BLACK ROSES IN AVALON!

The LOVE LIKE DEATH trilogy concludes :

Not even the eclipse of myth is forever. But eclipses return. And currents exist that are eternal. One such current is Love.

It binds the universe together.

Listen. Can you hear it? Can you hear him?

Blake, son of Man, is calling out across the night skies. What is he saying?

Remember.

Remember the strangled dreams, the shattered illusions that dropped from your bruised fingers long ago as a child. Still Time can be transcended. If you but remember ...

that love is forever,

that love cannot be taken from you,

that wounded hearts and minds but cast it from them in despair.

Listen.

Listen as Blake tells of haunted Avalon, broken by bloody Civil War. Of his love for the moon and the sun : the Last Fae and the alien drinker of souls.

Listen to his memories of BLACK ROSES IN AVALON :

The orphan, Blake Adamson, has been running for his life … or has he been running from it? One part of his mind says he is delirious, dying in the burnt ruins of his orphanage. Most of his mind insists what he is seeing and enduring is all too real.

His heart wants to believe the world he sees is real. A heart that is torn between an alien drinker of souls and the Last Fae. Loving both the sun and the moon may be his death. But Blake Adamson cannot help himself.

In an attempt to escape the enraged demigod, Abaddon Sennacherib, Blake and Fallen, the Last Fae, have left Victorian London by bending time and space,

using an ancient enchanted blade as a rudder. The two fugitive lovers find themselves far in the past … to Avalon.

Avalon, where life is illusory and deceptive, as are its inhabitants. In Faerie, nothing is as it seems, and even the simple act of uttering a name can be fraught with danger and death.

Blake and Fallen have appeared close to the Crystal Castle at the bottom of Lake Sayrade. The Dancers of the Myst float on their icy blue crafts upon that lake. And their Queen is Danis Nokkes, punisher of all false lovers.

Blake insists he is not false … just over-committed.

The distinction is lost to the sadistic Queen. To the Sidhe, mortals are but toys and pawns in their power games. They love to make the epitaph small and the death large.

In escaping the sadistic Queen, Blake and Fallen clash with the feral Wyldaelfen. And blood and destiny ensues.

In the midst of enemies in Broceliande Forest, they fail to skirt the Shadows of the Erinnyes and their dark queen Dinselle of the Golden Skin.

Atop the King and Queen of Avalon’s unicorns, Blake and Fallen evade the Wild Hunt as they race across the flying boulders of the fabled River Sambayton high in the skies of Avalon.

Until in the crystal and gold palace of Caer Wydr, Blake and Fallen endure the dark ritual, Diathke, ending the Avalon Civil War by paying the fearsome cost for love eternal.
***
http://www.amazon.com/BLACK-ROSES-IN-AVALON-ebook/dp/B005GQN03C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313029711&sr=1-1
***

TALKING SIN

TALKING SIN …

Of not taking these writers’ advise :

Hilary Mantel :

Read BECOMING A WRITER, by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself.

This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don't ­really need any others,

2 Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

3 If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

4 Be aware that anything that appears before "Chapter One" may be skipped. Don't put your vital clue there.

5 First paragraphs can often be struck out.

6 Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction.

When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that's the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don't notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they're trying too hard to instruct the reader.



Michael Moorcock (Author of the Elric fantasy series)

1 My first rule was given to me by TH White, author of The Sword in the Stone and other Arthurian fantasies and was: Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt.

2 Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own first stories, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.

3 For a good melodrama study the famous "Lester Dent master plot formula" which you can find online. It was written to show how to write a short story for the pulps, but can be adapted successfully for most stories of any length or genre.

4 If possible have something going on while you have your characters delivering exposition or philosophising. This helps retain dramatic tension.

5 Carrot and stick – have protagonists pursued (by an obsession or a villain) and pursuing (idea, object, person, mystery).

Lester Dent’s Master Plot Formula :

Lester Dent (1904 - 1959) was a prolific pulp fiction author of numerous stories, best known as the main author of the series of stories about the superhuman character, "Doc Savage."

http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html

Sample :

THIRD 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel the grief onto the hero.

2--Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:

3--A physical conflict.

4--A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

DOES: It still have SUSPENSE?
The MENACE getting blacker?
The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix?
It all happens logically?

These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there is no pulp story.

These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until next the next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may, naturally, be exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it more than once.

The idea is to avoid monotony.

ACTION:
Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and feel the action.

ATMOSPHERE:
Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.

DESCRIPTION:
Trees, wind, scenery and water.

THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.


FOURTH 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.

2--Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)

3--The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.

4--The mysteries remaining--one big one held over to this point will help grip interest--are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes
the situation in hand.

5--Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the "Treasure" be a dud, etc.)

6--The snapper, the punch line to end it.

HAS: The SUSPENSE held out to the last line?
The MENACE held out to the last?
Everything been explained?
It all happen logically?
Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?
Did God kill the villain? Or the hero?

Wasn't talking SIN fun?

***

THE 5 DEADLY SINS!

THE FIVE DEADLY SINS …

YOU DON’T SEE IN YOUR WRITING!

1.) REPEAT THAT … NOT!
Just about every writer unconsciously has a SECRET AGENT word that creeps in on every page it seems.

Hillary Clinton’s repeated word is “eager” (can you believe it? the committee that wrote Living History should have their typing fingers slapped).

Cosmopolitan magazine editor Kate White uses “quickly” over a dozen times in A Body To Die For.

Jack Kerouac’s crutch word in On the Road is “sad,” sometimes
doubly so – “sad, sad.”

Ann Packer’s in The Dive from Clausen’s Pier
is “weird.”

SECRET AGENT words are usually unremarkable little critters. That’s why they slip under the editorial radar –

they’re not even worth noticing, much less repeating,

but there you have it, pop, pop, pop, up they come -

like that rodent in the golf course in CADDY SHACK. Readers, however, notice them, get irked by them and are eventually distracted by them,

and put down the book never to pick it back up. Ouch.

2. PANCAKE FLAT WRITING
“I wanted to know but couldn’t understand what her face had to say, so I waited until Alice was ready to tell me before asking what she meant.”

Victor Standish is trying to say something in this sentence, but who cares? The writing is so flat, limp, listless it just dies on the page. Talk about a "bad hair day" for prose!

You can’t fix it with a few replacement words – you have to give it depth, texture, character.

Flat writing is a sign that you’ve lost interest or are intimidated by your own novel's scope. It shows that you’re veering toward mediocrity, that your brain is fatigued,

that you’ve lost your inspiration.

So use it as a lesson. When you see flat writing on the page, it’s time to rethink, refuel and rewrite.

3. LIFELESS, UNDEAD ADVERBS

Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally –

these and others are words that promise emphasis, but too often they do the reverse. They suck the meaning out of every sentence.

I defer to People Magazine for gilding its articles with empty, valueless adverbs. A recent issue refers to an “incredibly popular, groundbreakingly racy sitcom.” That’s tough to say even when your lips aren’t moving.

In Still Life with Crows, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (experts at needless filler to pad a book) describe a mysterious row of corn in the middle of a field:

“It was, in fact, the only row that actually opened onto the creek.” Here are two attempts at emphasis (”in fact,” “actually”), but they just junk up the sentence. Remove them both and the word “only” carries the burden of the sentence with efficiency and precision.

(When in doubt, try this mantra: Precise and spare; precise and spare; precise and spare.)

In dialogue, empty adverbs may sound appropriate, even authentic,

but that’s because they’ve crept into American conversation in a trendy way. If you’re not watchful, they’ll make your characters sound wordy, childish and dated.

Look at this hilarious clunker from THE DA VINCE CODE by Dan Brown:

“Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino.”

Puke! “Almost inconceivably” –

that’s like being a little bit dead, isn't it?

Hopefully, that “enormous albino” will ironically go back to actually flogging himself while incredibly saying his prayers continually as we regretfully heave the book into the thankfully empty trash can.

4. DEADLY DIALOGUE

Be careful of using dialogue to advance the plot.

Readers can tell when characters talk about things they already know, or when the speakers appear to be having a conversation for our benefit.

You never want one character to imply or say to the other, “Tell me again, Batman: What are we doing next?”

Avoid words that are fashionable in conversation.

Ann Packer’s characters are so trendy the reader recoils. ” ‘What’s up with that?’ I said. ‘Is this a thing [love affair]?’ ” “We both smiled. ” ‘What is it with him?’ I said. ‘I mean, really.’ ” Her book is only a few years old, and already it’s dated.

Dialogue offers glimpses into character the author can’t provide through description.

Hidden wit, thoughtful observations, a shy revelation, a charming aside all come out in dialogue, so the characters *show* us what the author can’t *tell* us.

But if dialogue helps the author distinguish each character, it also nails the culprit who’s promoting a hidden agenda by speaking out of character.

Setting your own high standards and sticking to them is the mark of a pro.

Be one, write like one, and don’t cheat.

5. SUFFIXES EXIST TO BE MADE EXTINCT.

Don’t take a perfectly good word and give it a new wardrobe, so it serves as something else. The New York Times does this all the time.

Instead of saying, “as a director, she is meticulous,” the reviewer will write, “as a director, she is known for her meticulousness.”

Until she is known for her obtuseness.

The “ness” words cause the eye to stumble, come back, reread:

Mindlessness, characterlessness, courageousness, statuesqueness, preciousness –

you get the idea. You might as well pour ball bearings into your readers’ mouths.

(Not even Victor Standish would do that!)

Not all “ness” words are bad – goodness, no – (couldn't resist; LOL) but they are all suspect.

The “ize” words are no better – finalize, conceptualize, fantasize, categorize. The “ize” hooks itself onto words as a short-cut but stays there like a parasite.

Policemen now say to each other about witnesses they’ve interrogated, “Did you statementize him?” Some shortcut.

Not all “ize” words are bad, either, but they do have the ring of the vulgate to them –

“he was brutalized by his father,” “she finalized her report.” Just try to use them rarely.

Use them too often is like jabbing your reader in the eye repeatedly. Guess what that reader does with your book? Ouch.

(Many thanks to Pat Holt for the wisdom of these pointers.)

*) MORE SINS TOMORROW, ROLAND

***

5 GREAT WRITERS TALK WRITING

5 GREAT WRITERS TALK WRITING :

1.) Elmore Leonard :

A. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

B. Avoid prologues: they can be ­annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction that comes after a foreword.

C. My most important rule is one that sums up my feelings: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

2.) Neil Gamain :

A. Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

B. Put it aside. Read it pretending you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

C. Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

3.) Roddy Doyle :

A. Do not place a photograph of your ­favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

B. Regard every new page as a small triumph.

C. Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – "He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego." But then get back to work.

4.) Margaret Atwood :

A.) Hold the reader's attention.

(This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.)

But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What ­fascinates X will bore the pants off Z.

B.) There's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you're on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

C.) Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

5.) Helen Dunmore:

A. Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

B. Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.

C. Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite some more. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.
***

IN THE SAME VEIN_THE LEAGUE OF FIVE

{"There is a garden in every childhood --

an enchanted place where colors are brighter,

the air softer,

and the morning more fragrant than ever again."

- Elizabeth Lawrence.}


Some have emailed me asking about the mysterious League of Five that I mentioned in the post of a few days ago.

I forget that I have new friends, unfamiliar with my older posts.

So pull up a cyber-chair and let me introduce you to something my mother sparked into being :

You see, the origins of the League of Five stretches back to my childhood.

That league was given birth by :

Mystery and wonder.

They were the seeds from which grew the League of Five.

I've talked about Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY with its stunning illustrations by Steele Savage.

As a child I caught sight of mythic Proteus rising from the wine dark sea,

And heard shadowed Triton blow death from his wreathed horn.

Mythology and fantasy were the mid-wives of the League of Five. And my tales show it.

But I want to speak on what the League of Five taught me ... and what it might teach you :

LESSON ONE :

{Mystery is the siren call for all lovers of fiction. Better to leave out commas than mystery in your tales.}

BEAU GESTE --
Its first sentence : "The place was silent and aware."

Mystery.

A desert fortress manned by the dead.

Every French Foreign Legionnaire was standing at his post along the wall. Every man held a rife aimed out at the endless sands. Every man was dead.

Who stood the last dead man up?

That question drove me to check out a book as thick as the Bible.

I remember sitting down that April 1st with my four junior high chums in study hall. They couldn't get over the size of the book. They looked at me like I was crazy. Then, I told them the mystery.

Tommy and Gary snapped up the remaining two copies in the school library. Raymond and B.J. (we called him Beej) had to go to the two different branches of the city library for their copies.

And then, my four friends, sluggish students at best, were racing with me through the pages to discover the solution to the mystery.

But then came stolen jewels and desert danger. We were hooked.

Mid-way through the book, I discovered the classic movie marathon that Saturday was going to show BEAU GESTE, starring Gary Cooper and Ray Milland.

The five of us roughed it that night in front of the TV.

After the movie, we planned on sleeping on the floor of my front room. It would be like we were French Foreign Legionnaires on a mission.

We were enthralled. We booed the bad guys. We cheered on Gary Cooper. And we sniffed back embarassing tears when he died.

But with the mystery solved, my four friends didn't want to go on.

The solution fizzled the fun of the reading. We all moped. A throat was cleared. We turned around.

Mother sat with a leather-bound volume in her hands, and with her voice blessed with the magic of the Lakota Storyteller and the lyrical beauty of the Celtic bard, she smiled,

"Let me read you five something --

LESSON TWO :

A GREAT VILLAIN WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN.

{And he will keep your readers' interest up high -- so no lukewarm antagonists. Think epic. Think primal.}

Mother, in her rich, deep voice, read low like distant thunder :

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline,

high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan,

a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of true cat-green.

Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--

which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.

Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man."

She put down the book on her lap and intoned, "That, young men, is the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Do you want to hear more?"

Man, did we! And so the League of Five was born.

For every Saturday night for the rest of that year and all through my last year of junior high, we sat cross-legged on the front room floor and listened to all thirteen of the Fu Manchu novels ...

along with the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starting with "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." I never went to sleep after that without looking at my headboard!

LESSON THREE :
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER ... NOT THE BAD ... CERTAINLY NOT THE GOOD.

{Instill that truth into your tale, and it will intensify the fragility of the human body and the enduring courage of its spirit.

And if it teaches your readers to hold gently and gratefully the love they find, so much the better.}

Unknown to us, Mother was teaching us the value of a mind that thought beneath the surface, that grew stronger with use as with any muscle.

We made special nights of it when the classic movie marathon played any Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Fu Manchu movie. Flash Gordon with Ming the Merciless was great. It was like seeing Fu Manchu in a space opera.

But the seasons pulled us apart to different cities, to different high schools, to different destinations.

Fatal car accident. War. Disease. Mugger's bullet.

Until now, only I remain of the League of Five.

But every April 1st, in the late evening hours, I sit down and pull BEAU GESTE from the shelf. I read aloud the words, "The place was silent and aware."

And no matter the room I find myself ...

it is silent ...

and it is aware.

I see five wide-eyed boys, their eyes gleaming with wonder and awe, listening once more to my mother reading into the wee hours of the morning,

her voice a beacon in the darkness of our imaginations.

I pull down my worn copy of THE INSIDIOUS DR. FU MANCHU and turn to chapter two with Sir Denis Nayland Smith's description of his adversary.

After a few moments, the words blur. But that is all right. I know the words by heart.

What novel meant so much to you that you just had to share it with a friend or friends? Tell me. I'd like to know.

Compare it to what you are writing now. Did it have any effect on your style or genre of writing? Please write me on that, too.
***********************


***
This is a new movie that the League of Five would watch this December were it still whole, all of us nudging the other with our elbows as if children again :

WHY FRIENDSHIP?

Friendship.

Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote :

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."

It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne.

Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote : "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Friendship.

It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening. Or giving a damn. They are hunched over their blackberries, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"

Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.

Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (from the Robert Crais fascinating detective series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.

Family is a crap shoot. Love cools. But friendship endures.

Friendship is one of the cornerstones of my surreal Noir, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Two friends :

Samuel McCord, agnostic undead Texas Ranger. Renfield, haunted revenant priest.

They have known one another since Istanbul was Constantinople and honor still had meaning.

Both love mysterious, beautiful, deadly women. McCord would say all beautiful women are both mysterious and deadly. His love is Meilori, a being from another plane of existence. "Born of stardust and the sea" as she once told him.

And Father Renfield loves Sister Magda, the nun who serves with him in his church. Of course, there is a unique back story there. But I'll let Sam tell it :

{At this point in the novel, Sam is helping Renfield clean up his church after Katrina, musing on his past relations with the Vatican} :


I'd had a pretty good relationship with the last Pope. I'd fought Nazi's with him back when he was studying in that underground seminary in Poland. I smiled thinking of how he posed as a priest while only a seminarian. And how he gave false baptismal records to fleeing Jews in the underground. He called it his elective course in the humanities. I sighed as my chest grew heavy. He was gone. Another friend was gone. It seemed just when I started liking somebody, they left me.

A shout of dismay brought me out of my musings. One of the statues in the main sanctuary was toppling over. And a nun was directly underneath it. Cursing under my breath despite the surroundings, I raced as fast as my bad right knee would let me. But I made it in time. Barely.

I grunted as I caught the marble statue of Jesus struggling under the cross with a bit of a struggle myself. But I managed. Being careful not to crack it, I shoved it back into its ornate niche. Now, I was kind of unsure if he was who he said he was.

And on top of that, it was only a representation of him, mind you. Still I knew my strange luck. If I handled the statue carelessly, it would turn out he was the real deal. And I was kind of uncertain how He would feel about some of the trails I had blundered down in my life. Best to err on the side of respectful caution. I looked down at the nun.

"Magda, you've got to be more careful."

Sister Romani looked up at me with deep eyes of summer seas from out of the kind of face that had men embezzeling from orphanages and starting wars. Her thick, silky black hair cascaded through the modern habit that had been brushed back on her head by my shoving her out of harm's way. There was a single one inch wide streak of moon-silver along the right side close by her temple -- a gift of sorts from Estanatlehi, whom the ancient Greeks had named Gaia and whom I now called 'Mother.'

Magda tapped the worn leather pouch of nails hanging from her rope belt. "He would never have harm coming to me from His statue."

I arched an eyebrow. "You stole those nails from that centurion over two thousand years ago. You think He has that long a memory?"

"Of course."

"That's what I was afraid of," I muttered.

I studied her intently. She'd been there. I felt a weight ease off my chest. I could ask her.

"Magda, did you see --"

Her face grew sad. "Him emerge from the tomb? No, Samuel, I was on the run from the Romans at the time and for some time afterwards. I just take it that He truly did rise since I am still alive some two thousands years later."

I bit back the words from my tongue and kept from telling her that her still living came from Estanatlehi. In love with language as much as she was, she had been fascinated with the parables of Jesus. And she took Magda's theft kindly and had rewarded her. I sighed. Still no answers. It was getting to be a frustrating tradition with me.

"Magda!," panted Renfield as he rushed up to her, out of breath more from fear than running, especially since he didn't breathe anymore.

He took both of her hands in his. "You must be more careful."

"You men, oh, foo on the two of you," she laughed, squeezing his hands lightly and not letting go.

"'Fu' is Mandarin for 'Good Luck' you know," I smiled at the two of them.

She made a face at me. "And you with that musty Jesuit education of yours."

"Well, they weren't exactly Jesuits."

She snorted, "Nor would I guess that you were exactly the best of students either."

"Reckon you got me there."

But she wasn't looking at me anymore. She and Renfield only had eyes for one another. Their fingers were still entwined as were their hearts. Long before they had become priest and nun, they had been man and wife. Each had entered the Vatican's service in response to my worst enemy's first demand to end their son's misery and curse. His second demand was for Renfield to assume that curse -- to become the vampire he still was.

DayStar, my worst enemy, being what he was, had still found a way to take their son from them anyway. But both Magda and Renfield were as good as their word. They remained true to both of their vows that they had taken -- though it took some doing to reconcile the two into a working system. But the pair had found a way, filled with hunger and hope, mind you. But isn't that much like life for the rest of us? The street people in the church were still and silent. They knew the story. And me? I felt hot tears blur my vision. I had failed my best friend.

I should have been smarter, should have figured out some way to defeat DayStar, found some method to save my friend's son, and to end the curse which tormented him hourly. He deserved a better friend than me. And me? I didn't deserve for him to call me 'friend.' I deserved to be called the monster I was. And you know what they did to monsters.



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

I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship : "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
****************************

At the moment, I am listening to "Into the Dark" by Jesse Cook. He is a Toronto-based Nuevo Flamenco guitarist, born in Paris to Canadian parents. It spins the mind. He was raised in the region in southern France known as the Camargue, growing up with the sounds and influences of Gypsy music {probably why my cat loves his music.} Check out his site on myspace : www.myspace.com/jessecook. I especially like the second youtube video on Jesse's page. Hey, c'mon, check it out. You don't want a gypsy curse, do you?

LOVE NEVER WALKS ALONE_Friday's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE_VOICES

It is Friday once again, and with its arrival comes the Romantic Challenge of Francine and Denise_VOICES.

Blog address : http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/p/challenges.html

My 395 word entry is LOVE NEVER WALKS ALONE from my historical fantasy, ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

It is 1853 aboard the cursed transatlantic steamer, DEMETER. To save his love, Meilori, and the LAST FAE, Fallen (yes, she is in this novel as well), Samuel McCord has walked through the Door of Nasah (‘testing’ in ancient Hebrew) into utter darkness :



The light of love slipped through the black shutters of this strange realm. 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.

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.

Laughter. Cold. Brittle. Knife sharp.

DayStar.

I slowed but kept moving ahead. I shivered. Not from the cold, but from a sudden growing warmth within me.

Meilori. Her velvet words spoke inside 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 DayStar 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 innocents. You fought cruel laws, usually to no avail. You have written no symphony save that of your deeds. You have written no poems outside words of comfort to those in pain.’

This time I did feel her invisible lips on mine.

‘Yet you are greater than any general, 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 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 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.

I burned to go back to her. I knew better. With life in general, and with DayStar in particular, there was no going back. No, I had to bull this one through to the end. Through to my end if everyone’s warnings were right.

***
What I think of as the love theme for Samuel and Meilori :

***