Hemanth Gorur's Blog, page 2

What’s in a name? Friggin’ plenty!

“Whoa! How the blazes did I land up here?”

Is that what you’re asking yourself? Relax. For those of you redirected here from the earlier WordPress address, this is still the official Aymaran Shadow book blog, except that the blog name’s changed a bit and is being merged into the author Hemanth Gorur’s official blog.

You still can dive into all the earlier posts – nothing changes there. What you can now sink your teeth into additionally is a lot more peeks into the author’s, um, life. No, scratch that. Make that “author’s bad-ass delusions”.

Plus, Book 2 of the Eternal Visitation Series is on the way. More creepiness. More puzzling. More lip-smacking. Book your psychotherapist right away. You’re going to need one.

Finally, watch out for the scathing book reviews, ruthless shredding of writing myths, tongue-in-goddamn-cheek humor posts, and newbie writing tips. That’s right, they’re in bold. That’s me saying “Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!”

So, lean back. Take a short breath. And lick your chops. While you still have the time.

Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends … #6

Read the previous post in the Behind The Scenes series: Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends . . . #7

A man who refused to die by hanging. A woman buried alive giving her husband nightmares. A haunted prison with eerie paranormal activity. A family stalked by a vindictive specter. Grab the nearest table for support – you’ll need it when you read the next one.

The Frozen Living

Movies and tales abound in which people frozen to death are brought to the morgue only to resurrect themselves and walk away alive. The scientific impossibility of such occurrences relegate such tales to ludicrous spin-doctoring at worst and mild, if gory, entertainment at best.

What happened to Jean Hillard, a teenager from North Dakota in the US, in 1980 is enough to revive belief in unseen forces and the unseen hand of God, if not lend a whole new connotation to the phrase “frozen stiff”.

It was late December of the year, a period given to windy and extremely frigid weather. Jean was returning to her parents’ home near Lengby (rural Minnesota) when her car skidded off the road and stalled due to the cold.

Hardly dressed for the weather, Jean nevertheless bravely set off on foot to reach home. Only, she did not reach it.

She was found the next morning by her neighbor Wally Nelson just a few feet from her door. Her body was frozen solid. So solid, in fact, that Nelson had to load her “diagonally” in the rear of his car to get her to the nearest hospital.

At the hospital in Fosston, Minnesota, doctors were blown away by the intensity of the freezing. Her pulse, hardly discernible through her frozen skin, was registering a feeble 18 beats per minute. Her temperature was too low for the thermometer to read. Intravenous needles could not even pierce her skin. Her face was totally ashen and her eyes, completely frozen in place, refused to react to light. Jean, for all practical purposes, was the “living dead”.

Doctors attending to her were completely out of hope. According to one of the hospital staff, “The body was cold, completely solid, just like a piece of meat out of a deep freeze.”

Still, doctors put her on a thawing process, wrapping her body in an electric heating pad. There was hope for a miracle where science had no answers.

And miracle presented itself. Hours later, much to the relief and disbelief of the team of doctors treating her, Jean Hillard revived. Her eyelids fluttered open. As her eyes began to refocus, doctors were beside themselves to explain the phenomenon. Admitted the attending physician, “I can’t explain why she’s alive.”

The last word on her near-death experience, naturally, went to Jean Hillard, as she remarked, “At worst, I might lose a couple of toes.”

So, what kept her alive in a tragic accident that had her marked for certain death? What explains her near-impossible revival from a state of being a “frozen vegetable”? What unseen hand pulled her from the brink of mortal termination? Science and rationale certainly had no answer on the day.

Coming soon: the next post in the Behind The Scenes series.

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Aymaran Shadow now in Paperback (India Edition)

Following fervent interest by readers in the Indian sub-continent for a print version of Aymaran Shadow, the wait is over. The Indian Paperback Edition of Aymaran Shadow is now out in print. Now, feel the crispy freshness of the printed book as you read about Sanya’s nearly fatal and hair-raising confrontation with a sinister intruder from another world.

The 2013 bestselling novel now retails at INR 250 in paperback format on Amazon (India), Flipkart, Pothi and Infibeam. Readers can also purchase the book directly from the author Hemanth Gorur’s website at 20% OFF on MRP.

Its International Paperback Edition is currently available at all leading retailers in the US, UK and Europe, including Amazon which is offering a 13% customer discount at the time of this post.

As part of a LIMITED PERIOD OFFER, the book is available at 15% OFF if bought at the CreateSpace e-store. Use Discount Code QY6KHBCP. Offer closes 1st Aug 2014.

The Kindle Edition continues to be available at $2.99. However, purchasers of the Paperback Edition are eligible to buy the Kindle Edition at only $0.99 (66% OFF). It is also available for borrowing on Amazon’s KOLL, identifiable with an Amazon Prime badge as you search and browse for books on your Kindle device or on Amazon.com.

Book Review – by Tony Parsons

Aymaran Shadow

An ethnic concept. Several twists/turns, suspense filled, lots of mystery. No grammar errors, or out of story line sequence, easy to read/follow, Unique characters. Maybe movie material . . .

. . . The book did not wow me but I enjoyed reading it, it pulled together at the end. I changed my mind & rated it at 5 stars.

Tony R Parsons

Top Amazon Reviewer

Read the full review here: on Amazon.

Why Samba 2014 Is A Paranormal Horrorfest…

Read the previous post in the Behind The Scenes series: Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends . . . #7

So the mega event of the year – the quadrennial FIFA World Cup ’14 – gets under way tonight. And might well be cruising towards the tape by the time you read this.

It promises to be football mayhem for over a month starting 12th June. Lots of blood and gore on the cards as nippy forwards slice through defences, medios take down rival strategies, and burly halfbacks hack down spell wizards and ballet dancers masquerading as strikers.

Take third-ranked but perennial favorites Brazil, for instance. The current squad is certainly weighed down by the legacy left behind by their players of yesteryears, but it’s certainly not overawed by the occasion, much less by the competition. Spearheaded by a wily magician called Neymar, the likes of Fred, Oscar, Jo, Hulk, Marcelo, Dani, Luiz, Dante, Maicon and Thiago Siva are wont to strike dread into any opposition. Easy meat (the opposition, that is).

Holders Spain are almost embarrassed by the deluge of skill in their ranks. Easily part of any dream team conceivable, Xavi, Xabi, Iniesta, Busquets, Ramos, Torres, Villa, Silva and Fabregas take sadistic pleasure in running concentric circles around their hapless prey, tiring them out with dizzying ball play before going in for the kill. Blood and gore.

Egged on relentlessly through heart-breaking column by former Argentine great Diego Maradona, two-time champs and fifth-ranked Argentina, who can boast of silken marauders like Messi, Aguero, Rodriguez, di Maria, Mascherano and Higuain, can maim and kill before you can blink. More blood and gore.

Read aloud the lineup of the second-seeded Germans and the hair stands on end. While Mertesacker, Boateng and Hummels can make even the most pretentious forwards wet their footballing shorts, the Bavarians have incisive strikers bolstered by tireless medios to puncture holes at will. Look no further than Podolski. Oezil, Goetze, Klose, Kroos, Mueller, Schweinsteiger and Lahm for that. Rivers of blood.

Marshalled by mercurial midfielder Pirlo who can hoodwink goalies and rip open defenses with equal ease, four-time champs Italy can send a chill down your spine (and your boots) with their clinical play and historically rock-solid defensive maneuvers that unbelievably explode into counterstrikes hard to recover from. Straight for the jugular.

And then, there are the unearthly ghouls who haunt you with their blinding runs. The ‘untouchables’ who seem to evade the boots of rival players like magical poltergeists. The alien superhumans with a bag of Halloween tricks that both mesmerize and terrify their opposition. Take your pick from Ronaldo, Nani, Robben, Sneijder, Persie, Ribery, Benzema, Suarez, Forlan, Dzeko, Sanchez, Vidal and Kagawa. Gut-wrenching.

Add to this the addictive Samba beat to which nubile Samba queens gyrate and titillate, dousing you in a delirious trance from which you don’t want to wake up, making you imagine things you didn’t think you could. Hallucinations and paranormal out-of-body experiences were never this welcome. Or normal.

So, put on your best armor. And draw out those daggers and shields. For, the supernatural predators from the footballing netherworlds are out on the hunt. Samba ho!

Coming soon: the next post in the Behind The Scenes series.

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Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends … #7

Read the previous post in the Behind The Scenes series: Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends . . . #8

A man who refused to die by hanging. A woman buried alive giving her husband nightmares. A haunted prison with eerie paranormal activity. The legends are getting deeper. And spookier.

Also live is a not-so-spooky snap poll at the end of this post to dictate terms to me! Now, here comes #7.

The Bell Witch

John Bell was a North Carolina farmer who arrived at Adams, Tennessee, in 1804 and settled there along with his family. In the initial years, the family lived an untroubled and Spartan life. A few years later, however, things changed dramatically for the Bells.

The family started noticing strange things happening in their house. They began to hear peculiar scratching noises on the walls. This was followed by strange noises – of people being pinched and slapped, of objects being dropped - and animals getting skittish without any apparent reason.

Legend has it that all this was the doing of a being which later came to be known as the “Bell Witch”. People came excitedly from far and wide to witness its manifestations and antics.

This witch was supposed to be an invisible supernatural being with the voice and physical traits of a woman who conversed with people and sometimes even shook their hands. Its antics - spilling milk, pinching and slapping children, snatching the quilts from the beds, then laughing hideously at the Bells’ discomfort - were seemingly designed to annoy and scare the Bell family.

Gradually, most antics started to center around John Bell’s youngest daughter, Betsy. The witch’s activities peaked around the time Betsy got engaged to one Joshua Gardner.

The identity of the witch is as varied as the stories surrounding the surreal being. Initially, the witch was thought to be a woman named Kate Batts. Some accounts swear that the being was someone cheated by John Bell. Others identify the witch to be a male slave killed by Bell.

In subsequent years, by the end of the 19th century, there were rumors that the Bell Witch Legend was no more than just that – a legend. Studies by various paranormal investigators identified loopholes in the stories surrounding the witch and the Bells’ experiences. Still, to this day, the legend lives on as is evident in the Bell Witch Cave at Adams, Tennesse, which promotes ghost tourism.

Coming soon: the next post in the Behind The Scenes series.

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Ambush at Not-so-O.K. Corral

I’ve been off the grid these past few weeks. And with good reason. No, scratch that. With good number of scratches and gashes. I was still in action. Only, off the grid.

You know those days when life ambushes you. Yeah. Like when you’ve chosen a quiet, off-the-track, backwater location for your summer getaway and find a thousand other people had a same idea. And intend to leave after you do.

Or when that blue-chip you’ve been tracking for months and had always wanted to buy is at a 52-week low but just when you’re about to hit ‘Buy’, your computer chooses that very moment to slink into a self-imposed digital trance and hang like a sloshed bat.

Or when three past clients rendezvous at a secret mountain hideout and conspire to offer you a full-time book writing assignment all at the same time. With no back-out clause. (I’m not complaining. But, still… Oh, well!)

It’s also times like when you’re directed to the 19th level at one of those dizzying parking lots at tech parks and you spiral (well, crawl, but let’s go with ‘spiral’) your way up only to be told that there was a glitch in the availability indicator and the vacant lot is actually in the adjacent tower.

You know you’re in guerilla cross-fire from life and Murphy when it’s the last day for paying your cell phone bill, and you can’t pay online since your data connection’s been suspended in anticipation of non-payment, and you can’t renew your data connection at the collection center since it’s a Sunday.

You definitely know you’re the “chosen one” when you slave on Photoshop for weeks to create that perfect book cover art and on the day you’re about to download the pdf, you’re told by Adobe that your account’s been discontinued since they no longer support Windows XP.

And you know you’re most certainly in the crosshairs of the meanie up there when you’re advised by your bank to make good on a missed payment on your mortgage by dropping off a physical cheque at the nearest branch, you do that, and four days later you find that not only has the cheque been cashed but also the bank’s auto-debit system has debited whatever’s left in your account balance towards the mortgage payment. Reason? That’s what the system’s been designed to do as a follow-up procedure. Right, but no one told me that. Not even customer care when I’d called them for advice in the first place. D-uh!

So, yes, though 2014 kicked off in spectacular fashion, it’s been ambush-at-not-so-OK-corral ever since. Time to head them off at the pass. Gidyap! I’m back with a vengeance. In stirrups!

Aymaran Shadow: Now On A $0.99 Offer

It’s a race against time in more ways than one. Two macabre stalkers with sordid pasts race across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to claim their prey – an unsuspecting girl in India.

Aymaran Shadow. A tale of lust, horror and reprisal. And, a #12 Bestseller in 2013 with sixteen 5-stars. The Kindle Edition is now available for US customers at a Countdown Deal price of just $0.99, down from its regular price of $2.99. This offer closes 20th Mar 2014. So, hurry if you want to beat the clock!

That’s not all. The International Paperback Edition is currently available at all leading retailers in the US, UK and Europe, including Amazon which is offering a 12% Customer Discount at the time of this post for customers in all geographies.

As part of a LIMITED PERIOD PROMOTIONAL OFFER, the Paperback Edition is also available at 15% OFF its MRP if bought at the CreateSpace e-store. Use Discount Code NECF2Q8V. Offer closes 20th Mar 2014.

Purchasers of the Paperback Edition are eligible to buy the Kindle Edition at the $0.99 price even after the Countdown Deal ends. It is also available for borrowing on Amazon’s KOLL, identifiable with an Amazon Prime badge as you search and browse for books on your Kindle device or on Amazon.com.

For more information about the book, please visit the THE BOOK section on this blog or the official Facebook page. For more information about the author, visit the official website or Twitter profile of Hemanth Gorur.

Book Review – by Warrior Princess

Unique and tense

. . . The book is tense throughout, both in the parts that show Sanya’s face-to-face interactions and her online conversations with Ramona and Ambrois — the mysterious strangers that were the impetus to the development of the whole story. The characters are well-drawn and realistic, and the author’s prose has a unique and mesmerizing feel to it. Very interesting!

“Warrior Princess”

Reader and reviewer

Read the full review here: on Goodreads, on Amazon.

Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends … #8

Read the previous post in the Behind The Scenes series: Top 10 Creepiest Paranormal Legends . . . #9

#10 of the Paranormal Legends countdown was about a man who refused to die by hanging. #9 was about a woman buried alive giving her husband nightmares. Could #8 get any worse?

Before we move on to the next legend, a spiffy reminder about the snap poll at the end of this post – if you want to get heard on this blog, dive right into the poll! On to #8.

Legends of Alcatraz

One of the most haunted prisons, and indeed one of the most haunted places on the earth, is the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island.

Located in the San Francisco bay, it has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “most notorious federal penitentiary this country has ever known. Its history runs far and deep, as do the stories, the rumors, and the legends.” It has been characterized by none other than Mark Twain as “being as cold as winter, even in the summer months” after he visited it.

Officers, prisoners and visitors have all recalled a spectrum of paranormal activity including whispering in cells, unseen fingers, cold spots, phantom figures in the corridors, women crying, and sound of sewing machines.

The island is believed to be a burial ground for Native American outcasts. One of the earliest inhabitants of the island, native Americans believed that it was home to evil spirits.

Built in 1959, Fort Alcatraz was the original military defense and prison on Alcatraz Island. It began to function as a war camp in 1861 and long-term military prison in 1868, serving as an important line of defense in the American Civil War.

Following its collapse in 1908, a $250,000 concrete military prison was built between 1910 and 1912. It was modernized 20 twenty years later to become the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, incarcerating some of America’s most dangerous criminals between 1934 and 1963.

Paranormal activity that has been reported at the Penitentiary range from the chilling to the outright bizarre. Prisoners have reported strange whispering sounds in the dead of the night, eerie blue figures, and clanking sounds of chains in cells known to be empty. These prisoners were later declared insane.

One inmate in D-block was reported to have screamed for hours after seeing a pair of ghoulish red eyes in the dark. The following mornings, officers found him dead with bulging eyes, purple face and bizarre strangulation marks around his throat.

James A. Johnston, the first Warden of Alcatraz, claimed to have heard a woman sobbing while conducting a tour of the prison. Prisoners have reported seeing strange figures, purportedly inmates from the early military prison, in 19th century attire walking the corridors in A-Block. The figures reportedly disappeared when approached by the guards.

The D-block of the prison, and particularly cell 14-D, are reported to have the most paranormal activity. Cell 14-D has been claimed by many to be permanently icy cold, even in summer, and is often 20 to 30 degrees colder than elsewhere.

Alcatraz Penitentiary has been the subject of many interest for many paranormal investigators. One such was news anchor and paranormal skeptic Ted Wygant visited the prision in 1982 along with psychic Jeanne Borgen and stayed the night.

It was eventless until around 3 am when Wygant felt a surging sense of anger and felt an evil presence on the floor of the utility corridor. It was the place where Bernard Coy, Marvin Hubbard and Joe Cretzer, all inmates, had been shot dead in the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz. According to Borgen, “his face was changed, you could see the anger and hate in his eyes.”

Today, although Alcatraz officials pooh-pooh the ghostly reputation the prison has garnered and dismiss all paranormal activity as hearsay, the penitentiary had become an enigmatic symbol of dread and awe, and still manages to lure the attention of even the most rational and skeptical of minds. Perhaps, ancient spirits are still watching over the creepy island.

Here is the full article on Wikipedia.

Coming soon: the next post in the Behind The Scenes series.

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