A NEW TERROR BORN IN DEATH

 

ANCIENT EVIL NEVER LOOKED SO BEAUTIFUL

 

http://www.audible.com.au/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Death-in-the-House-of-Life-Audiobook/B00NLQSB0G

 

 

Older than the Sphinx

Deadlier than the Colors out of Space

 

Meilori Shinseen is the most

dangerous creature on this planet ...

 

And beloved to the cursed lawman,

Captain Samuel McCord.

 

What will he do when she

enters the desert wastes of 1895 Egypt

in search

of the lost facets of her nature

even she found reprehensible?

 

Join McCord and his companions:

Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain,

Oscar Wilde, Ada Byron

and

Winston Churchill

 

As McCord tries to walk the razor's edge

between love and honor.

 

Will he succeed?

 

Listen to Robert Rossman's

thrilling narration of

DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE

and find out.

 

"Oh, if when you died,

you were only dead."

- Meilori Shinseen

A BLACK WIND BLOWS

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N758R96

 

“All of us have a path to follow, and that path begins in the heart.”

           - Samuel McCord  {a supernatural LONGMIRE}

 

          The world is filled with mystery and shadow.

 

What is life?  The years bring us the conceit that we grasp life.       

 

What we grasp is but illusion.

 

Childlike we seize a fistful of seawater and say we hold the ocean.  And even that slips through our grasping fingers.

 

As the ocean holds depths Man will never see so does Life.

 

But one cursed man has seen more than most.  And the enemies he has made doing so are now trying to un-make him.

 

From the undead halls of power in colonial Washington, D.C. to the bloody plains of India to the mystery-shrouded deserts of Egypt, Texas Ranger Captain Samuel McCord is spoken of in whispers lest he take notice of the speakers.

 

Follow his cursed footsteps from 1826 and the death bed of President John Adams to the blood stained hills and ravines of 1857 India. 

 

 

And finally to 1895 Cairo and the far deserts wastes of Egypt. 

 

 

Some fool has disturbed the sleep of something that should never have been awakened. 

 

 

And it is up to McCord, his deadly wife, Meilori Shinseen, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla, and Lt. Winston Churchill to keep the world from slipping into a new Dark Age of madness and death.

 

But this time, the past has caught up with McCord in the form of the undead Abigail Adams and the revenant Empress Theodora of the Unholy Roman Empire.

 

 

Worse, an ancient Pestilence in the body of a mummy child now reaches out for him and those he loves.

 

And his friends and even the world itself may pay the terrible price if he cannot be more than what he believes he can be.

Don't forget

HIBBS THE CUB WITH NO CLUE

only 99 cents

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MT8DNLY/ref=docs-os-doi_0

 

IN THE ROARING TWENTIES, ANCIENT EVIL AWAKENS

http://www.amazon.com/HER-BONES-BADLANDS-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B00FPFOJNO/

HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS

It is the era of The Great Gatsby. 

America has spanned the continent, survived the War to end all wars, and bursts with false fire in the stock market.

Criminals are the new heroes.  Science is the new god. 

And one lonely, undying man seeks to evoke an innocence that never was by making the first talking Western movie.

With his wizard, Nikola Tesla, Samuel McCord awakens an ancient evil. 

Now, he must find a way to save those who have unknowingly become the prey to Something whose hunger never ends.

HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS is now FREE for a LIMITED TIME.

For a real treat, listen to the great talent, Robert Rossman, narrate it:

http://www.amazon.com/Her-Bones-Are-Badlands/dp/B00JEOI1BI/



And if you like McCord with Nikola Tesla ...

Join him in 1895 Egypt with Nikola once more along with Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Winston Churchill ...

as they discover some secrets should remain buried.

DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE:
http://www.amazon.com/DEATH-HOUSE-LIFE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B00HIU5O38/

WEP_A picture is worth 1000 words: Haunted Desert

I am giving my entry for the WEP challenge this month a bit early

(Who knows the way my luck is going!):

{455 Words}

Excerpt from THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT

An illustrious company of adventurers are out to find the time-lost city of Amarna in 1895,

little knowing it a trap laid by Samuel McCord's most deadly enemy.

AT NIGHT, MAN IS NOT THE ONLY MONSTER

A sudden hush settled heavy on the sands.  I almost felt it weigh down upon my shoulders.  A physical silence like a roaring wind enveloped all of us.  The Ningyo bodyguards proved to be more than killers. 

They were as adept at desert clearing as much as Meilori’s diggers.  Particles of shimmering sand rode the Ningyo-made winds, looking nothing so much as mourning ghosts of some lost, accursed antiquity in the twilight.

Abigail Adam’s fingers went to her open mouth.  In fact, everyone stood stunned, looking at the desert sand being scoured in front of us to make a level plain large enough to contain some haunted mansion like the House of Usher.

Nikola Tesla stood death-still with some glittering machine in his large hands.  He aimed it at the heap of scarlet material that was our tent.  It slowly fluttered and fluffed as if it were some strange creature out of nightmare just awakening.  Tesla raised the machine, and the enormous tent spread out and up, its fabric wings flaring out with a leathery rustling.

Sammy Clemens’s daughters cried out and stumbled backwards.  Howard Carter made a sound much like them and followed their example.  Winston Churchill, his fist on the hilt of his sword, stepped towards Lucy.  Abigail noticed his movements with a grim smile.  She led Lucy back slowly a few steps. 

Oscar Wilde and Sammy, long grown used to Tesla’s marvels, just stepped back prudently, their eyes admiring the crimson fabric sweeping out and around.  The burnished, sharp stakes jutted abruptly from its bottom like a netherworld raptor preparing to strike.

Meilori flowed beside me, her Sphinx face glowing, “Is not my Wizard a wonder, Samuel?”

“Yes, he certainly is.”

But I was filled with wonder myself over something else entire.  Why had Meilori chosen this site to set up our tent?  We could have gone on for an hour more.

It was remote in the desert wastes this nameless ruin, crumbling and inarticulate with pillars wind-scoured of inscription, its low walls nearly hidden by the sands of uncounted ages. It must have been like this before the first stones of Memphis were laid, and while the bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked.

There was no legend so old as to give these ruins a name, or to recall that they were ever alive; but these ruins were spoken of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by Bedouins in their tents, praying softly to Allah for protection.

I have always known that I was an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.  But these ruins whispered to me that mankind was a stranger to the times when they were first shaped by hands that were not hands.

THERE IS IN THE NIGHT THE RUSTLE AS IF OF WINGS

From the living nightmare world of a 12 year old Sammy Clemens in Missouri 

to

a nocturnal campfire visit from Pele beside a 31 year old Mark Twain in the Sandwich Islands 

to

a cursed archaeological dig in 1895 Egypt with Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla, and his alien wife, Empress Meilori Shinseen

Samuel McCord has seen untold horrors.

The worst is yet to be unveiled: the monster within the woman he loves with all his heart.

The End is coming.  The portents murmur in the stars.  Death is on the breeze, and madness dances in the darkness.

Awakened Evil slithers from its opened crypt.

Can one cursed Texas Ranger manage to save the world AND his marriage?

The answers are in the next SAMUEL McCORD adventure:

COMING SOON

DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE

{Cover courtesy of the genius of Leonora Roy}

It is the time of death, disease, and war in Egypt --

normal conditions for all of its 5000 year history.

The year is 1895.  Ten years earlier General Gordon died in the seige of Khartoum, fighting alongside McCord-Pasha. 

Six months later,  Muhammad Ahmad, the self-proclaimed Mahdi died mysteriously.

Many whispered, "McCord-Pasha still lives."

In 1895, cholera has killed 150,000 -- among them those who would enslave the peasants and seize the land for themselves.

The whispers increase, "McCord-Pasha is angry."

Lady Meilori Shinseen, millennia ago called Sekhmet, merely smiles.

It was said that her breath formed the desert. As a Ningyo, able to manipulate all fluids, Sekhmet and her people happily drained the land dry.

Now, Sekhmet has returned for her aegis and should she succeed, nations will tremble before her and thousands die.

And with the genius, Nikola Tesla, at her side, Sekhmet may well possess her aegis again.

McCord-Pasha has to think of a way to save the world without destroying his marriage

while keeping British operatives from re-capturing Oscar Wilde, whom he and Samuel Clemens just broke out of Reading Goal.

But beneath the ruins of Tanis slumbers Something that should never be awakened.

Once again, the world is on the brink of Chaos with only the wits and courage of McCord-Pasha to push it back.

This November I will be working on this novel.  Not for NaNoWriMo. 

This novel has seized me, and it will not let me go.  Wish me luck on it.  I will still write my posts never fear.  :-)

MARK TWAIN_IF YOU ASK A HUNGRY MAN_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

{"If you ask a hungry man how much two plus two is, he will reply four loaves."
-Mark Twain.}

Nikola Tesla told me, ghost to ghost, not to use Roland's prose as a blunt instrument.

To leaven the flour, so to speak, with a little lesson on writing, or what not, every now and again.

Nikola's a smart one, even for a ghost, so I thought I'd listen to him.

Listening.

I've been thinking some on that subject.

Like that hungry man I started out with -- how what we hear depends upon what we're listening for.

I remember walking down a busy downtown street in 'Frisco a century or two ago with an Injun of my acquaintance.

I was in the midst of the most sage pontificating you ever heard when he suddenly pulled up short and bent down.

Lord Almighty, if he didn't pick up a chirping grasshopper, of all things, from the corner of a store door.

He walked carefully over to a nearby planter and dropped it in.

"You mean to tell me," I said, "that you heard that little fella over all this hustle and bustle?"

"Do you have a silver dollar, Clemens?"

"Why I sure do."

"Let me see it."

So I dug it out of the warmth and security of my vest pocket and handed it to him.

Wouldn't you know that danged Injun flipped it high in the air where it clattered to the floorboards of the sidewalk.

I swear there was a such a mad scrabble of folks clawing for my dollar, it took all I had to snatch it from the hands of an ample matron.

Being a gentleman and all, I only left a bruise or two on her doing it.

Well, it was my dollar, dang it.

She told me where I could go for my next vacation. I informed her that I would join her there come the next cold front in that place.

That Injun shook his head at me. "I heard a living creature in the path of blind feet. They heard the hungry cry of free money. You hear what you listen for, Clemens."

And just what has that got to with writing?

Well, listening is what killed Hemingway the first time around. Yes, that's right. Listening.

You see, a long time ago, Hemingway stopped listening - except to the answers to his own questions.

Maybe that's what dried him up -- not listening outside the Greek chorus inside his own mind : "Ernest. Ernest. Papa. Papa."

No insult meant to him. It happens to all of us. We see well enough. We just stop listening.

It dried the wellspring inside his soul. He was dead long before he pulled the trigger.

You say : that's fine to say of him, of yourself. The world's has changed.

But not human nature.

Lord Almighty, I've seen it all go, and I'll watch it go again.

If you would be good writers, children, thing to do is to last, to get your work done -- see and hear and learn and understand.

Write when you've done all that and not before.

Then, your readers will actually experience your tale.

But to do that you have to use the right word for the right thing. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

As you would filet a fish, filet your prose. Strip every sentence to its cleanest state.

Every word that serves no function,

every long word that could be a short word,

every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb,

every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what to whom -- carve it out as you would the bones from a bass.

After every sentence, ask yourself what the reader wants to know next.

Good writers write in such a way that one can read them aloud and know what they mean.

Bad writers have to be studied and re-read and pondered like that bejiggered James Joyce.

His ghost still holds a grudge against me for putting out a cigar in his ULYSSES. I thought I was downright subtle in my critique of his book.

It's not like my books haven't had their share of insults.

I've been tarred and feathered for HUCK FINN.

But you can't make your world come alive for the readers without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Because if it is all beauty and victory and rose sunsets, the readers won't believe in it. Life isn't like that.

Roland's certainly wasn't.

Now, I've gone and done it. Dang tears. I can't see the letters on this bejiggered contraption anymore. I have to stop now.

If you want me to, I'll post another entry from his journal Monday.
***
Nikola tells me I'm old-fashioned, even for a ghost. He wants me to add this song. Have I told you that old Nikola's a strange bird? Well, he is.

By the way, unknown to that band, Nikola is one of them -- the fella with the strange eyes behind that gal in the first photograph.

Like Wagner, this music is better than it sounds. The start and end of this song gave me a nosebleed, and the middle gave me a stomach ache :

GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER FOURTEEN : MURDER AS A KINDNESS

{“Mark Twain again.

Tesla taught me how to use this bejiggered contraption to write these posts as they are called.

With the strangest look to his eyes, he told me, “Life is all memory,

except for this present moment that flits by you so quickly, you hardly notice it going.”

Have you ever searched for a lost item? Torn up the house doing it, like a dog digging up the yard for the bone he’s already chewed to nothing?

Then, there it is in front of you, shining as if lit with fires unseen to the normal eye.

Where did it come from? The Shadowlands.

The Shadowlands have their strange ways. Roland’s battered note pad turned up last night by his black magic box folks call a laptop of all things.

Though Roland had no time to write an account of what happened, here on these pages, in his own hand, is paragraph after paragraph of the details.

So I will post them as they happened to the three of us, Roland, the ghost of Marlene Dietrich, and my own spectral self.

In this post, Roland finds himself in a Victorian London alley on the run through time for the murder of the ghost of Ernest Hemingway …

none of us knew the scoundrel had only been poisoned and was still alive … if such can be said of a ghost.

The being calling herself Death has just forced the three of us to witness the gruesome killing of a two year old girl by a swarming, biting pack of hungry rats.

Death is leading us to a brothel from which we can return to Meilori’s, the supernatural jazz club and sanctuary of sorts.

Unfortunately, the band of killers who are slaughtering poor prostitutes, using the group name “Jack the Ripper,” stand between us and the doorway to safety.

Here is the account in Roland’s own words} :

Death turned to us, and her form was of the many-armed, bloody Kali. “I am not your enemy.”

Mark Twain grunted, “Try being on this side of your eyes and still saying that.”

Marlene said softly, “Why did you have to show us that baby’s death?”

“It was her fate drawing me. Remember, Magdalene, I am everywhere, allwheres simultaneously.”

Mark Twain arched an eyebrow. “Something like that could put off your digestion.”

Death turned slowly to him. “Some find your humor quaint. I am not one of them.”

She turned back to me. “I have taken you with me in this way to confound your enemies that have the limited sense to try to use me for their own ends.”

I forced my throat to work. “That child’s death was the price of our admittance back into Meilori’s?”

“Yes, Lakota. And no.”

“No?,” frowned Mark.

“There is one more death yet to come before I can take you to the Door of Nasah.”

Marlene’s fingers went to her mouth. “That is the door of the damned.”

Death was now in armor and a horned helmet as she nodded. “And it will take you three to Meilori’s. A most detestable part of that club. But it is the best that I can do.”

She gestured to Mark Twain, and her form now was that of Blind Justice. “Behold your ‘low-rent district,’ Clemens. London of this age is undoubtedly the largest and richest city the world has yet known. “

She spat and her spittle sank smoking into the cobblestones. “Here in its underbelly, there are 90,000 full-time prostitutes, 7,000 brothels, and the highest rate of syphilis in Europe.

Here, in Whitechapel, little girls of ten or less can be bought like slaves for thirty guineas a head.

And elite bordellos owned by DayStar send 'respectable' gentlemen fancy brochures advertising 'pretty young lads with pink bottoms ripe for a birching.'"

Marlene’s eyes became haunted. “How like my Heimat Berlin in the ‘20’s. There doesn’t need to be a Hell later on. It’s already here.”

Death mussed her hair gently, but frost layered it just the same. "In such a place as this, murder might be viewed as a kindness."

Death laid a soft hand on my shoulder which went numb at the coldness of her touch. "We are there."
***