Marian Allen's Blog, page 404

Daffers In The Snow

Our daffodils are in bloom, so I picked a few and brought them in to liven the place up. Here you see them against a backdrop of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Hunters In The Snow, aka The Family Picture, so called because just about everybody in our family has a print of it.

Happy spring!

I’m posting at Fatal Foodies today about the book I’m reading, THE PERSIAN PICKLE CLUB by Sandra Dallas. Drop in and find out what a Persian pickle is!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Give your main character some flowers.

MA

Happy Birthday To Shifty Babs

I gotta question: If a writer uses a pen name, is it her pseudonym’s birthday, too?

It’s the first day of the month, so I do have a new Hot Flash, but I also have a guest writer posting here. She’s been here before, under one name or another, and she’s here today on her birthday!

Babs Mountjoy, aka Lyndi Alexander! Tell us about your new book, one of you.

Giving it up—then losing it all

Captain Temms Rogers, the main protagonist of HORIZON SHIFT, is a man who’s sacrificed a lot. A career officer in the Confederation, the sector’s ruling alliance, he’s dedicated his life to his work, leaving an ex-wife, his children and a lot of other broken promises in his wake. As a result, he’s a highly-trusted man, one who gets the opportunity to try out some new alien technology on his bridge, his lover Ramona the science officer in charge.

He’s also a very unhappy man.

The Confederation has recently changed policy from inviting worlds to join them into coercing worlds to join them. When one small planet, Persios, decides not to join, the Confederation plans an attack to “convince” them or take them over. And this, Temms just can’t live with.

He and several other fleet captains rebel against this wrong course of action and turn on their own comrades in an effort to stop the attack. They seem to have succeeded, but the battle grows fierce, and Temms is forced to take extreme measures to save his crew, not all of whom are mutineers. He orders Ramona to activate the alien tech, not sure exactly what it will do, but left without a choice.

EXCERPT:

The scope’s light reflected sickly green on Ramona’s face. The alien technology was untested, an archaeological find Rogers’ ship had been assigned to study. Ramona believed it might be a weapon. The rough translation of the relic’s hieroglyphics indicated the makers prescribed use of the device ‘when in a desperate situation.’ If there was anything more desperate, he couldn’t guess what it might have been.

Rogers prayed it was something against which the Talon and the rest of the fleet had no defense, or they were all dead.

Dark-skinned helm officer Kai Windthorp helped Ramona program the device with taut determination. The rest of the bridge crew returned to their workstations, their voices a buzz in the background, more immediately concerned with saving their lives than politics.

“We need the miracle, Rae. Make it happen!” Rogers threw himself into his chair with a grunt as he hit the hard cushion. “Everyone strap in!” From his seat, set in the middle of the back wall of the bridge, he checked each of the other stations. His officers grabbed belts and secured themselves, ready for anything.

Her eyes studied him, fear echoing in their depths. But she’d followed his orders. She trusted him. They all did. “Weapon activated, Captain, and aimed toward the fleet.”

He took a deep breath. “Now!” With a silent prayer, Rogers clenched his fist and waited to see what would happen.

To his surprise, there was no explosion. Nothing left the ship. A ray of red light seemed to flutter in black space ahead of them for a few moments, then coalesced into a cloudy opening – a wormhole.

“May the stars preserve us,” Ramona murmured.

Rogers was almost hypnotized by the sight on the screen, as they all were. The ship took a devastating hit, jolting them all back to reality. Ramona’s console exploded in a shower of sparks and she went down. Power faded, returned.

He stifled his first instinct to jump to Rae’s side. No time for the tragedy right in front of him. He’d have plenty of heartbreak on his shoulders today. Blocking the image of his fallen lover from his mind, he barked orders.

“Helm! Kai, take us in! Now!” He didn’t know where it went, but it had to be better than what they faced:  the Confederation fleet poised for a death blow.

“Aye, aye, sir!” Windthorp, face bleeding from flying debris, stumbled into his seat and hit his board. The ship flew ahead into the red-neon-toned opening as one last powerful volley from the Talon seemed to knock them forward.

Jal Burko’s enraged voice chased them over the comm system.

“Don’t think this is the last you’ll hear of this, Rogers! You’ve killed too many good men and women with this stunt. I’ll hunt you down and kill you like the traitorous Gonoran snake you are!” The cloudy violet, red and maroon interior of the wormhole pulsed on the screen for a few seconds, then everything went black.

***

When he wakes up, his ship is broken, much of his crew dead and he has one imperative: save the ones who are left and keep flying, before Burko finds him.

The clock ticking, Rogers enlists an assortment of people to help him rebuild and repair his ship, many of them misfits who deserve a second chance, each with a special talent to share: a runaway bride, a 17-year old navigation whiz sold into slavery, a cocky xenophobic engineer, a pair of genetically engineered lizard-humans. He even finds a friend aboard he never expected.

A chance meeting with an economic power called the Consortium brings Rogers powerful friends, and the key to putting the clues of this alien technology together. But the appearance of a strange autistic boy, abandoned in the Doubtful’s cargo bay, becomes the catalyst that may save the ship and its crew from Burko’s single-minded hatred when all else fails.

Find out more at: http://lyndialexander.wordpress.com/the-horizon-crossover-series/    and http://www.dragonflypubs.com/dfp/horizonshift.html

PAPERBACK LINKS:

| $14.99 Amazon.com

| Amazon.UK

| Barnes & Noble

| $14.99 Createspace   Get 15% off paperbacks at Createspace: B3PY6HNE

EPUB EBOOK LINKS:

| $5.99 Apple iTunes

| $5.99 B&N Nook

| $5.99 Smashwords

KINDLE EBOOK LINKS:

| $5.99 Amazon.com

| Amazon.UK

PDF EBOOK LINKS:

| $5.99 Lulu NEW

Thanks, gal! It’s always a pleasure to have you as a guest. As Shakespeare’s Romeo said, “A friend by any other name would be as sweet.” Or something like that.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Why do we like stories of unlikely friendships and of misfits succeeding?

MA

#SampleSunday – From “Command Performance”

Here’s a bit from “Command Performance”, a short story set in the world of the SAGE trilogy. It goes out free to people who pledged to the now-finished Kickstarter campaign, but will be put up for sale at some future date. Here’s how it opens:

Command Performance – excerpt

by Marian Allen

The Festival Players’ wagon creaked as Lumpkin pulled it up the steep hill. The huge, unlovely cart horse puffed and grunted, even though three of the troupe’s four members pushed. The muscles under the horse’s silver-mottled hide bulged and strained. Silvin, against his usual protests, held the reins and led the horse along the upward track, murmuring sullen encouragement.

“The faster you go, the sooner we’ll be at the top. The sooner we’re at the top, the sooner we can camp.”

He cursed as he stepped over a stone deeply embedded in the packed earth, right where the road narrowed to one wagon’s width. Lumpkin lifted his massive hooves over the stone, but the wagon stopped there, with Silvin’s curses echoed and amplified by the players at the rear.

The baritone bellow of Florian, the Players’ leader, shook the nearby trees: “Silvin! COME. HELP. PUSH.”

Silvin draped Lumpkin’s reins over the horse’s back and scurried to add his limited strength to the crew. The front wheel bumped over. A breath or two and another heavy shove, and the rear wheel followed.

“Up front,” Florian said.

“Why can’t Maida lead and I’ll stay back and push?”

“Why should I?” Maida demanded. “Because I’m the only female?”

Florian, one shoulder to the wagon, patted Silvin’s face with audible paks. “Maida has power, boy. Physical oomph! You have other strengths.”

Silvin returned to the front of the horse, and pushing recommenced.

“I can’t even feel put upon,” he told the dapple gray. “I don’t think that’s fair, do you?”

His years in the troupe primed him to cast himself as the hero of a grand fiction, but he knew he was neither a gallant nor an abused underling destined for surprising greatness. Good at dancing, fair at playing the lute, competent at elementary juggling, excellent mimic, quick of wit, delicately handsome, his broad shoulders disguising the weakness of his joints, he was a valuable member of the troupe. Valuable enough, at any rate.

The wagon topped the hill, and the city of Bahari rose from the plain ahead. Silvin led the horse slowly forward until the rest of the players joined them. The first order of business was to water Lumpkin and check him for signs of serious strain. Players besides these founding four had come and gone, but Lumpkin was the troupe’s fifth core member, and the one they could least afford to lose.

That done, Florian clapped and rubbed his hands together, his brilliant smile breaking through his energetic black beard. “We have time to set up and give them a matinée. Then we’ll have a bang-up supper, do a late show, and sleep at an inn tonight.”

A city supper and beds in an inn were rare treats. The laborious ascent of the hill was forgotten. Forgotten, until they found the city gates closed.

~ * ~

AN’ THEN WHAT HAPPENED?!?

That’s for me to know and for you to find out.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What’s a rare treat for your main character. OR write a character for whom a rare treat is something another character takes for granted.

MA

#Caturday – The Tail of the Clock

When I was a wee li’l MomGoth, I wanted one of these clocks SO HARD! But, alas, we were po’ and a novelty clock was an unjustifiable expense. This is not just a clock shaped like a cat, you understand. The tail is a pendulum, and the eyes go back and forth in time to the tail.

BEHOLD!!

leaves fly off of a calendar, signifying the passage of years

My mystical, exotic clock was reduced to the status of cheap plastic crap, and my mother had enough money to buy one for my #4 Daughter. Being a kind and good mother, Mom asked if it hurt my feelings for her to buy something for my daughter that she couldn’t buy for me at that age. Being also a good mother, I was, on the contrary, delighted to see my child enjoy what I had so desired.

Well, you know how life is. Yeah, you’ve probably guessed it: The clock totally creeped my daughter out. We had to take it down and hide it, and eventually discarded it. ~sigh~

Yes, I could go to Kit-Cat Clocks: The Official Kit-Cat ® Clock Website and lay down fifty smackers and have one of my own, but you know what? The ability to so easily gratify the desire has made the desire so much less compelling. Besides, I didn’t even know Kit-Cat was a cartoon character. I’m a Felix fan, myself. (Mom, don’t try to follow that link — it’ll take about a hundred years to load on dial-up.)

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Plot a story in which Person A wants something, Person B gets the thing but doesn’t value it, and . . . . Then what?

MA

Shiny Alphabetic Poetry Petals

How’s that for a grabby post title? Yes, I’ve been blog hopping, and I’ll be hopping even more in April.

First, I have to tell you about this makeup site! Yes, I know I’m all Earth Mother and practically vegetarian and all, but what’s a cochineal beetle ever done for me? I mean lately? So here are these AWESOME cosmetics with a Firefly-themed eyeshadow collection: Sweet Libertine Mineral Cosmetics. I mean, how could MomGoth resist the urge to walk around wearing Too Pretty To Die or Mutated Cow Fetus? Not to mention This Food Is Problematic. Me want!

Last year and the year before, I spent April doing the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge. That’s still going on, but it has grown and grown and grown and…. This year, darned near 1500 bloggers have signed up! In years past, I’ve found and retained friends and blogs through participating, but I felt guilty because I couldn’t begin to visit all my fellow participants. This year, I decided I’d eliminate the guilt and not sign up, but just pop onto the sign-up list or follow Twitter links to random posts. There’s still time to sign up, if you want to be part of the A-to-Z blogging madness!

This April, I’m going to be part of The 5-2: Crime Poetry Blog Tour. There’s probably still time to sign up for that, too. If you can’t or don’t want to sign up, you can always follow the tour. April is National Poetry Month, you know.

One of the people I met during a blog hop is the wonderful Sezin Koehler of Zuzu’s Petals, author of the American Monsters series. I’m one of the readers who couldn’t read her first book because I can’t stomach horror, but I’m looking forward to subsequent books, which she says are less horrific and more other stuff.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write a poem about makeup.

MA

Glass Act

Sorry for the pun. I’m not the first one who’s made it, and I won’t be the last. I’m talking today about Zimmerman Art Glass in Corydon, Indiana. Here’s their sign.It’s a family business, and always has been. I dropped by the other day, and was lucky enough to see a piece in progress.

First, the guy sprinkled out some colored glass. The main part of this piece was going to be clear, with some colorful bits in it.

Then he got the clear glass on the end of a long metal pipe. The clear glass is kept molten (melted) in a super-hot oven. The door is called the glory hole. See why?

He picked up the colorful bits with the molten glass.

When he had all the bits stuck on, he sat down and rolled the pipe back and forth across the wooden arms of the seat. That keeps the glass more-or-less symmetrical as it cools. “Cools.” After it stops glowing, it’s still too hot to touch!

This is as far as I got before I had to leave. He may have stuck it back in the glory hole to heat it up some more. He would have rolled it some more and shaped it with hand tools. He might have smoothed it or pinched it or poked holes in it and put more colorful bits in.

It might have looked like one of the pieces on this Zimmerman page on eBay. Gorgeous? You bet!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What would your main character have the Zimmermans make for him or her, if money were no object?

MA

Spaetzle Casserole WIN

Somehow, somewhere, I got hold of a box of spaetzle. Just in case you don’t know, spaetzle is — or possibly are — German dumplings. They take like 25 freakin’ minutes to cook, but they’re very hearty and yummy.

So I cooked some. In the meantime, I cooked some mixed vegetables in butter. Then I mixed the spaetzle, veg, a can of cream of mushroom soup, and some cheese, and baked it at 350 for about half an hour.

Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of it until it was half gone, but here’s what half of it looked like.

We loved it, and so did our next-door grandson.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character forgets to chronicle something he or she was expected to.

MA

Sharing the Warmth

It’s supposed to be spring up here in the Northern Hemisphere. Spring, as in “soft new grass, tender buds on trees and flowers, happy chirping birdies and all that.

It’s snowing. It’s freakin’ COLD.

So here’s something to help us all get through the nasty weather.

Just stare at that for a while and maybe it’ll help. It’s keeping ME warm.

I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies about another ladoo recipe.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: How does your main character keep warm?

MA

The World Among Us

Beth Ann Masarik is revealing the covers of her The World Among Us series! Don’t they look great?

The World Among Us is a trilogy that revolves around vampires, Greek Gods & mythology, as well as forbidden love.

Beth Ann Masarik, was born on February 6, 1984 with an over active imagination.  Born an only child, she often relied on her imaginary friends for entertainment when she was little.  It was her over active imagination and thirst for knowledge, that gave her the drive and passion to become the writer she is today.

Murderous Regrets

Leon Greene is accused of murdering his best friend, Jason Aysel, and the world wants to know if he really did it. Cue Elise Stevenson, the top news reporter for the Daily Gazette who gets the scoop. Will Leon tell her the truth and his motives behind the murder?

*this is a short story based off the soon to be released novel, The World Among Us: Prince of Darkness.

Moon Spirit

Raul Blackoak’s world is tossed upside down one evening when he stumbles upon a damsel in distress. What he wasn’t expecting was that his life would be changed forever by her. Because he risks his own life to save her, he is caught between two worlds; the world to which he belongs, and the human world. Will he be able to balance being in both worlds? Or will he have to give up one to be happily ever after in the other?

*this is a short story based off the soon to be released novel, The World Among Us: Prince of Darkness.

Hell Bound

After impressing her boss with her interview with werewolf, Leon Greene, Elise is Hell Bound to an interview with the Lord of the Underworld himself. Mr. Murphy wants her to find the dirty scoop on Hades himself, and foil his plot to take over the world. Will she survive the clutches of Hell?

*this is a short story based off the soon to be released novel, The World Among Us: Prince of Darkness.

Hell’s Captive

As if interviewing Hades himself wasn’t enough, Elise gets sucked into doing an interview with his son, Prince Damien. It turns out that the Prince of Darkness has a few tricks up his sleeve himself, and is head over heels for the girl he murdered. Will Elise uncover the Prince of Darkness’s deepest, darkest secrets?

The web site for this series is: The World Among Us.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character eats something that means more than it seems.

MA

#SampleSunday – Tosun

Since I have the document open to edit, I’ll give you another sample of SIDESHOW IN THE CENTER RING. The main character, Connie, has messed up her metabolism by taking a beauty product. She is now on a planet where the natives are humanoid but furred. Tosun is a native who has been following her around. Jackie is a friend, angry with Connie for hanging out with a rich but amoral crowd.

SIDESHOW IN THE CENTER RING – excerpt

by Marian Allen

I gave Tosun a good, long look. At about my height, he was short for a Mocskan. He was the color of pussy willows. Black stripes flared out in wedges around his rib cage. His ears were black, his nose was black, his lips were black (we had something in common, there). He wore nothing but his fur. Without his chestpack, weapons, and shield, he looked much younger and thinner than he had before.

He stood there, smiling and offering himself for the taking, and his eyes were so trusting, so open and innocent, I could have hit him with a brick. He might as well have been wearing a sign with “Easy Mark” on it in flashing lights.

“Go away,” I said. I sat in a chair near Jackie’s and rested my head and my eyes.

I could hear Tosun go to the couch and drag his stuff out from under it.

“There’s a lot of people in this party she’s with?” he asked Jackie. “She said about fifty?”

“About fifty altogether, on this trip. About nine that call the tunes. The rest just dance.”

“Is she the head of them?”

“On the contrary.”

“Ha, ha,” I said, not opening my eyes.

“Is she the richest of them?”

“One of the richest.”

“Others of them are rich?”

“Yes.”

“Will you describe the richest of them to me?”

“Why?” I asked.

“I told you,” Tosun said. “I left the Yolanbayt for revelry and luxury. My object has to be rich.”

I opened my eyes. “And that’s all? Rich? No other requirements? Not decent, or productive, or kind, or brave? Not thrifty, clean or reverent?”

“No. The Yol also flows through the wicked and shiftless, the cruel and cowardly, profligate, dirty and obscene. So, all things being equal, all I require in an object is affluence. That’s all I require of you; you’re special, because of your colors and because you take elixirs– “

“I took one. One was plenty.”

“Only the wise know plenty when they have it.”

Jackie smothered a laugh.

~ * ~

SIDESHOW IN THE CENTER RING is due out in a couple of months. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to editing.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What would you do if someone offered to bind himself or herself to you, totally subordinate to your every whim? Would what you thought of your own character make a difference in how you felt about that subordination?

MA