INTERNAL CONFLICT BLOGFEST

Once again it's blogfest time. THE INTERNAL CONFLICT BLOGFEST held by the Alliterative Allomorph :
http://thealliterativeallomorph.blogspot.com/2010/04/announcing-internal-conflict-blog-fest.html

{Short note : Guide to Literary Agents
http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/Dear+Lucky+Agent+Contest+Fantasy+And+SciFi.aspx is having another "Lucky Agent" contest. This time focusing on Sci_Fi and Fantasy. And I have entered it. Those of you who write Sci_Fi and Fantasy, follow my link and enter, too. I wish us all luck, Roland.}

Internal Conflict. Good writing depends upon it. In every scene. It's what pulls the reader and the story itself along. As the plus and minus of electrons determines the flow of electricity, so the plus and minus of EVERY scene determines the healthy flow of a novel's narrative.

An upscale attorney walks into his office, his back being slapped by his associates for winning another case. He closes the door, turns on the light, and turns off his smile. His eyes move to the certified letter on his desk, informing him of his wife's plans to divorce him. He walks to his desk, sits down, and buries his face in his hands.

A metropolitian mayor is hanging his latest civic award upon his paneled wall. His eyes flick to the picture of his son, killed in Iraq. He remembers his last words to him : ugly words, harsh words, impossible to erase words. He takes the award from the wall, tossing it into the waste basket.

Plus and Minus.

All of which leads me to my internal conflict scene from my historical fantasy, RITES OF PASSAGE :

It is 1853 aboard the cursed transatlantic steamer, DEMETER, heading from New Orleans to Paris. Captain Samuel McCord is on the trail of a murderer of young Rachel Houston. Samuel delivered her as a baby in the midst of a Comanche raid.

He always looked after her. While he was returning from a manhunt, she was found dead on the docks of Galveston without a mark on her. Except for one thing. Her face was missing. Marie Laveau has told McCord that the face was taken, not as a trophy, but for a mask.

Rachel was last seen in the company of someone only known as the Gray Man. McCord has tracked him to the DEMETER. Now, in his cabin, McCord has just been told by the ghostly Turquoise Woman that innocents will die if he is not smarter.

And so we join him in his brooding :

The more I thought about it, the less it seemed I knew. If I kept on, I would soon end up knowing nothing at all. Estanatlehi's last words stung. Be smarter. But that was just it. I wasn't smart, only stubborn and relentless.

The beginning of every hunt was like this. I would hold a tangled ball of unanswered questions in my hand, knots that seemed beyond untangling. I would tug here. I would bumble about there. Ask this person a question. Look for the most hostile face. Ask it a question.

Listen. Poke holes in obvious lies. Ask some more. Sooner or later, someone would try to kill me. I would object, survive, shake the survivors like a wolf would a rat. Follow what fell out. Someone meaner, tougher, would make a try for me. The process would begin all over again. People would die. I would be fed. The killer would be found.

It was a messy way of doing things. But I wasn't smart enough to do it any other way. And it kept me fed. Usually. Right then, I was weak from not feeding.

Feeding. The images that word pulled out of the darkness made me ill. And it wasn't from lack of -- nourishment.

Suddenly, I felt dirty. I needed a bath. One scalding hot. Maybe if I soaked in it long enough the screams from a thousand throats would be drowned. Maybe. I looked to the gold-trimmed door to my left. It was partially open.

An ornate ivory tub was half-revealed. Running water? Maybe this suite was worth $2,000. Of course, I didn't think Sen. Houston or Gov. Bell would think so. But then, steaming, scalding water didn't mean to them what it did to me. More than hiding in the sensation of the heat, there was life and energy to scalding water. Weak but enough to sustain me for a bit.

I got up. I took off my buckskin jacket, folded it neat, and laid it next to my clean, black buckskins. I shrugged out of the double shoulder holsters with their Walsh Navy Colts, each one capable of firing twelve .36 caliber bullets. I unsnapped my Paterson Colt from its SOB holster at the small of my back. I slipped off the sheath that hung down my back which held the strange knife taken from King Solomon's mines.

I smiled bitter. King Solomon’s mines. No wonder it had been so hard to find. Everyone had been looking on the wrong continent. There was a life lesson there. I was just too dense to see it.

Last, I unbuckled the Colt on my hip. I laid all that death on top of my jacket. The rest of the buckskins followed. The gloves stayed on. I would lay them by the tub. No one saw what passed for my hands. No one that remained alive, that is.

I ran the water scalding hot and eased myself into the tub. Any other flesh would have blistered. I barely felt it. I hunkered down into the tub until the steaming water was at my chin. Then, and only then, did I take off my buckskin gloves.

And even then, I did not look at my hands. I shoved them under the water quick but still caught a glimpse of them. It made me ill. I sighed.

Rachel. She had always wondered what my hands had looked like. She had teased me that I was hiding the fact that I painted my nails.

I felt like crying. If only. The memory of my last sight of Rachel, her face neatly removed as if by a scalpel, made me worse than ill. She had needed me on the docks of Galveston, and I had been unconscious in a hunger-coma on the city's outskirts. Even when I tried to do right, it seemed I did wrong.

I watched the water turn from blue to death gray. I was leeching what life breathed in the steaming water. I was even draining the heat from it. It no longer steamed.

I stared at the copy of a painting from some old master whose style wasn't familiar but was. I squinted at it. I was an idiot. It wasn't an old master but a recent one. William Blake. He'd died just twenty years before. Poet and mystic, completely mad. Sounded like me.

I finally recognized the painting. It was of a man with long, flowing moon-white hair like mine, bending down as he hung impossibly in the sky before a bloody sun. He was surrounded by black, boiling clouds. His arm was pointing down, his fingers splayed odd, shafts of light shooting from his forefinger and from the others joined together. The brass plate below called it The Ancient of Days.

Then, I realized that they weren't spears of light coming from his fingers.

They were a compass. It was God setting a compass upon the face of the depths. Just like I was trying to fix some design to the madness my life had become, the nightmare that was Rachel's murder.

I recalled words from the Bible when Wisdom spoke :

'The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before the works of old, before the mountains were settled, before the hills were brought forth. When He prepared the heavens, I was there. When He set a compass on the face of the depths.'

Wisdom. I was a dry well there. Sure, Father had schooled me in all he knew. And after surviving the Comanches, I had undergone a strange Jesuit education of sorts for seven years. But that had just been knowledge.

Wisdom was the application of it. And I had lived my whole life and undeath tangling the threads of my life until it was one big knot that could never be untied.

I rested my head against the rim of the tub and studied Blake's painting some more. The Ancient of Days. I felt ancient. And unreal.

I wasn't used to all the elegant splendor that was all around me. I felt like I was watching myself in some strange dream. I wanted to yell a warning to my dream self that he was missing something important, something left undone. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was that my instincts said I should have done.

Of things I shouldn't have done there was a wagonload. I studied the picture some more. God looked as unreal as I felt, hung up in the sky, still and frozen in time. Still and frozen. There was another reason I felt unreal.

Rachel's murder. She had been like my little sister given back to me. I had allowed myself to feel again with her. My only remembered laughter had been with her.

Though it had started getting a little awkward these past few years, what with her crush on me. But in a few months, a young man her age would have come along and swept her off her feet. And I would have proudly given her away at her wedding. She deserved -- had deserved a shot at happiness and growing old with the love of her life.

But the Gray Man had swept her away first. And ever since her murder, I had been like a frozen lake. No matter what happened, it just glanced off the icy surface of my mind, my heart. I noticed with a start that the water in the tub was ice cold and black -- just like my soul.

But not black with dirt, but black because all the life had been leeched out of it. Not cold from the air, but cold because the thing that I had become had drained all the warmth out of it. It seemed I leeched and drained all the beauty from the world around me. I sat there in my cold, wet self-pity for a few more ticks of the clock.

Then, I heard the door ease slowly open. No human ear would have heard it. But to me, it sounded like the screeching of rusted hinges. And with that sound, I remembered what I had failed to do.

I had failed to lock the door.

And all my Colts were neatly tucked in their holsters on the fancy bed in the next room. There were times when 'Oh, shit!' just didn't cover it.

***********************************************************************
And now, for some stirring, haunting music :

ANOTHER DREAM CAST ONTO THE SEA OF FATE

I've just sent out another query to a new agent. This time for my YA fantasy, THE MOON & SUN AS MY BRIDES. I thought it might prove helpful to those of you out there trying to write a query. Take what you find useful and leave the rest to the winds.

So here is another dream cast onto the mysterious sea of fate :

Dear Ms. ______ :

I know you must be weary of TWILIGHT knock-off's. Me, too. But for different reasons. Although I left my teen years some light years ago, I still enjoy the innocence and the angst of YA. I mean, TWILIGHT is a siren song of supernatural, forbidden love. CITY OF GLASS {Mortal Instruments} is a haunting tale of dove and serpent. But guys like to read, too.

Guys want a read that is a wild beast in the mind, surging along with fast-paced plotting and leaping-off-the-page characters. They want to be thrilled, to be made to laugh out loud, and, believe it or not, to be made to think -- usually outside the box -- but is that such a bad thing? So when they browse the teen section in the bookstore and read titles like WHY IS MY VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND PRETTIER THAN I AM?, they must mutter, "Help!"

Help! We've all cried that either mentally or just flat out loud. All of us have faced moments when we longed to be rescued. But mostly we must rescue ourselves. We must wear our own spandex, be our own hero.

Fifteen year old Blake Adamson has no spandex - only a world of nightmare. In the orphanage that is more prison than sanctuary, he retreats into books. But one night, a fire forces him to face reality.

Or does he face reality at all? Is he awake, or is he lost in the fever dreams of a burn-induced coma? Like Alice over a hundred years before him, Blake faces a world of wonder, insanity, and danger. He feels pain. But is that merely from the injuries of the fire as he lies in some hospital bed, or has the world always been larger, more mysterious than he ever imagined?

In the end, he decides reality is what you make it. It doesn't matter if what he sees are delusions within a coma or a wondrous journey through the worlds suggested by quantum mechanics. What matters are the choices he makes, the friends he holds dear, and the pain he can ease.

But then, he meets the enemy in this strange realm that threatens the two girls he has grown to love : himself. How do you battle yourself? And if saving the two girls you love means death for you, what do you do?

THE MOON & SUN AS MY BRIDES is a 90,000 word paranormal Young Adult adventure. I have just finished the rough draft of the sequel, LAST EXIT TO BABYLON. Thank you for the time you've spent reading my query. To get a better feel for my writing voice and my range, you might want to drop by my blog {Yes I have one of those, too.} www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com

In compliance with your submission guidelines, here is a short sample of my writing. And since you love to take dance classes, here is an excerpt where my hero learns to dance aboard a haunted junk as he sails across the myterious Sea of Fate. He is accompanied by the raven Munnin, fleeing servitude to Odin, the legendary Maori warrior, Hone Heke, and the Sun goddess, Kirika Amaterasu :


What had Napoleon said? That if you pretended long enough, you became what you pretended. Well, then, I would pretend that we would make it out of this mess. All three of us, Kirika, Fallen, and me. I reluctantly pulled back from our kiss, both our mouths wet from it.

"You know what Napoleon told me?"

Kirika slowly stroked my cheek with soft fingers. "What, beloved?"

"That when you fought for love, you always won, even when you lost."

Muninn cawed sharp, "I seem to remember he said --"

Speaking as one, we turned to him and snapped, "Shut up!"

Then, realizing we had acted as one, we both sputtered in sad giggles. Muninn smiled. I nuzzled my head against his. The wise little guy had spoken up on purpose. It was good to finally have friends ... and love.

I wasn't alone anymore.

The next seven days were nothing like the week before it. They were magic, a time of happiness, healing, and laughter. Kirika seemed intent to focus only on the moment, never talking of the past or even acting like there would be a tomorrow. And I was more than happy to let her. But every now and then, I would catch a cloud of darkness flicker across her ivory face. Then, she would notice me looking at her, fling back her long hair, and wisk me away to some new wonder on board or upon the black Sea of Fate. Or more maddening, tease me with playful fingers or lips that would just skim across mine before leaping back in a throaty giggle.

I made a mistake that first day of telling her about my spooky dream. She laughed til tears came to her eyes as I spoke of Muninn dancing a waltz with a tiny Bast. But I left out what the cat goddess had said to him. Muninn glared at me as if willing the whole tale back into my mouth. And afterwards, I wished I could have oblidged.

She insisted on teaching me how to waltz. I was wooden-footed and awkward. Kirika was patient. Muninn was mocking. And Hone? He gleefully helped stoke the fires by playing waltz after waltz on a pipe he magically pulled out of his inside shirt pocket. Slowly, as hour followed hour, I got better until by the end of the first day, Kirika was satisfied enough with my progress to switch to something she called the Rumba.

I protested, trying to keep my voice from sounding like a little girl's, as she demonstrated the swaying hip movements. "I can't move like that!"

She giggled, swaying up to me, pressing her lower body against mine. "Of course, you can."

Hone started to pipe a wild gypsy tune as she smiled, "The Rumba is several dances melted into one. The guaracha --"

Her hips began to gyrate in a way that made me tingle all over. "The Cuban Bolero ---"

She swirled around me, rubbing her, ah, bottom against mine. "And the rural Rumba, which is really a dance of exhibition, not of participation."

Hone stopped playing, "I don't know, honey, your tush seems to be participating with his just fine. Too fine. You know, there're no cold showers on this tub."

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

"A what?," I frowned.

She moved in, kissing me lightly, nipping me sharp on the upper lip as she pulled away. "A hold, silly rabbit. No step on the fourth beat."

"Oh, sure. I knew that."

She laughed throaty, moving her hips in a way that made me want Hone to turn away. "Of course, you did."

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

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

"Wh-What music?"

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

I nodded slow, caught in the spell of her brown eyes. "I thought you could. Oh, now, you're doing even better."

She ran her hands up my sides, then back down to my hips, guiding them into hers. "The Rumba is an old, old dance. Long ago, we Ningyo's gave it to the Cubans as a way for the woman to attract and ultimately dominate her man with her ---"

She tickled my ear as she whispered into it, "--- her feminine charms."

Hone was suddenly right by us, pushing us apart. "Alright, that does it. No sex standing up. Not unless I can jump in."

"Hone!," I sputtered.

He winked. "Just kidding, kid."

He laughed deep. "Now, I'll teach you a Maori war dance."

Kirika scowled, "Fitting, old man. I am in the mood for war right now."

He laughed cruel. "Thought you might be. Here, watch how a warrior does it."

He bent in a fluid flourish and picked up his staff. "Can't do it right without the traditional Maori Killing Stick."

He grinned at me. "Last time, I remember doing this, poor Hina lost her hula skirt."

He rolled his eyes. "She almost killed me when she found out I had untied the knot when she wasn't looking."

He spun his staff in a blur. Twisting at the hips, he jumped and spun in the air like a jungle cat, landing like one on the balls of his feet. Jungle cat? My scalp began to prickle at a ridiculous idea. But he spun me around, up, and over his shoulder, then stomped happily with both feet. He broke out into a roaring chant.

"Kamate. Kamate.

Ka Ora. Ka Ora.

Tenei te tangata

puburuburu

nana nei i tiki mai

I whakawhiti te ra

Upane Upane

Whiti te ra!"

Thanks to Solomon's gift of Tongues, I knew what Hone was singing. And singing in not a bad voice either. Kirika wasn't so blessed. She pouted.

"It is impolite to sing so we cannot understand. For all we know, you could be shouting the recipe for penguin soup."

He laughed and twirled her in a square dance kind of circling loop. Despite herself, Kirika giggled, caught up in his genuine lust for life and the dance. He swung about and, dropping his staff, looped his right arm through mine. Then, we found ourselves skipping and dancing all about the deck as Hone bellowed in English this time.

"It is Death! It is Death!

It is Life! It is Life!

This is the hairy one, (he mussed my wild hair as he sang those words),

Who caused the sun to

shine.

Abreast. Keep abreast!

The rank. Hold fast!

Into the sun that shines."

Hone swung us all about, while impossibly stamping his feet merrily and shouting, "Kia korero te katoa o te tinana. (The whole body should speak.)"

"What you said," giggled Kirika.

Hone swept us around some more as he bellowed out again :

"Ringa pakia

Uma tiraha

Turi whatia

Hope whai ake

Waewae takahia kia kino."

Kirika punched him in the ribs, and he chuckled out :

"Slap the hands against the thighs. (Which he did gleefully.)

Puff out the chest. ( I thought Hone's shirt buttons would pop off.)

Bend the knees. ( I almost fell as he dragged us down with him.)

Let the hip follow. (He frowned as Kirika swayed much too sexy.)

Stamp the feet as hard as you can. (We all laughed as we did just that.)"

Hone yelled, "Now, the pukana." (And he dilated his eyes like a guy with a thyroid condition.)

As Kirika pulled away giggling, Hone laughed, "Next, the whetero!"

And he stuck out his tongue so far I thought he was a human lizard.

Kirika folded her arms. "By no means! I am quite careful where I stick my tongue." (And she gazed at me in such a way, I tingled in places I hoped Hone didn't notice.)

"That's alright, honey," smiled Hone, slapping, puffing, bending, and stamping away. "The whetero can be only done by men."

Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, really?"

She stuck out her tongue right at him, looking not a bit fearsome, but like a mad little girl.

He reached out and swung her in a happy circle. "Yeah, who cares about centuries of tradition when I can finally see that cute little tongue of yours. Ouch!"

She had kicked him in the shin. And Hone added a few new dance steps to the Peruperu, the war haka of the Maori. He glared at her.

"You know, princess, there's the potete that only women can do."

She looped her arm back with his and smiled like a happy cat with canary feathers in her mouth. "Oh, and what is that?"

"The closing of the eyes -- like you're gonna do now!"

And with that, he swung her over his shoulder and around his waist to set her right next to me with a thud.

She steadied herself against me with a shaky hand. "No, I think I'll just do the whetero again."

And she proceeded to stick out her tongue at him, lunging in a blur and slamming a foot right into his other shin. "Oh, look, Blake, some more new steps for us to learn."

And she spun me around, leaping up and down, rubbing her own shin bone. "I like this new step!"

"I hate it," Hone grumbled, then held his sides laughing.

He reached out and hugged the two of us. "Now, that's how the Maori dance!"

***

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. I stayed.


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 Spring hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A.

And not to leave my favorite character, Sam McCord left out totally, here is his favorite scene from the ancient movie, THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN :

CASTING DREAMS INTO THE DARKNESS

Casting dreams into the darkness.

That's what you do when you send out queries to agents or to publishers. Writing a short note in a bottle and tossing it out onto the horizon-to-horizon waves. Will it succeed it getting you off the deserted island of unpublished status?

The million dollar question.

{Leonardo da Vinci scribbled in his many notebooks never knowing if all his work would ever be appreciated.}

Like any intelligent person, I read what each individual agent writes she would prefer -- only to read in another article how she just had to sign this debut author. One who broke all the query rules and wrote such a refreshingly different query, breaking away from the crowd who slavishly submitted the same old, same old {in other words : followed her submission guidelines.}

Sometimes I can feel a nosebleed coming on.

I have been following the conventional wisdom lately and feeling a lot like Snoopy riddled by the Red Baron. Once I emailed a query early in the morning to get the rejection in the late afternoon of the same day.

All right. Obviously, it was course correction time. I looked back at the four queries that got 4 agents to ask to see more. They had what I call the 4 C's : interesting Character, primal Crisis, enough of the plot to make the agent Curious, and most important, they were all Concise ... ie. short as to be kind to a weary agent's eyes and frayed patience.

I decided to go with what had won me the attention of four agents and write a query that used the 4 C's, trying to improve upon the theme. And this is what I wrote and promptly sent off to another agent {who did not reject me the same day or the day after.}

Dear Ms. _________ :

Hurricane Katrina has mortally wounded New Orleans. There is no help in sight. Federal agencies are grid-locked. State officials are befuddled and ineffectual. The police are undermanned with little amunition and no sure means of communication.

And along every dark, flooded street ... the dead have started to rise.

Samuel McCord, legendary French Quarter jazz club owner, decides he has lost enough : his family, his wife, and his humanity. He will not lose his adopted city -- not to inept, corrupt politicians, not to the rising dead in the shadows, nor to a life-long enemy whose power is causing the dead to return and the creatures of the night to close in around a helpless New Orleans.

And so begins the 90,000 word urban fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. I'm including the first three pages of my novel 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, fifty-one survivors of Katrina 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 were crawling out of 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.

But what was human? Science kept telling us that human was only another kind of animal. We certainly acted it.

The lights were out all over New Orleans. And the real face of Man was showing. I knew what so many were thinking : ‘Now, I can do what I’ve always wanted. No one to see me. No one to stop me. No one to make me pay.’

“There’s me,” I whispered to the approaching darkness. “And soon there’ll be hell to pay.”

The water lapped at my knees, and I shook my head. Hell had already come collecting. But it seemed Hell was never satisfied. Soon it would demand more.

I had no words. An entire life’s outrage at lying politicians tried to crowd itself into this one moment. It wouldn't fit. In fact, I felt like I was about to explode. My anger was a wild beast inside my heart. But the outrage was slowly pushed into the background by the numbed shock of the sight before me.
My city shouldn't be drowning in front of me. And yet, here it was doing just that. I tried to remember what these streets had looked like dry and filled with laughing tourists. I couldn't. My mind felt broken.

The love that had kept me whole in its invisible sheath was gone. Gone. And what was left worth having? There had to be something better than cursing the darkness. But for the life of me I couldn’t think of it. All I could do was mourn.

I thought about the words Wilde had me carve on his false tombstone.

“Alien tears will fill for him

Pity’s long-broken urn,

For his mourners will be outcast men,

And outcasts always mourn.”

I looked all around. Yes, those words fit the desolation I saw. Hell, they fit the desolation inside me. The emptiness that had been born seven years ago when Meilori, my wife, could no longer stand the sight of me and had stormed away into the night.

Now, another lady named Katrina had come storming back. And she didn't seem to like me any more than had Meilori. I shook my head. That particular line stretched around the block.

The light was quickly fading. A last crimson glory filled the French Quarter. Its glow lay on the flooded streets like a crown of blood. A whisper of ice murmured that I was watching more than the death of the day. I was watching the death of a city, of a people’s hopes and dreams. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time. And like the people now inside my club, they had looked to me for answers and meaning then, too.

My jaw firmed. It would be different this time. I heard Meilori’s mocking laughter in my mind.

Damn it. It would be different. I would be different.

The laughter continued.

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


To get a better idea of my writing voice, you may want to check out my blog, WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS, www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com .

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. I stayed.

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 Spring hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A.
*************************************
I included the first three pages as that was part of her submission guidelines. If no pages had been requested, I would have sent the first three paragraphs anyway. That is usually all weary agents read of our submissions before deciding to reject or not.

Just thought my query might help you write your own -- either incorporating some of its facets or steering away from them. Good luck with your queries everyone. And success to us all.

And here is a tune that describes how Samuel McCord feels towards his one great love, Meilori Shinseen.

DELETED SCENE BLOGFEST

It's my pleasure to enter Mia's Deleted Scene Blogfest
http://literaryjamandtoast.blogspot.com/

Of course, with my work schedule, I'm having to do it a little early again.

A little background on my deleted scene for my novel, SOMETIMES THEY LIE. I envisioned a life history for my hero, Luke Winters. A Lakota psychologist in Boston, witness to the mercy murders of his grandparents and exile from his tribe, Luke is trying to find meaning in the cold city of Boston.

As I was in the midst of the first chapter, I suddenly realized I wanted to tell another phase of his epic life -- one that occurred three years after this chapter -- so "Poof!" There went what I had written. The agents were as quiet as roadkill on my queries to them for SOMETIMES THEY LIE. But if you're interested in what replaced this first chapter, here's the link to "Sometimes You Don't" in the short story contest where I placed it : http://www.radiantprose.com/entry/view/301

And here is that deleted scene :

SOMETIMES THEY LIE

Her words were husky echoes. “They say you have a tragic past.”

“Don’t we all?”

She let my words hang in the air. She studied me. I studied back.

She was a striking woman. Her eyes were smoky gray windows into a burnt out soul. Other men in the bar were flicking appraising eyes her way. Perhaps they wondered why she was sitting at my table. Me, too.

Her own eyes passed over me, slowly, reflectively. Her slender fingers tested the ends of her long red hair. Apparently, both I and her hair passed our separate tests, and she spoke again.

“You don’t sound Boston.”

“I’m Lakota.”

“Who?”

“Sioux.”

Her lips curled in what she thought passed for a smile. “Oh, you mean Sioux Indian. You won at The Little Big Horn, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and look where it got us.”

“That was over a hundred years ago. Where your people are now is your own damn fault.”

“Story of the human race.”

“They say you’re a good shrink.”

“Psychologist.”

“Whatever. I need your help. I need to die.”

I nodded slow. “You’re dying?”

“I’m dead.”

“Meaning?”

Her long face suddenly became all eyes as she murmured, “Rose red, black heart, ivory bones.”

And then she simply wasn’t there. One heartbeat she was looking at me as if the words she spoke were crushed glass. The next, her chair was empty. I sat still as my heart raced fast. What the hell had just happened?

I looked hurriedly at the other customers. They all seemed oblivious of my visitor’s impossible exit. I studied their faces to see if there was any echo of shock in their eyes. I sighed. None.

This was the brooding hour. Most who came here at this time of day were nursing wounds, some old, some new, some never to heal in this lifetime. Most never took their eyes from their glasses.

I looked down at my own glass. Last I heard ice tea had no hallucinatory effects. No answers there. Hell, no answers anywhere that I could tell.

I spilled a bit of my ice tea as a voice suddenly spoke above me.

“Luke -- hey, didn’t mean to startle you.”

I looked up. Monica. Long black hair. Short green skirt. Best waitress that Illusions ever had. I tried for a smile. Almost made it.

“Had a hard day that’s all.”

“What happened to the redhead? She was drop-dead gorgeous.”

“I think you’re right, Monica.”

She flashed me her imp’s grin. “I’m always right, kiddo. And what happened to the redhead?”

“Guess she couldn’t be late for the witching hour.”

“Luke, you know for an injun you talk funny.”

“I’m a psychologist. We’re paid to talk funny.”

“That’s a comedian you’re thinking about.”

“You’d be surprised how often the two are the same.”

“No, I wouldn’t. This block’s full of them, remember?”

“How could I not? I’m one of them.”

Her china blue eyes grew wet. “No, Luke, you’re not. You’re just their token Native American.”

She had pronounced the last two words with bitter pomposity. Her eyes suddenly couldn’t meet mine. She walked briskly into the shadows.

I whispered after her. “When you’re right, you’re right.”

I went to my apartment with even more mixed feelings than usual. I expected a waiting ghostly presence in my living room. None showed up there. Or in my bedroom either. I figured the bathroom was safe. You never hear of a ghost haunting a toilet.

The next few days I awaited a return visit. She never came. The circle of the seasons flowed slow and steady and unrelenting. The year passed like a kidney stone, full of pain and promises of more to come.

Mac put Illusions up for sale. He wanted to go back to the old country. Poland. Don’t ask. Long story.

The bar was sold, becoming even more upscale. Monica became the new manager, though she still waited tables. But now only when the mood struck her. The name was changed to an odd one.

Rose Red.

Yes, you guessed it. I had bought the bar. I changed the decor to something out of an old black and white film noir movie. You half expected Bogart to be talking to Ingrid Bergman at a secluded table.

With my typical luck, my secluded table only had Aaron Brookheim. Tall, dark, and quite possibly the most deadly man in Boston. He shook his head at me.

“Do you have a death wish, Luke?”

I paused before answering. Not from fear. True, he ran the most elite escort service in Boston. He owned the most elegant and illegal gambling casino in town. He also carried more weapons hidden on his person than I had regrets. And last, and known only to a select few, he was the Mossad’s representative on the East Coast.

But no, there was another reason I paused before answering. He was a friend. One of the few I had left that was still living. And he deserved the truth. And please, do not become Pilate on me.

“Yes. I believe I do.”

He flexed his long fingers as if keeping them from strangling me with an effort. “I can believe it.”

He pointed to the oil painting. “Where did you find a photograph of her and an artist in Boston suicidal enough to paint this?”

“I painted it.”

“You can paint like this? Hell, it looks like that von Stuck painting you have in your living room.”

“You mean Sin?”

“Yeah, if it’s that one with the snake.”

“Yes, it is. It’s one of the better portrayals of the evil temptress . One of the chief, if not the chief, theme of the Symbolism school of Art.”

He frowned at me. “What?”

“Symbolism. To clothe the idea in perceptible form.”

“I know what symbolism is, smart ass.”

He turned his eyes back up to the painting and shivered. “Damn, her eyes seem to bore right into you.”

I looked up. Yes. It was one of my better attempts since that night. In the smoky depths of those eyes you could imagine monsters swam. The monsters who haunt us or drive us or both.

He rubbed his face angrily at himself. “Forget that, Luke. Where did you get the photograph to do it?”

“I did it from memory.”

“Memory? That’s impossible. She died over thirty years ago.”

Words that were velvet sneers murmured above us. We both looked up. I went cold. Rose Red.

“It so pleases me that even after thirty years I am the subject of such dread and interest.”

Looking like the Dark Angel in Carlos Schwabe’s The Gravedigger’s Death, she looked down amused at the two of us. I studied the cold glitter to her eyes.

I changed my mind. No, her haughty look reminded me of Gustav Klimt’s Judith. He and Freud had been alike in their fascination with the association of death and sexuality, of Eros and Thanatos. My own past made me share their fascination and obcession.

And Rose Red, in her form clinging black gown, seemed to breathe both death and sexuality. She looked up at her painting. She cocked her head, studying it. All emotion bled white from that haunting face.

She turned back to me, echoes of regrets and lost innocence in her hollow gray eyes. “They say you help hurting souls.”

“They who?,” I managed to get out.

She smiled with her lips only and sat down. She no sooner sat than her body blinked out of sight as if it had never been there. Aaron dropped his shot glass.

Its shattering on the floor sounded like a fired gun. Far to my left another glass hit the bar with almost an equal loudness. Monica. She looked like she had seen a --

No, I won’t use that phrase.

Aaron husked, “What the hell was that?”

“I think you may have answered your own question.”

He shook his head firmly over and over again. His was a world of expediant assassinations, carefully crafted lies, necessary subterfuges, and deadly espionage. There was no room in it for the supernatural. None at all.

But I was Lakota. My grandfather had taught me that the white man’s view of the world was stunted, limited by his insistence that everything had to conform to his ideas of what was possible. But he had also taught me not to believe everything I saw, not to take what was before my eyes at face value.

“A hologram,” whispered Aaron. “It had to be a hologram.”

I nodded slowly. “That would be one school of thought.”

“Don’t go redskin on me, Luke. Someone is trying to pull something on us. We’ve got to figure this out.”

“What do you mean we, paleface.”

His look should have jutted four inches out of my back. “Very funny. That was supposed to look like the ghost of Anthony Vincent’s first wife. When word of this gets out --”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Anthony Vincent. Even I had heard of him. If you wanted to make a crooked dollar, first you had to get permission from him. The first fruits of every black harvest belonged to him. And to fail to pay tribute to Boston's dark Caesar was to die.

Like his first wife had died.

Actually, she had simply disappeared. Word on the street was that Vincent had murdered her with his own hands. I smiled bitter. Some things you just had to do yourself.

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

Hope you enjoyed that lost classic scene. And here is a haunting video to go with the haunting scene you just read :

A MOTHER'S DAY GIFT TO MY FRIENDS

To me, mothers share a lot in common with farmers. Like farmers, they toil every day. They sow seeds without a promise of a sure harvest. Under the most harsh conditions, they till the soil, pull weeds, and prune where they believe it is needed.

With no promise of a certain return or a good harvest for all their labor, they work on.

What did my own mother often tell me? "Mothers hold their children's hands for only a short time -- but their hearts forever."

And for all their efforts, their loving kindnesses, their reluctant punishments -- they tend to slowly fade into the shadows, hidden from the spotlight of their children's ever-growing focus upon themselves, their wants, their lives. Mothers often grow ghost-like even in the eyes of their husbands, chained to the demands of job, bills, and a vitality that is frighteningly leaving them.

For all you mothers out there who feel they are slowly becoming invisible, unappreciated, and alone. Here is a video I borrowed from Kimberly Job's lovely blog, SCRIBBLED SCRAPS : http://scribbledscraps.blogspot.com/

:

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

It's Mother's Day. My own mother's spirit has long since traveled to that Land which knows no shadow. I know she waits for me there with Sooner, the wolf-dog that once roamed the hills with Mother when she was a young girl.

When Mother visited the harsh home from which she had been taken to spend years in an orphanage, she was surprised her beloved Sooner was still alive. No other human could approach her.

But when Mother kneeled in front of her, Sooner laid her big head in Mother's lap. The wolf-dog finally felt the soft fingers stroke her that she had waited years to feel again. Sooner let out a long, slow sigh. And then, she died.

In my worldview, Sooner went to where she sat in that Land Of No Shadows with wagging tail until Mother walked up to her to kneel once again and hug that big head.

Yes, it is Mother's Day. What do I give? And to whom? I am a story teller. And so I give to all of you a story Mother told me as my double pneumonia grew worse, and the winter shadows deepened in our basement apartment without power. It comes from my Native American/Celtic fantasy THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS. But the teaching tale is my mother's.


The adult Hibbs looked at the pond beside which Estanatlehi, the Turquoise Woman stood. She looked at him expectantly. What was she waiting for?

And then, Hibbs smiled. He knew that look. She expected him to remember. And with that very thought, he did. Time once again reached out from his mind and drew the bear back into his wondrous, seemingly endless, days as an innocent, ever curious, cub.

In the crisp memory, whose embrace swallowed him whole, he was kneeling on the sandy bank of the Snaking River, deep within the deadly wilderness of the Valley of the Shadow. And once again he was staring into the reflection of his river face and wondering if it lived its own life deep underneath the silver glass of the still waters.

Suddenly, a rock was tossed into the middle of the river-face, blurring it in spreading ripples which pushed out one after another, and Hibbs heard the soft voice of GrandMother.

“Always in circles. Never in squares.”

The startled cub bounded to his furry feet and turned around, happiness quickly replaced by nose-wrinkling puzzlement. “What?”

Tall, regal, Estanatlehi walked with the grace of the wind itself given form right up to Hibbs. “The ripples, Little One. You have never seen a square one, nor will you ever. Why do you think that is?”

Hibbs’ nose wiggled in hard thought until, right shoulder hunched up a bit, just in case he was guessing wrong, said, “B-Because that is the nature of ripples?”

Estanatlehi sighed, “The story of your life, O Slow of Thought.”

“Huh?”

She laughed soft. “You are both right and wrong. The nature of Life itself is a circle, Little One.”

Hibbs’ mouth dropped. “Truly?”

Long, icy fingers ruffled the fur atop his small head as whisper-soft laughter swept along above him by the breath of the winds themselves. “Truly.”

“Look up to Giizi, the sun. And remember my moon? See younder the rainbow, half hid by the tree-filled horizon. And think back on our trip to the StarMountain Olympus, where you saw my world in all its beauty and majesty. All are round, like the great hurricane you rode over in my arms last moon.”

Hibbs shivered at the memory. “S-So the circle is the way of Life?”

Slender fingers tweaked his nose gently. “Wiser than you know. From childhood to childhood are the days of all Two-Leggeds. The winter flows from spring to summer to autumn back to winter once more. As my world is a circle, so is all Life.”

Cold lips kissed the top of his little head. “Mystery explained.”

Once more back in the present, Hibbs sighed deep, his muzzle wrinkled in a smile of happy remembrance. "Mystery explained."

Estanatlehi stiffened, her own eyes going back into the mists of the past, finding both solace and loss in the journey.

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

May all of you find solace in your memories today and in the days to come.

Roland, a grateful son.

BAD GIRL BLOGFEST

My work schedule has me once again entering the Bad Girl Blogfest a bit early.

But even so, I am happy to enter Andrew's Bad Girls Blogfest. http://blog.dawnsrise.com/2010/04/announcing-bad-girl-blogfest.html

But to be gracious, I'll be giving you two bad girls from my urban fantasy, LAST EXIT TO BABYLON. {the sequel to my fantasy, THE MOON & SUN AS MY BRIDES.}

First we have Fallen, the Sidhe once called The Morrigan. But let the Ningyo {a race from another plane of existence}, Kirika, describe her :

"By the Haniwa, she was magnificent, terrifying, yet majestic all at once. Her long, honey-wheat hair tumbled down along either side of a face both haunting and dreadful. Her body was aristocratic and straight, the deep blue of her snug Prussian cavalry uniform taut across her fencer’s shoulders and firm breasts. Her elegant face was spotlighted by her high cheekbones and slanted fae eyes, gleaming green fires under hooded lids. The full moon burned in glints along the length of her long, black, rune-carved dagger. She smiled cruel, her wet, pointed teeth mocking us all."

And then, there's Kirika herself. Let's listen in on Fallen giving the Ningyo a pep talk before attempting a mission impossible :

"You are Kirika Amaterasu, empress of The Order of the Black Lotus. You were, and still have the spirit of, Empress Himiko. You are beloved of Blake, son of Adam, a mortal like no other, who believes in you, chose you, depends on you. And you will succeed in this task of freeing him from oblivion, for you have never truly failed. Never! And you will not start now!”

Somehow, she found my left hand and squeezed. “And because I stand with Fallen The Morrigan, goddess of the lust for life and the love of death, and ... sister of a very lucky Ningyo.”

“I -- am worse than you could possibly imagine.”

“Blake does not think so, n-nor do I. As much as I am jealous of you, sister, I - I love you.”

And with her words, the world flickered back into life around us. Her face beamed, and she gave my hand another squeeze before dropping it. She smiled like a little girl worshipping her older sister, making me ashamed of my using fae Glamour to heal her.

{Together they set out in the infamous night club, Kol Basar, a strange crossroads of dimensions and different times. They are off to find the legendary 3-sided chess game being played by Freud, Darwin, and Napoleon. A first step in rescuing the man they both love from limbo. Here is a snippet of their walk through the Kol Basar as told by Fallen.}

Kirika slung the Spanish guitar across her slim back, her eyes full of death. I moved beside her, trying to glide through the air with a menace that had filled Celtic hearts with dread for centuries. Kirika looked across at me.

“I feel as if I walk beside a lioness given human form.”

Before I could answer, the pathetic ritual began. What pathetic ritual? The one that always started whenever I walked into a room with men and alcohol. A swaggering samurai hoisted up on the belt that held his twin swords and winked at me.

“I know I could make you very happy,” he leered.

“Why,” I murmured, “are you leaving?”

A scruffy man in a battered fedora and stained khakis shoved the samurai aside. “Out of the way, loser.”

He flashed a wide smile that glowed white, appearing as it did in the midst of a two week’s growth of beard. But instead of me, he doffed his hat to Kirika. She looked underwhelmed.

“Go on. I know you want to. Ask me out.”

Kirika kept on walking past him. “Certainly. Get out.”

We walked through the cluster of glowing tables amidst the hoots of the samurai. A sound of a scuffle broke out. The rasp of a drawn sword. The snap of a whip. Men. So predictable. So full of ego.

A tall, wiry man in a black suit with wide lapels, wearing a hat with a wider brim, shifted his shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to hide the gun he wore in a shoulder holster. He strutted up to me.

“Where have you been all my life, doll?”

“Hiding from you.”

His face got hard. Unfortunately, his jaw was not. A fast uppercut and he went down to the floor with a loud thump. I stepped over him, trying for the grace of that lioness that Kirika had likened me to.

I had hoped that would put an end to our gauntlet. But male hormones are notoriously single-minded and short-sighted. I wonder how the human race has survived as long as it has. We traveled all of three paces before it started up again.

A musketeer, leaning on the bar to our right, reached out and stroked Kirika’s hair. “Haven’t I seen you someplace before, wench?”

She punched him once -- hard, four inches below his belt buckle. He went down huffing and squealing. She reached out and poured his mug of ale on his face.

“Yes, lout, and that is why I do not go there anymore.”

A bare-chested black man walked like a rooster towards me. He seemed to be wearing a woman’s hose on top of his head and more gold chains than Midas would have found decent. His baggy shorts went below his knees. His shoes were canvas. His fashions were unfamiliar. Sadly, his attitude was not.

He walked right up to me, looking me up and down. “Yo, mama, what it is?”

I locked cold eyes with his. “Unobtainable.”

His gold chains moved with a life of their own and began to strangle him. I turned to Kirika. She was oddly gesturing with the fingers of her left hand. Her face seemed a demon’s, as her hair floated around her head as if the air were slow moving ocean currents.

“You are alive only because I sense you were complimenting my sister. I, however, took it as an insult. Take your compliments and attitude far, far away.”

He staggered backwards, holding his throat where the chains were loosening. “Chill, mama! I didn’t mean nothing.”

Kirika murmured, “That is true, human. You mean nothing. To me. To my sister. And sadly, it would seem you mean nothing to yourself.”

Kirika turned to me, and her face grew long. “Fallen, in the not so distant future, we will very likely be taking on the entire clientel of this chamber of the damned.”

I nodded absently, my eyes ever roving for the three-sided chess game. “Yes, it would seem that our careers are certainly taking off.”

She rolled her eyes. “For once, be serious.”

“That is your end of our partnership, sister.”

“No! Listen. You have never faced the Amal. I have. When we round that cluster of tables, we must be holding hands. When we feel Blake’s fingers around ours and burn with that burst of love, the Amal will wither like mist under the rising sun.”

“You just say things like that because you are Ningyo.”

She stepped right into my face. “You are not as funny as you think.”

“You are not the first to point that out to me.”

“Why must you be like this?”

I reached out to stroke her cheek. She jerked away in anger. I sighed.

“I am who I am. If I let myself feel the fear that any sane person would have at this moment, I will freeze up. Blake needs me --”

“Needs us. Oh, you do not fool me, sister. You know this is suicide. You mean to part from me in the midst of the slaughter, draw the dogs after you, keep me alive -- for Blake. He needs us both or neither.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I need you. Do not leave me. Please, promise me when it begins that you will not leave me.”

I drew in a deep breath. “I promise -- to do what I think will best insure Blake’s return to this reality. And I expect you to do so as well. And if that means leaving me to die alone facing the assembled hordes of Hell, I expect you to do that.”

“I - I cannot promise that.”

I smiled bitter. “Well, no one is perfect. Come, let us beard these infamous Amal of yours.”

There was another uneasy silence between us as we floated upon feet that barely felt the floor. Heads turned as we walked like lions through jackels. I ignored them. All I felt was Kirika’s eyes on me. It was odd. Beating through my head, my very blood, was a gypsy song I had heard once as I preyed along the Balkins, Canto Alla Vita.

“I sing to Life and to its tragic beauty,

To pain and to strife, to all that dances through me

The rise and the fall; I have lived through it all.

Canto alla vita

Negli occhi tuoi riflessa

Facile e infinita

Terra a noi promessa.”

Kirika turned to me. “That -- that is beautiful.”

I was shocked. “You heard it, too?”

“We are linked. Through life, through death, ever shall we be sisters, the moon and the sun, destined to share the same sky, to be alone in our love for it.”

“I take it back. You are not a disillusioned romantic. You are simply a romantic.”

********************************
For Donna and Andrew, who wanted a truly bad girl, here is Nyx from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURE {Sam has just been told the back of his club has been invaded by Nyx who is forbidden in Meilori's.}

Toya, Meilori's manager, rasped, “Is she really the -- the personification of Chaos, the madness that existed before all Creation?”

I shrugged. “To hear her tell of it, yes. But when did you know any of the creepy crawlies who make my life interesting to tell the whole truth about themselves --- or anything for that matter?”

“So you don’t believe her?”

“I believe she wants to believe what she says about herself.”

“S-So she isn’t living chaos?”

“I - I think she’s something worse.”

“Worse? What could be worse?”

“Whatever she is, she’s bad. I’ve seen her lift an eyebrow, just an eyebrow, mind you, and suck the life out of every man, woman, and child in an entire city block.”

Toya paled even more. “God.”

“More in the opposite direction. I saw her whisper one word and wither the life from an entire crew of a Nazi submarine.”

“What was the word?”

“Hungry.”

Toya shivered, and I reached under my table. “Rind told me that once long ago Nyx screamed, and the Black Plague laid waste to most of Europe.”

“B-But that was a disease, and it took months to kill that many.”

“Historians weren’t there. Rind was, seeing as how it’s her job and all. Those thousands of people died in a day.”

“A day?”

“Yeah, a day. One terrible, terrible day.”

{Samuel takes the Spurs of Hephaestus out from under his table. To wear them is to feel bone-deep pain. But the pain of whatever wound is inflicted upon the wearer is felt by the person wounding the wearer of those mythic spurs. After some searching of his club, Sam finds Nyx at the Baccarat table, surrounded by dead players.}

I turned to the Baccarat table to my right. All the other players were withered corpses. That's what Nyx did to you if you lost. Or won, for that matter. She was a sore loser. Big surprise there.

Sitting high above the baccarat table, in a chair like a judge at one of those tennis matches, was a woman in a red Victorian-style gown. She looked like she belonged in a ballroom. But I knew what she was doing. She was the ‘floorman.’ Sitting in her polished oak chair, she nervously twirled a long oak paddle, used to scoop up the dealt cards and hand them to the players.

Directly below her, a short, slim woman in a skin-tight Harlequin costume stood with her fingers to her obviously terrifed face.

The Harlequin would have to be the caller, the one whose job it was to announce all the totals and proclaim the winner. She didn’t look happy with her job. She kept looking at the tall, skeletal woman to her right. The woman was human in looks alone.

She was Nyx.

If she had been alive, she would have been a very sick woman. But I suspected that she was undead, a very creepy kind of undead. Though, truth to tell, was there any other kind?

Long, black hair hung straight down each side of her old ivory face. She was nothing to write home about unless you were into frightening letters. She had gray, insane eyes, the same eyes that DayStar had. They said she was a law unto herself, that she recognized no code but her own hungers. To get in her way was to get dead - or worse.

Her tight dress fit her like a black leather second skin. It plunged down so low in the front I was sure that if she leaned forward, one of us was going to be embarrassed. And I had a feeling it wouldn't be her.

She seemed to wiggle without moving. Maybe if you were into kissing dead women, you would have found her sexy. Not me. I wasn't into necrophilia.

She was toying with her cute little necklace of tiny skulls and looking bored. I followed her gaze. She was looking at a tuxedoed man sprawled across from her at the green table. I smiled bitter. Once he had been called 'Mr. Lucky.' I sighed. Sooner or later, the cards always turned against you.

You might think it was just your life you lost when you played with Nyx. You'd be wrong. As I watched, Nyx reached out and touched the man, and another skull was added to her necklace.

“Next?," she laughed.

Nobody seemed eager to take the man's place. Who could blame them? She looked at me with hungry eyes and smiled.

You could starve off the difference between her power and DayStar's. And DayStar was the timeless dark personified. Nyx smiled wider, crueler. I hated powerful sadists.

There were two ways to deal with supremely powerful demi-gods. You could toady to them, kneel at their feet praying that they would only taunt and play with you, that the pain would be survivable. I made a face. Genuflecting was out. My bad knee and all.

That left the other way, and I forced a lazy smile. "Oh, a fan. I don't have a photograph on me, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks."

"Ape!," Nyx spit.

I quick held back the blessing to Hephaestus's spurs. And my world became white-hot agony. I had been in agony before. This was worse, much, much worse. I fell to the floor, squirming in spasms. I heard my customers scramble from their chairs. Some screamed. I would have, too. But the sheer torment had stolen my breath.

I heard the Harlequin cry out, "Please, Nyx, no. H-He was kind to me."

I didn't remember, but I did hear Nyx hiss, "You dare ask me for mercy?"

I had been too smart for myself. I thought whatever she would hit me with would still leave me breath. I had been wrong. But I heard the Harlequin cry out in terror. No! I would damn well find the breath.

I gasped out Hephaestus's blessing, "I-It is better to g-give than to receive."

Nyx reeled from her chair, hit the floor, and screamed her throat raw. The agony left me. But I knew my club, especially back here. I couldn't stay on the floor, though my trembling body begged for me to do so. I wrenched up to my feet to see a few of the predators heading for me. I glared at them.

"You know who I am. You've seen what I can do. You want me to do it to you?"

As a man, they took a long look at the squirming Nyx, the personification of timeless Chaos. Then they looked at me. They spun on their heels. I thought they would run for it. But the predators this far back were sadists.

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

Hope you enjoyed this stroll with three very, very bad girls. And when I think bad girls, I think first of Xena :

And the song Fallen sings in her head is one made popular by Josh Groban. I know that if I see the rights to LAST EXIT TO BABYLON, I will have to write my own song, but in my head I will always hear Fallen singing this :