B.R. Stateham's Blog, page 8

Smiling Buddhas and other such things

Creating characters for your stories.  Where do they come from?  How do you 'color in' the details of their lives which fills them out and gives them their unique personalities?  Are you one of those detail freaks who sits down with paper and pencil and manufactures a complex, multifaceted biographical sheet before putting the first word down on a new story or novel?  Or do you suddenly wake up and that character is in looking back at you in your mind.  Fully developed and ready to go.  Right down to knowing exactly what color of tie they would wear going into a knife fight (if that is . . . you know . . .  knife fighting and wearing ties went hand in a hand kinda thing).

Maurice came out that way for me.  Maurice; a short, and slightly growing plump, cross between a Charlie Chan wannabe and a Perry Mason-like lawyer.  A fastidious little smiling Buddha who has the gift of talking to ghosts.  Ghost who, violently murdered, come to him to solicit is his services in tracking down and incarcerating the actual person who did the foul deed.

Woke up one day and there he was.  Just sitting there on the edge of consciousness and unconsciousness.  Smiling, his little round face and growing chins beaming in delight at being in my mind.  Dressed in an off white three-piece Southern Plantation still cotton suit, a white colored fedora being held in one hand as he sat on the desk of an ornate French designed writing desk.

He didn't say a word.  Just sat there in my mind and waited for me to dig up enough gumption to sit down and begin writing a story.  Knew I would eventually.  Just sat there and kept smiling at me.

And he loves driving old Pink Cadillacs.  Why, I don't know.  But he does.

Irritating . . . but likable little guy.

So I did.  Here's the first chapter of 'Maurice.'  The story is currently being serialized, chapter or two at a time, in Angie's Diary ezine.  We're up to Chapter 7 now in the novella.  If you like the first chapter, I encourage you to go over to Angie's Diary and catch up on the story.  New chapters will be showing up in a day or two.

Enjoy.



One


            With a flick  of the thumb he opened the old Zippo lighter and thumbed it into life before lifting the bright flame to the end of the cigarette.              And paused . . .             A bright pink Caddy convertible slid into the No Parking Zone as if it belonged there and quietly came to a halt.  A big battleship of a car, with high tail fins in back and a spread of metal across the front hood big enough to be the landing deck of a Nimetz-class carrier.  Hot pink. Freshly polished . . . with white vinyl seats.  The white so intense he thought about lifting a hand up to shade the glare from his eyes.            One big sonofabitch of a car.            Had to be a '59 Caddy convertible. Looked just like the one he remembered his grandmother had way back when he was six or seven.  Yet it looked as if it just rolled off a showroom floor.  But as if the car wasn't enough to gawk at, the guy sitting behind the wheel was . . . was . . . unreal.            At first the thought of Charlie Chan.  White three-piece Southern Plantation suit.  Perfectly tailored.  Very expensive material.  Hung on the guy's frame like a million dollars.  Not even a smidgen of dirt anywhere to be seen on the white.  With white loafers.  Glistening white loafers.  But instead of a white derby sitting directly atop the man's head there was, instead, a wide brimmed white fedora.  The complexion of the guy suggesting oriental origins.  Or maybe not.  Maybe Egyptian.  Or Roman. Definitely pudgy around the midsection. Obviously the guy enjoyed his groceries. But you really couldn't call him fat.  Not yet.  No . . . this wasn't a Charlie Chan.  Charlie Chan was a Hawaiian-Chinese homicide detective based out of Honolulu.  A fictional character concocted by a writer from out of the 1930's.   This guy . . . this guy, as he rolled out from behind the massively wide steering wheel of the car and reached into the back seat to extract a rather expensive looking leather briefcase, along with an odd looking twisted black ebony shillelagh-like cane, was real. 'Bout five eleven . . . maybe six foot.  'Bout two ten, maybe two twenty on the bathroom scales.  With just the suggestion of double chins beginning to thicken.            Not Hawaiian.  Nor Chinese. Not anyone from the Far East. This guy had the greenest/yellow eyes he had ever seen and a smile that seemed to burst out from somewhere deep within. A smile that could warm up the frozen heart of a Spanish Inquisitor standing in a dungeon cell directly dead center on the North Pole.            "My dear boy, kindly show me the way to your booking sergeant."            "Uh . . . uh . . . sure. This way, fella."            For some reason he felt compelled to personally escort this creature through the mayhem of the precinct's ground floor.  As they moved through the crowd of those being booked, those being sprung, lawyers, cops, and assorted other denizens of the legal spectrum, he kept turning his head to look over his shoulder and at the guy following behind him.  He kept tripping over his feet.  He also noticed a number of others in the crowded commons area looking up from their desks and staring with that kinda dumbass look at the man dressed in white.            "Whatta want, Preston?"            The booking sergeant was a gray haired, iron jawed old veteran wore a permanent scowl across his gray face as if it was a mark of distinction or a battle wound.            "Dear boy, you really must take better care of your exquisite little Rosa Xanthia here. They are a hardy species, to be sure.  But such neglect is almost criminal.  Yet truly a gorgeous specimen. I do so love flowers."            The sergeant paused, fingers coming to a halt just above the keyboard as, puzzled, he rotated around in his chair and gazed at the creature standing on the other side of his desk pouring water out of a paper cup into the small vase which contained one single, rather sickly looking, yellow rose. Eyes blinked a couple of times in a kind of automatic reaction.  Clearing his vision, with the thought of maybe he was seeing things running through his mind, he openly stared at the white image.            "Who the hell are you?"            "Maurice.  Just call me Maurice, good fellow.  Here to see my client."            "You?  You're telling me you are a lawyer?"            Clearly in the sergeant's voice was a note of incredulity.            "Indeed," the creature nodded, beaming delightedly as gawkers, both uniformed and not, drifted over to stand just behind the sergeant's desk to they could listen in on the conversation. "Recently arrived into this fair city and looking forward to establish deep roots.  My client is my first case, I might add.  My very first."            "Who's your client?"            "A delightful gentleman by the name of Randall Cooke."            "Wha . . . Cooke?  You said Randall Cooke?  That Randall Cooke?"            "The Rapist and child molester?" someone in behind the sergeant mouthed angrily. "You're gonna represent thatguy?  Why?"            The collective faces of the gathered crowd reflected back the images of anger, disgust, dismay and incredulity.  Every knew Randall Cooke was guilty. Raped and murdered a nineteen year old mother and then turned his sick fury onto the eight month old baby. The guy was a sick pervert that needed to fry. Fry in the electric chair.  Or, at least, thrown in a jail cell and then forgotten altogether.            "Gentlemen, a man is innocent until he is proven guilty. The founding principal in our judicial system which has singularly separated our courts and civilization from the rest of this often times barbaric world for the last two and one half centuries.  I, contrary to popular opinion, happen to believe Randall Cooke has been falsely accused.  Now would someone be so gallant as to show me to the nearest interrogation room so I might converse with him?"            "Uh . . . sure.  Sure . . ." the desk sergeant grunted, unconsciously reaching for his desk phone as he continued to stare at the beaming white suited lawyer.  "Preston, show him to Interrogation One."            "Uh huh . . . sure, Sarge," the young cop nodded absently, turning as if partially paralyzed in a hypnotic state and touching the guy's right elbow gently at the same time.  "This way . . . fella."            When Randall Cooke walked into the room narrow black slits for eyes turned and stared at the figure sitting at the table, fingertips of both hands pressed gently against each other, a beatific smile beaming from his thin lips.  A round man dressed in virgin white.  With the odd green and yellow flecked eyes staring back at him, openly honest and unafraid.            Cooke paused, half turned to face the young cop who escorted him to the room, yet without taking his eyes off the creature sitting at the table patiently.            "Who is this guy?"            "Your lawyer."            "I have a lawyer?"  Cooke barked, lifting an eyebrow in surprise yet painting across his mug a sincere look of distaste at the form sitting at the table in front of him. "This is got to be a joke.  This guy doesn't look like a Public Defender."            "Shuddup and sit down. Be happy you got someone, even this guy, to represent you," snarled the cop before slamming door closed.            He hesitated, a calloused, big hand running across his mouth as he eyed the man in white.  But then, shrugging, he pulled out a chair directly across from the smiling man and sat down.            "Who'd throw good money down to hire a lawyer for me?"            "My . . . client wishes not to be identified.  But she wants me to assure you she knows you are innocent.  Innocent at least of this crime."            "She?" Cooke growled, frowning in confusion.  "I don't know any women with this kind of money to throw around.  So what's the scam, counselor?  What's going on here?"                        "Tell me, Randall . . . if you will allow me to call you be your first name . . . why did you confess to this crime?"            "Why not?" the unshaven, powerful built man said, shrugging and throwing one leg over the other as he sat crossways in the chair and stared at the smiling man.  "Everyone thinks I did it anyway.  I'm just saving them the trouble of actually working for a living."            Maurice smiled with a faint look of sadness, his tongue making a loud clicking noise of irritation, as he shook his head disapprovingly for a moment or two before turning his head to his right.  Not more than four feet away from where he sat the bright mirrored glass of a one-way window stared at them with an unblinking rudeness. On the other side of the glass he knew the room was empty.  Empty, that is, of any one living.            She came sliding through the glass window in one smooth motion.  First her hands appeared, followed by long arms, then her unearthly pale white face, and eventually her long, pale ghostly white torso.   Across the room she floated. Moving in a slight bobbing action one sees in Goldfish swimming in a fish bowl, wrapping arms around the neck of Randall Cooke and then gently hugging him in her embrace.            For his part Randall Cooke was unaware of her presence.            But he was aware something had happened.  His eyes narrowed as he gazed at the odd looking face of the man sitting across from him.  The counselor's eyes seemed to be unfocused.  Unfocused and staring at something maybe behind him.  His frown deepening, he wondered if he should get up, pound on the door, and insist on being taking back to his cell.            "Edward, she says you should stay.  If we're going to get you cleared of this charge, you have to stay and cooperate to the fullest extent.  In fact she insists on it."            For the first time in a long, long, long time Edward Randall Cooke stared at the white clad figure in front of him in disbelief.  He felt as if a five hundred pound gorilla had just punched him in the gut.  Or maybe blindsided by a couple of NFL linebackers.  No one knew his full name.  He had never told anyone.  Except for two people.  And both of them were dead.            "How . . . who . . . told you I was Edward?"            "Oh, my dear boy.  Don't look so stunned.  Are you familiar with Shakespeare? Perhaps the play, Hamlet? "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies!"            "Who told you my first name," Cooke snapped back, leaning menacingly over the table.            "Your lovely daughter, Tammy," the beaming face of the odd man said, lifting up an open palm toward the felon sitting across the table to stop him from speaking. "To answer your next question, I met her this morning. She dropped into my office . . . literally . . . this morning and insisted I had to defend you.  A most unusual case.  I could not possibly refuse."            The hardened criminal with a long history of assorted felonies and misdemeanors slowly sat back in his chair and just stared at the strange little counselor dressed in the white cotton suit in disbelief.  Unblinking eyes fixed on the counselor he could do nothing but just stare.            Tammy . . . today . . . told this man his full name was Edward Randall Cooke.  Told him . . . today . . . she had not been murdered by her father and insisted, that was her words, insisted he should represent her father in tomorrow's court appearance.  But . . . but Tammy, his daughter, and her son . . . his grandson . . . were dead.  Murdered more than a month ago by someone.  Someone who knew him and knew Tammy and the baby were his.  But it was impossible.  Crazy!  They were dead!  Unless . . .            Unless ghosts did exits.            "Ah hah!" the cherub faced, smiling man said softly as he leaned back in his chair and placed the fingertips of his hands together on the slight bulge of his stomach.  "You begin to believe."            "They're dead," the felon cracked hoarsely, eyeing the white clad oddity suspiciously.            "Yes," nodded the one who called himself Maurice.            "They've been dead a month or more."            "Yes," the cherub nodded again.            "So they're ghosts.  You saw her ghost and she told you I was innocent."            "Precisely.  Now, my innocent friend,  I need to know.  I must have an answer right now.  A mere formality, mind you.  But one that must be acquired.  Will you allow me to represent you tomorrow in court?"            "Yes," Cooke answered.  Answered without hesitation, yet having no idea why he was so convinced he was doing the right thing.  But conviction soon changed to rage.  Shooting forward burning in anger he leaned across the heavy wooden desk again with a mask of death etched into his hardened, scarred vision.  "Now tell me.  No bullshitting here. Who killed my daughter and grandson?"            "We will find out tomorrow," throwing up his hand again to stop the anger in Cooke from bubbling over again.  "Tut, tut!  Remember this.  Tammy did not see the killer's face.  Even in the afterlife she still doesn't know what he looks like.  But she does know his voice. Once she hears it she will inform me.  From there I will wring the truth out of him and you will be a free man.  All you have to do is trust me, my boy.  Trust me."            And with that last declarative statement the smiling cherub stood up, snapped his briefcase closed, and walked calmly out of the room.

Reintroducing yourself to old friends

I may have shared this short story before.  Hamm and Beans.  Two homicide detectives who are, shall we say, perfectly matched for each other.  In a twisted, psychotic, morbidly droll kind of way.

The idea was to write a decent mystery story and yet, somehow, throw a little humor into it.  So along comes Detectives Marissa Hamm and Mike Bean.  One's a shrew.  The other is a certifiable slob.  To tell you the truth, I kinda like these two people.  Both of them are socially inept.  Each is carrying a bag of emotional problems no one knows about. But, still . . . they're kinda interesting. (On a side bar, isn't interesting how . . . sometimes . . . characters fully developed just pop into a writer's head ready to go.  All you have to do is plug them into a story.)

I haven't done anything fresh with Hamm and Bean recently.  And maybe I won't ever.  Still, it's fun going back and reintroducing yourself to old friends again.

Hope you like it.  And maybe, if the moment strikes you, you might tell me if Marissa and Mike should be revived and pushed into some new stories again.



Hamm and Bean



           
She looked up from her desk and saw the lieutenant standing in the door space of his little cubicle looking at her.  A hand came up and he used a finger to silently summons her to enter his den.              And then he turned and glared at Detective Sergeant Mike Bean.  That same long, bony, pasty colored finger of his made the same silent summons.  She watched the big bear of a man push his chair back, throw the pen he had been using down angrily on his desk and scowl.  But he came to his feet and start lumbering toward the lieutenant's office.            Detective Sergeant Mike Bean was a slob.  There was no other way to put it.  Over weight, going bald, with beady little eyes.  His suit looked like it hadn't been cleaned and pressed for at least a month.  In fact it looked like Bean had been sleeping in it for about that length of time.  His shirt had coffee stains around the navel area.  The knot to his tie was pulled down low. There was tomato sauce  dotting the tie's length like tiny red pimples on a teenager's face.  His shoes hadn't seen a swipe of polish since Kennedy was in office.  Bean was the kind of cop everyone wanted to shy away from.  He was jinxed.  Detectives assigned to him as his partner had a way of getting shot.  Most survived and retired from the force.  A few hadn't been so lucky.            Bean, for his part, glanced to his right and looked at the tall, flat figured frame of Detective Sergeant Marissa Hamm.  All legs.  Bony arms.  Flat chested and flaming red hair that fell down past her shoulders.  Wore a dress like it was a discarded cement sack. The face wasn't too bad . . . if you had knocked back six or seven beers.  She was walking toward the lieutenant's office as well--and that didn't sit too well with him.  Hammhad the reputation of being a piranha in the department.  Chewed up and spit out partners in the Homicide division like they were sour gumballs.  Wasn't a cop--male or female--in the entire city who wanted to work with her.            "It's been decided.  You two are, as of today, partners," the gray faced, slightly stooping but tall lieutenant of detectives said as the two walked past him.            "Jesus Christ!  You're kidding me!" Hammhissed, angrily looking at the lieutenant.            "What the hell?!  Who was the idiot who came up with this hair brained idea!" Bean spit out venomously looking as angry as Hamm.            "I'm the idiot who made the decision," the lieutenant answered quietly as he folded arms across his chest and glared at the two.  "Both of you shut up and listen.  This isn't a fucking request.   You two don't have a say in this.  It's either this or I transfer the two of you to administrative staff jobs downtown.  I'm not going to do that.  Not yet, at least.  I need detectives.  Good detectives.  And as much as it hurts me to say this, you two aren't too bad at doing your job.  When your sober that is . . . Mike.  Or when you're tongue isn't slicing people's egos up like raw Pastrami . . . Marissa."            "But lieutenant . . . !"            "Didn't I tell you to keep quiet, Mike?  Shut . . .  up.  There are no ands and buts about this.  You two are a team.  You want to kill each other that's okay by me.  It'll be a little extra paperwork if you do it on company time--but that's just more paperwork.  I can handle it.  But the reality is this.  Neither of you two will be missed in the department.  Both of you are about as likable as two anemic Cobras fighting over the same dead mouse.  No one wants to be around you.  No one wants to work with you.  In a sane world I would have taken your badges months ago and told you to get the hell out of my precinct.  But this city's got a crime wave going on and I can't afford not having you two work together.  So that's it!  End of discussion.   You are partners . . . now take this file and go find the bastard who did this!  Get out . . . . now."            Both of them glared angrily at their lieutenant but kept quiet.  Mike Bean shook his head in disgust, shot a loathing glance at his new partner, and turned and reached for the door handle.            "I'm driving," Marissa Hamm said with a mean, sarcastic grin on her plain face.            "Like hell you are," scowled her partner and shaking his head.  "It'll be a cold day in hell before I let you get behind a steering wheel!"            When the arrived in front of the small ranch style home out in the suburbs Marissa Hamm opened the car door and slid out from behind the steering wheel--a pleased smirk on his colorless lips.  Her partner rolled out of the passenger seat and slammed the door shut so hard the big Crown Victoria rocked back and forth several times before coming to a halt.            "The next time you play a trick on my like that again, Hamm" he began, lifting a big fleshy brick for a fist up to his chest and shaking it a couple of times warningly.  "I swear I'm gonna tap you a good one."            "Ya big dope," Hamm grinned sarcastically "Don't lay the keys down on the booking desk and tell me you're gonna take a piss before we leave the precinct house.  It was like stealing candy from a baby."            Bean started to say something but turned as a patrol officer came toward them with a small spiral notebook in hand and looking at it intently.            "Sergeants . . . the body's clear to be examined.  Forensics just finished up."            "Whose dead?" both detectives said at the same time--like an echo chamber--glaring at each other in the process.            "The dead guy is Ralph Edwards.  A banker.  Someone plugged him in the forehead with a big caliber gun.  Close range apparently.  There's burn marks all over the man's face.  The bullet exited and went through a window somewhere that away.  Haven't found it yet."            "Any witnesses?" Bean snapped.            "Who discovered the body?" Hammsnapped.            "No to the first question.  And his wife answers the second question." the uniformed officer replied, grinning as he looked up at the two detectives.  "So it finally happened, huh?"            "What happened?" Hamm and Bean shot back simultaneously.            "The lieutenant.  He went and did it.  Put you two together.  Geez!  Sergeant Loomis is going to be one happy dude."            Both detectives frowned.  The young kid for a patrol officer grinned even wider.            "We started a pool about a month ago.  Each threw in ten bucks and picked a date when the lieutenant would bite the bullet and put you two together.  I think Sergeant Loomis is a couple of thousand smackers richer!"            "That sounds like gambling, Hamm." Bean growled menacingly as he half turned toward his partner.            "That's what it sounds like to me, Bean.  Corruption in the department.  Wonder what the mayor would say if he heard about this?"            The patrol officer wiped the grin off his face as he snapped the small notebook in his hand closed, turned on a heel, and moved away from the two detectives slightly slower than a dead run.  Hammand Bean watched the young officer disappear around a corner of the house, deadly little smirks on their lips.            "The little wimp," Bean muttered,            "Snotty nosed little bastard," Hammsaid.            Mike Bean turned and looked at his new partner and scowled.            "You gotta have the last word every time I say something?  Is that the way it's gonna be?"            "Does shit stink?" she asked, the smirk on her lips widening.            He grinned . . . almost laughed . . . as he turned and headed for the house.            The same old routine.  A grieving wife.  A despondent teen age son.  Several thousand dollars in jewelry missing  And wet paint on the driveway.            "Wet paint," Hamm said as she sat on her haunches sticking a finger in the wet goop.            "No shit, Sherlock!" Bean answered, bending over to make the appearance of looking at the wet paint.  But looking at the exposed thighs and pink underwear of his partner instead.            "Bean!  Stop staring at my panties and get that tongue back into mouth before you bite it off!"  she hissed, standing up and straightening her dress at the same time.            "Did you notice the house is half painted?" he asked, standing up as well and throwing a thumb back toward the house.            "Yes," she nodded, glancing at the house.  "Did you get a name?"            "Sure," he nodded, grinning and holding up a business card.  "Two guys I know from way back.  Guys who used to rob houses when they were in their teens."            "I'm driving," Hamm said, turning on a heel and walking toward the Crown Vic.            "Like hell you are.  My ulcers can take only so much of your driving.  Give me the keys, Hamm!"            "Bite me," detective Marissa Hamm said with a smile on her face as she unlocked the Crown Vic.            The two painters were cousins.  Stole together.  Served time together.  Came out of prison and started painting houses for a living.  Stayed honest until they got to the banker's house and found fifty thousand dollars of jewelry just lying out in the open waiting to be snatched.  Problem was the banker came home unexpectedly.  One of the cousins pulled a gun.  The gun went off.   Drilled the banker in the forehead.  Sheer accident.  The kid didn't think it was loaded.            "Good job, you two.  You survived the first day," the lieutenant said, smirking, arms folded across the chest as he heard their report. "Go home and get some rest.  Stay sober for once, Mike.  Don't eat any children alive, Marissa.  See you two tomorrow."            The two walked out of the lieutenant's office and stopped.  The squad room was empty.  Small fans on the desks of the detectives were humming quietly in the silence.  The two stared at their desks and then looked at each other.            "Going home?" Hamm asked quietly.            "Naw," Bean said, shaking his head.  "Thought I'd go and knock back a couple of beers over at Wally's."            Marissa Hamm said nothing as she nodded and looked down at the floor.  Bean, frowning, sighed and shook his head in disgust..            "You drink beer?"            "Uh huh," nodded Hamm.            "Really?  I thought you preferred chilled strychnine.  Or maybe molten lava," he said, heading for the stairs.            "The only question I want answered," Hammsaid, following Bean down the stairs loudly. "Is whether you're going to slid under the table after the third or fourth beer.  I heard two was your limit."            Mike Bean grinned.  Grinned and looked over his shoulder at his new partner.  Hell.  Maybe this would work after all.

Richard Godwin has Confessions Of A Hit Man

Richard Godwin has a new novel out.  Called Confessions Of A Hit Man.  If you know, or have read some of his work, you know this guy writes a taut, well researched, gripping tale of darkness and suspense.  So, when I finally get my hands on this novel, I expect to be kept glued to the text from page one all the way to the end.

I've invited Richard to use this blog and say a few things about both himself and his new book.  It's always interesting to read how a writer comes up with his ideas for a new book.  So we have that.  We also have his bio as well listing his complete works.

If you haven't read anything of Richard's, now is the time to rectify error in your reading selections.  Trust me.  You won't be disappointed.

So without further fanfare, here we go.

Confessions Of A Hit Manis my most mainstream commercial novel. Here’s the Blurb:Confessions of a Hit Manis a high octane thriller with a plot that adds velocity like a well-oiled chicane. When ex-Royal Marine Jack becomes a paid assassin, work comes easily, especially when working for the Sicilian Mafia, until he gets drawn into a government plot selling enriched plutonium to a rogue Nation.But it is also more subtle than that, in it I look at the world of espionage and the eminence grise that controls operation the general public has no knowledge of. One reviewer has picked Up on this and incisively written of the double who surrounds Jack:‘From the first, Jack, with his Royal Marine training, is brilliant at his job of tracking, approaching, ingratiating himself with, and finally killing his targets. He also acquires a double, a shadow self, which escapes from his mirror and becomes him. That in itself is a fascinating literary device. With each new adventure, “the line of barbed wire stretched its way round my life like a shadow. You can hardly read this without rooting for Jack. Or is Jack’s double, that absorbs him so completely that he stops talking about his double?
Throughout the novel, Jack (he hides his name even from his girlfriend) takes orders from a shadowy figure, immaculately dressed, smooth spoken, a kind of autodidact, with a bottomless pit of money. This man stands beyond the sociopathic billionaires, elected officials, arms dealers, the Deep State itself, and behind Jack (who stops talking about his double halfway through the book) . Who is this guy? Who is Jack?’Professor Jay Gertzman.Confessions Of A Hit Manis both a narrative about the world of espionage that encompasses us all but also what that world of the double entails.It is available herein the USAnd herein the UK       



 Richard Godwin is the author of critically acclaimed novels Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City, Meaningful Conversations and Confessions Of A Hit Man.
He is also a published poet and a produced playwright. His stories have been published in numerous paying magazines and over 34 anthologies, among them The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Mystery, alongside Lee Child, published by Constable & Robinson, as well as the anthology of his stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man, published by Pulp Metal Fiction in February 2012. 
Apostle Rising, published by Black Jackal Books in June 2011, is a dark work of fiction exploring the blurred line between law and lawlessness and the motivations that lead men to kill. It digs into the scarred soul of a cop in the hunt for a killer who has stepped straight from a nightmare into the waking world. It is available here. It has sold foreign rights in Hungary, to Alexandra, translated as A Romlas Labirintusa; in Italy, to Lite Editions, translated as L’Apostolo; and in Slovenia, to be published in late 2014 by Artizan Press.
Mr. Glamour, published by Black Jackal Books in Aril 2012, is about a world of wealthy, beautiful people who can buy anything, except safety from the killer in their midst. It is about two scarred cops who are driven to acts of darkness by the investigation. As DCI Jackson Flare and DI Mandy Steele try to catch the killer they find themselves up against a wall of secrecy. And the killer is watching everyone. It is available here. It has sold foreign rights to Italy and France, to be translated early 2015 by MeMe.
One Lost Summer, published by Black Jackal Books in June 2013, is a Noir story of fractured identity and ruined nostalgia. It is a psychological portrait of a man who blackmails his beautiful next door neighbour into playing a deadly game of identity. It is available here.Noir City, published by Atlantis in June 2014, is about dangerous gigolo Paris Tongue, who seduces the wife of a Mafia boss and is hunted across Europe by hit men. It is available here.It will be translated into Italian in 2015. Meaningful Conversations, published by Noir Nation in 2014, is a Noir novel about a well-adjusted psychopath. Bertrand Mavers is a professional cellist who is resisting a control programme through the use of artistic paradigms, he is also abducting people and building a body at The Farm. It is available here.
Confessions Of A Hit Man, published by MeMe in July 2014, is a high octane thriller with a plot that the velocity like a well-oiled chicane. When ex-Royal Marine Jack becomes a paid assassin, work comes easily, especially when working for the Sicilian Mafia, until he gets drawn into a government plot selling enriched plutonium to a rogue Nation. It is available here. It is being simultaneously published in English and Italian October 2015.
Richard Godwin was born in London and obtained a BA and MA in English and American Literature from King's College London, where he also lectured.
You can find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net, where you can also read his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual interviews with other authors.                               

Richard Godwin has a Confessions Of A Hit Man

Richard Godwin has a new novel out.  Called Confessions Of A Hit Man.  If you know, or have read some of his work, you know this guy writes a taut, well researched, gripping tale of darkness and suspense.  So, when I finally get my hands on this novel, I expect to be kept glued to the text from page one all the way to the end.

I've invited Richard to use this blog and say a few things about both himself and his new book.  It's always interesting to read how a writer comes up with his ideas for a new book.  So we have that.  We also have his bio as well listing his complete works.

If you haven't read anything of Richard's, now is the time to rectify error in your reading selections.  Trust me.  You won't be disappointed.

So without further fanfare, here we go.

Confessions Of A Hit Manis my most mainstream commercial novel. Here’s the Blurb:Confessions of a Hit Manis a high octane thriller with a plot that adds velocity like a well-oiled chicane. When ex-Royal Marine Jack becomes a paid assassin, work comes easily, especially when working for the Sicilian Mafia, until he gets drawn into a government plot selling enriched plutonium to a rogue Nation.But it is also more subtle than that, in it I look at the world of espionage and the eminence grise that controls operation the general public has no knowledge of. One reviewer has picked Up on this and incisively written of the double who surrounds Jack:‘From the first, Jack, with his Royal Marine training, is brilliant at his job of tracking, approaching, ingratiating himself with, and finally killing his targets. He also acquires a double, a shadow self, which escapes from his mirror and becomes him. That in itself is a fascinating literary device. With each new adventure, “the line of barbed wire stretched its way round my life like a shadow. You can hardly read this without rooting for Jack. Or is Jack’s double, that absorbs him so completely that he stops talking about his double?
Throughout the novel, Jack (he hides his name even from his girlfriend) takes orders from a shadowy figure, immaculately dressed, smooth spoken, a kind of autodidact, with a bottomless pit of money. This man stands beyond the sociopathic billionaires, elected officials, arms dealers, the Deep State itself, and behind Jack (who stops talking about his double halfway through the book) . Who is this guy? Who is Jack?’Professor Jay Gertzman.Confessions Of A Hit Manis both a narrative about the world of espionage that encompasses us all but also what that world of the double entails.It is available herein the USAnd herein the UK       



 Richard Godwin is the author of critically acclaimed novels Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City, Meaningful Conversations and Confessions Of A Hit Man.
He is also a published poet and a produced playwright. His stories have been published in numerous paying magazines and over 34 anthologies, among them The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Mystery, alongside Lee Child, published by Constable & Robinson, as well as the anthology of his stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man, published by Pulp Metal Fiction in February 2012. 
Apostle Rising, published by Black Jackal Books in June 2011, is a dark work of fiction exploring the blurred line between law and lawlessness and the motivations that lead men to kill. It digs into the scarred soul of a cop in the hunt for a killer who has stepped straight from a nightmare into the waking world. It is available here. It has sold foreign rights in Hungary, to Alexandra, translated as A Romlas Labirintusa; in Italy, to Lite Editions, translated as L’Apostolo; and in Slovenia, to be published in late 2014 by Artizan Press.
Mr. Glamour, published by Black Jackal Books in Aril 2012, is about a world of wealthy, beautiful people who can buy anything, except safety from the killer in their midst. It is about two scarred cops who are driven to acts of darkness by the investigation. As DCI Jackson Flare and DI Mandy Steele try to catch the killer they find themselves up against a wall of secrecy. And the killer is watching everyone. It is available here. It has sold foreign rights to Italy and France, to be translated early 2015 by MeMe.
One Lost Summer, published by Black Jackal Books in June 2013, is a Noir story of fractured identity and ruined nostalgia. It is a psychological portrait of a man who blackmails his beautiful next door neighbour into playing a deadly game of identity. It is available here.Noir City, published by Atlantis in June 2014, is about dangerous gigolo Paris Tongue, who seduces the wife of a Mafia boss and is hunted across Europe by hit men. It is available here.It will be translated into Italian in 2015. Meaningful Conversations, published by Noir Nation in 2014, is a Noir novel about a well-adjusted psychopath. Bertrand Mavers is a professional cellist who is resisting a control programme through the use of artistic paradigms, he is also abducting people and building a body at The Farm. It is available here.
Confessions Of A Hit Man, published by MeMe in July 2014, is a high octane thriller with a plot that the velocity like a well-oiled chicane. When ex-Royal Marine Jack becomes a paid assassin, work comes easily, especially when working for the Sicilian Mafia, until he gets drawn into a government plot selling enriched plutonium to a rogue Nation. It is available here. It is being simultaneously published in English and Italian October 2015.
Richard Godwin was born in London and obtained a BA and MA in English and American Literature from King's College London, where he also lectured.
You can find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net, where you can also read his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual interviews with other authors.                               

Richard Godwin has a Confessions of a Hit Man

Richard Godwin has a new novel out.  Called Confessions of a Hit Man.  If you know, or have read some of his work, you know this guy writes a taut, well researched, gripping tale of darkness and suspense.  So, when I finally get my hands on this novel, I expect to be kept glued to the text from page one all the way to the end.

I've invited Richard to use this blog and say a few things about both himself and his new book.  It's always interesting to read how a writer comes up with his ideas for a new book.  So we have that.  We also have his bio as well listing his complete works.

If you haven't read anything of Richard's, now is the time to rectify error in your reading selections.  Trust me.  You won't be disappointed.

So without further fanfare, here we go.

Confessions Of A Hit Manis my most mainstream commercial novel. Here’s the Blurb:Confessions of a Hit Manis a high octane thriller with a plot that adds velocity like a well-oiled chicane. When ex-Royal Marine Jack becomes a paid assassin, work comes easily, especially when working for the Sicilian Mafia, until he gets drawn into a government plot selling enriched plutonium to a rogue Nation.But it is also more subtle than that, in it I look at the world of espionage and the eminence grise that controls operation the general public has no knowledge of. One reviewer has picked Up on this and incisively written of the double who surrounds Jack:‘From the first, Jack, with his Royal Marine training, is brilliant at his job of tracking, approaching, ingratiating himself with, and finally killing his targets. He also acquires a double, a shadow self, which escapes from his mirror and becomes him. That in itself is a fascinating literary device. With each new adventure, “the line of barbed wire stretched its way round my life like a shadow. You can hardly read this without rooting for Jack. Or is Jack’s double, that absorbs him so completely that he stops talking about his double?
Throughout the novel, Jack (he hides his name even from his girlfriend) takes orders from a shadowy figure, immaculately dressed, smooth spoken, a kind of autodidact, with a bottomless pit of money. This man stands beyond the sociopathic billionaires, elected officials, arms dealers, the Deep State itself, and behind Jack (who stops talking about his double halfway through the book) . Who is this guy? Who is Jack?’Professor Jay Gertzman.Confessions Of A Hit Manis both a narrative about the world of espionage that encompasses us all but also what that world of the double entails.It is available herein the USAnd herein the UK       



 Richard Godwin is the author of critically acclaimed novels Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City, Meaningful Conversations and Confessions Of A Hit Man.
He is also a published poet and a produced playwright. His stories have been published in numerous paying magazines and over 34 anthologies, among them The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Mystery, alongside Lee Child, published by Constable & Robinson, as well as the anthology of his stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man, published by Pulp Metal Fiction in February 2012. 
Apostle Rising, published by Black Jackal Books in June 2011, is a dark work of fiction exploring the blurred line between law and lawlessness and the motivations that lead men to kill. It digs into the scarred soul of a cop in the hunt for a killer who has stepped straight from a nightmare into the waking world. It is available here. It has sold foreign rights in Hungary, to Alexandra, translated as A Romlas Labirintusa; in Italy, to Lite Editions, translated as L’Apostolo; and in Slovenia, to be published in late 2014 by Artizan Press.
Mr. Glamour, published by Black Jackal Books in Aril 2012, is about a world of wealthy, beautiful people who can buy anything, except safety from the killer in their midst. It is about two scarred cops who are driven to acts of darkness by the investigation. As DCI Jackson Flare and DI Mandy Steele try to catch the killer they find themselves up against a wall of secrecy. And the killer is watching everyone. It is available here. It has sold foreign rights to Italy and France, to be translated early 2015 by MeMe.
One Lost Summer, published by Black Jackal Books in June 2013, is a Noir story of fractured identity and ruined nostalgia. It is a psychological portrait of a man who blackmails his beautiful next door neighbour into playing a deadly game of identity. It is available here.Noir City, published by Atlantis in June 2014, is about dangerous gigolo Paris Tongue, who seduces the wife of a Mafia boss and is hunted across Europe by hit men. It is available here.It will be translated into Italian in 2015. Meaningful Conversations, published by Noir Nation in 2014, is a Noir novel about a well-adjusted psychopath. Bertrand Mavers is a professional cellist who is resisting a control programme through the use of artistic paradigms, he is also abducting people and building a body at The Farm. It is available here.
Confessions Of A Hit Man, published by MeMe in July 2014, is a high octane thriller with a plot that the velocity like a well-oiled chicane. When ex-Royal Marine Jack becomes a paid assassin, work comes easily, especially when working for the Sicilian Mafia, until he gets drawn into a government plot selling enriched plutonium to a rogue Nation. It is available here. It is being simultaneously published in English and Italian October 2015.
Richard Godwin was born in London and obtained a BA and MA in English and American Literature from King's College London, where he also lectured.
You can find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net, where you can also read his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual interviews with other authors.                               

The master, Les Edgerton, returns

You're a writer.  Stories pop into your head.  But exactly . . . just how do they pop into your head?  Where do they come from?  The ideas . . . do they come fully formed?  Complete?  Or are they tiny little icky hatch lings that require nourishment so they can grow and blossom out into fully developed, gleaming examples of pure intellectual thought.


The Man himself, Les EdgertonI dunno.  They come.  They go.  Some have a sticky backing so that, when they pop up, they slam into the brain like a brick thrown through a plate glass window and stick forever.  Some are covered in slimy green gooey stuff.  They hit the brain pane, seem a bit interesting, and then slide off into into the subconscious void never to be seen or heard from again.

Les Edgerton, a writer of some considerable talent, and one who . . . let's face it . . . has a rather colorful background to draw from, has a new one out called The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping.  He was gracious enough to write up a little piece explaining this very phenomena on how one gets a handle on writing a novel.  Thought you might be interested looking it over.

Enjoy.





History of The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping
This has long been my favorite of all the books I’ve written. It began as a short story of the same name that The South Carolina Review published years ago. Soon after that, I wrote this novel, based on the short story and then I wrote a screenplay of the same title which was named a finalist in both the Writer’s Guild and Best of Austin competitions.
I wrote it because I simply went back to my initial roots as a writer. To those days as a kid when I wrote simply to entertain and get a laugh from readers. Some of the books I’ve written, while fun to write, were drop-dead serious and Kidnapping was simply a return to the joy of writing and watching the reader’s face for signs of a smile or a laugh. And, I was fortunate to gain those kinds of responses with this book.
The germ of the idea for it came when I was in perhaps the dullest period of my life. When I was selling life insurance and trying to become what’s called “a solid citizen.” Yuch… One of the first things I learned from my boss was a term insurance folks call “the million dollars on the kitchen table.” It refers to the mindset that most folks have when they’re being sold a policy. The million dollar policy is just an abstract figure and it’s a goal for salesmen to move as many of those as possible. The guy sitting across from them usually doesn’t have a clue what a million dollars actually is. It’s just a number to them. When you can convey the image of an actual million dollars sitting on the kitchen table to them rather than just an abstract figure, that’s when you make the sale.
Well, I started thinking about that in terms of a kidnapping. What I came up with was that when the ‘nappers snatch the wife and ask for a million dollars, it’s just a number and the husband is fully prepared to pay it and get wifey back. But… and there’s the big BUT I came up with that signaled the birth of this novel—when the guy withdraws the million dollars from his bank and it’s sitting on the kitchen table just before it gets stuffed into the suitcase or whatever—it suddenly becomes very real to him. It’s no longer an abstract number—it’s a MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS! And, that’s when he calls the cops and the fibbies in on the deal. Suddenly, he realizes just how much a million bucks really is and while he of course dearly loves his snatched loved one… he also realizes how much he also dearly loves his frickin’ million dollars. Maybe even a tech more than he really loves his wife… Ask any FBI agent—I think they’ll attest to this happening. Of course, hubby denies this to himself. He’ll justify calling in the law because he now thinks that they have the best chance of getting the wife back. In his heart of hearts, he knows that if he just paid the dough he’d get the wife back most likely. Only it’s his heart of hearts that he studiously avoids going to during this period.
Does this say something about true love? You bet your bippy it does! It says something about our real
natures most of us don’t ever want to admit. And, it’s this realization that my character Tommy LeClerc realizes. Although he’s a smarmy little worm, with little redeeming characteristics, Tommy actually has an insight which many people, lots smarter than he is, can never have. And, his insight is that when the million bucks is exposed on the kitchen table, the guy suddenly places its importance up there with retrieving his wife. But… and this is the Big But that’s illuminating—if, instead of a wife he’s giving the million up for it happened to be his own hand… his outlook changes. If it’s his meathook that’s at stake—the hand that picks his nose, whacks off his trouser worm, hits his nine-iron with… he ain’t gonna dick around and chance losing that appendage by calling in the fibbies… And that’s a fairly profound insight…
So, while this is a comic novel, at the heart of it is a very serious truth.
The other reason I had so much fun writing this is that I got to include a character who was very real in my own life. Cat. Cat was a call girl I lived with for a couple of years in New Orleans and I think her character is accurately portrayed on the page. I used her real name in the novel, btw. Like the woman in the novel, Cat was sold by her mother to Carlos Marcello, the Godfather in New Orleans, when she was nine and she made the same poor career changing move—she made the mistake of turning 12 and which was much too old for his tastes and so he kicked her out and she went down to the French Quarters and was a rare survivor. Her history in Kidnapping is precisely her own real-life history with him and with me. Even though Cat tried to kill me several times—shot at me twice, tried to stab me thrice, tried to run over me in Fat City with her car once, sicced her killer brother on me and some other things—she was the most memorable person I’ve ever been involved with. I didn’t love her, but she sure was exciting to be around. And, although she was never involved in a kidnapping—at least not when I was with her—her book counterpart acted pretty much the way I think she would have under the same circumstances. Except for the kidnapping, everything Pete and Cat went through in the novel I went through with the same Cat in real life, including the scene with her, her black friend Jackie, me and the trick in the hotel gig. Who happened to be a real-life person who’s very famous and whose real name I couldn’t use, alas.
One other note. When I wrote this, I was co-writing a screenplay with Steve Duncan who happens to be a black guy. I ran the scene in the black bar with Cat pretending to have Tourettes and shouting out racial epithets to see if he thought it was racist. Not in the least, Steve told me. It’s just plain funny stuff.
Anyway, there’s some of the background stuff about this novel I thought you might find interesting. I’m working on a sequel to it at the moment and hope to finish it by the end of the year. I find I’m laughing out loud at the scenes I’m writing, so I’m pretty sure folks will like this one as well. Hope so!

The first two chapters of, While the Emperor Slept

Alright.  Within four days I will finally . . . FINALLY . . . finish writing the Decimus Julius Virilis novel, While the Emperor Slept.  As you may or may not know, someone asked me to write a novel (and possibly a potential series?) featuring a character from out of 1st Century Rome who acts, in his deductive reasoning, like an ancient Sherlock Holmes.  Not a clone of the famous sleuth, mind you;  just someone who would strongly remind you of the famous Baker Street detective.

The first question to ask, while approaching this delicious little quadmire, was . . . just what exactly makes Sherlock Holmes so interesting? Is it his personality?  His looks?  His cold, scientific mind?  His brassy assurance?  Or all of the above stirred up into one big stew and poured into a tall frame of sheer audacity?

The second question to ask was, could I recreate the ambiance and color of 1st Century Rome and make it believable.  And . . . did I have to make it 100% historically accurate?   (this led to a whole series of mental debates within my noggin' about just how important historically fiction had to toe the line in authenticity at the expense of dramatic framing of potential scenes).

In the end I threw all these concerns out the window and decided to write the best damn story I could and stuff it into the 1st Century as best as I could.  A good story, in my not-so-humble-opinion, wins out over historical accuracy any time (as long, of course, as the bending of historical fact doesn't completely fracture ons's Suspension of Belief to the breaking point).

So with all this in mind, I created Decimus Julius Virilis.  I thought I would do two things today.  I thought I might share with you a little Decimus' background and top it off with the first two chapters of the book. (a little blatant self-promotion here.  IF the book is accepted, and IF the book comes out in print, maybe it will receive a higher than expected audience if I kinda . . . you know . . . prime the pump first.  Yeah, I know; wishful thinking.)

So here goes:

Name:  Decimus Julius Virilis
Born:  Somewhere between 29-31 BC in a hut just outside the city of Brundisium
Occupation: At the age of 15 joined Octavius Caesar's Legio III Augusta  in 16 BC and
                    began rising through the ranks. Served in various legions and saw action in, Gaul
                    Hispania, Africanus, Aegypt,  Italia, Germania, Parthia.
Retired: 9 AD, after achieving the rank of Prafectus Castoreum (third in command of a Roman legion);
              becoming a full Roman citizen. (thanks to being distantly related to Caesar himself)
Further Employment:  Given the rank of Tribune in the Caesar's new Cohortes Urbanae (a specialized
                                  police unit for the cities of Rome and Ostia).  Put on special assignment personally
                                  by Octavius Caesar to investigate delicate cases particularly sensitive to the
                                  Julii familiy.
Died: Yet to be determined

So there is a snapshot portrait of my Holmesian wannabe.  Part detective. Part assassin.  Part seeker of political intrigues.  Sometimes very cold and calculating.  Sometimes very deadly.  Hopefully . . . a character that will catch on with the reading public.

So.  To stimulate that last thought, here are the first two chapters of While the Emperor Slept.


One
            With a shrug from a shoulder he slipped off the short toga and took the first tentative step into the hot bubbling waters of the bath.  Behind him his servant, a pepper haired old Roman soldier by the name of Gnaeus, eyed his master ruefully and then bent down and retrieved the short robe from the marbled floor. In the light of a hundred candles filling the bath with a soft warm light, he eyed the black marble columns of the private bath, noted the rich drapes which hung from the marbled ceiling, felt the warmth of the marble floors he stood on and nodded to himself in pleasure.            The Baths of Juno Primus, with its marbled columned porch and impressive water fountains at the base of its portico steps, was the newest public baths in Rome. It sat three blocks away from the gigantic Balisca Julius, the elegant and impressively enclosed public forum and administrative building just completed in the heart of the city.  The baths, rumored to have been built with donations from the Imperator himself, were equally impressive.  It may have been true.  He knew Gaius Octavius.  An old man now known as Gaius Octavius Caesar, the Augustus.  He knew the other Caesar was that kind of person.  Julius Caesar had a passion for spending money lavishly on grand architecture.  Octavius inherited the family trait. Both had a passion for building.  Building large, grand structures out of the finest marble.  Each dreamed of converting, in one life time, a once dreary, almost rural, city called Rome into a world class megalopolis.              Smiling, Decimus Julius Virilis stepped into the warm clear waters of the steaming bath and lowered himself onto a marble bench.  Closing his eyes he stretched arms on either side of the bath and leaned back and heaved a sigh of relief.            He sat in the water and allowed his senses to wonder.  Vaguely in other parts of the large bathhouseRome's rather complex society.  In such a place like this one would find the most noble and the most carnal.  Without question cabals were being hatched.  Dark secrets were being revealed.  Roman politics thrived behind the closed doors of each large bathing pool reserved for one patron or another.   Chin deep in the artificially warm waters of these baths there was no conceivable plot, no scandalous terror, men of power and wealth could not converse in soft whispers which had not been discussed a hundred times before. he heard the voices of men mumbling or the splashing of water.  Somewhere a woman's voice, probably that of a serving girl, was laughing merrily.  Somewhere else the tinkling of goblets clinking together told him men were enjoying their wine. The baths was a giant complex filled with senators, generals, politicians.  The rich and elite of
             Sighing, he gently pushed the cacophony of noise from his mind, and allowed the heat of the water to seep into aching muscles and a tired body with its soothing fingers of sensual delight.  He was an average size man in height.  But the numerous scars which tattooed his flesh in a bizarre matrix of randomness, along with the amazing display of muscles he yet retained, would have indicated to an on looker this man was anything but remotely average.              Twenty five years soldiering in one of the many legions loyal to Octavius Caesar had a way of hardening a man's body . . . a man's soul.  From Hispania to Aegypt; from Illyrium to Gaul.  One legion after another.  Fighting.  Fighting Gauls.  Fighting Spaniards.  Fighting Romans.  Hundreds of skirmishes.  Several pitched battles.  Stepping over friends and foes alike lying on the ground dead, sword dripping with blood in one hand and shield in the other.  Battle fields littered with the dead, the dying, and the cowering for as far as the eye could see.            Twenty five years.            Watching fool politicians appointed to command riding prancing horses, banners and Eagles rising in the sunshine, with men shouting and hammering their shields with the swords eager for battle, only to, months later, see the same legion either victorious and lusty.  Or defeated and disgraced.  Or worse . . .  decimated and barely clinging in existence.            Twenty five years.            Rising up through the ranks.  First as a simple legionnaire in the tenth cohort . . . essentially the raw recruits of a legion.  Proving himself as both a leader and as a fighter.  Attaining on the battle field the promotion to centurion and assigned again to a tenth cohort as its commander.  Years of slugging through summer hit and winter's cold.  Through rain and snow.  Facing an almost unlimited number of Rome's enemies.  Facing  rampaging war elephants.  Facing armor clad Parthian cataphract cavalry with their deadly lances and stinging composite bows.  Facing Greek spears stacked up in their compact, vaunted, phalanxes.  Facing naked, blue painted Celtic madmen wielding gigantic two handed swords taller than a man.  But eventually . . . with a little luck at surviving defeats as will as victories, along with the acumen of using his own natural abilities  . . . his star kept rising.  Rising eventually to primus pilum, or First Spear; the top ranking centurion commanding the First Cohort in a Roman legion.  And finally, from there, to being promoted to a tribune and given the rank of prafectus castorum.  The highest rank a professional soldier could attain.  Third in command of a Roman legion.  The soldier's soldier a legion's twenty or so tribunes and eighty or so centurions came to with their problems.  The soldier expected to maintain discipline in the army.  To feed the army.  To provide the arms. To mold thousands of disparate individual souls into one efficiently killing machine.            But no more.  No more.            A life time of soldiering was enough.  With what few years of good health remained to him he would enjoy as a free man.  He had accepted all the accolades, all the honors bestowed on him by noblemen and commoner, and retired from the army.  He no longer served anyone.  No longer took orders from anyone.  No longer felt obligated to anyone.  It was a strange feeling.  A dichotomy of emotions.  On one hand was the feeling of joy . . . immense joy of finally, finallybeing in command of his own fate.  On the other hand was this feeling of extreme loss. An odd emptiness hanging just below his consciousness.   As if there was something critical was missing.  An order given and yet to be obeyed. Frowning, he inhaled the hot humid air of the baths and opened his eyes.            What was he going to do with himself?   The need to be gainfully employed was of no concern.  Retiring from the position of prafectus castorum meant he left the service of the Imperator as a wealthy man.  Almost twenty three years of being first a centurion and then a tribune meant, among other things, being involved in the handling of his men's savings.  Yes, most of the men he commanded spent their wages on women and drink as fast as they could.  But a number of men in any legion had learned to save some money back.  To throw it into the cohort's banking system in the hopes that, if the army was successful and cities or provinces were plundered, their meager savings would grow.            The final three years of his army life had been a considerable financial boon.  As perfectus castorum  his staff had been in charge of the entire legion's savings.  Several thousand sesterces worth.  If an officer was astute in his men's investments a sizeable profit could be had by all.   And if a legion was fortunate to be favored by its commander, or legate, for exceptional service, the reward would be even greater.            He was not called The Lucky for nothing.  Lucky in war.  Lucky in investing.  Lucky in being related to the richest man in the empire.  Gaius Octavius Caesar.  Money was of no concern to him.  He would live comfortably for the rest of his life.            But what to do?  What exercise to entertain and stimulate his mind?  He needed a challenge.  A goal . . . a . . . puzzle . . . to keep his wits about him!  Without some challenge for the gray matter in his skull to dwell on life was nothing but a series of boring mannerisms to endure.            Closing his eyes again he idly heard his servant Gnaeus pouring wine in a large goblet for him.  And then . . . a brief silence.  An odd silence.  An out of place silence.  Softly followed by just the lightest whisper of heavy cloth rubbing across the leather scabbard of a sheathed gladius.            He didn't move or show any outward gesture he was aware of a new presence behind him.  Resting in the water of the bath he appeared to be asleep.  But ever nerve in his body was tingling with delight!  He heard the soft tread of three distinct sets of sandals.  With one of the three, strangely, without question an old man. Opening eyes slowly he noticed the colors around him . . . the blue of the water, the black of the marble columns, the white of the marble bath walls . . . seemed to be a hundred times more intense!  For the first time in weeks he felt alive!  And when he heard that distinct shuffling of feet and the odd hissing of someone finding it difficult to breathe he almost laughed out loud.            "Good evening, cousin," he said quietly, coming to a standing position and turning to face his unannounced guests.            Three of them stood above him looking down at him as he stood in waters of the bath.  Two of them were big men dressed in the distinct cuirass and greaves of the Praetorian Guards.  Around their shoulders were short capes of the royal purple trimmed in silver thread.  Underneath their left arms were their brightly polished bronze helms.  At their waists lay the short blades of the Roman gladius. The double edged weapon that had carved out a vast empire for the City of Rome and its people.            Between the two was an old man slightly stooped over and dressed in a dark wine red toga.  Around his shoulders and covering the curls of his white hair was a plain woolen cloak and hood.  But there was no mistaking this man.            "Good evening, Decimus Julius Virilis," Augustus Caesar said, an amused smile spreading across thin lips.  "I see you still retain all your limbs and most of your senses."            "No thanks to you, Imperator," Decimus laughed, making his way out of the bath completely unconcerned about his nakedness and men armed standing before him.  "You've tried to kill me at least a hundred times."            "One of my few failures I'm sure," replied the old man, chuckling.            "So tell me, cousin.  To what pleasure do I owe you receiving your company in a public bath house suddenly ordered vacated by a detachment of your Praetorian Guards?"            The old man's eyes, bright and alive, looked upon his distant cousin with mirth and pleasure.  They had known each other for years.  Ever since Decimus, as a boy of fourteen, ran away from home and joined his first legion.  A legion he happened to be commanding in Greece facing Mark Anthony so many years ago.  Nodding approvingly, the old man moved closer to the younger man, took him gently by one arm and squeezed it affectionately.            "I am in need of your services, cousin.   And, amusingly, some would say I bring with me an incredible opportunity you might consider.  A very delicate situation has come up that must be addressed swiftly and surely.  Swiftly and surely with . . . uh . . . only the talents you can bring to bear."
Two
            To his right the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea seemed to lift up and fill the late afternoon sky in a soft blue haze from horizon to horizon.  Sails, white and wine red, from several large cargo ships, moved with an elegant ease as they headed for the port of Ostia.  Sea gulls circled and wove through the partially cloudy skies above them.  The Roman countryside slid down to the see was a lush verdant green.  To him it looked like the vast gardens of a royal estate as he rode down the rough trail toward their destination.The sun was out and deliciously warm.  The panoramic view of the countryside pleasing to the eye.              One would think, if one only trusted his eyes and nothing more, the world was beautiful and peaceful and tranquility was the order of the day.  But he knew better.  He knew the true nature of the world.  Life was an illusion.  Beauty only a mask to hide the darkness and pain from our eyes.             Reining in his powerful mare he turned and looked at the small entourage behind him.  Gnaeus, looked decidedly ill at ease sitting on a horse, dressed in the garb of a Roman legionnaire.  With the plain conical helm of a legionnaire partially hiding the thick mass of pepper and salt colored hair, the simple off white linen undergarment underneath the typical lamellar armor of a Roman cavalryman, Gnaeus reined in his horse expertly and scowled at Decimus.            Smiling, the tribune turned his head and looked at the two other men who reined in on either side of Gnaeus.  One was a thin framed with the hooked nose of a scowling hawk.  Like Gnaeus, he too was dressed in the typical armor and uniform of a cavalryman.  And like his servant a man whom Decimus had known for years in the army.  A specialist in his own right.  A man who knew how to find things.  Any thing.  Find it and retrieve it without making any raucous noise about it.   Some said Rufus was a thief.  A pick pocket. A purse snatcher.  He knew Rufus for what he truly was.  A man with a very special talent any commander of a legion would require sooner or later.            Or a man now in his newly appointed position.            The third cavalryman was very much different.  He was a tall man with thick arms and powerful thighs.  Yet he rode his horse with the ease of someone who had lived all his life around horses.  He was dark complexion with jet black eyes and a small mouth.  There seemed to be an aloofness . . . a sense of otherness . . . that separated him from the rest of them.  Indeed he was this stranger.  He was not Roman born.  He was a foreigner.  A tribesman from the deserts of Numidia.  Yet he too, like the others, a man whom he had known and trusted for years.            "Hassid.  That way," he said lifting an arm and pointing toward the south.  "Check the surrounding countryside for any tracks.  Make a full circle around the crime scene.  You will find us there when you return."            The black eyed hunter from the desert nodded silently and urged his horse on.  He moved out rapidly and soon disappeared into a copse of trees hugging a small hill.  Decimus, waiting until the rider was well out of sight, grunted and turned his horse toward the southwest and heeled its flanks.            With the two riding abreast and slightly behind him the newest tribune of Rome's  CohortesUrbanae topped a small grassy knoll and began descending rapidly down upon the odd scene below.             After the civil wars, after Octavius' arch rival, Mark Anthony, had been dispatched to Hades, Octavius returned to begin rebuilding both the city of Rome and the empire.  In Rome, after decades of neglect and civil strife, he found a city dominated by powerful underworld gangs. Gangs, bought and paid for by powerful patrician families of Rome, basically had carved out their own private empires within the city.  To fight the tenacious tentacles of organized crime Caesar created two organizations and gave them the specific tasks to accomplish.  That being bringing crime under control and providing some measure of safety for the citizens of the city from the ever-constant fear of the city burning to the ground in one gigantic conflagration.  One was the old Vigiles Urbani.  The other was the Cohortes Urbanae.            The vigiles were the firefighters and beat cops of the city.  The city-watch.  A carry over idea, greatly expanded, from the numerous privately funded fire brigades and neighborhood watches that littered the city during Julius Caesar's time.  The Imperator collected the various units into one unit, assembled them along the lines of a Roman legion, and established taxes to pay for them.  Most of the men were ex-slaves commanded by Roman citizens--usually retired officers from the army.  They worked during the night looking for fires and chasing down common hoodlums.  They were effective if not, occasionally, a bit brutal.            Cohortes Urbana acted more like the homicide division of a city's police force.  They investigated violent crime, organized crime, political shenanigans. They too were organized along the lines of a Roman legion.  But unlike the vigiles using ex-slaves as their manpower, only free Roman citizens could join the cohorts.  Better paid and equipped compared to their vigiles cousins the Urban Cohorts could, if the need arouse, actually be pulled from the city's streets and used in military operations. The
            The Imperator commissioned Decimus with the rank of tribune in the Urban Cohorts.  A tribune minus the normal eight hundred or so men most tribunes in the army, or the vigiles, or the urbanae,  would command.  His orders, straight from the quill of Octavius himself, decreed he was on detached service answerable only to the Imperator.              His assignment was simple.  Find, and bring to justice, those whom the Imperator thought were of a particular dangerous threat to the newly acquired peace of the empire.            Like this case.            Reining up suddenly in front of a group of men, a mixed bag of vigiles and urban cohort soldiers standing around the destruction of what once had been a large wagon, he nodded to the centurion in charge and then slipped from his horse, throwing back the edge of his short scarlet and purple trimmed short riding cloak in the process.            "Hail, tribune!" the young officer said, snapping to attention and saluting.            "At ease, son.  And be so kind as to inform me of this situation."            In the thick grass were several large dark stains where people had died violent deaths.  The bodies were gone but the visual evidence was ample to the trained eyed to conclude no one had survived the attack.  A quick sweep of the ground suggested to Decimus at least four people were dead.  The litter of several wooden trunks smashed to piece with their contents strewn all over the side, even the ripped out bottoms of the wagons themselves mixed in with the other flotsam, indicated someone must have been in search of something important.            "Night before last the servant of a merchant in Ostia brought word there had been a series of murders . . . a massacre as they described it . . . just outside the port.  I sent two men out on horses to ascertain the truth.  As you can see the information was correct."            He saw Rufus nod his head toward his master and drift off toward the sea to begin his assigned task. Gnaeus, scowling as always, silently moved away in a different direction and began looking at the signs left behind in the dirt and grass.  Decimus nodded, turned, and strode to one particularly large dark stain in the grass and knelt down.  The young centurion behind him followed respectfully yet watched the two servants of the tribune curiously.            "The bodies?"            "In Ostia, sir.  In the morgue of the vigiles' barracks.            "Any survivors?"  he asked as he used an index finger and traced the outline of a particularly large partial print of distinctive shoe sole in the dust of the narrow trail beside the grass.            "None that we know of.  When I arrived I found four bodies.  Two men of rank it would seem and two servants.  And, of course, the scene which greets you now."            "Identification of any of the men?"            "None.  No signet rings.  No personnel scrolls.  Nothing of monetary value left behind."            "Are you sure, centurion, of the veracity of your men?  Are you sure no one in your command decided to claim a small prize of his own?  Say the first two men who came out and discovered this scene?"            He stood up and turned to face the younger man.  A hot flash of anger swept across the centurion's face but quickly subsided.  The officer was of a famous plebian family.  A very famous, and rich, family.  Rarely had anyone doubted his veracity.            But standing before was a tribune with a high sloping forehead with a thin swipe of grayish/blond curly hair covering the upper regions of his cranium.  The man also had this deep, experienced wrinkled face of a man who had seen much in life; like that perhaps of an old soldier.  Certainly the man exhibit a confident, almost arrogant, gate of a soldier.  There was the way the tribune gripped his ivory tipped baton, the symbol of rank for any high ranking Roman officer, which cautioned him.  Not just an ordinary soldier.  But someone who was used to command.            A man not to be trifled with.            Frowning, he turned and barked loudly two names.            From the huddled group vigiles two men stepped forward and came to attention in front of the centurion.  Decimus, eying the two freedmen, slapped hands behind his back, stepped up very close to the men and began inspecting them closely as circled them.  Glancing down into the dust of the wagon ruts he noticed the prints of their sandals they had just imprinted into the dirt.            "You," he said, using the long wooden baton of authority he gripped in one hand and slapped the man forcefully on the man's biceps. "Your name."            "Gallus, sir."            "You and this man beside you discovered the bodies last night when you road out from Ostia?"            "Yes sir."            Decimus nodded, hands gripping the baton behind his back, head down and staring at the ground thoughtfully as he walked slowly around the two men and stopped directly in front of the man who called himself Gallus.            "Centurion, what is the punishment for a vigilii who is convicted of thievery?"            The rough looking plank of an ex-slave visibly paled.  As did the man standing beside him.  Decimus eyed the tribune but returned his attention back to the two standing in front of him.            "Ten lashes with the whip, sir.  And garnishment of one month's of wages.  Of course, if the theft is large enough, perhaps he might become a contestant at the next set of gladiatorial games."            Beside the white faced Gallus groaned softly and his knees almost buckled.  The centurion, angry, exploded in rage.
            "By the gods, Gallus.  You filthy liar.  I'll personally peel the flesh off your back with a cat'o nine tails if you don't confess to your crimes now.  Do you understand me!"            "Sir!  I . . . we . . . it was just a little thing!  Nothing expensive . . . really."            Decimus turned his head and watched the forever scowling Gnaeus trotting up toward him carrying something white and thin between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.  The tribune nodded and smiled grimly.  Extending a hand, palm up, toward his servant.  The bushy haired smaller man gently deposited the grim piece of evidence onto the tribune's hand            The centurion's eyes, watching closely, did not see what was deposited into the older officer's hand. But he felt relatively certain it was something which would not go well for the undersized oaf named Gallus.            "Let me paint you a picture of what happened last night, soldier.  Interrupt me whenever I stray from the truth."            The young centurion strode up to stand by the balding yet dominating force of Decimus Julius Virilis and turned crimson faced in rage when his eyes fell upon the severed ring finger.  Slapping the small baton all centurions gripped angrily against the side of his bare leg he turned and gave his man a dark, murderous look.            Decimus, snarling back a dangerous smirk, zeroed his eyes on the man in front of him and continued talking.            "You and your companion arrived last night just as it began to lightly rain.  You found this site as it appears today.  You found four dead bodies, clothes and furniture scattered all over the field, along with the two small wagons completely dismantled and strewn about.  There was no gold.  No jewelry.  Nothing.  Except for one small item . . . "            Lifting the severed finger in his palm he delicately put it directly under the ex-slaves flaring nostrils and continued.            "You found a rather large fat man with a small signet ring on a finger.  A ring which would not come off because the man's fingers were swollen.  No no . . . don't deny it.  It was a signet ring.  In fact I suspect it was a signet key ring.  A key that was supposed to open a small jewelry box or some other small wooden chest.  See the circular discoloration on the flesh?  Yes?  Clear evidence the man wore a ring.  Now look closely at the finger.  It is a man's middle finger.  The finger a man of some importance would decorate with a signet key ring.  So tell me, Gallus.  Did you find the wooden box the ring you removed from the dead hand of Spurius Lavinius last night?"            "I . . . uh . . . we found what . . . what was left of the box, tribune."            "We . . . !" exploded the man standing beside him, wheeling around and stepping away from his comrade.  "I told you not to cut off that finger.  It was a trifling ring! It wasn't worth a penny!"            "Silence!"            The centurion, baton in hand, backhanded the man across the face viciously.  The man staggered to one side, holding his face with one hand, but came back to full attention.  Glaring at the man for one second the young officer thought about clubbing the man again. But he contained his anger and turned to face the tribune.            "My sincerest, most humble, apologies sir.  I assure you when these two return to their barracks they will be severely dealt with."            Decimus shook his head negatively and placed a hand on the officer's arm.            "Severity in punishment will not correct evils committed, centurion.  Discipline them you must.  Preferably in front of their comrades for all to take note for those who cannot restrain themselves from petty theft.  But measure the punishment to the quality of the crime.  Otherwise you will generate more animosity than compliance among your men.            Besides, I believe this man.   I suspect they did indeed find the small jewelry box already destroyed and its contents missing when they arrived."            Turning back to the ex-slave the balding, darkly tanned tribune lifted a hand up and told the man to give him the ring.  The man fumbled the ring out of a small leather pouch and dropped it into Decimus' hand.            "Sir, if I may ask a question?"            Decimus smiled, turning from the two ex-slaves and motioned them to leave at the same time.            "You're wondering how I knew so quickly this nasty little deed had taken place last night.  Yes?"            "Sir!" the centurion nodded, surprised, and wondering if the older officer could read his mind. "I mean . . . how?"            Decimus half turned toward the young officer and smiled fatherly as he lifted a finger up and motioned him to follow his actions.  Kneeling in front of the stain on the grass beside the dust of the wagon trail he waited for the centurion to kneel beside him and then he pointed toward a set of tracks in the recently dried soil.            "There are two different set of foot prints.  Here and here," he said pointing to one and then the other.  "Look closely.  The vigilies and the urban cohorts issue to their men the exact types of sandals as the army does for their men. They have a distinctive pattern on the soles of the leather.  Notice one set is that of someone wearing such footwear and the other isn't?"            Once pointed out it was obvious for anyone to see plainly written in the soil.  With the addition of the military soled sandal extruding from underneath it mud.  As if Gallus had knelt in the rain to do his dastardly deed.            "Precisely," Decimus nodded, smiling with quiet pleasure at seeing the younger officer see the evidence without the need to point it out to him. "A slight rain producing just enough mud to generate such a track.  But not so the other.  Meaning?"            "The murderer must have committed his dead prior to the rain last night.  The rain began just a little after midnight.  So . . . that means the massacre mush have taken place sometime before."            "Very good," the older man said, coming to his feet and smiling. "Remember this small lesson, young man.  Every living creature uses their gift of sight to see world around us.  Our eyes gives us this wondrous sense of vision.  We see . . . but very few of us observe.  For an officer such as yourself the difference between seeing and observing could be all the difference in the world in keeping you and your men alive."            "But . . . but how did you know in the beginning the dead man would have a signet key ring?  And this blood stain?  How did you know this was the precise stain to look at and not the other three?"            Decimus laughed casually and glanced at Gnaeus who had come up to stand beside him.  The scowl on servant's face softened a bit but did not go away as he eyed the young centurion.            "As to the knowledge of the key ring I confess I came owning such knowledge already.  I've been asked to look into this case and to bring it to a swift conclusion.  I was informed the patrician involved was carrying a small black wooden box engraved in ivory with a set of papers in it that were important.  Important to several groups of people.  That box and those papers my task is to find and obtain as well as to bring to justice those who killed Spurius Lavinius and his men.            As to knowing to look at this stain and not the others?  I confess. I guessed. Over the years I have observed men in powerful positions and how they reacted in a number of extreme situations.  Experience, in other words, centurion.  Drawing on my experience in similar situations led me to believe a man of Spurius' position would have placed him in the lead wagon.  He would be the first to step down form the wagon if confronted by ruffians.  I knew the man, centurion.  I knew how arrogant and supremely confident he was toward those he considered his inferiors.  I'm sure Spurius thought he could bluster his way through this confrontation and continue on with his journey.  Unfortunately he sorely misread the situation and paid for it dearly."            "Spurius Livinus?" the young centurion repeated, frowning and looking confused.  "I don't recall hearing this name before.  Who was he?"            "An old, old, old villain my boy.  Very old . . . and very dangerous,"  Decimus answered softly.             "Yet it appears, tribune,  someone even older and more dangerous found your man first. I assume this may be the opening gambit for a far more complex crime wave to come?"            Decimus Julius Virlis glanced at the young centurion and frowned.              Indeed so, my boy.  Indeed so.

                   

Sometimes it just doesn't work

The other day I wrote a Smitty short story.  A short short story.  Numbering not much more than 580 words.  What I was trying to do was create a mood.  Create a mood and a distinct mental image that would linger in a reader's imagination for some length of time.  All in as few of words as possible.  I think I succeeded.  Apparently I'm the only one who thinks so.

Smitty, as you may or may not know, is a character I created who basically become the counter balance to my Turner Hahn/Frank Morales characters.  Turner and Frank are the good guys.  Two homicide detectives who try to follow the rules a civilized society dictates to its police force in how to handle and solve violent crimes.  Smitty is just the opposite.  Smitty is a hit man.  And the rules he follows are his own.  Neither civilization nor society have little to say in the matter.

What makes Smitty interesting . . . . well. interesting to me at least . . . is this; how do you make a dark character who is decidedly anti-social an interesting, and . . . dare we say it? . . . . a believable character who can actually generate some sympathy and affection from the reading audience?

You must admit.  An interesting conundrum.

Well, anyway.  Here's the short short story entitled, Sammy.  Read it and tell me what you think.


Sammy

            She was sixteen.  Sixteen and in tears.  Long black hair, as black as a murder of crows, fell well past her shoulders. Her hair reflecting brightly the few shards of sunlight piercing through the fall foliage of the park's old trees.  Just a child.  Thin. Almost anemic. Without feminine form yet.  Yet the orb of her face was young and flawless in complexion.  Promising soon a beautifully exotic flower about to bloom.            He sat down on the park bench, and, with one gloved hand stretching out, deposited a worn, tattered, but much loved old teddy bear onto her lap.  Startled, wiping a floodgate of streaming tears from her eyes, she stared at the scruffy looking child's toy in silence before turning to look at the man sitting beside her.            The chill of the morning air promised a hard winter.  The riot of colors of the deep Fall foliage a visual feast to behold.  The small park setting in the middle of a small city almost empty of human presence this early in the morning.            "This . . . this is Sammy.  My toy," she whispered softly.  Almost inaudibly.            "I know," the man with the dark eyes and the gloved hands of a concert pianist replied with a similar soft whisper.            "I kept it at Dad's house.  The last time I saw Dad it was sitting on the dresser in my bedroom. But that's been five, six years ago.  How did you get it?"            "He asked me to give it to.  I promised him I would."            "You knew my Dad?"            "We were friends.  At least, I considered him my friend."            "Someone broke into Dad's house last week and killed him," she whispered, eyes flooding with tears and streaking down her cheeks as she watched the dark man stand up and step in front of her.  "Do you know who killed my father?"            Above her, hidden deep in the bowels of the canopy of a grand old birch tree, a robin began chirping.  Behind him a squirrel leapt from a tree and began running madly across an open stretch of grass toward another tree.  Paralleling the park the city street had a heavy flow of cars and trucks rumbling slowly in queue from one traffic light to another.  Yet in the distance they both heard the sudden, startling, extremely loud squeal of tires screeching across hard cement.  A half second later a moving mass of steel and glass traveling at a high rate of speed smashed into an immovable object of immense weight.  The resulting crash generated an unbelievable explosion of noise and destruction.            The infinitely black eyes of the man glanced toward the direction from where the sound of a horrible accident had just occurred.  But then the dark orbs turned back to face the young girl in front of him.            "You asked if I knew the man you killed your father.  Yes, I used to.  But he's no longer anyone's problem.  Go home, Cindy.  Go back to your mother.  She needs you.  Like you, she never lost her love for your father.  She suffers as much as you.  Go home.  The two of you put this behind you.  Make yourselves a new life.  It's all over now.  All over."            He turned and walked away, gloved hands in the pockets of the heavy blue coat he was wearing.  Just walked away.  Leaving her clutching to her heart with both hands the tattered, raggedy old form of an ancient teddy bear, with memories of her laughing father clouding her vision.

When do characters/series you love start to become irritating?

Original coverRight up front; a statement of fact.  I love reading the Jack Reacher novels.  They are superb reads covering the trials and tribulations of a man who is, by any definition, of mythic proportions.  Reacher is six-feet-five in height, weighs in around 220 pounds, with fists as hard as sledge hammers.  He's like a search and destroy weapon when he latches onto a problem.  He never backs off.  He never gives up. He as tenacious at solving a problem as a pack of wolves are as tenacious tracking down their next meal.

He's an ex-Army major out of the Military Police.  More or less forced into retirement, he now roams the country like a bum.  He usually owns no mode of transportation, lives in very cheap motels, occasionally works menial jobs so he can make enough bucks to buy a bus ticket to move on to the next city or state.  And wherever he lands, he always, always, always gets his ass into trouble apparently only he can dig his way out of in his own fashion.

Like I said, the guy is of mythic proportions.  And maybe . . . just maybe . . . that's getting to be a problem.

It's hard to identify with a myth if he wins . . . all the time.  Hard to identify with a myth if he is far superior in his skill sets to any and all enemies he faces.  Sure, all of us want to be invincible.  All of us ultimately identify with some entity that seems to posses all the qualities we do not have.  We are human.  Meaning  we sometimes win a few battles, but usually we lose the vast majority of our little ruckuses and ultimately learn how to move on and live our lives out in average mediocrity.

Think about it.

Sit back and think of all the books you've read, all the characters you've stumbled over and discovered; all the adventures you've had while buried deep in the bowels of a good book.  Now ask yourself  . . . did any of these hero-types have any frailties, any weaknesses, which limited their ability to triumph in their struggles?  Did any of them get into a sticky-wicket and wind up losing.  Even though they were the 'good' guys?  I suspect the answer is NO. Probably not.

Jack rarely does.  And when he thinks he's wrong, it winds up he really wasn't.  And then he has his quirks, his little peccadilloes, which irritate the crap outta me.  He blue-collar through and through even though he comes from a professional military family (father) and a rather European-elite intellectual society (mother).  There's really nothing blue-collar.  Yet . . . he prefers shopping in the nearest local Goodwill or Wal-Mart store for just about everything.

And then he's got this almost psychotic shtick about not being tied down owning any possessions.  So he doesn't own a house.  He doesn't own a car.  He shies away from modern electronic devices.  He never stays in one spot for more than a couple of months at a time.  He constantly is moving on.

Okay, I know this sounds like I'm complaining loudly about someone I don't like.  In fact, it's just he opposite.  If Lee Child (author) writes a Jack Reacher novel, I'm buying it and keeping it in my library as a treasured memento.  I haven't collected all of the Reacher novels yet ('cause . . . you know.  I'm a writer myself in the classic sense.  I'm piss poor).  But I'm making headway.  Eventually . . .

Nevertheless.  At some point in time I suspect this mythic-hero hubris is going to start to wear a little thin on me.  Fortunately, that doesn't look like it's gonna happen until we're to book 100 or more in the series (we've got about 89 books to go yet).

Problems with Stubborness

Screw it.  I was going to write today's blog about the Problem with Prologues.  But . . . in reality, that's not the problem that's bugging me. It's a symptom.  But not the source.  Here's the real issure yanking my chain.

I've got a character by the name of Roland of the High Crags.  He's a warrior-monk who happens to be a wizard.  He's the typical heroic character usually found in most epic fantasy novels. He's loyal, brave, incredibly daring, with a sense of humor. But more than that . . . In my opinion the guy has a far, far more complex character to him.  He's got strengths and he's got his weaknesses. And it is his one major weakness, which is his sudden plunge into blinding rage against those who would do evil things, which makes him interesting. And he faces characters, both good and bad, who are just as complex as he is.

The problem is this;  I created this fantasy character to write a series . . . a long series . . . featuring him and a few of the characters he meets in his adventures.  I wanted to create a fantasy series that ultimate postulates the idea that Magic is just another name for Science.  Writing the first book of the series I fell into wonderful quandary of thinking about Time travel, Multiple Universes, and possibly meeting one's self from out of the distant Past and the far Future.

In short, one hell of a kick-ass fantasy series.  Or . . . at least I think so.

But no one has read the first novel of the series (Roland of the High Crags: Evil Arises.  See the right hand column of this page and find the book).  So how do you write a series when no one reads it?  How do you continue to write a series and generate ZERO INTEREST from any lit agent or book publisher who works in this genre?  Why not just move on . . . forget Roland and his adventures . . . and go on to something else.

That's the rub.  The conundrum.  The kink in the grand scheme of things.  I'm just too damn stubborn to set Roland aside.   Roland deserves an audience (hell . . . for that matter, ALL the characters I've come with need to find an audience of their own!)  Yeah, I know . . . I know.  There are all kinds of reasons on why Roland has not taken off.  One of them being that perhaps . . . just perhaps . . . the writing is atrocious and the writer himself is a talentless hack.

But, I read this stuff.  Regularly.  I know what's in the market these days.  I can live with the charge of being a talentless hack.  Sort of . . . 

So, for your entertainment, I thought I'd share the open few pages of the prologue from book two of the series.  Book two is called, Roland of the High Crags: Treacherous Brethren.

Enjoy.




Prologue
Know your enemy, my son.  Respect his skill; admire his cunning.                 For the Dragon was built                                 For War.                                                                 - From the Book of St. Albans-           
                                                                                               


                                                            In the Beginning . . . . .
            They hung in the clear blue winter’s sky like two glistening jewels.  Two dragons.  One a Winged Beastie, her giant bat-wings stretched out to the fullest, riding the thermal drafts of the rugged forest hills like some dreaded Dark Lord.  Her wingspan was a good fifty feet.  Her body, a charcoal gray color, with its long serpentine neck and equally long horned tail delicately balancing her in her flight, sat in the sky as if she was a natural part of it.  She was a fire-breather.  An old warrior.  Supremely confident and master of the skies.            Her rider, strapped in the heavy saddle just in front of the Beastie’s forward shoulders, had wrapped himself in a heavy cloak to keep the biting cold at bay.  The air was frigid cold.  Winter’s harsh grip had taken hold of the land and would not let go for another six months. Snuggled close to his body was the heavy looking crossbow so favored by King Dragons.  A weapon of immense power and range and very deadly in the hands of a marksman.  And something else was held close to him underneath the cloak.  Something important.  So important it required him to keep his crossbow strung and notched.            Two dragons riding the empty winds in maleficent grandeur.  Terrible to behold.            Harbingers of Destiny.            And I?              Once a Bretan warrior-monk and accomplished wizard, now condemned and hunted by my brothers and all humanity, I rode in the saddle of my fierce Cedric high above and behind the unsuspecting Dragons.  Cedric was a Huygens-bred Great Wing.  A beast much resembling the smaller, but equally dangerous, Ferril Hawks which populates the forests and mountains of the High Kanris.  But bigger, much bigger, and far more deadly.  A powerful bird.  Capable of carrying me and my weapons of war high into the skies to hunt Winged Beasties and their masters.            Friend.              Confidant.              Ally.              This was my Cedric. One does not own a Great Wing.  Neither bird nor man is the other’s master.  To fight the ravages of the Dragon,  man and bird must unite in a common cause.  They must blend into a well honed weapon with one partner knowing what the other will do in the heat of battle even before the other knows himself.  Cedric and I had fought the dragon for decades.  We knew each other’s soul as if it was our own.            Neither of us could believe a Winged Beastie and King Dragon rode the cold blue skies of the Northern Hill Country.  Yet there they were.  Both radiating from their souls a sense of boredom and being lost at the same time.  I sensed their half-hearted attempts to search the forests below for something they expected to find.  They were on a mission.  They were lost yet they were near to where they should be.  Given time they would find what they sought. They would deliver the dispatches the dragon clansman clutched beneath his cloak tightly to his chest.
            It was not that we were surprised in finding dragons.  Dragon clans possessed baronies in the North Country.  The Malawei, the Bruinii, and not too far in the west, along with the Marouth.  Malawei and Bruinii were near.  Small clans hardly large enough to keep the lands they had carved out of the enclaves of human kingdoms surrounding them as their own. Yet they too would have been an oddity to have one of its fabled fire-breathers riding alone in the clear skies here and now.            But this clansman was neither Malawei nor Bruinii.  This clansman dressed in red and trimmed in black was Hartooth.  The First Clan.  A warrior of the fabled clan who first rose out of the swamps of the Far South.  A warrior far from home.  Far from the skies and forests he would be familiar with.  A creature who was decidedly out of his environment. Yet more importantly these Dragons were enemies.  The rider was a warrior of a legendary clan.  Legendary in their intense hatred for all of things human.  Wherever a Hartooth appeared, so too appeared death and destruction.  He was, for me as an outcast Bretan warrior-monk or not,  my sworn enemy.            There was but one option for my feathered comrade and I to take.  We had to destroy the Hartooth courier and his fire-breathing companion.  We had to find out why a warrior of his clan was so far north.  It was imperative we snatch from his dead or dying body the messages he held so close to him and ascertain the real threat he represented.            Reaching for my bow I quickly pulled it from its leather pouch strapped to my saddle and strung it.  Notching arrow to the string I said nothing, made no movement to signal my comrade, nor had to.  We were a team.  A well oiled machine.  The moment his sharp sense of hearing heard me string the bow he waited long enough for me to notch arrow to the string.  And then, in the blinking of an eye, he folded his wide but powerful wings and threw his beaked head down.  We, like a massive stone, dropped from out of the skies in a steep dive.  The cold winter air flew past my face at an incredible speed.  I felt my face grow numb and the sense of touch in my hands begin to disappear.  But this did no matter. Our enemies were rapidly approaching and our goals were simple.  Destroy both dragons and allow neither to escape.            When it appeared we were about to crash into Dragon and fire-breather I sat up in my saddle, lifted the bow and pulled the string back to my ear before releasing the arrow.  It was a swift, sure, and practiced move.  One I had done a thousand times or more in my life.  The arrow flew from the bow straight and true.  It hit in the middle of the unsuspecting warrior’s back with such force it threw the warrior forward and actually penned the creature into the neck of his comrade.  The fire-breather lifted its head and screeched in pain as it started to turn and look behind and above him.            Too late!  The Winged Beastie had no chance to dart away.  With talons extended my giant comrade and I slammed into the fire-breather’s neck with a horrendous jolt.  The collision almost ripped me out of the stout leather straps holding me into my saddle.  Cedric’s talons gripped the Beastie’s neck into a death grip and we, dragons and all, began plummeting to earth in a spiraling Dance of Death.            The fire-breather tried to twist out of my Great Wing’s grip.  A stream of blue-white flame roared from the Beastie’s mouth as it tried to turn its head and engulf us in his fiery fury.  The roar of the flame, the heat of the fire, and the smell of burning sulfur almost saved him.  Close came his final blow to I and my faithful comrade.  But Cedric’s grip was too strong.  The Beastie could not turn his head far enough to hit to dislodge his tormentors.            Onward we plummeted to the ground below.  I felt the life draining from the fire-breather and from the Hartooth.  And then, only few hundred feet above the snow covered forest below us, the fire-breather expired and Cedric released his grip and twisted away at the same time.  Hartooth rider and his Beastie crashed into the a small clearing with a thunderous finality.  A dark cloud of snow and soil was thrown up into the air and momentarily hid our enemies from view.  But we circled and waited, bow notched again with arrow, and both of us anticipating anything from below.  But there was no need.   The cloud of snow gently blew away.  Below us our prey lay in a jumbled heap of broken bones and splayed limbs.            Cedric landed in the clearing some distance away from our fallen quarry and in a position which, if the fire-breather was still alive and wished to again use his hot breath against us, would be difficult for him to do so.  I leapt from my saddle after unstringing bow and replacing it in its quiver.  From my side I withdrew the curved blade of a Dragon scimitar and gripped it firmly as I approached the mass of flesh before me.  No life force could be felt within the stilled heart of the fire-breather.  But the Hartooth clansman was, for the moment, alive.  His life force was draining from his soul rapidly.  He had only moments left in this world before journeying over into the Netherworld.   He, still strapped to his saddle, had been ripped away from his companion and lay to one side of the dead Beastie.  As I stepped around the dying creature to face him I heard the clansman snort out of rattling chuckle of amusement as our eyes met for the first time.            “Ah! I travel to the Dark World thanks to the deadly aim of a Bretan priest.  So be it.  I go honorably.  As it should be.  We were destined to meet, human. Our destinies were set long ago.  My life ends and yours continues on for a little time more.”            He coughed, blood trickling down his lips.  From out of his chest the shaft of my arrow was visible.  He held one hand to his chest and coughed again.  And again chuckled in amusement.            “Destiny, our destines, human, are set in stone.  It is the destiny of the Hartooth to rid this planet of all your kind.   It is the destiny of all of your kind to accept your extinction.”            I nodded, frowning.            “What if I do not believe in destiny, warrior?  What then?”            “Ha!  Believe or not!  It does not matter.”            He tried to laugh but had no strength as his life force deserted his physical form.            Using the tip of my sword I reached forward and slid part of his red cloak to one side.  Lifting the heavy leather courier’s satchel from his body I cut the straps holding it to him. Picking the satchel up with the tip of my blade I stepped away from the dead and moved back to a position close to my comrade.  A quick perusal of the dispatches  made me frown even more.  The Hartooth were coming.  And they were coming in force.            Destiny.  Our destines  sat long ago.  Set in stone forever and incapable of changing.Did I believe that?  Was it true?  Was it the destiny of mankind to be eradicated from this world by the Hartooth?  Was it meaningless to resist?            Destiny.