Cynthia A. Morgan's Blog, page 122

In Perfect Time – #RomanticTuesday #NarrativePoetry

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Soft the Light Glows in Yonder Window,

Filling and Calling to the Heart in me,

Fair the Dream Abiding within,

Always Kept so far from me.

Dreams are Golden Flagrant Flowers,

Shifting in the Dappled Night,

Yet when the Waiting turns Days from Hours,

Sweetest Patience bears a stinging Bite.

Hope Springs full in Gilded Glory,

Spanning Dreams and Reality,

Speaking in Dark Shades of Stillness,

Building Bridges of Synchronicity.

Rapid Falls this Pulse, Drumming,

Pounding Through my Heart and Mind,

Like a Brazen Musician, Gently strumming,

Playing Beat and Rhythm in Perfect Time.

Standing then on nothing less,

But Strongest Passion and wretched Guile,

Come I to your Window, Breathless,

With Bated words and Jaded Smile.

Harps of Angels Sing Thee Sweetness,

Strings of Melancholic woe Caress,

All the Hours I’ve Dreamed and Waited,

Coming now to a Moment like This.

Calling to your Heart from Darkness,

Staking claim to Love Untold,

Walking Bold upon the Shackles

Of Artless Love, Before it’s cold.

One Look from Thee and all Shall Be

Sweet and Harmonious Lethargy,

To Pause one Moment in your Shade,

To Speak one Golden hour with Thee.

Yet Speaking has Fair limits, bending

Mortal Thought to mortal Pleasure,

And when those words first spoken Softly,

Sour in the length of single measure

Then Action Prompts where Heartbeats pause,

And Brazen Impatience Scales the wall,

Climbing from this pit of sorrow

To Heaven’s Gate, where Petals Fall.

Dance, then in this Sumptuous Light,

Where moonbeams Kiss and candles Glow,

Ride with me on Passions Tide,

Braving the danger in Tempestuous flow.

Yet when the Daytide chides the night,

And Brightens those far eastern hills,

Let not Thy Words be masked in sorrow,

Let not Reality dull this Thrill.

For Love is fleeting and capricious can be,

Daylight mocks what Moonbeams Sing,

Yet for this Heart, no other Delights,

For this Love, none else can Bring

The Sweetest Succor of Thy Kiss,

Or the Flagrant Flames of Quick Desire,

Though Years shall melt like Newest Snow,

Eternity Shall Ne’re dull this Fire.

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful photograph of Balcony found at :fandango.com

Beautiful Painting of Romeo and Juliet by: Frank Dicksee

Unright – #RomanticTuesday #Love #Poetry

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Breath of Morning Light

Beating Pulse

Of something

Not right

In the Subtle Shifting Hours

Blossoming like gilded flowers

Unsorted Melancholy

Uncensored Blaze

Passion Invoking

A Breath of Change

Breathing in the Deep Morning Light

Shifting

Lifting

From what was Unright

Marked transition from

darkness to light,

as these emotions tumble,

As we stumble,

in the shadows

of Diminishing sight

Into the Embrace of

what is

unright

While all within Delights

How Right is

this Unright!

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful Photograph found on Flickr via Pilottage.  Credit Gratefully Acknowledged to the Original Photographer.  Thank You!

Slowly – #RomanticTuesday #Love #Poetry

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Slowly

Steadily

As the Candles Light Shifts and Turns

Soothing

Surrounding

With Sensuality that ever Burns

Softly

Gently

As the Night Glitteringly Beguiles

Intractable

Inescapable

Like the Captivating Smile

Slowly

Inescapably

Beckoning me

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful Photograph found on Pinterest.  Credit Gratefully Acknowledged to the Original Photographer.

Breath of Serendipity – #Inspirational #Poetry

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Breath of Serendipity

Sing

Wing your Splendour as your

Bring

A Wealth of Treasure, Endless,

Pure

Reminding Memory to Recall

Evermore

The Sweet Serendipity of

Singing Breath

Splendour Winging

As Memory

Rests

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful original Artwork by Shirley Sirois

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Shards of Light – #Inspirational #Poetry

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Shards of Light,

Like Fragments of Hope,

Of Truth,

Reach across the distances between us,

Stretching to Touch each Heart,

Spreading their Unifying Grasp

Into the pallor of this bleak world,

Ever Offering

Far More than we Shall Ever Grasp.

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful Original Photograph by Dusty Demerson

#FridayFantasy – The Protagonist Speaks – #Epic #YA #CharacterSpotlight

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Fellow Fantasy author and blogger  Assaph Mehr has a website solely dedicated to character interviews!  Very Cool, right?!  The Protagonist Speaks  is dedicated to the characters living inside the books we love. Each week they aim to publish an interview with a protagonist from a novel they believe in.  Yep, you read that right. The protagonist – or antagonist! – from the book. Not the author. Not the reviewer. The character. They aim to put the characters in the limelight – to be heard, to be felt. …Which is a notion I believe in as well, since I also do Character Spotlights.

So when Assaph said he’d enjoy talking with Gairynzvl, the lead of my Epic YA Fantasy Dark Fey Trilogy, I couldn’t refuse.   Gairynzvl could, of course.  One never knows when it comes to unpredictable malefey, but fortunately he was in a talkative mood.  Below you will find the conversation, and the link to the full interview on Assaph’s site.

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Tell us a little about where you grew up. What was it like there?

My life has been dichotic.  I spent my first seven years in the village Hwyndarin with my family and the Fey of the Light. It is a place of simple beauty and communal living, where each villager shares life’s responsibilities and burdens.  I was very young, but remember playing with friends and learning to fly amid the forests, streams and meadows bathed in sunlight.

When I reached 7 ½, I was abducted by the Reviled Fey and spent the next 15 years of my life trying to survive the gloom and shadows of their dark realm, the Uunglarda.  No sunlight warms their barren dominion and the skies are choked with soot and poisonous fumes.  I suffered the Integration; five years of neglect designed to turn childfey into monsters and each day was a torment of hunger, thirst, cold, and abuse.

Gosh, that sounds horrible.  How did you manage to hold onto hope?  Was is a cherished memory, a favourite toy you clung to, a friend?

We had no toys in the Uunglarda, and very few friends, but I was determined not to forget the ones I had and to see them again.  I kept the Light alive any way I could, mostly by repeated prophecies I had already learned and secretly studying others.  Although I had to keep it completely hidden, which was not easy in a place where you are forced to do horrible things every day, as time went on, I formed a few secret alliances with Dark Ones who wanted to escape as much as I did and our mutual dream of freedom kept hope alive.

What do you do now?

Even though I have returned to the Light and live in Hwyndarin once again, I spend much of my time training with an exclusive unit of Fey Guards dedicated to the covert operation of returning into the Uunglarda at undisclosed times to rescue younglings and those Dark Fey who wish to escape. 

That’s very heroic, but also dangerous, isn’t it?  Have you always been driven to risk so much for others?

It is unquestionably dangerous, but also a self-rewarding sacrifice and one I am very willing to make, especially when I can see childfey restored to their families or those who will love and care for them.  I would never call myself heroic, though I might agree with driven.  Some of my friends describe me as tenacious and the Reviled thought me infuriatingly stubborn, (well, some of my friends say that too!)  I simply choose to believe that positive action creates positive results and this conviction has proven true.  Consequently, I am motivated to do more because it is so satisfying.

When you first decided to take such risks to help yourself and others, did you think you would succeed?

Honestly, no, but it was all I had; it was the only thing that kept me from being consumed by darkness.  When I doubted, I forced myself to read and re-read the ancient texts, searching for anything that might help.  When I met others who were doing what I was, it became easier to believe we would achieve our goal, but it was only when I first saw Ayla, the Fey of the Light Child Guardian who helped me when no one else would, that I knew with certainty I would stand in the Light once more.

Reaching out to her was extremely risky, wasn’t it?  What was the most frightening thing about risking so much?

I risked everything and, believe me, it was terrifying. I lived in fear for months.  If the Reviled had found out or caught me, I would have faced unbearable torture as a traitor.  If Ayla had chosen not to listen to me and help, my only chance of escape would have failed, and if she had told others about the dark one who was following her for months trying to communicate with her from the shadows, I could have been captured and thrown into the Prison of Daylight; executed by the same Light I sought to return to. 

Fey of the Light are taught from a very young age to fear the Reviled.  As one of them, what was the hardest thing you had to do to convince her she could trust you?

The night I chose to confront her was stormy and the darkness aided my crossing, but I knew coming face to face with a Dark Fey, alone, would frighten her immeasurably.  So, I had taught myself a spell that would protect her from the Legion I was forced to traveled with by casting a brilliant light, which would block them from crossing over to harm her and give me time to convince her I was no threat.  It was difficult not only because I had no desire to scare her, but the light I used to protect her, at the time, was lethal to me.  If she had not chosen to act and help me, it would have killed me.    

Risking so much was certainly difficult; so, what was the best part of that night?

Ayla used her very special gifts to help me escape the torrent of light I had created.  She covered me with her body; extended her strength to bolster my own and physically dragged me into the darkness of the parlor before it was too late.  I remember standing there in the shadows trying to catch my breath as the sensation of burning I had been suffering subsided.  She lay on the floor at my feet, utterly exhausted and overwhelmed; yet she did not try to run from me.  In fact, she reached up to touch my hand, as if making sure I was all right.  It was an extremely intense moment. For 15 years, no one had done anything for me; yet, although she was frightened, overcome, and wracked by physical and emotional pain that was not her own (because she had connected with mine), she did not retreat from me, but chose to draw closer. 

That was and still is the most indescribable feeling I have ever experienced.   

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Are you still close to Ayla?

Yes, I am.

What does the future hold for the two of you?

She is my Beloved One, but this is all I will say.

Some things are too personal to talk about?

Something like that.

(smiling) I understand, but before we end our conversation, can you share a secret with us, which you’ve never told anyone else?

Hmmm?  Sure, I know something, a very old prophecy, that can change the world for all Fey…… 

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I would like to thank Assaph for this marvelous opportunity. It was a pleasure learning more about Gairynzvl, even for me, who wrote him.   Please be sure to visit The Protagonist Speaks to read more fantastic character interviews (or to set one up for your own character!)

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[image error] Discover more about the Dark Fey Trilogy

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful Original Artwork by HJGArt and  Negshin at Deviantart.com

#FridayFantasy – Shifting

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Perceptions shift in the rustling Indigo,

Uncertainty Spinning with the Forgotten Long Ago,

Whispers of what was once mere Rhyme,

Now congeal and collide in the Arc of Time,

To Underscore and Intersperse with Ebon Colours Lifting,

Like Perception in the Rustling Indigo, Ethereally Shifting.

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful Original Artwork by: Katarina-Sokolova

Friday Fantasy #Character Spotlight: Jean – the Last Eternal Lord

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This is a repost of the Character Spotlight Author Roari Benjamin did for Richard Ankers on his marvelous character JEAN in his Vampire/Dystopian Trilogy – The Eternals.  Posted here in its entirety for your reading pleasure.

In this Character Spotlight, I’m excited to introduce you to another wonderful, fellow author, Richard M. Ankers, and his new series,  The Eternals . He’s taking over the stage to shine the Spotlight on Jean – the last Eternal Lord – and to give us a glimpse of a future where vampires have evolved, and outlasted humankind. However, they are bound to a dying world, so, it seems even eternity has an end. Unless someone does something. Soon. But, who among these Eternals, waltzing their way into oblivion, might take action?

Let me just put on a little Strauss to set the mood…. There, that’s better. Now, without futher ado, Richard, the spotlight is yours!

*****

An Introduction to Jean – the last Eternal Lord – from Author Richard M. Ankers

Jean is the lead character and main protagonist in the first book of The Eternals trilogy. The Eternals are an ancient race evolved, at least in their opinion, from the vampires of old. They live at the end of time where humanity are extinct, their sun is soon to die, and them along with it. Most dispute or ignore this salient detail. They would waltz into a decadent death instead of fighting to prevent it.

Jean is an orphan and the last born Eternal. Since the suicides of his parents and their ridiculing by The Hierarchy, the planet’s elite, he has grown increasingly melancholy. Jean hates everything and everyone except for the new love of his life, Princess Linka. If only he’d not gone and killed her sister! Aided and abetted by his incompetent friend-cum-nemesis, Sir Walter Merryweather of Britannia, he deems it is time to do what nobody else will: something.

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A Taster (From Chapter One of The Eternals)

Chantelle’s cold, dead hand slipped into my own like velvet ice.
“The balcony, Monsieur?”

“Please, Jean. You know formality makes me feel old, Princess.”

“Are you not?” she giggled.

I gave her a narrow-eyed glare.

In sashaying majesty, she led me out onto the moonlit balcony, a slight breeze stirring the purple silks of her gowns and tousling those flowing, raven locks. Neither the orchestra, nor revellers, noticed our absence, all far too absorbed with their petty pleasures.

Scattered geranium bushes emitted a faint pomade into the night in wafts of delicious perfume. The fragrance circulated in the evening’s air currents mixing with Chantelle’s own exquisite scents. She was everything a man could have desired, perfection personified.

“Come here.” I pulled her close, uncaring of prying eyes. I cared for nothing else, so why should that have mattered.

“Come here Princess,” she corrected, pressing hidden curves against my body.

If I could have remembered what happiness felt like, then that moment would have come close, her demure eyelash batting only adding to the allure.

“Beautiful, is it not, Jean?”

“Not as beautiful as you,” I said and leaned out over the balustrade. The red waters of the Danube looped their turgid way around the palace perimeter forming a natural barrier to uninvited guests. That was the exact purpose of their design. Nature had never had a say in it.

“Shall we?” Chantelle purred, as the reinvigorated orchestra drew my attention back from the river. There was only one kind of music for such occasions: Strauss.

We waltzed in slow circles to the ironic notes of the Blue Danube. I doubted the composer would have generated the same response to his masterpiece if titled red. A searchlight moon shone down from amongst a twinkling eternity, as we twirled across the polished, ebony floor. Could there have been anything better? I very much doubted it. Just because one was dead did not preclude them from appreciating the finer things in life.

I’d been experiencing the best of life for the last five hundred or so years and unlike some, I’d enjoyed every second. What was there not to have liked? To have wined and dined with those of undeniable breeding, shared tailors with kings and queens, walked along gothic promenades without fear, that was the life, or death, I’d dreamed of. I’d never missed the sunlight and felt it terribly overrated. The sun had given such a false sense of wellbeing to the living. Only in the crystal clarity of a sparkling moon did the true reality of an object shine. The snake was not a slithering, ugly beast, but a sensual, seductive coil of a creature. The bat far outshone the bird for it required none of the adulation that the avian so craved. And the wolf, ah, the wolf, what could one say? To see the grey wolves of old backlit by a hunter’s moon was a thing of surreal majesty. In a world of sculpted pleasures; toned to compliment the night; crafted for exuberance, I had walked unhindered. Who was I trying to convince, I hated it all! How I envied the wolves their freedom the one thing I would never possess.

“Shall we remain out here under the stars, Monsieur?”

The beautiful French accent of my partner snapped me from my musings.
“Tell me, Jean, what is your wish?”

“To be with you.”

“You can be with me anytime, but in this moment only once.”

“I can close my eyes and imagine this moment anytime I require.”

“That is not the same thing and you know it,” she berated. Another batting of those dark lashes caused a brief disturbance in her sparkling, amethyst eyes.

“No, probably not, but I shall still enjoy doing so.”

She tilted her head to one side as if it helped her think. “You know, Jean,” she whispered. “With your long, dark hair and those brooding, black eyes, you really are to die for.” Chantelle flicked her hair back and grinned, her elegant, porcelain neck beckoning.

It was a momentary thing, an uncontrollable urge, as I plunged dagger fangs into flesh, and sucked, and savoured, and drank.

How long I sated, I did not know, but it was too long. By the time I’d finished, the metallic tang of her blood saturated my tongue, and she was gone. I had taken her past the point of no return where Eternal lust and immortality merged. My lapse shattered the one sacrosanct law of Eternal life, the original sin, the forbidden link to a shameful past: I’d killed Princess Chantelle of The New Europa Alliance, sole daughter of King Rudolph and for the first time in an age, panicked!

As a rule, I was quite unflappable, after all, what was there to get in a flap about when you were already dead? But killing a princess certainly qualified. So, I kept on dancing, holding Chantelle close, and edged my way past the double doors to the balcony’s edge. Twisting our conjoined forms around, I surveyed the merriment within the ballroom: revellers swayed to the orchestration ignorant of all but themselves. A smirk escaped the confines of my lips. Once sure of our privacy, I leapt the rails with my burden. It was a drop of about thirty feet, nothing to such as I, and quickly made my way to the tree-lined riverbank. Clutching Chantelle tight, as a lover might, I again made certain of our solitude. Where my Eternal eyes could not see my senses, scent and hearing, took charge. They all confirmed that there was nobody present but me and my corpse. I waited for an opportune cloud to obscure the moon and then flung her departed form far into the claret waters. Chantelle’s limp form hit the surface with an undignified plop, and then slipped away in stages, her raven hair the last to depart as kelp in a wavering sea. I’d have liked to say I was sorry to see her go, but to be honest, I was at best indifferent.

Retracing my steps to beneath the balcony, I had a sudden epiphany: I could not go back the same way. People were bound to have seen us both step onto the balcony. No, another escape route was required.

Not wishing to be found outside alone, I spotted some sturdy looking climbing ivy and, in a reversal of parasitic behaviour, scaled it to the top of the palace. I felt no lethargy as I hauled myself up and over a particularly hideous gargoyle to the palace roof, Chantelle’s blood had quite reinvigorated me.

Having always enjoyed a spectacular view, I took a moment to savour my surroundings. It was incredible! Class told, and that most opulent of pleasure domes dripped with it. Positioned with a full view of both mountains and river, the Comte de Burgundy, a clever play on colour as he was certainly of no royal heritage, could keep his vampiric eye on all and sundry. Not that there was anyone to keep an eye on anymore, but I suspected him a tad insecure and it probably aided his sleep. I envied him his home though. If he’d built it for himself, I could neither remember, nor recall witnessing, but it showed him in a finer light than he warranted. I could not stand the little runt, otherwise.

I meandered across the inclined roof looking for somewhere to gain access to the main halls, when I realised, I’d been revealed.

“Good evening, Jean,” came the whining voice of Sir Walter Merryweather.

“Good evening,” I responded with a casual air.

“Taking a stroll?”

“No, I am in fact lost. I was looking for the latrine and somehow found myself in front of the wrong kind of pot.”

“Tee-hee, yes, quite.”

“And you?”

“Boredom, as always.”

Continued in The Eternals…….

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*****

SWM: “It’s me, I’m here to interview you.”

JEAN: “Oh, God, not you, Merryweather.”

SWM: “Charming!”

JEAN: “What do you want?”

SWM: “The clue was in the opening.”

JEAN: “I don’t like talking to you at the best of times.”

SWM: “You don’t like talking to anyone. That’s why I’m the ideal host, we both want it over with.”

JEAN: “True.”

SWM: “So?”

JEAN: “So what?”

SWM: “What’s your answer?”

JEAN: “You haven’t asked me a question yet.”

SWM: “Touché. Well, I suppose we might as well get straight down to the nitty gritty. Why did you bite old Princess Charlotte?”

JEAN: “Chantelle.”

SWM: “Whichever.”

JEAN: “I couldn’t help it.”

SWM: “One cannot help stumbling, forgetting to clean one’s teeth, even to eat, but murdering a lover by draining their blood is another thing altogether.”

JEAN: “I don’t know what else to say. At that moment, it was inevitable.”

SWM: “As inevitable as ditching her in the Danube?”

JEAN: “No, that was just practical.”

SWM: “I see.”

JEAN: “Do you?”

SWM: “Not really. So what’s for Jeany-boy, the Vagabond Prince, next.”

JEAN: “Jean, if you don’t mind. And, I don’t know why people keep calling me that.”

SWM: “Ah, so young. So very young.”

JEAN: “I’ll so very young you!”

SWM: “Always resorting to violence, an outlet for the dimwitted, and you, my friend, may be many things but never that.”

JEAN: “Thanks, I think?”

SWM: “You’re welcome. So, what next? What are you going to do now everyone wants you dead?”

JEAN: “I don’t know.”

SWM: “We’re not really getting very far.”

JEAN: “Ask me something else then.”

SWM: “All right, I will. You seem to have gone through hell lately what with murderlising one princess and falling in love with her sister. It is love, isn’t it, Jean?”

JEAN: “That’s my business.”

SWM: “Not now. Anyhoo, what would you, an Eternal Lord, do to keep her now that old Crown Prince Vladivar has whisked her away to that rust bucket of a castle of his?”

JEAN: “Oh, only one thing, Walter.”

SWM: “Ooh, you called me by my first name, you must mean business.”

JEAN: “Oh, indeed.”

SWM: “So?”

JEAN: “I’m going to kill him and every other person who gets in my way.”

SWM: “I wish I hadn’t asked that now.”

JEAN: “Why?”

SWM: “Because…”

(Merryweather’s laughter fades away as he exists stage left leaving Jean as lonely and alone as he was, is, and always has been.)

*****

Now, I admit to sinking my teeth into a number of vampire novels over the years, though, none quite like this, I think. I don’t know about you, but, this “taster” leaves me thirsting for more!

To read on, get your copy of The Eternals by Richard M. Ankers at Amazon now!

Amazon US: amazon.com/Richard-M.-Ankers

Amazon UK: amazon.co.uk/-/e/B01GEM7690

For more of Richard’s writing, visit his WordPressBlog: richardankers.com.

Or, to follow him via social media:

Twitter: @Richard_Ankers

Facebook Author Page: facebook.com/richardmankers

Goodreads: goodreads.com/author/show/15271976.Richard_M_Ankers

Pinterest: Richard_Ankers

 

Interested in having YOUR character interviewed or spotlighted?  Contact Roari here:  http://roaribenjamin.blogspot.com/

 

~Morgan~

Dreams Breathe Soft – #Poetry of #Love

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Dreams Breathe Soft from

Long Far away

Away across the Tides that play

Dreaming of Whispers

Transitory and Calm

Fleeting and Shifting in the

Mercurial Balm

Dreams Breathe Soft from

Far Away Long

A Delicate, Mystical, Exotic Song

Whispering of Dreams

Tempestuous and Sweet

Secrets that Entice through

Ploys that Entreat

Dreams Breathe Soft from

Away Long gone

Waiting

Debating

Upon the Billowing Dawn

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~Morgan~

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Beautiful Photograph found on Pixabay.  Credit Gratefully Acknowledged to the original Photographer.  Thank You~

#ThankfulThursdayReblogs — John Cowgill’s Literature Site

Originally posted on forgottenmeadows: And some days… she mused with the skies, Writing poetry, in between the branches of life. ? poetry and image copyright neha 2018

via Happy World Poetry Day! — John Cowgill’s Literature Site

Yes, Im thankful for John’s unequivocal support through his reblogging blog, so I thought I’d return the favour today and reblog his reblog