I got my EYE on you

I'm gonna be at the LDStorymakers Writers Conference in Provo, Utah this weekend. Life being what it is, I don't have any of the new projects quite ready for sale there ~ I had hoped to have BLESS THE CHILD and WHISPERS OF THE GODDESS available but distractions have come up...beautiful distractions.

Anyway, gorgeous distractions that want their privacy aside for a moment, I'm still going to try and have these writing projects out soon enough - definitely before my birthday late next month when I turn 40. Just a few more accomplishments I want done before that.

I've already done more traveling this year (and it ain't nearly over yet) than I have for years. Had to share this sculpture of Polyphemus I took at the Getty Villa and recreation of the Temple of Hercules just outside of LA last weekend.
Right after I took the shot, security told me photography wasn't allowed in that wing, oh well, I already had the shot.

Here's a few more just because...

In the Works...

Life has made my blogging this year incredibly erratic (did I completely miss February?)

But projects are coming along, The Mad Song in Artifacts & Relics shouldn't be too far off, and The Dogs of War in Thunder on the Battlefield will be shortly behind that I think, Rolling in the Deep in A Flame in the Dark: Monsters should be out anytime as will Make A Monkey Outta Me in Heavy Metal Horror and The Problem with Magick in Another 100 Horrors. Wish I knew something more on the Rogue Blades Entertainment Challenge antho = The Serpents Root and the rumored Sword & Sorcery League collection which supposedly has accepted Sailing to Valhalla, but alas I know nothing on either project.

I still need to format Whispers of the Goddess, so that delay is all on me and I did finally receive the edits on Bless the Child, so I will absolutely have a sword & sandals novel out this year - I'm hoping in the next few weeks but can't promise anything since I honestly don't know what I'm doing with formatting yet.

Bring the Fire (tentative title) for The Barbarian Coast is coming along nicely = almost done. And I have dreamt up my story for Space Eldritch 2 I just have to write it now.

Two more projects demand near immediate attention, one is a Sci-Fi sure thing, the other is a limited invitational Fantasy submission, best 10 out of 25 (good odds), and both MIGHT get published through Baen, so that's cool.

I'm also sitting on a half dozen finished spec tales that I need to just get off my butt and submit somewhere - and then there are the fifty plus starts to tales I need to finish...and then there are the books I need to finish, I wish I was half as prolific as I sound.

Part of the writing problem has been the busy family life and drama but it seems the Muse has returned ~

Storming the Gates of Troy

 

One thousand ships launched astern
For you, the flames they burn
Scarlet lips and hands to hold
Passion unfurled and courage bold
Swords are raised as bridges crossed
One thousand moments count and lost
Two for the neck, one for the heart
Hopes blaze that we may never part
All for you my queen, so regal
I shall be cloaked dark with eagle
Stricken in the heart and the heel
I write to forge what I feel
To be with you again I hope and pray
And win but a kiss today
No tears, no pain, no sorrow
All so I may win the war tomorrow
With sacred horse and a tour deforce
The gates will fall and I’ll tear down your wall
Chariots race and dooms embrace
Will open the path to proceed
And truly fulfill that primal need
To be as one and never ever come undone

Also, it seems I am getting 5 times the hits to this blog from Iran than I am from the usual suspects = The US of A, Canada, Germany and the UK - What the Hell? Can I be so interesting to the Persians? Or is it just the Spartan thing??? I've barely been posting this year - what's so interesting???

W.I.P.'s

Just checking in with a status update of ongoing projects.

I just submitted The King in the Wood to Alchemy Press

 I'm putting some final touches on Whispers of the Goddess

Still waiting on edits for the novel Bless the Child

Still sitting on my hands when it comes to Blood of Our Fathers and for that I apologize, it is the plan to get on that soon...
but in the meantime I have to get to work on my tale for Space Eldritch 2 - its gonna be a bigger collection, more authors etc etc and I have to get on that...

I also have to finish up Bring the Fire for the Barbarian Coast collection, taken way too long already...

A good number of other stories are accepted but I have no idea when they will be available, I won't let those slip by unspoken though.

If there was any Doubt as to how I feel Lately

Almost the only writing I have been able to do as late are these...

In The Garden
I thought I was Adam and you were Eve
Blaming the serpent, that he did deceive
Forgetting that there was another
Lilith, that first wicked mother
But Eve, she stood by her man
You, just turned and ran
Each of us into the wilderness cast out
I pray for rain and you curse the doubt
Lies your cloak and despair your hood
Truth, your bane and doing what you should
Now I wipe the children’s tear’s
And chase away your demonic fears
The flaming sword, I would lay down
and return to you, your exalted crown
if you could but be my Eve
but No, you chose to leave

The Empty Throne
You sat beside me in the Temple and ruled our home,
but you stole the scepter and dashed the crown,
all so you could roam.
Will I ever trust you again?
Not while every lie you speak, pierces my heart and steals my life.
Not while you try to play upon me like a fife.
Not as you proclaim love but plant pain,
you seed hate and reap one great black stain.
Can I ever love again?
With every truth spoken and my fired soul awoken.
With every fiber of my being, I’ll gain a queen and be a king.
And the throne beside me will be empty no more,
free from you, my dirty little whore.

To A Woman
After the silken threads that you spun
and the cords you’ve woven come undone
the lines you drew without care but rage
they will combine to craft your gilded cage
For the lies you told are freedom not
but slavery holding fast til you rot
An anchor round your slattern neck
driving you to your fated wreck
Satan has no servants but slaves alone
You are foremost his, soul, body and bone
Doom holds thy deceitful hand and black heart
with a curse upon your lips and tainted parts
You, the bride of darkness, despair and fear
fully selfish and cowardly, it is quite clear
Play the tortured soul, haunt the dark places
Weep crocodile tears and toy with many faces
But you shall stay and will ever be
the most evil person known to me

Karma is a Bitch and So is She
She lies and she lies
She cries and she cries
My hopes rise and they rise
But my heart dies and dies
I know what I want is what I want
I know what I deserve ain’t what I got
I know that I seem to be asking a lot
And I know that she is going to rot
Karma is a bitch and so is she
Thinks she can keep up the charade
Thinks she can keep me hanging onto her strings
I was blind but now I see
She thinks I’m broken but I’m remade
She thinks I’ll be waiting keeping her rings
No, Karma is a bitch and so is she
A lie must exit her mouth
A stab must enter my heart
Someday, someway she will see
The damage done her life gone south
Our union ends and my life will start

Two Reasons
Two reasons you can’t sleep:
Either you have a soul and conscience, and twist about at night in the agony of what has been done…
Or you are bereft of soul and conscience and thusly not even fit to dream…
I know which you are…

Whispers of the Goddess is Coming

I haven't been around, all my regular readers know why, but finally my first project of the year is almost here.

I need to figure out all the nuances and get it put together but WHISPERS OF THE GODDESS my novella from the departed Roar of the Crowd is coming soon.

Here is the back cover blurb I recently put together, (and thanks to Angie Lofthouse for helping polish it)

"Warships of the Fourth Crusade surround Constantinople threatening murder, rapine and worse.
The only option left the impotent Emperor to avoid the sacking of the great city, is to secretly give away a sacred relic.
Enter Tyr a red-handed Swedish mercenary and Wolfram von Eschenbach the Templar poet, together charged with retrieving the holy artifact and escaping the city.
What they don’t know is that arcane forces, old as myth, are marshaled against their mission. The old gods of multiple nations war with the New.
And Ragnarok is coming to Greece."


Here is the cover by the talented Carter Reid - he also did the SPACE ELDRITCH cover.


In other news, the prequel of sorts for Whispers of the Goddess, The Dogs of War, has been accepted into the Thunder on the Battlefield, Sword & Sorcery collection edited by James R. Tuck, so if you like one tale I hope you will like the other and we can get some cross-pollination going.

SPACE ELDRITCH reviewed in the new AMAZING STORIES

Very excited to be among the first reviews in the newly relaunched Amazing Stories http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/01/dead-cosmonauts-and-other-eldritch-horrors/
so check them out and bask in the latest glorious review of the macabre masterpiece.

Thanks again Keith! and I'm sure its is a distant, swords-winging relative back in the days of Solomon Kane that we are related to.

Getting Back in the Saddle

I'm having a real hard time getting the notion to write at the moment, too much heartache and shock at the sudden departure of my own Delilah.

But while I may have been blind and ultimately powerless to stop her betrayal and self-degradation, I have not lost my own strength. I have been spending more quality time with the kids, starting working out again (to lose the writers gut) and I have noticed that while before I used to agonize over every moment lost not writing, now I just don't fret about it anymore. Life is still more about living than recording it for prose.

I know I will write again when the healing is done and I know I will be better than I was before. More projects are lined up even with me doing nothing at the moment and that's OK, in time the words will flow like a mighty river and I will climb that mountain and I will be back on top.

And it hurts now, but I know that like the dawn, Love will rise again.