Leonard D. Hilley II's Blog, page 17

The Chronicles of Aetheaon [Boxed Set: Books 1 & 2]

Read for #FREE on #KindleUnlimited or purchase at a reduced set price. Both are also available on Audio (separately), too.

Two Epic Fantasy Novels in Box Set:

Shawndirea [Book One]

Often the smallest unexpected surprises garner the most demanding dilemmas, which proves to be the ordeal that entomologist Ben Whytten faces. While netting butterflies to add to his vast collection, he mistakenly sweeps what he thinks is the most spectacular butterfly he has ever seen into his net. Upon examining his catch, Ben is horrified to discover he has captured a faery and shredded her delicate wings into useless ribbons.

Devastated, Ben vows to take Shawndirea back to her realm, Aetheaon; but he discovers that doing so places their lives into immediate danger. To get to Aetheaon, they must pass through a portal rift deep inside the haunted cavern, Devils Den.

Once they cross the rift, Ben enters a world where mysteries, magic, betrayal, and power struggles await. He must adapt quickly or die because Aetheaon is filled with enchanted creatures and numerous races where chaos often dominates order. And since Shawndirea’s destined for the throne of Elvendale, opposing dark forces plot to prevent her from ever reaching her kingdom again. The faery’s magic isn’t enough to fully protect them, so he must trust other adventurers to aid them during their journey.

Lady Squire: Dawn’s Ascension [Book Two]:

To what end would an exiled princess go to regain her rightful throne?

 

Lady Dawn, Hoffnung’s princess, brutally learns what it’s like to have everything unexpectedly stripped from her after Lord Waxxon’s coup kills her half-elf mother, Queen Taube, and he assumes the throne. Before Dawn’s plight, her mother’s bloodcurdling screams are etched into Dawn’s memory, giving her the resolve to somehow build an army, kill Lord Waxxon, and reclaim the throne. However, the odds of such an undertaking are far greater than a princess can overcome alone.

 

Unable to find Lady Dawn after scouring the castle and the kingdom, Lord Waxxon places a bounty on her, sending his ruthless henchmen across Aetheaon to locate and kill her. But Lady Dawn has disguised herself as a lowly squire, chosen by one of her late father’s Dragon Skull Knights, who doesn’t know her true identity. Alongside her knight, they seek other Dragon Skull Knights to gather forces to bring Waxxon’s reign to a quick end. Yet, her identity must remain secret, even to the knight she serves, until they have accumulated the necessary masses to storm Hoffnung.

Chronicles of Aetheaon Boxed Set

 

Football or “The Lost Dream”

Looking at me today, one could never picture me as a frail, skinny pimpled-face kid in sixth grade. But I was just that.

In the fall at the beginning of my sixth grade year, handouts were given to those who wanted to play football. I watched football every Sunday with my father, and I always wanted to play. Like other boys my age, I fantasized about it. We played football with paper cups on the playground, but that simply wasn’t the same thing. I wanted to be a part of the team.

I took the handout home and asked my parents to sign it, but my father didn’t want me to play. He never came out and said it directly, but his actions indicated such.

“If you can do 25 pushups, I’ll let you try out for football,” he said.

Now he said that because he knew I couldn’t do that many. Just a few weeks before, he asked how many pushups I could do. Then he told me to show him. I couldn’t do one! Like I mentioned, I was a scrawny little kid. Twig arms and legs. He knew I couldn’t do one pushup, and he was asking me to do 25. The goal simply was unattainable in my mind. I had less than two weeks to turn in the permission slip, and sure enough, by the time it was due, I was unable to do more than three pushups. I had given it my all, but I needed to build strength.

“There’s always next year,” he said with amusement.

I knew if I wasn’t able to do that many by spring, I didn’t have a shot at playing then, either. So I started practicing. Of course, my father enjoyed my agony, so he wanted to watch my progression and had me do pushups every night. It took a few weeks, but I finally was able to do ten in a row. My strength began to build, and soon I was doing thirteen in a row regularly.

Spring was arriving and I had managed to hit twenty in a row several times. I was getting so close. The odd thing about my posture for doing pushups was that I was actually using my left arm to balance and doing the pushups with only my right arm. He mentioned that, but didn’t insist I use both arms. But he never praised me for my progress, either, and he acted quite nervous because of how close I was getting. If I were a betting man, I’d say he truly hoped I never hit the goal.

One Saturday I reached twenty-four reps. I strained hard for the twenty-fifth rep. I was halfway up. While pushing with everything I had left, I got tickled by the comedy album he was playing. I lost my composure and dropped to the floor. Sooo close!

Then for the next few days, I was only getting 21-22 reps each evening. I thought I’d never hit 25. About a week later, I hit 25 and his jaw dropped. I expected him to make some other excuse to keep me from playing, but he didn’t. When the spring permission slips were handed out, my mother signed it. Excited, I turned in the paper to my homeroom teacher. Other students who had already played football for the team noticed and one-by-one, each told me that whatever position you try out for, I’m going to beat you out of it.

And they tried. But I ended up as the offensive first-string left tackle. No one took that position from me. I earned it.

I ran into only one real problem. None of the helmets fit me. Although I was excessively skinny, I was the tallest student in our grade and my head was too big for the helmets. We had to go to Rainsville Sporting Goods to buy a helmet.

Since this was the spring, we only had one game before school let out. It was at night. We played Valley Head, and the best play I had was when I recovered a fumble. But my father missed the play because he was off somewhere talking. My mother saw it though.

When fall tryouts came, I made the team. I wanted to play defense instead of offense. To me that seemed to hold more excitement because as a lineman you could block passes or sack the quarterback. There was an assistant coach who worked with us. He was one of Plainview’s former athletes and had a cocky attitude. During our scrimmages, he placed me on the defensively line, and he was the quarterback as he called the plays. I wanted to play so badly, and I thought I needed to impress him so I gave it my everything.

The problem came that since I was taller than he was, and I was playing defensive tackle, I kept blocking his passes and intercepting them. If he handed off the ball, I tackled the running back before he crossed the line. I kept my eye on that ball and fought hard to try to take it. It never crossed my mind until today that by doing so, I must have been pissing him off. Here was this former ‘star’ player unable to get a play past a seventh grader. All I was trying to do was impress him, but I had no idea I was doing quite the opposite.

After a few weeks of practicing, we were scheduled to hold a scrimmage game on a Saturday. My father actually came to the game, along with my mother and sister. I was proud at how hard I had worked during practices and had made first string, despite my father’s obstacle. I couldn’t wait to get onto the field and try to impress my father.

The first and second quarter passed, and the coach never put me into the game. Not for one second. Third quarter came. I patiently waited to be put in the game without asking or saying a word, and the coach walked past me, tapped my stomach hard, and said, “Be patient. We’ll get you in.”

Four quarter came. I stood on the sideline beside the coach and with five minutes left, my father came off the bleachers and to the fence near where I stood. He called out my name and when I turned, he motioned me to him.

“Why aren’t they letting you play?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

He unstrapped my helmet. “Is the helmet yours?”

I nodded.

The assistant coach noticed what my father was doing and said, “He’s going to get to play.”

At this point, less than three minutes were left in the game. My father took off my shoulder pads and hurled them at the coach. The coach frowned and started toward the fence, but my father formed fists and stood ready to fight. Since my father was a lot bigger, the coach stopped approaching.

“He’s going to get to play,” he repeated.

My father fumed. “He’s been standing out there all game while everyone else has played!” He looked at me and said, “Come on, son.”

I had mixed feelings about the entire situation. I was proud that my father had stood up for me, but at the time, I couldn’t understand why I stood on the sideline the entire time without getting to play.

Only a few years ago did my father tell me that the head coach had called my father at work and apologized that I hadn’t gotten to play. He told my father to bring me back because I was a good player and that wouldn’t happen again. I would get to play.

I wish my father had never told me that, because it only proved to me that he never had wanted me to play in the first place. I had proven myself by achieving the pushup goal, but by not getting to prove myself on the field because a coach wouldn’t play me, my father had found his out. He pulled me from the team, using the situation to his advantage, and a few weeks later, he and my mother separated.

I’ve never tried to step in the way of my children’s dreams. I’ve never insisted either of them pursue a career or an interest that wasn’t their own. I’ve encouraged them to work hard for their dreams, and that’s why I don’t think I’ll ever understand my father’s actions while he was in my life and even after he and my mother divorced. All I know is that he had a narcissistic personality where he needed to be the one in the spotlight. Even after my books got published, he tried to crash two of my book signing appointments, and had even emailed me through my former publisher as ‘The Boss.’

‘Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want,’ is a quote that comes to mind. Regardless of whether a dream in my life is fulfilled or has been dashed, I learn from it. I’ve probably had far more bad things happen over the years than good, and a lot of those end up in my writing. Nothing’s wasted that way.

Cheers!

Nocturnal Trinity Series

Nocturnal Trinity is the exclusive nightclub everyone in Seattle raves about, where the crème de la crème of the city mingles and parties. Access and membership are by rare invitation only. Those hopeful to become members are desperately willing to do almost anything to be chosen. They sacrifice hours of their time waiting in line, give blood offerings, pledge their very souls, and even kill, if doing so grants them a better chance for entry into the nightclub.

To the unknowing eye, the nightclub’s symbol above the door is merely occultic art, but to the ones able to translate its obvious message, the symbol screams a blatant declaration of the union of vampires, witches, and demons that preside over the club.

“Welcome to Nocturnal Trinity!” sounds like a cordial invitation for any new member fortunate enough to be chosen to partake in the Seattle Underground, but not so for Kailey Yates. She discovers something far more sinister resides inside the nightclub and their combined powers spellbind and blindly draw the lust of the city’s elite, mesmerizing them into doing whatever the nightclub’s Circle of Unity commands.

Kailey believed these creatures only existed in fantasy novels and movies, but now that she knows they are real, she must fight for her life because some of them want her dead. And one of those is the demon that murdered her brother.

***Read for FREE in Kindle Unlimited at Amazon.com or buy for $7.99. Two complete novels in one boxed set.

Nocturnal Trinity Series

The Darkest July

July is often a month for celebration in the United States with fireworks on the 4th. For me, July never passes quietly as my memories take me back to 1991, which holds the darkest and lowest time in my life.

On the 8th of July, 1991, after I clocked out at work and headed home, I was supposed to back up my belongings and move out. My first wife had demanded the night before that I leave. This was the third time during our short marriage that she insisted we divorce. The reason this time? I had decided to go back to college while still working full-time at the hosiery mill to earn my teaching degree. Her reasoning seems preposterous, but it is true. Many years later I learned she suffered a type of mental disorder that prevented her from keeping any type of steady relationship.

When I pulled into the driveway to start packing my stuff into my pickup truck, she came outside of the back door and told me that my eight-year-old brother had been shot and was in surgery at the hospital. I don’t remember putting the truck into gear. Everything for the next few minutes remains a blur, but when I had come out of the shock, I found myself driving down Airport Road in Fort Payne, Alabama at nearly 70 mph. This was after speeding down the hairpin turn of Sylvania Gap.

I found my mother seated in the emergency room and sat beside her. She was in shock, praying. She had cried until no more tears could come. A few minutes after I had arrived, the surgeon came out in tears. She said that they had tried everything they could, but the bullet had struck dead center of his abdominal aorta. Had the bullet gone an inch either direction, she said that he might have survived.

This happened the day after our mother’s birthday while she was working one mile away from the house. He and our twin sisters (age 9) were home alone and walked to my stepfather’s house less than a quarter mile away. No one was at home.

The day before, their father had been teaching them how to shoot a .22 rifle. Alone, they heard a sound outside and grabbed the loaded rifle from behind the pantry door. My stepfather’s philosophy was “an unloaded gun is more dangerous than a loaded gun,” which has no logic at all and no doubt haunts him to this day. So not only did he keep his guns loaded, they weren’t locked up.

They took the rifle, went outside, and fired a few rounds. Back inside, my brother argued and tried to take the gun from one of my sisters. While struggling over the gun, it fired and shot Bubba in the stomach. He bled to death within a matter of minutes. He died before my mother arrived and well before paramedics came to the scene.

 

Oddly, Bubba’s death occurred one day after my mother’s birthday and on my oldest brother’s birthday. Even though they weren’t blood related and had never met, my oldest brother came to the funeral and was one of the pallbearers with me for the burial, which touched me deeply.

After the funeral, my mother and I were at my house. I had held to the hope that perhaps my first wife and I could work things out, but at the end of the week, she insisted I move out. A week later, we signed the divorce papers. Although it had been devastating for me at the time, once the fog of my misery vanished, I was able to see her true self. I discovered that keeping my sanity was far more valuable than suffering constant verbal and mental abuse. This didn’t come quickly, but over time.

To heal also meant I had to move away from Alabama. For weeks after my brother had died, the house didn’t seem the same. We kept expecting him to come through the door, as though it had all been one bad dream. The afternoon and evening skies during those weeks were odd. The sky was an odd yellow haze, never blue, and no puffy clouds. I recall that depressive haze clearly, even now, and it clearly reflected our household in response to our mood of painful loss. Death isn’t easy, and the loss of a child makes that even more devastating. My mother never recovered from Bubba’s death. Instead, she used painkillers and other drugs to try to numb the ache inside. Eventually, after fifteen years of prescription drug addiction, she died from an accidental overdose.

If you own guns, please lock them up where children cannot get to them. Never leave a loaded gun where a child has access to them. Guns aren’t toys, and if you own them, be a responsible person. If you cannot, you don’t deserve to possess them. This isn’t a political statement. Just common sense.

Fabulous Friday Giveaway

Still 9 days left to enter for a chance to win 1 of 3 signed copies of my novel, Forrest Wollinsky Vampire Hunter. Simply go to https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh... and enter. (U.S. ONLY)

Good luck!

Throwback Thursday

So, so long ago.

My sisters and my brothers with our father. ~1973

Canasta

Congress Playing Cards, Bicentennial Edition

When I was about nine-years-old, my parents sat and played Canasta for hours on the weekends. 8-Tracks of Don Williams or Jim Croce played continually in the background and my mother and father smoked lots of cigarettes and drank coffee while they played game after game.

I sat and watched them play, often asking what the rules were and how they kept score. I asked if I could play and for months the answer was always, “No.” Disappointed, I continued to watch and studied the game.

Finally the day came when my father asked if I’d like to play canasta with them. I was excited. I knew the rules, and now was my chance to play the game.

For the first deal my luck was better than I had expected. I had good cards, several wild cards, and after several rounds of discarding, I drew two cards that I needed. I set down several small melds and one meld of seven cards for a canasta. I had only one card left and had to discard.

My mother and father stared at my cards in shock. In anger, my father threw all his cards onto the table and stormed out, saying, “That’s not the way we play it!”

I was confused. I had broken no rules, and my father was furious. He definitely was not a good sport, and for several minutes I considered leaving the table and quitting. Neither of them had placed any cards onto the table, but they both had enough cards to have melded a canasta and gotten points. Their hands were full of cards, but I had not broken any rules. However, I had set them in the hole. My mother counted off their losses and wrote down our scores. She whispered, “Your dad likes to wait until the last draw before laying down cards.”

I thought, “Why? What’s the point in that?” The game has rules but nowhere does it state one must wait until everyone else plays out their cards.

Ten minutes probably passed before he returned to the table, but his anger didn’t lessen. The funny thing is that he never held all his cards until the end of the game again.

The decks we used were like the ones in the picture. They had been released in 1976 for the Bicentennial celebration, and those have always been my favorite decks to play cards with. I have looked on eBay for years to find another set, and strangely enough, just recently, I found four sets of them. I had to buy them for the nostalgia because I really never thought I’d see another set after all these years.

Cheers!

 

Nocturnal Trinity Series [Kindle Unlimited]

The first two books in the Nocturnal Trinity Series are now in one volume: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073P9DL6B

Succubus: Shadows of the Beast



Nocturnal Trinity is the exclusive nightclub everyone in Seattle raves about, where the creme de la creme of the city mingles and parties. Access and membership are by rare invitation only. Those hopeful to become members are desperately willing to do almost anything to be chosen. They sacrifice hours waiting in line, give blood offerings, pledge their very souls, and even kill, if doing so grants them a better chance for entry into the nightclub.

To the unknowing eye, the nightclub’s symbol above the door is merely occultic art, but to the ones able to translate its obvious message, the symbol screams a blatant declaration of the union of vampires, witches, and demons that preside over the club.

“Welcome to Nocturnal Trinity!” sounds like a cordial invitation for any new member fortunate enough to be chosen to partake in the Seattle Underground, but not so for Kailey Yates. She discovers something far more sinister resides inside the nightclub and their combined powers spellbind and blindly draw the lust of the city’s elite, mesmerizing them into doing whatever the nightclub’s Circle of Unity commands.

Kailey believed these creatures only existed in fantasy novels and movies, but now that she knows they are real, she must fight for her life because some of them want her dead. And one of those is the demon that murdered her brother.

Raven [Book Two]:

The original Circle of Unity council that had presided over Nocturnal Trinity–the underground Seattle nightclub–remains in shambles after Micah and his pack of werewolves invaded to settle an old score. Thinking he can bring back balance, Micah merges a new faction into the Circle of Unity, the werewolves. However, ancient vampires never take lightly to threats, nor do they like abrupt deviations. The elder vampires and the demon council members detest the werewolves even more than before, refusing to enter the truce or even acknowledge anything less than a fractured Circle of Unity. Faced by such opposition, will Micah succeed in uniting the factions or will it cause more problems than it could solve, perhaps even his own life?

Flora, one of the elder vampires, has taken the newly turned vampire, Raven, as her proselyte to mold and nurture because her protege has something none of the other vampires have–seething rage and resentment toward the werewolves and her former best friend, Kailey Yates. Raven blames them for their betrayal, which has caused her eternal undeath, and she seeks to mentally torment and torture Kailey. With the young vampire’s burning bitterness knowing no end, she isn’t giving Kailey the chance to fully mourn the death of her brother and settle into her new life. Is Kailey strong enough to both fight for her new life and for her very life against Raven?

The Mysterious Banana Tree in Fort Payne

So many things early in my life helped shape my imagination, even practical jokes.

Our father was notorious for his practical jokes. He was a con man, and convincingly able to make others believe his otherwise unbelievable stories. Often, he pulled others into his gags to help pull off his shenanigans. This joke he schemed was partnered with my oldest brother, Chris, or my Uncle Nelson, and in the beginning, the act was quite convincing to children under the age of seven.

An old dirt road divided our backyard from Boykin Farm pastures and also cut through a pine woods as the road sloped downward. Near the top of the hill was a narrow spot where one could turn a car around without being seen from our house.

So, here’s how the practical joke was carried out. At the time there had been a small curb market in Rainsville, Alabama. Our father and his partner in deception (my brother or uncle) stopped at the curb market, bought a bunch of bananas, placed them in the woods on the way home, and then turned the car around to drive the loop to the front of our house. My sisters, my other older brother, and I were usually playing outside.

Our father walked into the backyard, looked at my oldest brother, and said, “Boy, I’d like some bananas. How about we fly down into the woods to the banana tree and pick some.”

Chris agreed.

“You kids stay in the yard,” our father said. “Only we are allowed to go.”

Then he and my brother took off, flapping their arms to the side as they headed down the dirt road. Why? I don’t know, as they never made it off the ground. A few minutes later, they’d return with a bunch of bananas. We marveled about it at the time and questioned where the tree was. “In a place you have to fly to,” our father said, as if one was magically whisked away.

Of course I didn’t like bananas. Still don’t. When I was seven years old, our father had set two 50 dollar bills on the kitchen table, telling me I could have the money if I ate one banana. I refused. As to why I cannot eat them and why the smell of a freshly peeled banana makes me nauseous, that’s a story for another day. So actually seeking out this ‘banana tree’ wasn’t on the top of my agenda to ever find. But, as I got older, I figured out the mystery.

Needless to say, fun incidents like this were important factors in shaping the imagination because one spends time wondering how the banana tree got there and why no one else had ever returned with bananas. Perhaps it is why I have pulled a few practical jokes over the years, but I’ve never flown to the fictitious banana tree, except in my memory to write this down.

Throwback Thursday: Memories of Alabama

My oldest brother, Chris, our dog Luke, and your truly.

So long ago. I was probably close to three years old here. Back in the days of Polaroid cameras. The road we lived on then was nearly barren. The small twig of a tree behind us was planted by our father. When I drove past our old homestead last year, that sycamore is massive and towers a good fifty feet or more.

Things change so much over the years. Time indeed escapes us, faster than we know. I remember when the four of us were kids and each wishing/waiting until we were eighteen years old. My mother always said that you’re wishing your life away. Now I find myself looking at the pictures of our youth and wishing that for a day we could somehow revisit what seemed like simpler times before technology mesmerized our time.

Growing up in DeKalb County during this time was a blessing. Drivers always waved at one another in passing on the road. Families had more time to gather together on Sundays. Now everything seems so rushed.