lone telepath finds himself a helpless spectator as the race of Man is subjugated into mindless drones by the very blood within their bodies.When the war is over, and he finds himself totally alone ... How can he go on and why?
CALL ME TOMBS
The last Lakota Heyoka faces voodoo and ultimate evil in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania with his Hellhound, Puppy
CATCH FIRE!
BLOG TOUR FOR ALEX J, CAVANAUGH'S NEWEST NOVEL
SIV'S BLOGFEST!
The Norse Gods Are Watching You!
NERDY IS THE NEW SEXY!
BECOME A JEDI KNIGHT FOR TEENS
THE SECRET OF SPRUCE KNOLL
Help save the endangered species of Earth by buying THE SECRET OF SPRUCE KNOLL!
AMAZON KEEPS SELLING OUT!
Written by the author who could very well turn out to be the new William Faulkner, Elliot Grace
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There are many mysteries in the French Quarter.
