Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 44

TO DIE TWICE_HAPPY ADA LOVELACE DAY!

"My brain is more than merely mortal."  actual quote fromAda Byron, Lady Lovelace

https://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-in-Code-audiobook/dp/B07N12FKBV/

HAPPY 207th BIRTHDAY, ADA BYRON!
{From the pages of THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH} https: //www.amazon.com/dp/1508804540

       I am Ada Byron.  I died and willed myself back to a semblance of life.  I did the same for my lover, Margaret Fuller, she of the existential mind and passionate embrace.

       On this fine New Orleans morning, I may well die again.

   Odd.  I can almost feel young Victor’s eyes on me, his hand on mine, those laughing gypsy eyes telling me that he has a plan, that everything will be all right.

I smile demurely over my dining table at Margaret and my uninvited guest: Abigail Adams, President of America Corps, the ridiculous name for America’s Revenant Empire.

She sips her tea cup full of O Negative blood that I keep for Renfield and smiles with red-stained teeth.  She is dressed in a black business suit much like Margaret’s.  But her satin blouse has a frilly jabot like my own.

I know that her private quarters are done in an exact replica of the bedroom she shared with her husband, John, when he was the second president of the United States.  I would have pity for her had she pity for any who stood in her way of Empire. As it is, I have only the guarded respect one has for a rattler coiled to strike.

Her smile broadens, cheapens, loses all authenticity.  “This need not end badly, Lady Lovelace.  We three here are each from the same era and morality.”

To my left, Margaret speaks harshly.  “This need not have happened at all, Madame President.  There was a time when you would not even have thought of invading another’s home at all.”

Abigail sighs.  “The times have changed.  All is adrift.  Humanity has lost its mooring.”

I laugh without pleasure. “Humanity, Abigail? You have not the slightest idea of what that word means anymore.”

“And you do,” smirks Abigail.

“Yes, because of Samuel I do.”

“It is you,” I continue, “that seems to have a broken compass, Abigail.”

“Life for Margaret,” stonily speaks Abigail.  “Or death.  Your choice.”

“No.  Yours, Madame President.”

“Yours,” insists my uninvited guest – and as a revenant, just how did she accomplish that feat?  Perhaps madness confers certain abnormal abilities in a revenant?

Abigail raises her haunted eyes to meet mine.  “All you have to do is convince that stubborn McCord to see the light and join my crusade to repel Empress Theodora’s troops from these shores.”

“All,” I laugh.  “Do you not want me to give him a Judas kiss while I am it?”

Margaret leans forward as if to convince with her not inconsiderable presence.  “You know Samuel as well as we do, if not better, for you have known him longer.  He will not consent for any armed or undead conflict in his city.”

Abigail goes even paler and statue erect.  “His city?”

“Yes, his city,” I whisper.

I gather my scattered wits and continue, “Your own husband made him swear to protect New Orleans.  Why do I have to tell you this?  You were there, hiding in the shadows, Madame President.”

There was a soulless giggle from the foyer door.  We turn.  I sigh.  Things have gotten … interesting.  I stiffen.

The ghoul, Alice Wentworth, looks at us with blue-fire eyes.

 I feel Victor near.  In this room.  But how can this be?

“President?” Alice sneers.  “Empress is the true title.  Empress of the American Revenant Empire.”

I look at Abigail’s narrowed eyes.  Eyes which have looked calmly at men being sucked dry of their blood by cruel, cold, efficient machines as she murmurs,  “I preside over America Corps.”

Abigail places down her drained blood cup with a deadly grace.  “So, ghoul, where is that perversion that would join his loins to yours?”

At those words, the scamp in question slips from the misty body of Alice.  And Victor Standish, the fourteen year old Ulysses, laughs that reckless laugh of his.

 Victor

 smiles, waving his fingers in front of his face as if they were a fan.  “Is it hot in here, or it is just me?  Joins loins with Alice?  Whew!  That’s a pretty hot image there, your worshipfulness.”

The smile drops from his lips.  "And if you haven't noticed, Your Hind-Ass, your moral compass doesn't exactly point North anymore." {Then, of course, with the intrusion of Victor, things get even more interesting.}***
More on the woman who wrote the first computer program a 100 years before the invention of the computer:

WOULD YOU WRITE HORROR? IWSG Post

 

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/blackrabbit...
We are living in a horror movie.
The Russians are said to be deploying a Poseidon torpedo.
Fact is they may have already deposited one off our shores months ago

OCTOBER is horror month. 
It is popular to be scared then. After all, movies, shows, and months eventually end

Do you know what galvanized President Regan 

to work so hard for world peace? 

A TV movie.

I  have been finding it hard to write about 

fictional horror, 

feeling too much like Nero

fiddling while Rome burned.

Scientific studies indicate that those

who are not so empathic

can enjoy horror movies more

than those who feel more

negatively about those in torment.

What do you think?

Stephen King wrote:

"I think people do kind of gravitate towards horror stories when times are tough, and times are scary."

Are you finding writing

harder these days?

Thanks to Damyantii, I have this month's IWSG question:

My favorite genre?
Historical fantasy
I get to right certain wrongs that have galled me in my historical research.
Alfred Hitchcock's misogynistic cruelty on set after set, I was able to let my sociopathic former O.S.S. agent deal with him in my 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09LGJZ842
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NRKWZTZOnly $7.68 at the moment in hardcover!
I was able to spend nearly a year with my favorites, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Nikola Tesla in 1895 Egypt
while doing my own rendition of THE MUMMY!
Like Damyanti, I make setting and its history an actual character in my novels.
Unlike Damyanti, my historical novels have not been optioned for the screen.
PHOTO BY Gage Skidmore 
(Although I did dream that Tatiana Maslany emailed me wanting to portray the female version of my blood courier in BLOOD WILL TELL! )
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Will-Tell/dp/B00E7UTGLS/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

DO YOUR SIDE CHARACTERS FADE IN THE READERS' MINDS? IWSG Post

 

 

A former TV executive says why She Hulk appears bland and Ally McBeal seemed vibrant is 

the latter's side characters "popped" with life while She Hulk's seem one dimensional and fade away in the background.

Is that true?

Maybe? I am not a former TV executive, but it made me wonder how vibrant my side characters are.
How vibrant are yours?
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to find out: WHAT'S THEIR BACKSTORY?

Present scenes that give them access to speak from their hearts and share their life’s journeys, dreams, and goals.

WHAT MAKES THEM SMILE?

Nothing reveals the personalities of your side characters more than what makes them smile or laugh.

WHAT EVENT INFLUENCED THEM THE MOST?

 Was it political, health-related, or romantic? How did she/he rebound from it? Or did she/he never recover?

WHAT ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTS THEM?

It will only take a small scene of outrage in their actions or sobs in their throats that will etch their nature in your readers'  mind and delineate them from one another.

WHAT IS THE DISTINCTIVE PATTERN TO THEIR LIVES?

It is fascinating to see how subtly good authors weave the actions of their side characters in the lives of the others. Many of the crises in great books derive from the clashing patterns of the side characters.

Oh, when I was homeless for 7 months after hurricanes Laura and Delta, this is how I listened to books.

COYOTE CALLING

 

https://www.amazon.com/Coyote-Calling-Shifter-Seeker-Book-ebook/dp/B0B8BDZTJX/
The multi-talented Heather McCorkle has done it again.


Have you ever noticed? Troubles do not play fair. They gang up on you all at once, seemingly trying to elbow their way to get to the head of the line to take off your head!

You thought human politics was foul and dangerous?
Try surviving werewolf politics ... werewolves descended from Vikings at that. 
Sonya finds herself with the prospect of landing in a grave marked, "She died doing the right thing."
Worse, she has dragged her best friend, reaper Ayra Valdisdöttir, into that grave with her.

It soon turns into a Blood Moon:

A Navajo shifter appears on her doorstep with a life-threatening mystery along with untrustworthy estranged relatives.

Then, her mother goes missing.

What is happening?

And could Life please make

her troubles take a number?

If you like Norse Mythology, Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series, and mystery, 

you will be wowed by Coyote Calling.

You have to hit CC to get the lyrics in English

DEADLY LADIES

Hurricane Katrina was among the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States, 

and it made landfall in New Orleans today in 2005.

The federal government and President George W. Bush were roundly criticized for what was perceived as their slow response to the disaster. 

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown, resigned amid the ensuing controversy.

Two weeks later, Hurricane Rita, the forgotten hurricane, destroyed Cameron Parish and nearly destroyed my town of Lake Charles. 

Hurricane Rita was the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the Gulf of Mexico and the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.

I wrote an urban fantasy of my experiences in New Orleans and Lake Charles: 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1511548207
It is Hurricane Season once again, think good thoughts of me, all right? And maybe pick up the paperback or audio book, too.

AMERICA IS A BAD MEL BROOKS FILM

 How strange.

Police made at least two stops with Paul Pelosi in custody before bringing him to jail following a May 28 crash. 

He had more than 2 hours to burn off alcohol in his system before investigators took a blood sample.

The maximum prison sentence for an insider trading violation is now 20 years. 

The maximum criminal fine for individuals is now $5,000,000.

President Biden's obvious cognitive decline emboldens our enemies 
and our allies unsure of the worth  of our support.

Yet Congress turns a blind eye to this. What profit is his condition to those politicians?

Now, for a little humor:

DID THE CANNIBAL VISIT YOU LAST NIGHT?

 

Our fiery star spit out a series of bursts on Sunday that are now headed in the direction of our planet and could trigger a strong geomagnetic storm.

 

One of those bursts, called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, is expected to collide and consume another, creating what's called a cannibal CME event.

Like the cell phone ad says, "Can you hear me now?" Or did the Solar Cannibal eat the internet last night?

Did one of you out there insult Mother Nature? And if so, could you PLEASE apologize!
A little dark humor to gowith the dark news:

MOVE ON, NOTHING TO FEAR HERE

 The time intervals between magnetic fields reversals have fluctuated widely, 

but average about 300,000 years, with the last one taking place about 780,000 years ago.

Official talking heads all agree, it will be nothing to worry about. But no humans were alive then to record what happened.

But there was one living thing that recorded what happened. 
A study of an ancient, well-preserved tree that was alive the last time the Earth's magnetic poles flipped tells a different story.

Chaos ensued. 

The weakening of the Earth's magnetic field briefly transformed the world by altering its climate and allowing far more ultraviolet light to pour in.

Anyone noticing drastic changes in weather patterns lately?

You think world governments trust us to handle terrible news well?
No. Me either.

IF YOU SEE ME, WEEP

 

The Elbe River’s hunger stones, carved centuries ago to mark the low-water levels that were recorded on years when crops failed and famine occurred.

 This one, dating back to 1616, reads “If you see me, weep.”

But perhaps the times are showing us other danger omens?What do you think?
A little Magic to lift your spirits.

What Is the Last Book You Read? When? Why?

 

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, 

and slightly exhausted at the end, for you lived several lives while reading.”

 - William Styron

Book Lovers Day is celebrated on August 9 every year. 
This is an unofficial holiday observed to encourage bibliophiles to celebrate reading and literature.

People are advised to put away their smartphones and every possible technological distraction and pick up a book to read

Sadly I've lost count of the times I've nearly been run over by stockers in WalMart, 
orderlies delivering supplies, 
or walkers on the street too lost in their smart phones to even notice the world around them.

Have we become addicted to our cell phones?

Do any of your non-author friends read for pleasure?Has life of late made it hard for even you to read?

Is the book destined to take its place beside the slide rule?
What do you think?