Joseph Duncan's Blog, page 2

Sin Eaters, A Poem

Sin Eaters

fat
bloated and fat
take the food off their plates
and then lick the plate

a blueberry tick in a dog's floppy ear
pluck you out
stomp you if I could
pierce with a needle
and watch the blood spew

like a leech
clinging quiveringly to flesh
like a remora
cleaning a shark's toothy grin

like a virus
like a spider
like a fungus
like a flea

you take
what you have not earned
and give nothing
absolutely nothing
in return

Apollonius Now Available for Kindle

My new short novel, Apollonius, is now available for download for the Amazon Kindle. Other ereader versions to follow shortly. Follow the yellow brick link to get your copy, and be sure to leave a review if you enjoyed it.

http://www.amazon.com/Apollonius-Oldest-Living-Vampire-ebook/dp/B00FAA1E1O/ref=la_B00457T8UM_1_20_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379568112&sr=1-20

This one was supposed to be about the same length as Nyal's Story, but ended up growing into a short novel. The characters of Apollonius and Julia have always been a part of the Oldest Living Vampire Saga in my mind, although they have only been mentioned in passing a couple times (Volume II and III). I've had this whole story floating around in my brain for a year or two now, and it feels good to finally have it out there. Queen Amar, mentioned in passing in this story, may also get her own one shot later down the line. With the Oldest Living Vampire, there's an infinite number of stories possible.

Apollonius, The First Chapter-- Coming Soon!

The ship was named the Palinouros. It departed the city of Thessaloniki, in Greece, and made its way slowly across the Mediterranean. It was January, but the weather was mild, almost warm, and the sea was like a broad blue plate, flat and very calm. The Palinouros, a low-slung shipping vessel, threaded its way through the Dodecanese, the Twelve Islands, gliding past Mikonos and Naxos, Kos and Rhodes, before pulling into dock in Pigadia, the main town and port of the island of Karpathos.There, the crew of the Palinouros began to unload the crates they had been hired to transport into a large flatbed truck. The truck had been waiting for them at dock. All told, there were fourteen crates to unload, the largest of which was about the size of a coffin. They were all marked  εύθραυστο, which was “fragile” in Greek. The word “fragile” was printed in several different languages on each of the boxes. The crates had traveled a very long way.When the crates had been transferred to the truck, the driver, an older gentleman with a large bald head, waved to the sailors, who were heading off in search of a tavern. He took a moment to mop the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief—it was really very warm for January-- then strapped the boxes down so they didn’t slide off the back of the truck. His son helped him tighten the straps, then hopped into the passenger seat. His father slid in behind the wheel, thinking of how much he’d like to go and have a beer with the crewmen of the Palinouros. “After we drop these crates off, maybe,” he said to his son with a smile, and then he slammed the door and pulled his seatbelt across his chest.The boy, who had no idea what his father was talking about, but who was used to the old man finishing his thoughts out loud, just squinted an eye at his baba and went back to playing Angry Birds on his cell phone.The old man keyed the ignition and the truck started with a roar. He drove away from the docks and headed south.The old man didn’t need to consult a map or even his shipping manifest. He had lived on the island of Karpathos all his life. Its winding roads and rugged hills, houses and beaches and shops, were as ingrained in his memory as his wife’s face, with whom he’d been married thirty-two years. This was the third such delivery he’d made to the Villa Carpathia.He drove up into the hills, one sunburned arm cocked out his window, passing olive orchards and rocky, uncultivated fields. He hummed as he drove. There weren’t many homes on the south side of the island, and once he was away from Pigadia he had the whole road to himself. Karpathos hosted just 6,200 souls. That number more than doubled in the summer months, as Karpathian expatriots and tourists came to the island to vacation, but in winter the island was all but deserted, and that was exactly how he liked it. He’d never been much for crowds, and couldn’t be dragged out of his house the entire month of August, when folk flocked in from all over the world to enjoy the Panagias, the island’s most famous religious festival.A couple kilometers past Lamiotissa, a shrine to the Virgin Mary, he turned off the main road and headed up a winding private drive. There, at the top of the hill, was the Villa Carpathia, home of the island’s most mysterious residents, the Nikas family.It was a large, beautiful, white home with a red tiled roof and a colonnaded entrance. The house sat on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea, surrounded by several terraced gardens and a ten foot high security fence. The terraced gardens extended over 800 square meters and hosted an eclectic mix of Mediterranean plants: lemon trees, figs, dates, crape myrtles, bay laurel, and cypresses. The security fence ran the entire length of the property and hosted over two dozen surveillance cameras. He knew. He had counted them.The old man pulled up to the front gates and stretched his arm out to press the call button. After a few minutes, the call box emitted an insectile buzz and a crackling voice inquired, “Yes?”“Got another delivery for Paulo Nikas,” he said, looking into the security camera mounted above the call box.The security camera moved with a humming sound to inspect the crates on the back of his truck, then returned to his face.“All right,” the box crackled. An instant later, the gates glided smoothly inwards.Just as she had the last time, and the time he came before that, an old crone shuffled out to greet them. She was eighty if she was a day old, with a hunched back and skinny, bird-like limbs. Her features were bird-like as well: eyes small and dark, a big beak of a nose.“More packages?” she cawed as he climbed down from the truck.“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He consulted his manifest, though he did not really need to, and said, “Fourteen crates. All shipped here from Liege, Belgium.”The old woman seemed exasperated, and waved vaguely toward the inner courtyard. “Put them where you left the last ones.”It took the old man and his son nearly half an hour to unload the fourteen crates and roll them on a dolly into the piazza. The old woman stood in the scant shade of a small olive tree and watched them suspiciously, her bony arms crossed in front of her breasts. When they were finished, the old man mopped the sweat from his brow. He was out of breath and a bulging vein in his temple looked like it might spring a leak at any moment. When his face was not quite so red, he had the old woman sign his clipboard, gave her a copy of the receipt, and bid her have a good evening.“You, too,” the old woman said. She folded the receipt and stuffed it into the pocket of her apron as she accompanied the men to the driveway. She waved to the deliveryman, sparing him one faint smile of acknowledgement, then watched the man and his son until the truck had vanished over the hill. The truck appeared once more at the foot of the cliff, small with distance. It glided past the front gates and receded steadily down the driveway. When it was finally out of sight, the old woman returned to the crates they had delivered, made a sniffing sound, then shuffled inside to close the gates.The old woman’s name was Leonora Nassa, and she was actually ninety-two years old. She had lived on the island all of her life, and had served the Nikas family for fifty of those years. Once she had made certain the gates were shut and her employer’s home was secure, she shuffled back to the kitchen to finish polishing the silver. That’s what she was doing when the deliverymen buzzed at the gates. She did this work contentedly, humming along with the radio. The quiet pop music, along with the clinking of the silver, were the only sounds in the house.She finished polishing the silver, did some light dusting and vacuumed the sitting room. At five o’clock, she returned to the kitchen, took a large stainless steel pot out of the refrigerator and carried it to the stove. The pot was heavy and sloshed thickly as she carried it. Soon, she knew, she would be too old to manage this trivial chore, but there was not a doubt in her mind that the family she had served more than half her life would look after her when she became too frail to work. After fifty years of employment, she was more a member of the family than she was a servant.She set the pot to simmer, then put another pot on the stove beside it—fassolatha, left over from the day before, a hearty white bean soup. It was about all she could eat anymore. Her digestion had gotten so fussy of late.She ate the fassolatha at the small table in the kitchen, paying no attention to the coppery smell that arose from the larger pot. Once, that sickly-sweet smell had nauseated her, but she hardly noticed it anymore. When she was finished eating, she washed her bowl and utensil and put them in the drainer to dry, then took a large ladle and stirred the “soup” simmering on the stove. She didn’t taste the other “soup”, didn’t even really like to look at it, and turned her face away when she rinsed the ladle in the sink.She put the lid back on the pot and looked out the window. The shadows of the cypresses in the east yard had grown long and attenuated while she was eating. It would be dark soon. The sky was already deepening, assuming a richer shade of blue.She went to the table, sat and opened the book she was currently reading. It was a gothic romance, so trashy she was embarrassed to be caught reading it, but everyone had their vices. Her husband’s, God rest his soul, had been loose women. Hers was trashy romances.It wasn’t long before there was movement in the great villa. Leonora heard footsteps, the creaking of a door. She hid her book in her purse and pushed herself up from her seat, wincing at the pain in her joints. She was taking a soup cup down from the cabinet when Ezra, her daughter, shuffled into the kitchen.“Mother,” Ezra said in a groggy voice. Ezra was always the first of the family to rise. Sometimes she rose before the sun had even touched the sea.“Hello, sweetheart,” Leonora responded. “Did you sleep well today?”Ezra smiled. Her small, delicate fangs showed when she smiled. She was a petite girl, not twenty years old when Leonora’s employer, Paulo Nikas, gave her the living blood. He had done it at Leonora’s request. She hadn’t been a widow two years—her husband, a fisherman, had drowned that year at sea—when her daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. He had done it to save Ezra’s life. Ezra was really sixty-three years old, but would forever have the form of a seventeen-year-old maid.“Yes,” Ezra replied, quick excitement in her eyes. “I even dreamed today! I don’t dream often, but I did today!”“What did you dream?” Leonora asked.“Oh, that I was a living girl again,” Ezra said wistfully, running her fingers through her long, raven hair. “I was on a beach and it was night and a handsome young boy was chasing me! I ran, of course, as a proper girl should do, but I wanted him to catch me, and when he did, he laid me down on the warm, wet sand and made passionate love to me.”Ezra, like her mother, had a penchant for romance.“My goodness!” Leonora exclaimed. “What would the neighbors think?”“Oh, mother!” Ezra laughed. “I’ve seen those books you hide in your purse!”“Are you hungry?” Leonora asked, quickly changing the subject.“Yes!”Leonora took the lid off the big pot and ladled some soup in the mug. It was thick and red. Adamos Gonce, a local fellow in their employ, collected it at the slaughterhouse, delivered it three times a week, for which he was extravagantly compensated. On an island with just 6,000 inhabitants, vampires must be very conservative. The family only fed on humans a few times a year, and only during the summer when the island was thronged with foreign tourists, and then only if they were evildoers. No harm would ever come to the innocent citizens of Karpathos. Not from the Nikas family!Ezra brought the mug of warm pig’s blood to her lips and drank thirstily, her eyes rolling back in her head. “Oh, that’s good!” she sighed. She licked her lips as Leonora looked on adoringly.Paulo had offered Leonora the living blood as well. He’d offered to make her a strigoi several times in the past four decades, but Leonora had always refused. It was a tempting proposal—of course it was!—but despite her husband’s many failings, she had loved the man dearly and wanted to rejoin him in heaven. He was such a wonderful lover! That had been his only failing, really. He’d had too much love for just one woman! In the end, the idea of delaying their reunion had outweighed her fear of death. And if she were made into an Eternal, like her darling Ezra, she would live forever—be separated from her Bartholomaios for all time! Better to suffer the sting of death than be apart from Bartholomaios forever!One by one, the rest of the occupants of Villa Carpathia arose from their beds. Though Leonora didn’t really notice it anymore, the house was permeated with the smell of pig blood, and they came to drink like butterflies to nectar. Next up was Steve Jackson, an American blood drinker who had come for the island festival a decade ago, not knowing the Nikas family resided here on Karpathos. He had fallen in love with Acacia, the oldest of them besides Paulo, and stayed on with the family. Acacia, his lover, came next. Beautiful, tall, pale, with curling blond hair that cascaded to the middle of her back, Acacia was nearly a thousand years old. After Acacia came Fatima, Paulo’s wife. Fatima was a Turk. Paulo had rescued her from a vile blood drinker named Baracka some three hundred years ago, during one of the island’s wars with the Ottoman Empire. Fatima had skin like polished walnut, dark almond-shaped eyes and beautiful, long, wavy black hair. After Fatima rose came her son, Sunduk, whom Paulo had transformed at her request. Sunduk was, like Ezra, only seventeen when he was made into a vampire, a soldier in one of the military units occupying the island. He was a short, stocky, brown-skinned young man with close-cropped curly black hair. A lad who loved to eat, he had two cups of Leonora’s “soup”.“Delicious,” he said gratefully, and wandered off into the house. A few minutes later, Leonora heard the television come on in the sitting room. The family had not owned a television until the new “high frame rate” systems came out. Old television sets tended to annoy immortals, who were conscious of each advancing frame. The strigoi could watch these new televisions without going mad with frustration, though she wasn’t really sure that was a good thing or not. As she chatted with Ezra in the kitchen, she heard the blaring horns that announced the beginning of the movie Star Wars. Sunduk was obsessed with science fiction movies.Finally, Paulo rose.The master of the house strode into the kitchen, dressed in white shorts and little else. Paulo was nearly two thousand years old, but had the form and features of an angelic sixteen-year-old boy. He was tall, with a narrow waist and a head full of curly blond hair. In truth, he possessed the chiseled physique of the men who adorned the covers of the novels she so enjoyed, her trashy romances. Of all the men she had met in her life, Paulo was the only man who might have tempted her to be unfaithful to her beloved Bartholomaios, but she was fairly certain her husband would have understood. If she was being completely honest, Bartholomaios might have been tempted himself. You know what they say about sailors!“Good evening, Nora,” Paulo said, grinning at her sleepily. A deep sleeper, he was always the last to rise, and the slowest to come fully awake.“Good evening, Paulo,” she replied. She turned her head as he leaned in to kiss her, his lips cold and soft on her cheek. “Are you hungry?”“Always,” he said. In the kitchen’s fluorescent lighting, his eyes glittered like jewels, pale blue sapphires.Ezra, who was still sitting at the table reading her mother’s trashy novel, said, “I had a dream today, Paulo!”“Did you?” he asked, sitting across from her.As Ezra told him about her dream, Leonora took a bowl down from the cabinet and filled it with warm pig’s blood. She set it before him, placed a spoon and napkin beside it, and waited for him to take  a sip.“It’s good,” he said, his attention divided between the “soup”, Leonora and her daughter. Leonora was relieved. Their “soup” tended to spoil very quickly. It was really only good for two days, three at the most, and then she had to pour it down the drain. Today was the last day for this particular batch. Adamos should deliver more tomorrow.When Ezra had finished telling Paulo about her dream, Leonora said, “Old Vassallo delivered more packages from your maker in Belgium.”Paulo turned in his seat. “More?”Leonora nodded. “I’m afraid so. Fourteen crates this time. One of them is very large.”Paulo laughed softly. “I don’t know what he’s thinking! We’re running out of room for all his memorabilia. We’ll have to start putting it in the vaults if he sends us any more.”Leonora shrugged. She was not overly fond of the ancient creature. There was something about him that set her teeth on edge. Perhaps it was his great age. Paulo’s maker claimed to be 30,000 years old. That was much too old for any living being to be. Not to mention, the ancient vampire’s mementos were cluttering up her house. They were all priceless artifacts, she was sure, but they were also just more things for her to dust, and she had enough things to dust now!“I’ll get Sunduk to help me bring them inside in a little while, then we’ll see what Gon’s sent us this time,” Paulo said, and he returned to his soup.Fatima strode into the kitchen. “Steve and Acacia have gone to walk the beach,” she announced. Fatima was the resident mother hen. She liked to keep Paulo apprised of everyone’s comings and goings.Paulo nodded, told Fatima that Gon had sent them more of his ephemera.“More?” Fatima cried, and Paulo nodded. “What will we do with it all, Paulo? And why is he sending us all of his belongings?”“He said in his letter he’s getting ready to assume a new identity. He’s been Gaspar Valessi for… well, I forget how long. Much too long, certainly. He’s leaving Liege, he said. He plans to travel abroad for a while. He might be going to search for Zenzele. They haven’t been together in a very long time. He probably misses her.”“Yes, but why send us so many of his belongings?” Fatima insisted, frowning. “I tell you, Paulo, I don’t like it. It gives me a terrible foreboding.”“I’m sure he’s just cleaning house. I assure you, what he’s sent us so far… it is nothing. The man is a sentimentalist. He probably has warehouses full of historical artifacts and keepsakes. He isthirty thousand years old!”Fatima, who was very fond of Gon, scowled fretfully. “I think you should go see him,” she said, looking away at the window. It was full dark now, the window a blank black rectangle. “You know he gets depressed when he’s been alone too long. Bring him to the island. He is always cheered by his visits here with us. It’s been almost ten years since he’s vacationed on Karpathos.”Paulo, who hated to leave the house, much less the island, frowned.“Paulo…!”“I’ll think about it,” he said.“If you don’t, I will,” Fatima threatened, and then she turned and stalked out of the kitchen.Paulo sighed and finished his soup. He wiped his mouth with his napkin, then rose and went to his bedchamber to dress. He walked past the kitchen doorway a few minutes later, attired in white linen pants and a loose white button-up shirt. He found Sunduk and asked the fledgling to accompany him to the courtyard. Leonora cleaned the kitchen. She turned off the stove, but left the pot on the burner. The family would drink all through the night, availing themselves of her “soup” whenever they got hungry. She would empty the pot and wash it in the morning when she arose. That was the routine.Normally, she would have retired about then. It was nearly nine o’clock in the evening. But she was curious about the latest artifacts Paulo’s master had shipped to them. She lingered in the kitchen, gossiping with Ezra, while Paulo and Sunduk carried the boxes into the foyer. There would be a mess to clean in there in the morning, she knew. Splinters of wood and packing material to sweep up. She watched through the doorway as Paulo and Sunduk hauled in the last of the wooden crates, the largest one, the one shaped like a coffin.“Is it heavy?” she asked, thinking perhaps it was a statue.Paulo glanced at her. “No. It’s actually very light.” He set it down.Rather than open the big crate, he started on the smaller ones. Ezra and Fatima came to watch. The first out of its crate was what appeared to be some kind of African tribal mask. Paulo took a sheet of paper from the crate it came in and read it aloud to them.“This is a warrior’s mask from the region where Zenzele was born,” he said. “It is from Gon and Zenzele’s visit to Africa in 1842.”Sunduk held the mask over his face, then lowered it with a scowl. “Smells bad.”“I’m not surprised. It is two hundred years old.”Gon had sent them paintings by artists both famous and obscure, a Chinese puzzlebox from the Han Dynasty, a clay tablet from Uruk, statuettes of various gods and goddesses, a pair of ancient sandals Gon claimed had once belonged to Aristotle, a Spartan shield, a Babylonian spear, and a large assortment of smaller nicknacks, jewelry and good luck charms, and even a double-headed phallus made of smooth black polished stone. This, he claimed, had belonged to a powerful queen, who had ruled an empire that predated the earliest known civilizations of the Middle East. “Queen Amar,” Paulo read, holding the Stone Age dildo in his free hand, “was famed for her sexual appetites, and was known to entertain as many as thirty men in a single evening. She asked me once to be her king, but I declined. She died a few months later, poisoned by the palace priests. Their religion is as dead and forgotten as Amar now, and good riddance! I myself destroyed all evidence that they, and their gods, had ever existed.” Paulo grinned up at them, still gripping the phallus. “Never fuck with Gon!” he laughed.“We are going to have to built a new wing if he keeps sending us these things,” Fatima said.“We can open a museum,” Ezra suggested. “Start charging admission!”“Let’s see what’s in the big one,” Sunduk said eagerly, and he pried the lid off with his fingertips. The nails squawked as they came loose. He hefted and tossed the lid to one side.Everyone crowded forward to see what Gon had sent them.“What is that? Some kind of statue?” Sunduk asked.Leonora peered into the crate. Inside, nestled in packing material, was what appeared to be the crude likeness of a young woman. It was made of stone, lying on its back, knees slightly bent, head craned back. Its mouth gaped, frozen in mid-scream, and it seemed to be reaching out with one delicate hand, as if pleading for help. The sculptor, whoever he had been, had made no attempt to replicate hair, or any other minute detail. It was just a gray, lumpy, ugly little statue—one of a young woman writhing in agony.There was a hole in the breast of the artifact, its ragged edges curled slightly outwards, as if her heart had burst from her breast. No, Leonora thought. Not a statue. It was a casting of some sort. The old servant could see through the hole in the chest that the figure was hollow inside, like a porcelain doll.She looked up at Paulo, was about to ask him who had made the casting, or if the casting was of some historically significant figure, and that’s when she saw the horror in his eyes.Not just horror. There was pain there, too. Despair, sadness, love, guilt and anger, all mixed together in his glinting blue eyes.“Julia!” he cried.
To be Continued...

NOS4A2, by Joe Hill: A Book Review

NOS4A2 is the newest novel by author Joe Hill. Mr. Hill, if you have been living under a rock for the past few years, is the son of one of the most well-known authors in the world, Stephen King. The King family has now produced four separate novelists: Stephen, wife Tabitha King, and sons Owen King and Joe Hill. Writing, it seems, runs in the blood.

NOS4A2 refers to the license plate of the haunted vehicle that is featured in the novel, but it is also a clever play on words. NOS4A2. "Nosferatu". Get it?

This is a book about vampires. No big surprise coming from the son of America's resident boogeyman, but these are not your ordinary vampires. The book's main antagonist, Charlie Manx, is a psychic vampire, and his car, a 1938 Wraith, runs on human souls. With the help of a demented Renfield named Bing Partridge, who takes care of the pesky adults in a very grisly, un-Christmasy fashion, these two roam the highways and byways of the United States, abducting children and taking them to "Christmasland", where their souls are drained from their bodies and they become terrible revenants who call their killer Daddy.

Enter Vic McQueen, nicknamed the Brat, a troubled young woman who can travel places on her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike through a chimerical covered bridge called the Shorter Way. Vic's ability is sort of a psychic power, and not dissimilar from Charlie Manx's ability to go to Christmasland via his 1938 Wraith. When she has a fight with her mother after their family is deserted by her father, Vic rides out looking for trouble, and the Shorter Way Bridge (which has helped her find many lost items in the past) delivers her to the residence of Charlie Manx, the Sleighhouse.

Hill's prose in NOS4A2 is clear and descriptive, though at times it can seem a little stilted. I'm not sure if that was the editing, or a product of Hill's relative youthfulness, his craft not quite honed to perfection yet, but it is noticeable in a few passages. However, I was impressed in several places by the way he turned a phrase or used a particularly evocative metaphor.

"...there was something awful about Christmas music when it was nearly summer. It was like a clown in the rain, with his makeup running."

That, to me, set the tone perfectly.

The book is easy to read and keeps your interest, although I do have a couple of gripes with Mr. Hill's work in general. Hill tends to populate his fiction with somewhat unsympathetic characters. There are rarely any "heroes" in his fiction, as even his protagonists have some serious personality flaws that can strain the reader's sympathy for them. Vic McQueen is brave and self-determined and moral, but she is also portrayed as a alcoholic bad mother who has mixed feelings about her son and boyfriend, which, although it makes her a believable character, also makes her slightly unlikeable. I don't think there is a single character in his fiction whom he hasn't snuck up behind as a writer and lifted their skirt so everyone can see their dirty business, and I think it hurts his work a little. NOS4A2 is also about 200 pages too long, a tendency he shares with his father, whose works can (and I believe have) been used to club people to death with.

Overall, Hill is a good writer. I won't say he is a better or worse writer than his father because that is like comparing children. They're both special in their own way. But if you enjoy a good horror story every now and then, you can't go wrong picking up this lengthy novel. Hill has the gift of storytelling, just like his celebrated dad.

Oldest Living Vampire In Love is available!

I finally got this sucker finished. It is available now for the kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Oldest-Living-Vampire-Love-ebook/dp/B008D2ZCOG/ref=sr_1_10?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340223823&sr=1-10

and the Nook:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-oldest-living-vampire-in-love-rod-redux/1111662605?ean=2940014696913

The paperback and ibooks versions are coming soon!

Nyala's Tale: An Unfinished Story

I was going through the files of an old hard drive and discovered this fragment of a story. It takes place in the Oldest Living Vampire world, and features Nyala and Eyya, Gon's wives, long after their husband had been made into an immortal. Maybe I'll finish this one day. What do you think?



Nyala’s TaleByRod Redux1When she was younger and of child-bearing age, the people of her tribe called her Nyala. She lived in the verdant river valley of a piney mountainous region that is now called the Swabian Alps, in a country that would come to be named Germany in some thirty thousand years. In her youth, she had two husbands, one named Gon and the other named Brulde. She also had a subordinate Neanderthal wife named Eyya. They lived contentedly in a dome-shaped hut called a wetus, and their successful group marriage—which was a common way to live in her culture-- produced six beautiful children, three of which she had delivered from her own body. But her child-bearing days were long past. Her youth, like her womb, had wizened with the passing of the seasons, shriveling like a bunyun fruit that had been left too long in the sun. “Nyala”, in the tongue of the River People, meant “a blooming flower”, a name her father gave her when she was born, never considering that someday that flower would go to seed. As age seamed her face, as the unrelenting march of the sun and moon across the sky bleached her blonde hair white and hunched her back, the People took to calling her Nyal, which meant simply “a plant”, but the connotation of the word was a little bit worse. It really meant “a useless old weed”, but that suited her. That suited her just fine. This Paleolithic crone, now named Nyal, was by our standard of measuring time, only 59 years old, but that was ancient in those untamed days. She and her subordinate wife Eyya, a Neanderthal, had been living in the Siede for years, old widow women. The Siede was the communal cave of the elders, where the River People retired to while away their twilight years, performing menial tasks and teaching the young ones the skills they would need to survive while their parents were off hunting and gathering.It was just the two of them now.Brulde was dead, and Gon… Gon had vanished many years before, when they were all still young and had a hut full of babies. Nyal and Eyya subsisted on the generosity of their four strapping sons now, and traded their skills at threadwork and weaving for the rest of the commodities they needed to live.“At least we’re comfortable,” Eyya would say, sitting beside the fire.Comfortable is a matter of opinion, Nyal thought to herself, shifting around irritably on a pile of woven reed mats and old furs. Either her bedding was getting thinner, or her butt was getting bonier!“At least our children still visit us,” Eyya sometimes said also. Well, Den was always busy, chasing after women who were far too young for him, but Hun and Gan and Gavid always brought a portion of their hunting to their mothers’ apartment in the Seide, and Lethe and Breyya visited from time to time to gossip round the fire.Eyya was an incurably optimistic woman. It irritated Nyala to no end.“It’s a miracle that all our children live,” Eyya often observed after their female children had visited. “Vestra has truly blessed us, Nyala.”“Is that right?” Nyal replied tactfully.Vestra was the moon goddess of the Neanderthal people. The River People had no gods—no gods save one. If that is what you wanted to call a “god”, thought Nyal with bitter amusement. But she loved old Eyya, fat and ugly as she’d become, so she smiled and nodded and agreed with her. Nyal wasn’t inclined to be so satisfied, but Eyya’s feelings were easily bruised, and Nyal hated to see that look of shock and hurt flash in her Neanderthal companion’s eyes. It made the old woman feel terribly guilty.“I suppose that’s true, my love,” Nyala said, adjusting a pair of breeches in her lap. She wriggled her bone needle through the tough material and pulled the flaxen thread taut. One of the young men in the tribe, whose wife had no skills at sewing, had promised her a fat haunch of deer meat in return for a new pair of pants. As she sewed, Nyal pretended she did not notice how thin and wrinkled the flesh of her hands had become. When did her hands become an old crone’s crinkled claws? she wondered, turning them this way and that in the flickering firelight.Eyya often smiled like she was doing right this moment, looking at the ceiling with a dreamy expression-- counting all her blessings, Nyal supposed with an exasperated shake of her head. Ancestors love her!She wished her heart could be so simple… so easily satisfied.2Eyya died at the wet end of winter, after slipping in some slushy snow. She had tottered from the cave early one morning, headed for the ditch at the edge of camp where their people went to shit and piss. Nyal told her to wait, told her she would help her walk to the ditch in just a moment, just let her get her shoes on and work the kinks out of her legs and back, but Eyya couldn’t hold her water – she could never hold her water anymore-- so Nyala’s companion ventured out alone. Cursing under her breath, Nyala slipped her wrinkled old crone’s feet into her leather shoes. She pulled on the gut string laces its seams were bound together with to snug them tighter to her feet, then leaned her elbow against an outcrop of stone to lever herself up.She winced at the pain that seized her back. It felt like some devil beast had sank merciless hooked claws into the meat of her and pulled in both directions. When she’d gotten her balance, standing hunched with one hand on the wall, she pushed away and tottered off after her Neanderthal companion.The Siede was divided into living quarters with hanging hides, which were draped or suspended from rickety frames of wood bound together with gut string or braided rope made of plant material. Nyala’s apartment was near the entrance of the cave, which was good for a peepee bunny like Eyya, but not so good for an old arthritic like Nyala. It took her several minutes every morning just to work her swollen joints loose, and on cold moist days, her body howled in agony at the chore. If not for the framash, which she drank regularly, she thought she might wander off into the woods to die, the pain could get so bad.Nyal pushed through the hide dividing her quarters from the rest of the elder commune and began to shuffle her way toward the opening of the cave. Through the gaps in the other hangings, she caught little glimpses of her fellow residents: her fat brother-in-marriage Epp’ha, snoring in his bedding, tiny Herma and her blind husband, the sisters Deb and Neba, smoking merje beside the low licking flames of their fire. She saw nasty old Y’ppham, assaulting the wrinkled remains of his manhood, and averted her eyes with a disgusted snort.Do they never tire of their little toy?Even on the best of days, the Siede smelled of smoke and aged flesh, stale farts and urine-stained bedding.Nyala’s lips thinned as she leaned into the frigid wind that was whistling through the outer wall. The entrance of the cave was blocked off with hides, too, but the stout late winter wind had found a hundred gaps through which to pry its icy fingers. The chill currents blew through her thin white hair, made her knees and shoulders throb.She was reaching out to catch the flapping entrance when she heard an outcry rise up from the camp beyond.It seemed she already knew, even before tottering outside, what had happened. With a coldness in her heart that she could not attribute to the wind, she pushed her way outside. The sun was bright despite the cold, and glared off drifts of new fallen snow. The white humps of snowfall sparkled in a very lovely manner, but the glare was still painful for rheumy old eyes adjusted to the dimness of the Siede. Squinting into the white light, she watched as several of the younger People went running toward the ditch on the far side of the camp, calling to one another and making sounds of surprise and concern.She followed after them, her lips pressing tighter and tighter together. The wind blew spicules of ice into her face. Icicles dripped from the bare limbs of the trees.She hoped her premonition was wrong, but before she’s even made it halfway across the camp, several men came stumbling her direction, Eyya cradled in their arms.“You foolish old Fat Hand!” Nyala cried as the men carried her companion toward her.Eyya was groaning, the right side of her body wet and slick with mud.“She fell down, Grandmother,” one of the men said, a tall, powerful looking hunter in fur trimmed clothes. He had wiry black hair and a full beard. The man was not her grandson. “Grandmother” was just a title of respect. The young ones called all the elders Grandmother or Grandfather. “I was shitting when she came to the ditch to empty her bladder,” he explained. “I asked her if she needed help, but she said she was fine. I… I guess she slipped. I was looking away to give her some privacy. She must have fallen in the ditch when she squatted and couldn’t get back on her feet.” The trough where the People went to eliminate their waste, out on the eastern side of the camp near the tannery, was several feet deep, a sizeable fall for an old woman.It wasn’t mud all over her then…Nyal curled her upper lip and waved at the foul smell coming from her companion. “Why couldn’t you have waited a moment longer?” she asked Eyya querulously. “I said I was getting up!”“I’m sorry, Nyala,” Eyya moaned. She gasped and clutched her hip. “Oh, that hurts!” Her heart aching, Nyala stepped aside and motioned the men past. “Take her to our quarters in the Siede. I will look after the foolish old thing!” She followed, daubing at her eyes. That wind--!There was nothing that could be done for her. The other elders gathered and helped Nyala to bathe the woman and make her comfortable. They gave Eyya framash to sooth her pain, and bundled her up for warmth. Most of their children came to see her in the days that followed, but the Neanderthal woman grew weaker and more feverish by the hour. The nights were long and terrible. Eyya could do naught but shiver and cry out when she tried to move. Nyala did not leave her side, and cleaned up her companion when Eyya soiled herself like a baby. She did it grimly, but without complaint. When Eyya apologized, crying softly, Nyal shushed her brusquely. She couldn’t bring herself to speak out loud what she felt in her heart. As unpleasant as it was to clean her, Nyal loved the old Neanderthal woman, and felt it an honor to tend to her in her last days. Finally, about a week after falling and breaking her pelvis, Eyya passed into the Ghost World.Nyala knew it was coming. Her companion was pale and weak. Eyya lay shivering by their fire, even though the Siede was stifling hot. She had laid unconscious most of the day, and when she did wake, her eyes were filmy and rolled in their sockets as if she couldn’t quite remember where she was. Nyala went to lie next to her, and she petted the fat old Neanderthal’s hand.“It’s all right. I’m here.”“Nyala?” Eyya murmured.“Yes?”“We’ve led a good life.”“I know we have.”“Do you remember how handsome and strong our husbands were when we were young?”“Yes.”Eyya laughed softly. “They pursued me so insistently! My father didn’t know what to make of them. You know, the Gray Stone People do not live in group families like your people do. It was a bit of a scandal when I left home to marry two Fast Feet men, but I loved Gon so much, and Brulde was a very sweet man, too. So calm and thoughtful. Brulde was very much like my own people in that regard.”Nyala shifted uncomfortably. She did not like to reflect on the past so much. It made her feel weepy. “You need to rest, dear one. How will you ever get better if you don’t rest?”Eyya’s deep brown eyes rolled toward Nyala. They seemed very clear all of a sudden. Her lucid gazed chilled Nyala to the bone. She knew what it meant. Eyya smiled and said, “I won’t be getting better, my love. I’m go tonight to dwell with Vestra. I’m ready to return to the Mother of All. I’m tired of living here on Doomhalde’s back, but I will miss you. I only hope to see my family there. All the ones the Demon Ghost killed all those ages ago. And Brulde, too. I hope I see him in the spirit world. Perhaps they’re one and the same, your spirit world and the realm of the sky goddess?”Nyala shushed her, bringing the woman’s feverish hand to her lips and kissing it. “Perhaps,” she said solemnly.Eyya’s eyes waxed distant. As she faded, she asked one last question: “Do you think our husband will come down from the mountain to claim me, Nyala?” She drew a whispery breath, more of a rattle, really. “I hope so,” the Neanderthal sighed, so soft Nyala could barely hear her. “I want my bones to reside with our husbands.”And then she was gone.3When Nyala was a blushing newlywed, a demon ghost invaded their peaceful valley home. It had stalked and killed the Gray Stone People, the tribe her subordinate wife had come from. When Nyala’s people sent a war party to aid their neighboring clan, only two men from the tribe returned.Nyala supposed she and Eyya were lucky. Both of their husbands had gone to aid their neighboring allies. One, at least, had lived to return to them. Brulde had returned, crippled and full of fearsome tales, speaking of not one but two demons, and how those demons had killed all of their war party.Gon, Nyala and Eyya’s other husband, did not come home.Gon and Brulde had escaped after killing the little demon, Brulde told them, but then the master demon had come and snatched Gon in the dark.Several of the People had vanished in the night while the war party was away. Their bodies were never recovered. A couple of their tribesmen described the monster that had preyed upon them: that it was pale, with eyes like the embers of a fire, and that it flew through the trees on great black wings, moving faster than any mortal man could move. Mad as his tales were, Brulde was believed by all, and it was verified a day later when one more survivor straggled in, Brulde’s uncle Kort-lenthe.The People waited for the demon to return, debating in the Siede whether they should flee the valley like their Neanderthal neighbors had done, but when no more people were stolen in the night, they began to think that the demon ghost had moved on, and they got back to their daily lives, mourning for those that were lost, yes, but a body had to eat, and there were babies to take care of. A few seasons went by, and life returned to normal. No more People were snatched from their tents in the middle of the night. Brulde recovered, and grew strong enough to provide for his family once more—with the help of their eldest sons, of course.And then one day in the fall, many seasons later, Brulde came limping back to camp, overwrought and shouting the news that Gon still lived. Their two sons who were hunting with him were just as shocked and overwhelmed. Gon lives! Their father lives!They explained to all who cared to hear their tale how Gon had dispatched the demon ghost who’d killed the Neanderthals so long before. “The demon ghost cursed him,” Brulde gasped breathlessly. “That is why he could not return to us. He has been made a thing of ice and spirit. I saw him, Nyala! It is like he is frozen. He hasn’t aged a day! And after we spoke, he melted away like smoke. He just vanished. But he is real. I touched him.”If her sons Gan and Hun had not sworn it was true, Nyala wouldn’t have believed it. Demons and magic were the playthings of Neanderthal imaginations, not the People.Then, when Brulde died of the coughing illness a few winters later, Nyala saw her long lost husband with her own two eyes.Brulde had spoken the truth. Gon drifted like a spirit from the treetops, white, gleaming, as young as the day he left her side to do battle the monster who was killing the Fat Hands. They were carrying Brulde’s body to their ancestral burial mound, but at Gon’s request, their sons put the body of Nyala’s dead husband at the feet of the white, ageless thing that looked like her young husband. He spoke to Nyala and Eyya both, his voice like the voice she heard in her sweetest dreams, and then he lifted Brulde into his arms and flew away with him, leaving behind a promise to return for them both, when the last of their days were done.Eyya wondered aloud if Gon would indeed return for her when she died, and of course he did.How he knew that Eyya had passed into the Ghost World, Nyala could not fathom. Perhaps he watched over them, as the People had come to believe. Perhaps it was simply a part of the magic which preserved him throughout time. However he knew, he came. As they bore Eyya’s body down to the burial mound in the forest just across the river, the winds came up, twisting and whipping like an angry serpent, and he swept down through the sudden flurry of ice to claim his bride.

OLV In Love is finished...

I have completed The Oldest Living Vampire In Love. It is 120,000 words in length, or about 450 paperback pages. The longest installment of the Oldest Living Vampire books. It is currently in the hands of a few trusted beta readers, and should be available on the kindle, nook and ibook store sometime next week. All I'm waiting on is some feedback from my beta readers. So far they've spotted a couple typos and repeated words that need to be fixed.

In this volume, Gon encounters the beautiful and hot tempered vampire Zenzele, and confronts his arch enemy, the god king Khronos-- who will play a major role in the next two OLV books. I cannot wait for you to meet all the new characters in volume three of the Oldest Living Vampire Saga! There are going to be some major developments for Gon's adopted child Ilio, and for his mortal prisoner in present day Liege, Lukas Jaeger, as well.

Preview of Soma, the Sequel to Mort

The following is a preview of my next novel Soma, the second volume of what I'm now calling the Fearlanders series. This is a first draft, so there may be some typos and odd grammar. Hope you enjoy it!

PrologueThe world was blue.An early snow was falling, had been all afternoon, and as the sun dropped below the scrim of the trees, the deepening blue seemed to bleed into the sugary accumulation. For some reason it made him think of coloring Easter eggs. It had always seemed slightly magical when he was a kid, putting that hardboiled egg on the metal eggholder, then dipping it into a bowl of dye. His mother always oversaw their Easter egg coloring, a Virginia Slim dangling from her seamed mouth. She was quick to criticize if she thought they were making a mess or not taking the activity serious, but her baleful supervision was never quite sour enough to spoil the magic of dying those Easter eggs. Not for young Joe Bob Gillette.That’s what color the world is tonight, Joe mused. It’s the color of eggshell dipped in blue food coloring.Not that kids would be doing any such damnfool things now. Not since the Phage came and gobbled up all the Easters to come. The world had died, and it had taken all the egg coloring, trick-or-treating and presents under the Christmas trees with it.Not that it was all bad. He was free now. Free as a fucking bird. There was no more government, no more laws. If he wanted to parade down Main Street with his dick swinging and a big doobie clamped between his lips, who was going to complain? Equal rights was also out the window. His gang, the  Highwaymen, had a regular Ali Baba harem, and Rule #1 was: put out or get out. Which, in this day and age, was more of a death sentence than an option any of the Pusses might seriously contemplate taking them up on. They didn’t squawk so long as the men kept their bellies full and protected them from the deadheads. And if any of them even thought about getting mouthy, why, all they had to do was take a good look at Sheila. Sheila had gotten smart with him once, and Joe Bob had laid her out. Kicked her fucking teeth in. She didn’t say “boo” to anybody now.Joe Bob shifted inside the duck blind, trying to find a more comfortable position. It was cold, and that made every little  sharp stick and rock jabbing him in this ass that much more annoying. His nose was running, and his feet felt like two size 12 blocks of ice. Just a couple more hours, he thought, and then he’d hike back to HQ. Let one of the other guys guard the base for a while. He’d strip out of these insulated coveralls, grab whatever leftovers there were in the kitchen, then warm his tootsies by the electric heater in the den.He was dying for a smoke. He had a pack of Winstons in the inner pocket of his coveralls. He’d grabbed several cartons of them from the OK Corral just a few days ago-- the day they’d had the shootout with Old Man Shitkicker and Shitkicker Junior. He’d light up right now, only the deadheads seemed to recognize the smell of cigarette smoke. To them, it was an advertisement for an all-you-can-eat brain buffet. He might even take the chance if he thought there were no zombies nearby, but this old blacktop, as remote as it was, seemed to be a regular zombie highway. The nearest town was a shitty little burg called Cloey, population 1200, and it was a good fifteen minute drive from their new base, but there were deadheads marching up and down the road all day. Maybe they were migrating, he thought. Heading south for the winter.He couldn’t blame them.Joe Bob checked his watch again. One hour and fifty five minutes to go.He leaned forward and peered through the slit in the blind, looking up and down the road. He didn’t see any deadheads, so he leaned to the right and ripped off a hairy fart.“Damn,” he muttered, as the smell wafted out through the collar of his coveralls.Oh, well... at least it was warm.The blacktop wasn’t a blacktop anymore. The snow had finally begun to stick on the tarmac and the road was just a blank white expanse now, marred only by the zigzagging tracks of the last deadhead who had shuffled past, and those tracks were growing fainter by the minute. That one had doddered by about an hour ago. A big spade in bib overalls, frizzy hair dusted with snow, jaw hanging slack like some kind of retard. It hadn’t sniffed Joe Bob out, just shambled by, making a kind of sad gurgling sound in the back of its throat, and Joe had let the creature pass. It wasn’t the noise he was worried about. He was equipped with a crossbow, or, as he liked to call it, Silent Death. He just didn’t like exposing himself. If he’d shot the big black one, he’d have to go out in the road and pull the bolt out of the zombie’s head. That was like hanging your ass out the window and yelling “come and get it!” at the top of your lungs.He was also lazy as hell.Besides, they weren’t supposed to shoot the things unless a deadhead showed some interest. Orders from Big Boss. Joe Bob checked his watch again. One hour, fifty-two left.“Aw, fuck it,” he said.He leaned forward, checked the road. No zombies.Setting aside his crossbow, he unzipped his coveralls and fished the Winstons from the interior pocket. He had to shift around a bit so that he could get his fingers down to the bottom and snatch out his lighter, but he finally got everything situated, and he rezipped his coveralls and leaned back to enjoy a cigarette.“Another nail in your coffin, boy,” he murmured. That was something his mother always said when she saw him light up, not that she had any room to talk. By the time the dead started walking, she had to plug the hole in her neck when she indulged to keep the smoke from leaking out her stoma.He didn’t have to take off his gloves. He’d cut off the index and middle fingers of both so he could pull a trigger. And scratch. And pick his nose. He opened the flip top and plucked out a fag, then flicked his Bic and blew out a cloud of sweet, sweet carcinogens.“Ahhh!” he breathed.He coughed, wiped his runny nose, and wondered how he should kill himself when the world ran out of cigarettes. He was pretty sure all the people who worked at the cigarette factories had been calling in dead lately.Sure, there were plenty of Winstons left out there in the big dead world, and not a whole hell of a lot of dedicated smokers still alive to smoke them, but you’d have to leave the fort to get your fix, and all the Injuns wanted to eat your brains.It was a real dilemma: zombies, or withdrawals.Maybe they’d all freeze to death this winter, Joe Bob thought. There was quite a bit of debate amongst the Highwaymen about the particulars of zombie physiology, and one of those questions was: would they all freeze to death when the temperature dropped below zero this winter? And if so, would they start moving again when they thawed out come spring? Or would they just keep wandering around, cold or no cold, with icicles hanging from their balls? They’d even debated catching one and putting it in a freezer, just to see what would happen, but that proposal had never come to fruition.“We’ll find out soon enough,” Big Boss had said.A low-pitched and guttural groan drifted suddenly out of the gloaming.Joe Bob lurched, biting back a cry of surprise. He snatched the smoldering cigarette from his mouth and smashed it out on the gravel beside him.Fuck!As quietly as he could, Joe leaned forward and peeked from the duck blind.Deadhead at three o’clock.It was a male, middle aged, dressed in just a pair of tattered boxer shorts. The deadhead’s belly was fish white and bloated with gas, its feet ground to hamburger from weeks of ceaseless wandering. It tottered along near the shoulder of the road like a sleepwalker and was going to pass perilously close to Joe Bob’s position unless it keeled the other direction.Shit!Bubbly green mucous dangled from its slack mouth. Half its body was overgrown with some kind of greasy-looking gray fungus.It stopped and snorted at the air as fluffs of snow swirled around it in a little vortex. For a second it looked like the world’s ugliest snow globe. Joe Bob-- ever so gently-- lifted his crossbow in his lap. The zombie craned its head back and forth, nostrils flaring, blue-tinged fingers curling and uncurling. The light was almost gone from the world, but they had good sniffers, those deadheads, and really good hearing.Joe Bob flicked the crossbow’s safety off.The zombie’s head swiveled toward the duck blind.Fuckshit!Its brows furrowed down over those soulless, cataract eyes, and then it was running toward him, hands held out before it, fingers curled into claws. It came at him fast, howling like a banshee, and Joe Bob stood up, bringing the crossbow to bear.Tried to stand up. He had been sitting so long on the ground that his right leg had gone to sleep. He knee flexed in like a loose hinge, and he almost fell back down.“Damn!” he hissed, hopping on his good foot.He swung the crossbow back up, sighted on the ugly fucker’s head.It was almost too dark to see now. “Hold still for a second, you rotten motherfucker!” Joe Bob snarled, and then he pulled the trigger. The crossbow twitched in his hands as the bolt flew, but he was already reaching for his Bowie knife. He was going to have to kill it with his pigsticker if he missed the lurching creature. No time to reset the bow and nock another arrow.No need. Despite the numb foot, the dark and fingers that felt like frozen fish sticks, he got the ugly sucker-- smack between the eyes!The deadhead took about three more running steps, then fell on its face with a thud, going down hard just ten feet from Joe Bob’s duck blind. When it fell, the weight of its body came down on the shaft of the arrow, and the bolt punched out the back of its skull with a disgusting spurt of cranial fluid. A hunk of rotten brain matter quivered on the tip of the arrowhead.“Ew-hewwwww!” Joe Bob leered, swiveling his chin back and forth Earnest T. Whorl style. He checked up and down the road real quick, then stomped toward the deadhead, flapping his arms and yelling, “What? What? How you like me now, bitch? You like that arrow in your head? Huh?” He snatched his handkerchief from his back pocket and used it to pull the arrow from the deadhead’s skull, holding the dripping shaft at arms length. “Jesus jumped up Cootie Brown! Your brain fucking stinks, you undead faggot!”He started to walk around the body so he could roll the deadhead’s remains into the ditch----And that was when it got him.“Rarrrrh!”Joe Bob wailed as cold fingers seized the back of his coveralls, wrenching him to and fro like a pitbull with a kitten in its jaws. He lost control of his bladder and squirted about half a cup of hot piss into his Hanes. His knees buckled-- both of them this time-- and he fell down on his rump, and that was when he realized he’d been had, that one of his buddies had snuck up behind him, not some deadhead. Mainly because said buddy was laughing his ass off.“Ray, you fucker!” Joe Bob snarled, rolling to his hands and knees.Ray backed off, still laughing, as Joe Bob jumped to his feet.“Sorry, dude, I couldn’t help it!” he snorted, holding his hands out in front of him.“You made me piss my pants, you asshole!”Ray looked down at Joe Bob’s crotch, where a Florida-shaped wet spot was currently spreading down the man’s inner leg, and went off into gales of fresh laughter.“Oh, my god! You did!”“I’ll fucking kill you!” Joe Bob yelled, and he launched himself at the other man.It wasn’t much more than a schoolyard scuffle. Ray had saved his ass more time than he could count since the dead rose up and took a bite out of planet Earth’s ass. Joe Bob just shoved his laughing companion around the road until he’d blown off some steam. He did land a few satisfying rabbit punches to his buddy’s chest and shoulder, but they did little damage, then he was spent. He leaned forward with hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath, while Ray wiped his eyes, his laughter winding down to the occasional snort or snicker.“You okay?” Ray asked.“Y-yeah,” Joe Bob gasped.“Your face is all red.”“Winded... Need to... quit smoking,” Joe Bob wheezed.“No, seriously. You look like you’re about to have a coronary.”“Just gimme a minute,” Joe Bob panted.Ray walked to the blacktop to check for zombies while Joe Bob tried to catch his breath. Luckily, the road was deserted in both directions. If there were deadheads within earshot, they were in the woods out of sight. He thought the coast was clear, however. Most deadheads screamed their heads off when they were in kill mode, and he didn’t hear any wailing. The landscape was cold, white and silent.Ray went to the deadhead Joe Bob had killed and checked out the corpse.“Nice shot,” he said, when Joe Bob joined him at the road.“Thanks,” Joe said. “One shot?”“Yep.”“Nice.”They dragged the carcass across the road and rolled it into the ditch, then headed back toward the duck blind, wiping their hands on their pant legs.“You come down early to relieve me?” Joe Bob asked.“Yeah. I brought you some turkey, too. I was afraid the other guys wouldn’t save you any.”“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”Ray walked up the gravel drive and retrieved the covered dish he’d brought down from the farm, then they sat together inside the duck blind and talked idly while Joe Bob scarfed some leftover turkey and dressing. Because they were simple men, they talked about simple things. Sports teams they’d supported before the whole world went down the toilet. The cars they’d owned: mostly pickup trucks, the bigger the better. And then finally women.“What do you think about the tall one. The one Big Boss is so hot for?” Ray asked.“Alexis?” Joe Bob asked, his cheek distended with food. With his grey-streaked beard and bulging cheek, he looked like a man-sized chipmunk. “I don’t think she’s a she, you know what I mean?” Ray leered. He pointed at his throat when Joe Bob looked confused, said, “Adam’s apple.”“You think Alexis is a boy?”“I think Big Boss might be in for a little surprise when he takes that chick out to the shaggin’ wagon.”They laughed together, then realized they were on guard duty and checked the road for deadheads.Ray leaned back, pulled at the front of his jeans with a grimace. “Speaking of shaggin’,” he said a little more quietly, “I think one of those bitches gave me the clap or something.”Joe Bob set his plate and utensils aside. He’d all but licked them clean. “You’re lucky one of them ain’t give you AIDS,” he said to Ray. “You know you’re not supposed to be fuckin’ them bareback. Ain’t no telling what kind of diseases they got, and Big Boss will give you hell if you get one of the Pusses knocked up. We ain’t set up to be taking care of no babies. Not right now. They’ll probably be deformed anyway, what with all the radiation. Hell, half this snow is probably radioactive ash!”Ray looked up at the sky, his eyelids lowered to thoughtful slits. “You’re probably right,” he murmured. A couple flakes of snow drifted down onto his face, coming to rest on his eyebrows and lashes, and he scrubbed them away quickly. He looked at Joe Bob soberly, and asked, “You got a roll of toilet paper down here?”Joe Bob chuckled. “Yeah. Why?”“I got to shit.”Joe Bob laughed. “Why didn’t you go before you walked all the way down here?”“I didn’t have to go then.”Joe Bob fetched his little cardboard box of guard duty supplies and handed his friend a half-spent roll of TP. Ray stood up and headed toward the woods on the east side of the gravel road. There was a fallen tree back there with a limb perfectly positioned to pop a squat over.“Be right back.” “Hope everything comes out all right,” Joe Bob called after him.He listened to Ray crunching through the underbrush. His partner stumbled in the dark and cursed, then fell silent for a moment. Joe Bob heard a very faint zip, then some very noisome elimination. “How about a courtesy flush?” Joe Bob called with a grin.“How about you come over here and suck this dick?” Ray called back.“Get it ready for me,” Joe Bob replied.Joe sat in the duck blind, grinning, waiting for Ray’s rejoinder. He waited. Just in case his buddy hadn’t heard him, he called out, “You gettin’ it ready for me?”Nothing.“Ray?”He grabbed his crossbow and loaded it, then clambered to his feet.“Ray, you okay?”He heard something, but it was very soft. Sounded like a heavy exhalation.“Ray!” Joe Bob yelled.The crackle of a limb breaking.“Oh goddam it!” Joe Bob muttered, and headed into the woods after his friend.He edged into the forest, the crossbow seated against his shoulder, ready to aerate the first critter that jumped out of the dark at him. “You better not be playing another prank on me, Ray,” he said. “I got the safety off and a twitchy finger.” He tried to walk as softly as he could, but there was a lot of brush underfoot and each step he took sounded like someone munching on a big bowl of Rice Krispee cereal.He smelled something musky and animalistic in the air. Kind of like skunk. He sniffed, his upper lip peeling back from his teeth. Skunk and... Well, to be honest, skunk and sweaty dick.He heard a grunt and a not-too-promising ripping sound, kind of wet, like someone pulling open a watermelon with their fingers. Taking a steadying breath, he came around the trunk of a tree and sighted on the log where they all came down to shit when they pulled guard duty.Ray wasn’t squatting on the log though. He was laid out on the ground, his pants around his ankles, with something big and dark crouched down over him.Even in the murk, Joe Bob could see that his buddy was dead. It wasn’t the expression on his face-- because he had no face. It was ripped off. Rather, it was the sight of that big, dark thing pulling out quivering loops of Ray’s guts. You couldn’t play in someone’s guts like that without them screaming bloody murder. Not unless they were dead.But what was it?It wasn’t a deadhead. He couldn’t really tell what it was, it was so dark, but whatever the thing was, it was doing a passable imitation of a magician’s scarf trick with his buddy’s innards.Joe Bob felt his hair stand up. What he didn’t feel was the remaining contents of his bladder pouring down his left leg. He sighted carefully on the back of the thing’s skull, sticking his tongue out the corner of his mouth, but it seemed to sense him before he could squeeze the trigger. The big creature ducked and twisted around, tiny yellow eyes fixing him where he stood. He realized, staring into those luminous orbs, what exactly he was looking at, what had killed Ray while his friend was taking a dump, and Joe Bob felt his courage drain out of him like someone pulled the stopper out.“Jesus,” Joe Bob groaned.It didn’t snarl or growl, it just stared at him, silent as death, and then it rose up on two feet, its head ducked down between broad, powerful shoulders.Joe’s finger twitched and the crossbow jumped in his hands. He hadn’t meant to shoot, and the recoil made him cry out.The thing that had killed Ray reached up and snatched the arrow from the air. It’s arm moved so fast it was just a blur, but it didn’t seem impressed by its own speed. It merely plucked the bolt out of the air and tossed it casually aside.Joe Bob retreated with a whimper.The big beast loped after him, crashing through the underbrush.Joe Bob ran for all he was worth. Bare branches slashed at his cheeks like skeletal fingers, and then he was jumping across the ditch to the end of the gravel lane where the duck blind was set up. He slipped and fell when he came down on the other side, but he rolled over quick as he could, his breath coming out in puffs of white vapor. With trembling fingers, he reached for his Bowie knife.The big thing that had gutted his buddy stepped out of the forest. It stretched one foot across the ditch, the muscles of its oddly-shaped leg taut and quivering, but before it came and ripped off Joe Bob’s face, it hunkered down with a start, looking up at the sky with its lips curled back from its fangs.Shaking uncontrollable from head to toe, Joe Bob followed the creature’s gaze.A flight of angels was descending.

Ready to Fall "In Love"?

Thought I'd make a quick post and let all you Gon fans know that I have completed the first draft of The Oldest Living Vampire In Love and am currently engaged in the editing process of the novel, trying to get it ready for publication. I have the second draft about 25% done. I normally do three drafts before I publish a book, so I have a few more weeks of work left to do.  The novel is approximately 115,000 words in length. Kind of a big one, and that's why it's taken so long to get this finished. I hope you'll be patient just a little while longer as I tie this bad boy's shoelaces and straighten his cuffs. It's all there. It's just a little rough around the edges.

Coming Soon...

I have received many emails asking me if I am going to do a sequel to this or that, so I thought I'd post a quick update on my blog and give you guys a rough idea what projects will be coming out this year by little ol' me. Just remember that I may change this later, depending on how the muse strikes.

First up, the Oldest Living Vampire in Love. It is 80% complete and should be released sometime in April. I only have about 30,000 words left on the first draft, and then I will do a couple rewrites, and it will be finished.

Next, I plan to do a sequel to Mort. I was originally going to do it as a one-shot, but so many readers have asked me for a follow up that I feel like I have to do it. It might not be quite what you're expecting, but that's always a good thing in my opinion.

What else...? Oh, yeah, I'll be doing the second installment of my serial horror western. This one is going to be called Doc Wormwood and the Siege of the Holy Moses.

I'm not just going to write a bunch of sequels this year, though! I have some stand alone novels planned as well. Following the sequel to Mort, there's going to be The Cryptozoologist,  a werewolf novel, and a young adult fantasy novel called Emily and the Imp. The plot of Emily and the Imp was created by my son and I on a long car trip from Tennessee. I also have some ideas floating around in my head for an unusual serial killer book and I'm planning on tackling the doppelganger horror trope as well, but those may be next year, as I have a lot on my plate now, and I have to get Volume 4 of the Oldest Living Vampire done somewhere in there, too!

Thanks for listening to my ramblings, and thanks for all your support! I really appreciate all the kind words and excitement you've all show toward me and my creations!

RR