In this week of being consciously thankful and grateful, this quote by Henri Frederic Amiel reminds me that my thoughts and deeds are concentric circles creating ripples in the Universe. What flows out, flows back. Let kindness inform the intention and compassion shape the action.
Happy (Early) Thanksgiving
Fantasy Author.It's Thanksgiving time in the US. We are supposed to post about the most profound and simplest statement of gratitude that we can think of.
Thank you seems to cover that pretty well. It's amazing to me how many people have trouble with those two words. They're almost as rare as I'm Sorry. But it's easy to forget, isn't it? When the world is doing its best to me you lower your head and push past the inconveniences, the fights, the squabbles, and protests? The world does that. It gets us into trouble. Politically speaking I don't have to look any further than the current president of these United States to see an example of selfishness personified. I don't care what side of the political coin is yours, it's just pathetic to see.
We have a plague wiping out hundreds of thousands of people across the globe. We have had a season of truly epic hurricanes and tropical storms. We have seen millions of acres of land burned and destroyed this year, and heatwaves that are epic continue to hit the planet. In a time when we should be seeking unity, were have a virtual army of buffoons who can't wear a mask without throwing fits about their freedoms being taken away, and we have armies if, well, gun-happy clowns, running around carrying their weapons and doing their best to look intimidating.
It's easy to see the negatives, isn't it? It always is.
And yet, there are a million reasons to say thank you. I was silent here for over a year, because I woke up one morning with a growth on the side of my neck that turned out to be cancer of the tonsil. It was fast-acting and it could easily have killed me. I had doctors taking their own sweet time in making appointments for me to see specialist after specialist, while I struggled to continue breathing, while I found out the hard way that eating is damned near impossible when you can't swallow.
But I had one young man who listened when I said I couldn't;t wait two more weeks to see the next specialist. He took the time to called around and got me an appointment at 8 am the very next day. That appointment got me in the hospital the same day, and got the machinations started to aggressively treat my cancer. I had people outside of the hospital who got me financial help in the form of a GoFundMe site. I would have never even considered that option.
I got financial help when I needed it most. I got treatment for my cancer. I got help from literally hundreds of people, many of whom I never met, who had no reason to offer me help, aside from simply being kind-hearted. They helped me, when there was nothing in it for them.
How amazing is that?
Listen, it's not perfect. My health is not what it used to be. They mean it when they say the treatment for cancer is damned near as bad as the cancer itself. It's brutal, and it's nearly crippling. My heart is not the same. My body has suffered debilitating side effects. But you know what? I'm alive and currently cancer free. I've lost 70 plus pounds, had a few teeth pulled, and I spent six months with chemo brain stopping me from writing virtually anything at all.
But I'm still here.
I have a lot to be thankful for. More than I can express.
As I said last year, I have so much to be thankful for and truly I am blessed.
And all I can say is Thank You.
I can never repay the debts, but I'm trying to pay it forward.
And I hope I never find a reason to forget to say Thank You.
I write fiction, a little of everything and a lot of horror. I've written novels, comic books, roleplaying game supplements, short stories, novellas and oodles of essays on whatever strikes my fancy. That might change depending on my mood and the publishing industry. Things are getting stranger and stranger in the wonderful world of publishing and that means I get to have fun sorting through the chaos (with all the other writer-types). I have a website. This isn't it. This is where you can likely expect me to talk about upcoming projects and occasionally expect a rant or two. Not too many rants. Those take a lot of energy. In addition to writing I work as a barista, because I still haven't decided to quit my day job. Opinions are always welcome.
Jeffe Kennedy is a multi-award-winning and best-selling author of romantic fantasy. She is the current President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and is a member of Novelists, Inc. (NINC). She is best known for her RITA® Award-winning novel, The Pages of the Mind, the recent trilogy, The Forgotten Empires, and the wildly popular, Dark Wizard. Jeffe lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is represented by Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency.
I haven’t written the
blurb for the book yet because one challenge at a time, you know? Here’s the
series blurb: Genetically engineered
soldiers of the far future, the Badari were created by alien enemies to fight
humans. But then the scientists kidnapped an entire human colony from the
Sectors to use as subjects in twisted experiments…the Badari and the humans
made common cause, rebelled and escaped the labs. Now they live side by side in
a sanctuary valley protected by a powerful Artificial Intelligence, and wage
unceasing war on the aliens. Some overarching issues do remain unresolved in
each book since this is an ongoing series but romance always wins the day in my
novels!
Jamokan is the Alpha of
one of the packs and feeling frustrated with his role in the rebellion and in
the sanctuary valley. In this unedited scene from near the beginning of the novel, he’s asking Aydarr, the ruling
Alpha for permission to take his men to the mountains for a hunt.
EXCERPT:
Two days later he sat with Aydarr in the other Alpha’s office, drinking Badari
herbal tea and discussing a training issue. It was a rare meeting with neither
Jill nor Daegan in attendance and Jamokan knew this was his opportunity to make
the proposal he’d been mulling over. “There is one more thing,” he said once
they agreed on the resolution of the training curriculum.
Eyebrows raised, Aydarr watched him. “Yes? I know
you’ve had something weighing on your mind for a while now. I know you too well
after all those years of rivalry in the lab. I used to have to watch you like
the alien cat in my DNA would stalk small winged prey. I never knew what you’d
pull next and I always had to be prepared.”
The Alpha’s tone was complimentary, admiring even
and Jamokan was mollified to some extent. Yes, before Jill came onto the scene there had
been strong competition between them and Jamokan won his share of the contests.
He stopped himself before wondering for the thousandth time what would have
happened if the Khagrish had given Jill to him instead of Aydarr. She isn’t my fated mate, which is the will
of the goddess, so we’ll never truly know. “I need to pull my pack together
and take the men out of this damn valley for a bit. The pack bond is… fraying.”
He searched for the right words. “Not to the point where it would ever break of
course.” A flare of dominance prickled through his nerve endings at the mere
idea of his pack dissolving. “I wouldn’t permit that. I can hold a pack
together. But maybe it’s our special canid mix of DNA – we need to run as a
pack. Just us. Take a breather from all this forced togetherness in the valley
and undertake a task or mission on our own.”
“I think the Khagrish unfortunately had some sense
built into their so-called science,” Aydarr said, unperturbed. “I think all
three of our packs needed that time loose in the Preserve which we were given
between experiments. To just be ourselves, as much as we could be under the
circumstances. To not interact with the other two packs for an extended period.”
Thinking back to the time in the labs, Jamokan said,
“I wonder how the Tzibir are faring these days? Collaborating with the Khagrish
even to a limited extent seems like a slippery slope to extinction.”
“You hear the same reports I do from MARL,” Aydarr
said with a shrug. “Nothing about them on any of the intercepts. As long as the
damn lizards aren’t taking the field against us, I have other worries to deal
with than a group who chose not to join us. What kind of sortie do you have in
mind for your pack? Now isn’t a bad time actually.”
Jamokan had come prepared. “I understand the kitchen
is running low on protein stocks, since we added the last group of people. I
was thinking the pack and I could go up north, to where the giant horned
faleker roam, and do a few weeks of serious hunting. Maybe bag game birds as
well. Darik said when he was on his solo mission to the north he saw flocks of
thousands of birds on the lakes near the falekers’ habitat. My enforcers and I
could design a few simulated maneuvers to run as well, sharpen everyone’s
senses. Maybe offer a prize to the winning team or soldier. I have to think
through the details, once I know for sure where we’re going.” He tilted his
head ever so slightly, knowing he needed to signal his willingness to accept
Aydarr’s decision. The other Alpha’s strength pushed against his own and of
course Aydarr would win. Jamokan always had to be mindful to steer clear of
confrontation with the man, which chafed. In the old days, in captivity, he and
Aydarr squared off fairly often. “Assuming you give permission.”
The supreme Alpha lounged in his chair, considering…
******************************************
I hope to get the book finished, edited and released
in December….till then feel free to catch up on the rest of the series, if you haven't already! At all major ebook sellers...
Best Selling Science Fiction & Paranormal Romance author and “SciFi Encounters” columnist for the USA Today Happily Ever After blog, Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything.
This book doesn't have a title yet. It'll be Enemy something or the other. I just haven't gotten to the something or other yet. The story is resisting pulling together and you know how happy that makes me. But. Like Dad has always liked to say, anything worth doing -- no. That's not the one. You know what? He doesn't have a saying for this. I do. Sometime writing is hard. It'll be worth it. Someday. Today's not that day. Tomorrow doesn't look so great, either.
We're on an alien planet. Bad things are happening. While this is for book four, it the whole 'alien planet, bad things happening, pretty much describes all the openings of the books in my SFR series. Welcome.
Perimeter guards on Anqorre had a distressing tendency to turn up dead, their body parts strewn all over the jungle. When they could be found at all. Since she hadn’t had the good grace to die in her first several firefights, putting her on sentry duty presented the brass with the next best opportunity for getting her killed without having to put a gun to her head themselves.
Though, to be fair, that was likely next.
Lightning flashed.
Ildri stopped walking. She glanced at the dark hulk of jungle. Rain swept the tops of the trees flat. The low roar did nothing to mask bone-shaking thunder. The squall had to be the outer bands of the incoming storm.
No one would sleep in the muddy, misery-plagued camp tonight. Good time to head for the supply ship.
A man’s voice pinged her auditory sensors as if carried on the last rumble of
thunder. "Godsdammit, I should have gills.”
This week on SFF Seven, we're offering snippets of whatever we're working on. And as usual, I'm working on a story, and I love it and loathe it at the same time, and I am trying to make it good, but it's not always cooperative. And I hope sort of desperately that someday someone reads it and likes it, but I have no confidence of that ever happening.
My WIP features a badass semi-retired Mary Poppins in space. It's called The Breath Between Stars, and this is the first of my favorite moments so far.
Hestia didn’t turn. Smoke burled through the recycled air. She had been scanned for weapons before boarding, of course, but she was not unarmed.
She stilled herself, hands at her sides, weighted skirts brushing the metal deck.
Closing her eyes, she amplified her aural implants, searching for breaths, fingers on weapons, boots on a floor, tumblers being set down, knives unsheathing, any sound that would tell her who among the people in this room were her enemies, and where they sat. She liked to think of it as reading a room. Much like reading a book or reading the stars, assessing the threat in a given space simply took a bit of mental flex.
Blade was still sitting at the back table where she’d left him. The chair springs creaked beneath his fussily clad ass. He was getting to his feet.
The barman clinked a glass. He said nothing, but Hestia was sure he’d ducked behind the long fake-ivory bar for protection. Or maybe to fetch a weapon? Or to send a System alert? She counted off the other pub patrons and covertly accessed the handheld control disc in one pocket of her armored, voluminous skirts, pairing the Damsel’s remote pilot with her gloves.
“All right, if you insist,” she murmured.
With a gloved thumb she drew a shape on the control disc, and three things happened.
One, her boots magnetized, securing her to the deck plates.
Two, her adorable peacock-feather fascinator elongated, forming a pressurized, oxygen-filled helm about her coiffed head.
And three, the station stopped spinning.
Which meant gravity stopped.
Which meant drinks, snacks, expletives, and other far less savory items were flung into the piped-in and pressurized air, messing the cramped space and colliding with all those self-important mercenaries. One of their bitty guns went off, with predictable results. In null gravity, the bullet and the shooter spurted in opposite directions and both with some force, though not enough to injure the shooter. Shouted accusations of clumsiness won out over the mad search for any pricks in the space station’s skin. It was all glorious chaos, if you liked that sort of thing.
As Hestia so did.
“As you can see, Mr. Bly,” she said calmly amid the panic, “my starship has overridden the gravity controls. You may indeed own this module, but you currently have no control over the station core. I do. Open the blast door, or I shall demonstrate the reasons why one should never underestimate a lady with pockets.”
Dropping in late January, the sixth book in my Immortal Spy series leads Bix and the Berserkers on a scavenger hunt for the pieces of a potent containment device that will remove a millennia-old cosmic moat from outer space, and allow them to finally deploy the new and improved defense system. But, there are things living in the moat that will not go quietly, things that will force Bix to confront the greatest tragedy she's ever suffered and turn her into the Worlds' biggest threat.
 |
| Cover by Gene Mollica Studios |
From the Book:
Tobek closed the fingers of his prosthesis around the piece of the containment device still held by Bix. His high-tech amalgam of plastic, rubber, and machinery crumbled into dust. He changed hands, cautiously gripping the triangle. The ink of his heavily tattooed arm and torso illuminated through his T-shirt. The green of his pupils lit, and the vibrant blue of his irises followed.
Fantasy Author.As Jeffe pointed out, this week we're supposed to tease a forthcoming project. Well, I've got several of those going and I like to tease, s here's the first part of THE HOURISTS GUIDE TO HAUNTED WELLMAN.
For the many who do not know, Wellman is a fictitious town in Georgia, created by Charles R. Rutledge and yours truly.
This book is a blend of ghost guide and ghost stories. Here's a bit of both. IN thepry this book will be out in time for Halloween of 2021.
The Tourists Guide to Haunted Wellman
Introduction
Brennert County, Georgia is a beautiful place. Nestled in the north Georgia mountains, and only a little over an hour and a half away from Atlanta (depending on traffic, of course) the buildings in the area are a collection of traditional southern homes and a few surprises. The area has been lived in for years, and the history is rich with tales of heroism and villainy alike. During the Civil War there were plenty of those tales to be told, and exactly who the bad guys were was often a matter of perspective.
Looking at the homes, at the landmarks, and at the lush green hills, you’d think that Brennert County, and towns like Wellman, were just about postcard perfect. But as is often the case in the south, there are things not mentioned, places not spoken of in polite society, that hold dark and sometimes even dangerous secrets.
Wellman, Georgia and the surrounding areas are steeped in a history of violence, madness, and murder. There are tragedies aplenty to go with the local legends of goblins, like the Moon-Eyes, and the tales of witches buried in the Hollow, or living in the places where the sun almost never shows itself. There are rumors of runaway slaves who got themselves lost in the mountains and had to deal with demons in order to survive. Wellman is a place where families have kept themselves for close to two hundred years, never leaving once they found the places that felt like home to them. What could be better? What could possibly go wrong?
Read carefully and you’ll learn of love lost, of murder most foul, of people hanged for crimes they did not commit and young lovers who died trying to save each other. Take the time to study this book and you’ll discover where a man buried his own family in the walls, along with their fortune, to keep them all “safe” from invading forces, and you’ll hear the truth about some of the Native American Mounds that even the Etowah are scared to go near. You’ll hear tales of heroism and stories of dark deeds that were never punished. You’ll learn where statues cry bloody tears and find out about the judge that took the law into his own hands and made sure the guilty were punished for crimes they thought they got away with.
You’ll discover the road where a little girl wanders when the sun sets, looking for her family dog, and some say running from the man who murdered her and her family alike. You’ll find out why the ghost of Ethan Crane still haunts one of the local churches and if the stories are true, still seeks the man who cut his eyes and heart from his body.
There are tales of Confederate Soldiers who wander along a dark road with plans to kill the Yankee conspirators who betrayed them, and legends of a battle that replays every hundred days, revealing the locations of where each person died and maybe even showing where treasure is buried if you pay attention to the clues.
All this and more await you in The Tourists Guide to Haunted Wellman, a book of stories meticulously studied and verified by the Brennert County Paranormal Society. We know what haunts you.
***
“Are we really doing this?” Emily Strand looked at the rest of the society members and spoke softly, her voice barely carrying far enough for anyone to hear.
Travis Dunlap heard her, of course. Travis would have heard Emily from twice as far away and if she were whispering as softly as she could because every word she said was very nearly holy in his mind. She owned his heart and he would marry her someday if he ever got up the nerve to actually speak to her.
Don Washington was the one who answered her question, of course. Don, who was twenty-six and knew more about the supernatural than most of them, was the Vice President of the Brennert County Paranormal Society, and he was the driving force behind the book they’d been writing and the plans they had to make sure that the ghosts were really there.
Well, none of them were really writing the book, they had a ghostwriter. Travis snorted when he thought about that. A ghostwriter for a book of ghost stories. Of course, Don didn't think that was funny at all. Don took everything as seriously as a heart attack.
“Yes, for the tenth time, we’re doing it, Emily. We have to make sure we’re onto something. The book says we can prove the existence of ghosts just by reciting the right words, at the right time, and in the right place.”
Don huffed and puffed and sighed. He was not in great shape, really. Okay, he was obese, as in carrying an extra person around his guts and butt. They’d been walking for close to a quarter-mile and most everyone was just fine, but Don was wheezing and red-faced. Okay, the clove cigarettes probably didn’t help very much.
“I thought Charon said it was a bad idea.” Emily really did whisper that time. Don rolled his eyes and shook his jowly face. “Charon doesn’t know everything. She’s got a bookstore that sells occult crap and Tarot cards. Everything there is over-priced and a rip-off. Have you seen the stupid books on local ghosts she has? Not even half as much stuff as we’re including in our book.” He hauled his pants back up to his waist as if that were a definitive statement about how foolish Charon was.
Travis grimaced. No one but Don thought poorly of Charon, and he only thought that way because she’d told him off about all the crazy experiments he wanted to do, like the one tonight. Charon's bookshop, Baba Yaga’s, was over in Gatesville and was probably the best-stocked occult bookstore north of Atlanta. It was the primary reason she didn't have much time to spend with the group anymore.
Don had the wild idea of “enhancing” the ghostly experience by making the restless dead more restless. He said it was like agitating fireflies: harmless, but effective. To that end he’d used Ouija boards, a dozen different “rituals” he’d found online, and had even hunted down a few books that he said were supposed to “thin the barrier between the living and the land of the dead.”
So far the only thing that had happened was they got to hang out together and wait, while nothing at all took place. Travis would have minded a lot more, but every time they got together for one of Don’s experiments, he managed to sit as close as he could to Emily.
Emily, who was just about as perfect as any girl had ever been. He could count the freckles on her face a million times (there were exactly thirty-seven of them) and never get tired of it. Emily, who was so quiet and shy, even though she had the greatest eyes ever behind her glasses. Emily, who probably didn’t even know his name, even though they went to school together and were in the society together. Emily, who thought Mark Irvin was about the cutest guy on the planet if you judged the way she always looked at him.
He'd have hated Mark if the guy wasn't so damned nice.
“So that’s a yes.” Emily sighed and wrapped herself in her own arms to ward away the chill.
It was cold. Autumn was in the air, the sky was half-buried in clouds, and the wind that blew through the area came from the north and west. There was frost on some of the trees and the grass under their feet crunched in a way it never did during the summer.
The First United Methodist Church on Maynard Avenue stood like a shadowed guardian over the area as they moved into the cemetery. The side of the building held hundreds of pumpkins set up for sale, even though the pastor there was not overly fond of Halloween. As they moved past the gate into the graveyard the bell at the church rang out eleven times, the sound so much louder in the night than it seemed when Travis was at home.
They passed the subject of one of the entries in the book, a life-size marble statue of a woman in a flowing robe. Travis didn’t know if it was supposed to be the Virgin Mary or what, but local legend said that on full moons people had seen tears of blood in the statue’s eyes, and heard the sounds of a woman weeping. They wound their way through the tombstones, many of those the unmarked graves of fallen Civil War soldiers, until they found the spot they were looking for.
Don let out another epic sigh and grunted as he lowered himself to the grass near the headstone of William Avery Harrington. The stone was rather unremarkable, but the dates showed that the old man had died at exactly one hundred years of age, down to the day. For the next fifteen minutes, all of them sat around while Don looked over the things he’d brought with him and then he directed each of them to a different position as he started carefully making marks on the lawn with a bright white powder and then other marks in charcoal black.
It was ten minutes to midnight before he said he was ready. By then Travis had sidled closer to Emily and then slipped back when she moved over to talk to Mark, damn his eyes.
The mood was solemn and despite his appearance—unkempt on the best of days—Don lowered his voice and spoke clearly as he said the words written out on an old piece of parchment.
He finished at exactly midnight, as the bells of the church rang through the night air. The bells sounded wrong to Travis’s ears.
They sounded angry.
I write fiction, a little of everything and a lot of horror. I've written novels, comic books, roleplaying game supplements, short stories, novellas and oodles of essays on whatever strikes my fancy. That might change depending on my mood and the publishing industry. Things are getting stranger and stranger in the wonderful world of publishing and that means I get to have fun sorting through the chaos (with all the other writer-types). I have a website. This isn't it. This is where you can likely expect me to talk about upcoming projects and occasionally expect a rant or two. Not too many rants. Those take a lot of energy. In addition to writing I work as a barista, because I still haven't decided to quit my day job. Opinions are always welcome.