GHOST SHIP IN THE NIGHT,

As I drove home tonight, I studied the lonely strip of interstate ahead of me. I reflected on how it intertwined into the dark oblivion where the lances of my headlights died, much like our lives do into the unknown of our future.

I looked up into the sky. Great waves of clouds washed over one another in misty billows. It felt as if a night of dark intent was coming. No, more than that. As if an age of dark intent seemed to be crouching just beyond the known horizon. And I thought of the beckoning sea with her whispered mysteries and tragic legends.

And those musings led me to thoughts of my fantasy Titanic tale, RITES OF PASSAGE. The story of the cursed voyage of the transatlantic steamer, Demeter, in 1853. A journey where my hero of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE first met the one great love of his life, the mysterious Meilori Shinseen, born of stardust and the sea. A passage where McCord fights his first duel with the enemy who is destined to become his life-long foe, DayStar. A being claiming to come from a realm beyond the boundaries of Time itself.

The weather was unseasonably crisp outside my van. Not at all like awakening Spring but more like the brittle chill of Autumn. And that in turn made me think of the scene in RITES OF PASSAGE where a wounded McCord walks through a plane of existence not of this world to discover the identity of a murderer that both friend and foe warn will destroy him. But not to do so would destroy the love of his life. And that means there is no question that he will walk this strange realm until he finds the truth that will save Meilori and destroy him. 'Fair Trade,' he thinks :

****

I expected to see a good many unpleasant sights when I walked into the darkness that lay beyond The Door of Nasah. After all, I had a Jesuit education of sorts, courtesy of the Soyoko from so many years ago. So I knew that nasah was ancient Hebrew for testing. It had been used to describe those poor wandering Israelites bickering and stewing their way across the desert to the Promised Land.

And you know how well that went for them.

But since this is me we’re talking about. I didn’t get a single one of the things I expected. Story of my life. And undeath.

I was walking in a place forgotten by feet. Or so it felt to me. The darkness slowly bled to a lighter hue of gloom.

I paused, brooding in this twilight world, not knowing where to place my steps. I strained my eyes. I could almost make out the smudged silver of a far horizon.

What had I said to myself earlier? That I figured the folks who entered this realm made their own walls. Maybe that was what I was doing now.

Was I walking through the burned-out ends of the smoky days of my past? A dark forest of memories was lanced through, not with sunlight filtered through thick branches, but with images of pain and struggle. My pain. My struggle. I almost felt the crunch beneath my feet of the withered leaves of others’s masquerades. I did seem to feel, like the lash of snapping branches against my cheek, the tiny thousand misunderstandings of my best efforts and the clumsy gropings of my heart to the life-hardened hearts of others.

I knew then that I was indeed walking through the Autumn world of my past, rising above the dark horizon of my regrets. The yellowed leaves of recollection curled up around me as I walked slowly forward : Sonora, England, France, China, Australia, New Zealand, and even India.

The light of love slipped through the black shutters of my guilt and loneliness. It was warm and emerald. The light I saw in the eyes of Meilori. My torch that I would carry in this darkness.

I kept walking. Images swirled around me. Revolving doors, showing the faces of an ever-growing army of enemies. Refracting light of clues, guesses, fears of the truth I finally realized I did not want to know.

Meilori’s eyes seemed to waver. I remembered her anger, her warnings, her despair. I clung to our bond, our love bruised but enduring, curling about my spirit like perfumed smoke rising from the embers of our hearts. I would endure. I had to endure. For her. For us.

Laughter. Cold. Brittle. Knife sharp.

It swirled all about me. And as fast as fingers become a fist, a chill blackness swallowed me. I slowed but kept moving ahead. I shivered. Not from the cold, but from a growing warmth within me.

I slowed even more. Meilori. Her velvet words spoke within my mind.

‘Beloved, wherever you are know this -- you are a great man.’

I started to protest but her soft words stopped me. ‘Hush, I do not have long before he senses I am talking to you. You are Samuel Durand McCord, beloved, and you are a great man.’

I could have sworn I felt the lingering caress of tender fingers on my cheek. ‘You turned your back on war to save a small boy. You fought cruel laws, usually to no avail. You have written no symphony but that of your deeds. You have written no poems outside words of comfort to those in pain.’

This time I did feel her lips on mine. ‘Yet you are greater than any general, any politician, any composer, or any poet I have ever known. You are great because you are kind when you could have so easily learned to be cruel. You are great because you love when so little has been shown to you. You are great because you are humble when you have the power to be a tyrant.’

I felt my nose tweaked. ‘And finally you are great, not because you never fail but to celebrate life, but because you never quit. Now, do not make me a liar!’

And suddenly the blackness was colder because my sense of her was gone. Snatched away like life by a pistol shot. DayStar must have sensed her talking to me. She could be in serious trouble. I ground my teeth. I had to get back to her.

But I figured turning back would only lead me to a deeper darkness. If there was one ugly lesson I had learned in all my wanderings and mistakes, it was that with life in general, and with DayStar in particular, there was no going back. None at all. No, I had to bull this one through to the end. Through to my end if everyone’s warnings were right.

But there was another lesson I had learned. The majority was usually wrong. Usually.

I took a firm step forward, and the ink shroud around me lifted. I was back in the Autumn world. But it no longer held any restrains of regret for me. How could there be any? Meilori’s love was here with me. And besides I had always liked Autumn despite its warnings of the white death of winter biding its time impatiently.

Autumn’s crisp breath stirred the unseen leaves with whispery lamentations. Their graves provided a crackle and rustle as my feet stepped upon them while I made my way through Autumn’s colors more than landscape. The very air filled my nose and lungs with the tang and wrinkling of leaf bonfires, of ripened apples making the heavy branches hang their heads as if in mourning for ice storms to come.

My ears prickled as I could have sworn I heard the leathery flutter of pheasant wings, the still happy liquid singing of a meandering stream, and the sad lament of a sparrow facing hunger. The red and gold of this world murmured to me of happier times as I had tramped lonely hills and haunted forests. And a peace filled me. The peace which is the reward of completing the long gauntlet of summer. The quiet dark that precedes the winter of the soul which lurks just around the next bend. A time for binding recent wounds and old -- and forgeting them, along with the misfortunes that had brought them.

I took another step. I stopped. Autumn had ended. My winter of the soul lay before me.

I lay before me.

I had gone into the past. Stepped right past the boundaries of time’s firm grasp. The evening of Rachel’s murder was bidding me a dark welcome.

An instinct born of this cruise told me that DayStar had not expected me to make it even this far. I stiffened. Cornered in fungus, his voice mocked me in the confines of my mind.

‘No matter, McCord. Now you end.’

I whispered, “Maybe si. Maybe no.”

********************************************

I am of three minds like a winter tree in whose branches sit three blackbirds. Or of three novels actually : FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, RITES OF PASSAGE, and THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS. I wrote all three concurrently. Trust me on this, bloggers. If ever you are tempted to do such a thing, take two aspirins, go to bed, and pull the covers over your head. But it was instructive to do such a thing. When I wrote on one, a plot snarl from another would smooth out in my mind. And it helped me place in perspective the epic scope of my undead hero's long life.

Since at heart I am a romantic, I'm listening to Celine Dion singing -- you guessed it -- "My Heart Will Go On." In case you might want to listen, too --

WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE HUNGRY

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 where Old Suze had warned me 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.

BLOOD WILL TELL

Life is never fair. And perhaps it is a good thing for us that it is not.
-Oscar Wilde

Several of my friends have emailed me asking just what a blood courier is. Others have suggested that I write a story on it. So I did.

It is called BLOOD WILL TELL. When we think evolution, we think of the life forms we can see. But what if evolution would occur on the microscopic level? What if red blood cells achieved intelligence? Would they be happy at the world in which they find themselves? And if they didn't, what might they do?

In my story intelligent blood is starting an offensive against Man. One lone telepath finds himself a helpless spectator as the race of Man is subjugated. When the war is over, and he finds himself totally alone, how can he go on and why?

Here is a snippet of BLOOD WILL TELL in which the protagonist is explaining why a telepath has a hard time in finding a job where he can function without going insane :



Numbers proved comforting. Black and white. Zero and one. Computers were safe. Sadly, I just was less than stellar when it came to technology. Concepts I could handle. But anything hands-on proved disasterous. Another way of paying the bills went the way of the fifty cent coke. No matter what job I chose, I had to deal with people and their thoughts, lusts, and fears that clawed at me.

My forty-first birthday found me working for Healthshare, the blood center that serviced Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana. I had always thought that each hospital had their own vast supply of blood. I had been wrong. Hospitals only kept a small roster of blood types and an even smaller supply of the more rare blood component called platelets, used to stop bleeding. Healthshare was to hospitals what the mint was to banks.

And I was a courier for the blood mint. Say a premature baby needed a random platelet across town. Off went my pager, and down the road I would go to the blood center, charge out the blood, and drive it to the ill baby. Did a cancer patient in Jennings need a pheresis, a larger bag of platelets? Off went the pager again, and an hour later, the cancer patient was being transfused with the needed blood. I was finally helping people without being near them and their clawing thoughts for very long.

I had found some small measure of peace. No answers, but I had given up on that dream of youth. Unfortunately, some dreams become nightmares. And some nightmares kill.

Christmas Eve found me on call. The day was half over, and I felt run over. DeRidder, Jennings, Kinder. The major hospitals from all three of those small towns had called me for blood, one right after another. It had taken me nearly the whole night to answer all three calls. And I had no sooner collapsed in my chair in my efficiency apartment than the pager wailed on my belt yet again.

But this time, it was a friend. Kim Marcotte. Her husband, another good friend, had just had a terrible motorcycle accident the night before. Recovering from surgery, he was asking for me, half crazed with fear. I sucked in a ragged breath. Robert was a good friend, so good that he had been the only one I had ever trusted enough with my secret.

I could've driven the way to the hospital blind-folded, which was lucky considering how hard it was raining. I found Kim near beside herself. Looking as if she had aged five years, she stood outside his door, wringing her hands and waiting for me to arrive so she could talk to me in private.

Kim reached out to me with both hands. I flinched at the intensity of her thought : 'Oh, God, let Luke be able to help Bob!'

"They're going to put him on the psychiatric floor, Luke. The damn psycho ward! You're his best friend. He's always said the best thing that ever came out of his being a tech for Gambro was when he and you met at Healthshare. If anyone can reach him now, it's you. Please help him.”

I had seen Robert go through hell and not put up a whimper. Something had to be terribly wrong. Maybe beyond my ability to help wrong. I hate it when I'm right.

My head pounding from the cascade of howling thoughts from Robert and the others on the same floor, I walked into the private room. I pulled up short. He looked like hell. His right leg and arm were broken. The whole right side of his face bandaged. His left eye reached out to me in fear and hope. I flinched from the impact of his acid emotions.

"Luke! Thank God, you've come."

I walked over to his bed and squeezed his good hand. "You called. I came. How can I help?"

His lower lip started to tremble, and a gnawing buzzing like hungry wasps erupted inside my head. In all my life, I had never heard anything like it. He looked hollow-eyed at me.

"You hear them, don't you?"

"Them?"

"Don't fold on me, Luke. I never told anybody your secret. But I know you hear my thoughts."

His voice went low and shaky. "You hear them. Oh, God, tell me you hear them."

I squeezed his hand harder. "I hear the buzzing, Robert. But you took a pretty hard whack to the head. I don't know what a concussion sounds like, but ---"

"But shit, man! I've banged my damn head before. This is different. The buzzing's from ... from ..."

"From what?"

He nodded to the blood bag on the pole above his bed and stared fearfully at the tubing connected to his arm. "From this damn blood."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"Do I fucking look like I'm kidding? With each drop, I feel them eating away at me. It’s like a fire in my blood! The longer I lay here, the less of me there is."

He wailed, "Oh, God, pretty soon there'll be nothing of me left!"

I reached up and turned the wheel to the blood line, shutting off the flow. He sucked in a shallow breath and slowly shook his head. He looked like he was about to cry. I hiked up my right shoulder from the pain of his despair eating into me.

"It's too late, man. There's too much of it in me. And not enough me.”

I went sick as the buzzing from inside his head grew louder, and the "Robert" I knew grew fainter. I was scared, dry mouth, heart racing sacred. I had never run into anything like this before. For the first time in my entire life, I went within myself and focused one word into his mind with all I had. It was a shot in the dark, but it was all I could think of.

He took my hand, still on the small wheel shutting off the blood, and squeezed weakly. "T-Thanks for being with me at the en---"

The fear dropped from his face like a stone, and the life left his eyes. "Robert" disappeared from my mind, only the buzzing remained. He moved my fingers from the wheel, turning the blood back on.

"All better now," he smiled in a voice that almost sounded like the Robert I knew. Almost.

Right then, the pager on my belt went off, and I jumped what felt a foot. I grabbed at it with suddenly clumsy fingers and finally managed to turn the damn thing off. I checked the number.

"Women and Children's Hospital."

Robert pulled his lips up in what wouldn't have passed for a smile in a morgue. "Ah, a baby needs blood. We like to get them young. Better hurry off. And do be careful out in that rain, hear?"

I slowly got up on legs that seemed to have become wood. "We who?"

Flecks of something alien gleamed in his eyes. "Why anyone who wants to bring order out of chaos. Better hurry. We wouldn't want to lose a baby now, would we?"

"No," I whispered. "I've already lost enough tonight as it is."

The smile got wider, colder. "Tell Kim to come in, will you?"

I turned and got the hell out of the room. Kim met me at the door, her blue eyes hollows of worry. She grabbed my hands in a vise of wiry fingers.

"H-How is he?"

I struggled to keep my face calm. "He's ... He's not afraid anymore."

*********************
Here is a music video of a song that plays an important part in the ending of my story

TEAM ROLAND QUERIES AGAIN

Yes, that's right. "Team Roland." You see that's what I call all of you who have cared enough to submit input on my past queries. I took what insight you gave me and shaped another query to send to a new agent I discovered : Gordon Warnock {check my blog list to find the article leading you to his interview in GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS.} He talks about a new genre he has named "Monster and Disaster."

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, starring Natalie Portman is soon to come out. ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE KILLER is being made by Tim Burton. And JONAH HEX with Megan Fox will hit theaters this June. Thinking FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE fit his category, MONSTER & DISASTER, I submitted to him. And here is that query, polished with your generous insights :

Dear Gordon : {Look at his picture. Read his interview. He's a fellow that you address in a letter by his first name.}

Monster and disaster. I have never heard that particular phrase used before concerning genre, though it certainly fits a whole herd of novels out there -- including my own, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

The narrator, Samuel McCord, is a monster himself. The Apaches whom he had fought nearly 200 years ago would call him a "gahe," a drinker of souls. Now, he is merely known as the legendary French Quarter jazz club owner of Meilori's, a place where practically anything can happen and most everything has.

It is the first evening following Katrina, and the predators, both living and undead, see their chance to prey on the helpless. Samuel McCord decides he has lost enough : his humanity, his family, his beloved wife. He will not lose his city -- not to politicians, not to predators in the shadows, nor to his life-long enemy returning for a final revenge. McCord has always lost to his enemy, who insists upon the name DayStar. But he discovers that if he loses again, the European Revenant Empire will over-run not only his city but his country. But DayStar is about to discover that McCord has saved his best for last.

I'm including the first three paragraphs of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE to give you a feel for my writing voice :

It rained lies and death today.

I stood knee-deep in water outside my French Quarter jazz club, Meilori’s. My soul stretched tight across my chest. Everything I saw and heard in the shadows spoke to me ... in threats. The sudden, short explosion of an unseen gun. A quick, sharp scream in the distance. And the blue spurt of a lighted match at the far end of the street. My city bled slowly in the ripples of the flooded streets.

I leaned back against the door to my club as if for reassurance that something solid still remained to me. That it had survived Katrina was a mixed blessing. It was all that was left to me of my wife. Staying here was both penance and purgatory. Meilori’s was the kind of place in which almost anything was likely to happen and in which almost everything had. Inside, the fifty-one survivors of Katrina that I could house were huddled in shivering, too quiet clusters. Words have no meaning when a city dies. Nothing much does.

Somewhere distant in the hot, red darkness a shot rang out. Another called out to it like a wolf. But it came from a different direction. I smiled bitter. The predators had crawled out from their boarded shelters. They knew the restraint of law had died this day. Soon they would come for me.

You see, I had enemies in the night. And not all of them were human.


To get a better idea of my writing voice {and if you care to challenge the murky blog waters}, you may want to check out my blog, WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS, http://www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/.

If not, I understand. Some of those blogs are truly scary. I would tell you mine isn't. But I would sound too much like Richard Nixon claiming he wasn't a crook.

I am a former high school teacher, family counselor, and now a blood courier. The last a result of being evacuated from Lake Charles due to Hurricane Rita and having to support myself any way I could. I found I liked the job and the people with whom I worked.

Thank you for taking the time to read my query. I would be happy to send you sample chapters or the full manuscript. I hope that you find some gem in the flood of submissions that pour your way. May your New Year hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A. {Wish me luck, my friends}

And here is the tune that was blaring from my speakers as my van streaked underneath the sliver of a moon at 5 A.M. as I battled fatigue and brought rare blood to a dying woman in Texas :

T'WIXT WING AND WIND

First, since some of you liked my haiku's. Here is one Samuel writes in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM :

"Your eyes drink mine,

The sea drifts by,

Both the same green."

Meilori quotes a haiku when she believes Samuel dead in RITES OF PASSAGE :

"The moon kisses the night,

My lips are cold,

You are gone."

Now to the subject of this post : Dream.

Dream is the love affair t'wixt wing and wind, between longing and reality.

I had the most unusual dream last night. Don't groan. No revolving doors into my unconscious. At least I hope not.

It will probably appear in my Samuel McCord novel, AN ARIA FOR HITLER. Dream is often the ink my page has been needing. So when my muse whispers to me in my sleep, I listen.

As is the custom of dream, the story begins in full bloom. Samuel McCord, in a western-cut tuxedo, is dancing like the wind given life with Meilori in a long, flowing gown of scarlet. It glitters under a night club's lights as if woven with the blood of gods. It is Venice in the year 1926. Cole Porter is playing the piano. Alanis Morissette is singing, "Let's Do It." {Hey, in the land of dream, you're lucky it wasn't Kirsten Dunst (have you heard her sing?)}

Alongside Sam dances Father Renfield, so skinny you can almost smell his bones. He is dancing with his former wife, Sister Magda, a woman with the kind of face that has saints stealing from orphanages and pacifists starting wars. And beside them dance two women : the tiny bird of a woman, Ada Byron, who inherited her father's love of scandal, and tall, elegant Margaret Fuller, whose existential soul sneers at convention. At the tables bordering the dance floor, heads are bowed in outraged gossip. Sam is oblivious to them. His beaming face says it all. Meilori is in his arms and convention be damned.

Meilori, her shoulders the white of mountain peaks, her arms slender as birch branches, looks up at Sam and whispers, "Life is not a hunt, Samuel. It is a dance. And in some ballrooms, they turn out the lights. Come, let us close our eyes and dance, feeling our bodies move under each other's fingers."

Trusting to his memory of the floor, Sam smiles and closes his eyes. Meilori does not. The veil is lifted from her jade eyes, suddenly cruel and sparkling windows into her past. Eyes that smiled at the burning of Rome, that caressed the blossoms of extinct flowers in Babylon's Gardens, and that stonily regarded the screams of sacrifices under Aztec stars, now watches as Nazi revenants slip onto the dance floor from all four directions.

Renfield notices them at the same time Magda does. He spins on Meilori, "What have you done? Innocent by-standers will be hurt!"

"No flesh is innocent."

Sam opens his eyes, sees the revenants, and looks hurt. "Why?"

"These dogs task me, beloved. They task me. And death is a dance as well. Let us show them the steps."

And that is all I remember of the dream. I awakened with the memory that Cole Porter had served with the French Foreign Legion during World War I. What can I say? I have a hodgepodge of an unconscious.

But I scribbled the fragment onto a notebook I keep by my bed just for that purpose. You might think of doing that as well. If for nothing else than not losing a snippet of dialogue you would forget otherwise.

And so now I share that fragment with all of you. I have thought about it all day. Now, that I have finally written it down formally maybe it will give me some peace. Some dreams are whispers that the mind warehouses as shouts. Oh, well, it is a hope.

What would Samuel say? "He who lives in hope dances without music."

And no, I'm not as old as Samuel, but I like all sorts or music from all eras. If you might be wondering how Alanis Morissette sounds singing "Let's Do It," here is a music video of it. And, no, again, I don't look as old as the aged Cole Porter at the beginning of the video. I look just like Tom Selleck in his 40's. Ah, don't believe that, huh? Neither does my mirror. Anyway, I must have heard Alanis last night on http://www.pandora.com/ before I went to sleep without realizing it.

HAIKU? GESUNDHEIT.

April is National Poetry Month.

So I thought I would offer up two haiku's I wrote for two of my fantasies : RITES OF PASSAGE and THE MOON & SUN AS HIS BRIDES.

The first is the lament of Lady Meilori, the one great love of my hero, Samuel McCord. She speaks it to the depths of the endless night as she reflects upon the emptiness of her life :

"Dreams drift like clouds,
I reach to touch the moon,
I grasp but empty night."

The second is the mumuring sigh of Kirika, a drinker of souls, who has fallen hopelessly in love with a fifteen year old boy whom she knows she will destroy if she follows her heart :

"Lonely Moon, Winter Winds,
My hungry love is
But shadows of Night."

Hope you enjoyed one or both of them. And here is a video haiku from a Zen Master :

STARTING YOUR WRITING CAREER

Starting your writing career.

That's something all of us want to know more about. Here is a link to an article by agent Michael Larsen on that very topic in the latest GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS : http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/default.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/blog/default,month.2010-1.aspx.

And TJ was right when she wrote me in the last post in that my query was long according to what conventional wisdom advises. I have taken that thought into consideration, and based upon another article from GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS, I sent off a "wiser" query. Here it is :

Dear {First Name of Agent -- I think it is warmer to address an agent by the first name} :

After your April 5th interview on GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS, I am sure you are swamped by queries. You stated you were interested not only in urban fantasy but in lesbian characters that had more to share than the angst of coming out. In my urban fantasy, Lady Lovelace, Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron {and author of the first computer language a 100 years before the computer's invention,} is a major player. As is Margaret Fuller, the first woman foreign correspondent. The year is 2005, and they should be long dead. But they are not.

And they have been lovers for a 150 years. How? It is explained in the 90,000 word urban fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Neither one is the central character. But they are his anchors to sanity.

In a world where reality is but a walking dream, nightmare is only a shadow away. A legendary jazz club owner decides he has lost enough : his humanity, his family, his beloved wife. He will not lose his city -- not to politicians, not to predators in the shadows, nor to his life-long enemy returning for a final revenge. His tale is set in post-Katrina New Orleans.

I have finished FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE as well as the first three chapters of its sequel, NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE. As you requested in AGENT QUERY, I am sending the first five pages of my novel in the body of this email :


"Our nation is prepared, as never before, to deal
quickly and capably with the consequences of
disasters and domestic incidents.”
--FEMA chief Michael D. Brown - March 09, 2005
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans August 29, 2005


CHAPTER ONE

It rained lies and death today.

I stood knee-deep in water outside my French Quarter jazz club, Meilori’s. My soul stretched tight across my chest. Everything I saw and heard in the shadows spoke to me ... in threats. The sudden, short explosion of an unseen gun. A quick, sharp scream in the distance. And the blue spurt of a lighted match at the far end of the street. My city bled slowly in the ripples of the flooded streets.

I leaned back against the door to my club as if for reassurance that something solid still remained to me. That it had survived Katrina was a mixed blessing. It was all that was left to me of my wife. Staying here was both penance and purgatory. Meilori’s was the kind of place in which almost anything was likely to happen and in which almost everything had. Inside, the fifty-one survivors of Katrina that I could house were huddled in shivering, too quiet clusters. Words have no meaning when a city dies. Nothing much does.

{Then follows the remaining 5 pages, but I wanted to be kind to your punished eyes.}

************
To get a better idea of my writing voice -- and if you care to challenge the murky blog waters -- you may want to check out my blog, WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS, http://www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/.

If not, I understand. Some of those blogs are truly scary.

{Of course, I was not referring to any of the blogs I follow here.}

I would tell you mine isn't. But I would sound too much like Richard Nixon claiming he wasn't a crook.

I am a former high school teacher, family counselor, and now a blood courier. The last a result of being evacuated from Lake Charles due to Hurricane Rita and having to support myself any way I could. I found I liked the job and the people with whom I worked.

Thank you for taking the time to read my query. I would be happy to send you sample chapters or the full manuscript. I hope that you find some gem in the flood of submissions that pour your way. May your New Year hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A.

{Say a prayer for this query, will you, friends? I'll say more than one for yours. I just added this new query to show how a short query would look. Subtract the requested 5 pages, and it is fairly short.}

Here is a lovely rendition of a prayer that means a great deal to me :