Pratap Divyesh's Blog, page 14
August 1, 2018
Corvid’s Lament
A tale of evil magic, fate, tragedy and loss… but can it be overcome by true love?
Connie’s life turns upside down after an altercation with the landlord. Life events seem to conspire against Connie to deny her of the perfect life she craves so badly. It seems to Connie that everyone around her has achieved a perfect life, everyone except her.
An old man with a crooked smile appears to help Connie when she is least expecting it. But who and what is he, does he really exist and has he really helped or hindered her further?
Connie must battle tragedy and loss to try to grip onto her very fragile sense of reality. Will Connie realise before it’s too late that the perfect life she craves is unattainable and that the best she can hope for is a few perfect days in a lifetime of imperfection… just like the rest of humanity.
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The Arrow of Ronan: Book 1
In the small Kingdom of Ronan, murder sent Princess Abbetha’s life reeling when it senselessly claimed her beloved mother. In the five years since, her once loving and devoted father, King Diermund, has transformed into a cold and distant stranger set on trapping her dutiful older sister into a loveless arranged marriage. The rogue royal, Abbetha, escapes her anguish by finding solace on the archery fields. However, when rumours of an uprising against her father spread like fire; a knight with a past shrouded in mystery joins the Royal Guard of Ronan, and an unimaginable tragedy threatens to crumble her world; will she finally surrender all, including her beloved bow and arrows to God, to do what is right?
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July 30, 2018
When The Gods Fell
A game of thrones on ancient Mars!
Oracle Veritas of the House of Delphi has waited for over 65 million years to tell her story to the children of Olympus. Now, in the year 2041, the first humans from Earth have stepped onto the surface of Mars. But instead of a barren world littered with long-dead probes and rovers, the crew of the Seeker will encounter Oracle and hear of a world that was once covered in seas and lakes, icecaps and deserts, plains and forests. When it was a world called Olympus, inhabited by the race of advanced immortals that called the planet home.
How Lord Zeus, head of the ruling family of Caste Olympus, was ruler of the world. But other Castes chaff under the Olympian rule. Lord Odin, of Caste Norse, and Lord Anu, of Caste Paga, have set their eyes upon the throne of Olympus. Even as the jubilee celebration of Zeus’ rule draws near, Odin and Anu recruit the leaders of the other Castes – Dine, Asiac, Afrikans and Hindi – to their cause against the mighty Zeus.
Only Caste Zion, led by Lord Yahweh, remains loyal to the throne. A loyalty proven two centuries before when Yahweh exiled his own son, Lucifer, after a failed coup attempt. But Lucifer’s treachery will not die. He waits for the rebellious Castes to strike against his father and set him free from his prison on Gaia, the third planet in Olympus’ solar system.
As the plotters move against the throne, Zeus sees the extinction of all life on Olympus as the only possible result of the looming civil war. He is left with only one terrible solution. Zeus turns to the only person he can trust to carry out his last order as ruler of Olympus.
REVIEWS FROM ARC READERS:
“True to form, Richard delivers another great story sure to keep you guessing. In 2041, an expeditionary force on Mars encounters an oracle to the gods. The sixty-million-year-old woman claiming to be oracle tells a familiar tale of greed, ambition, pride, and the undiluted lust for power. What’s unusual is her claim that Mars was Olympus, playground to the gods.”
– W.S. Gray
“What the hell? I’ve never read such treachery, deceit—WTGF is a remarkable story. Seeing all the familiar names of the old gods and angels, the names of places, terms that I was familiar with all in one story was mind-blowing. Every day I was happy to come back where I left off. When I finished the entire story, I stared into space for a while letting it gel. It was quite an accomplishment.”
– Dawn Ireland
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The Failsafe Query
The Failsafe Query is a gripping thriller set in the contemporary world of modern British espionage.
Sean Richardson, a disgraced former intelligence agent, is tasked to lead a team to search for Alfie Chapman, an Intelligence officer on the cusp of exposing thousands of secrets to the media. This includes a long lost list of Russian moles embedded since the Cold War, one of whom remains a public favourite in the British parliamentary system.
The action moves with absorbing pace and intrigue across Central Asia and Europe as the puzzle begins to unfold through a deep hidden legacy.
Tense, fast paced, and insightful, The Failsafe Query twists and turns to a satisfyingly dramatic finale.
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July 26, 2018
On The Road to Saying Bye to Autism
I told autism in my family these vitamins and juice and muffins will help my son’s brain get on the right channel it is supposed to be on. I told autism that you will not win in my family. I told autism that my son will make it. He will graduate high school and go to college. I told autism in my family my son will play sports, he will talk, he will be on the same level as his peers. I told autism in my family I said “Bye, Felicia.”
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Duty & Betrayal – The SS Brotherhood & the NASA Connection
Everyone has a different agenda when a former Nazi scientist and a current NASA rocket expert arrive in 1960s London for a conference. International spies and war criminals alike are still looking to settle old scores from World War II.
Monitoring the conference are Spencer Hall of MI5 and Jack Stein of the CIA, top agents who became fast friends while fighting side by side for their lives. They’ve been called to protect their nations’ vital secrets, but one of them harbors his own plans for revenge. Meanwhile, Bernard Zimmerman, the NASA scientist, wants everyone to forget his past work with the Third Reich so he can create a new life in America. Unfortunately, both the Soviets and the Germans remember him all too clearly.
Thrown into the mix is Joyce Leader, a beautiful double agent with contacts in both Britain and Germany. If secrets from her past missions fall into the wrong hands, her life may be in jeopardy.
Filled with drama and double-crosses, this suspenseful tale unfolds inside a dangerous web of top secret knowledge and unknowable loyalties. These spies and ex-Nazis can’t help but get further entangled as they seek their own justice for past wrongs.
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July 23, 2018
January 7th: The Day Nobody Was Born
Will Stills is the most ordinary boy in the world.
Trouble is, the whole world is convinced he’s far from ordinary.
Every January 7th, Will is forced to celebrate his birthday in the most peculiar way.
But it is not his proud parents who are planning these bizarre parties!
The twisted minds behind the world’s biggest media company, ViewYou, are pulling the strings.
But what exactly are they are trying to prove?
What is it they want the world to see?
Why are they and everyone else so obsessed with Will Stills?
Children’s Fiction – Aged 8-12
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Blessed Curse
In Rugby, Tennessee, Jorie Wainright and the man she loves, Logan Mathis, grew up as two of the Rugby Six: a group of children so closely bound that they experience each other’s emotional and physical pain. And they have the power to affect others.
TO FEEL ANOTHER’S HEART
At twenty-six, tormented by a darker facet of her past, Jorie abandons love along with the desire to ever be a mother. The act plunges herself and the remaining Six into anguish, and it is all for naught. She is already pregnant with Logan’s child. When her father’s death forces her back to her hometown, she goes alone.
Logan’s love for Jorie forces him to obey her wishes. Still, for him there can be no other woman. And, like always, he can feel her pain…and her need. She waits in a rural Tennessee town on the edge of the spirit world, where a dark and sinister presence threatens all she never wanted. All that Logan knows she will never let die. All he knows they must save—together.
AMAZON Barnes & Noble KOBO Goodreads
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Owl Eyes: A Fairy Tale
Nora knows three things: she is a servant, her parents are dead, and she lives in the kitchen house with her adoptive family. But her world is torn apart when she discovers that her birth father has always been right there, living in the house she serves.
This discovery leads Nora to more questions. Why was she thrown in an ash-covered room for asking about her father? Why is a silver-bladed knife the only inheritance from her birth mother? Why is magic forbidden in her household—and throughout the province of the Runes? The answers may not be the ones Nora hoped for, as they threaten a possible romance and her relationship with the adoptive family she loves.
With the announcement of a royal ball, Nora must decide what she is willing to give up in order to claim her stolen birthright, and whether this new life is worth losing her family—and herself.
AMAZON Barnes & Noble KOBO Goodreads
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July 21, 2018
Creativity: Creating Memorable Characters
With the incredible success of my new novel, The Man Who Loved Too Much – Book 1: Archipelago, released only two weeks ago but already peaking at #11,496 on Amazon’s Fiction/Coming of Age/Fantasy/Zombies /High School Cheerleader/Romance best-seller list, people often ask me:
“John, how do you come up with your characters?”
First, I drive my Mercedes to a local ramen restaurant here in Japan, where not only do they have great meals, but I can get my kitchen knives sharpened.
I walk in and sit down. I say something in Japanese. They just roll their eyes.
An eighty-five-year-old lady is across from me, slumped over at her table. She might be breathing but I don’t see how, with her face immersed in the bowl of noodles.
I picture her as a twenty-year-old university student, dressed in either sexy lingerie from Fredericks of Hollywood, or a Lycra fetish costume purchased from an online store in the West Village. There’s a tennis ball strapped in her mouth.
Now . . . what is she feeling?
Suddenly, an off-duty Japanese police officer drives through the front of the restaurant on a Harley Davidson. There is broken glass and disposable chopsticks everywhere!
Inspiration!
And the plot thickens.
I thought the police officer had tattoos on his arms but they are just temporary removable sheer hosiery tattoos he picked up in Thailand, while on his police precinct’s annual sex tourism holiday.
He orders the lunch special, Salty Miso Beef Ramen with Deep-Fried Pork Dumplings on the side. Of course, all the rice you can eat is included . . . and it’s free!
Now I hear the sound of a helicopter hovering overhead. Understandably, my first instinct is that it must be Navy Seals either conducting exercises or mounting a raid. There are so many suspicious people everywhere you look these days. Especially here in Japan!
But no, it’s a medical rescue team. Four paramedics tethered to long nylon ropes drop down onto the street out front. They rush into the restaurant. The first medic through the door grabs the old lady’s hair. He violently yanks her head out of the bowl of ramen, then gagging, gives her mouth-to-mouth. But it’s too late. Her windpipe is clogged with congealed noodles. She is dead.
While they drag her body out of the restaurant to hoist it into the helicopter, some young boys, probably elementary school age, are passing. Several of them are taunting a pathetic little guy, who unfortunately is cross-eyed and suffers acute lymphedema. His legs look like pontoons, very unusual for someone his age. The other boys are mocking him by chanting: “Dalai Lama! Dalai Lama!”
Hmm. I don’t get this. Dalai Lama? But I can use it! Sometimes you need something a little off the wall to keep a reader’s attention.
All this time I’ve been slurping away. The food here is truly amazing! My bowl is just about empty when a huge stabbing pain shoots through my gut. I feel like someone has stuck a samurai sword in my belly button, twisting it like they’re wrapping pasta around a fork.
Food poisoning!
I don’t know why I keep coming here. Every time I eat here — I mean every time! — it’s the same thing. I get food poisoning and spend the next six hours . . . well, you know.
My only excuse for this habitual self-sabotage is that this place has been so good for my writing. This is where it all starts. The huge cast of misfits and miscreants that populate my stories are all denizens of the social tapestry of this little hole-in-the-wall soup shop.
I’ll tell you something else. No way am I giving away my secret.
You can try Googling “ramen shops in Japan” if you like.
Ha! Good luck finding it.
This post is contributed as a Guest post by JOHN RACHEL.
About the author:
John Rachel has a B. A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter and music producer, and evolutionary humanist. He has spent his life trying to resolve the intrinsic clash between the metaphysical purity of Buddhism and the overwhelming appeal of narcissism.
He is the author of eight novels, three non-fiction political books, and one
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