The Published and Unpublished Novels of John X. Grey 2000 - 2011.
The Nightmare of Aarontown (first written in 1999-2000).
Genre - Contemporary Horror. Statistics to date: 172,000 words in 606 pages after most recent revisions. Novel still needs more polishing.
My effort to write a Stephen King-style epic contemporary setting horror novel with touches of eldritch horror from H. P. Lovecraft actually began in the late summer of 1999 with some trial and error starts or stops until smoothly progressing between March and June from a few chapters into the 475-page 140,000-word rough draft. After early marketing attempts failed (with one literary agency requesting it in August 2000, then never responding, and accepting the full manuscript eight years later only to reject it for being even longer by then), I began revising it a few times in 2001 and 2006-08. Currently it is 171,000 words and 606 pages, but no publisher will touch it due to the depressed horror market, and unwillingness to accept something that long from an unknown author. The book tells the story of a young lawyer returning home to help his family's local law office after his grandfather suffers an unexpected stroke. Once home from a dead-end law firm position in Cleveland, Fred Hamilton III slowly discovers his home town Aarontown and Darkland County are the focal points of a cosmic conspiracy for the forgotten Biblical pre-Flood race called Neph-Alam seeking to return and rule over humanity once more. His own mother Janet, the town's acting mayor is one such creature along with two fellow Neph-Alam that managed a return to Earth, as they gather disciples and power within a cult-like church for creating the portal for their kind's return on the summer solstice in 2008 atop Aarontown's highest point on Juniper Hill. The story also has Fred reconnect with his high school sweetheart, local high school English teacher Jackie Cabot and other old friends still living in town, some of them killed by Janet's minions or the woman herself. Fred also reconnects with his mentally-ill father Fred II, driven mad slowly over sixteen years by Janet's hideous true form whenever they had intercourse, breaking the broken ex-lawyer out of Darkland County's Green Glades mental facility and teaming up with Fred's uncle judge and his friends in working against Janet's evil schemes with Archbishop Calvin Morton and his chauffer Terry Arcane as the three Neph-Alam.
I have ideas for two sequels to this lengthy horror novel (apparently too long for commercial viability by an unknown author, but I resist reducing its length or splitting it into two volumes at present). The first (The Ruins of Aarontown) is set decades later after a limited World War III left America fragmented into successor nations in which Fred Hamilton returns to Aarontown an old man to help his sister Lilith, now the mayor, against one of Janet's suriving servants reviving the dead Neph-Alam plan for returning to Earth. The second (The Ghosts of Aarontown Past) involves Janet's ally Terrence Arcane being thrown backwards in time by the temple explosion as the first novel's ending to try realizing the Neph-Alam plot during the late 1950s as a local teenager of that time is the only one who can stop him while one poetry-writing serial killer simultaneously stalks the town.
NEW NOTE - This novel was rewritten in 2013, expanded and divided into three volumes which will be published in 2014 and 2015 by Dark Moon Press. The individual volume subtitles are: A Sinister Homecoming, A Curtain of Darkness descends, and A Strange Manifestation upon Juniper Hill.
My effort to write a Stephen King-style epic contemporary setting horror novel with touches of eldritch horror from H. P. Lovecraft actually began in the late summer of 1999 with some trial and error starts or stops until smoothly progressing between March and June from a few chapters into the 475-page 140,000-word rough draft. After early marketing attempts failed (with one literary agency requesting it in August 2000, then never responding, and accepting the full manuscript eight years later only to reject it for being even longer by then), I began revising it a few times in 2001 and 2006-08. Currently it is 171,000 words and 606 pages, but no publisher will touch it due to the depressed horror market, and unwillingness to accept something that long from an unknown author. The book tells the story of a young lawyer returning home to help his family's local law office after his grandfather suffers an unexpected stroke. Once home from a dead-end law firm position in Cleveland, Fred Hamilton III slowly discovers his home town Aarontown and Darkland County are the focal points of a cosmic conspiracy for the forgotten Biblical pre-Flood race called Neph-Alam seeking to return and rule over humanity once more. His own mother Janet, the town's acting mayor is one such creature along with two fellow Neph-Alam that managed a return to Earth, as they gather disciples and power within a cult-like church for creating the portal for their kind's return on the summer solstice in 2008 atop Aarontown's highest point on Juniper Hill. The story also has Fred reconnect with his high school sweetheart, local high school English teacher Jackie Cabot and other old friends still living in town, some of them killed by Janet's minions or the woman herself. Fred also reconnects with his mentally-ill father Fred II, driven mad slowly over sixteen years by Janet's hideous true form whenever they had intercourse, breaking the broken ex-lawyer out of Darkland County's Green Glades mental facility and teaming up with Fred's uncle judge and his friends in working against Janet's evil schemes with Archbishop Calvin Morton and his chauffer Terry Arcane as the three Neph-Alam.
I have ideas for two sequels to this lengthy horror novel (apparently too long for commercial viability by an unknown author, but I resist reducing its length or splitting it into two volumes at present). The first (The Ruins of Aarontown) is set decades later after a limited World War III left America fragmented into successor nations in which Fred Hamilton returns to Aarontown an old man to help his sister Lilith, now the mayor, against one of Janet's suriving servants reviving the dead Neph-Alam plan for returning to Earth. The second (The Ghosts of Aarontown Past) involves Janet's ally Terrence Arcane being thrown backwards in time by the temple explosion as the first novel's ending to try realizing the Neph-Alam plot during the late 1950s as a local teenager of that time is the only one who can stop him while one poetry-writing serial killer simultaneously stalks the town.
NEW NOTE - This novel was rewritten in 2013, expanded and divided into three volumes which will be published in 2014 and 2015 by Dark Moon Press. The individual volume subtitles are: A Sinister Homecoming, A Curtain of Darkness descends, and A Strange Manifestation upon Juniper Hill.
Goram - the First World: The Prophecy of Kolab (first written in 2001).
Genre: Epic Space Opera Science-Fiction. Statistics to date: 111,000 words in 400 pages as of most recent revision. Needs some more small changes. The additional volumes are subtitled as follows: JOURNEY TO THE GREATEST DEPTH, SHROUD OF THE FIRE STORM, TO THE STARS WITH DIFFICULTY and THE END AND THE BEGINNING. The first sequel (rough draft) is 90,000 words in 300 pages and second sequel (rough draft) 117,000 words in 402 pages. The third sequel is only 24 pages along and fourth sequel 1 page but outlined.
My first effort at epic space opera science-fiction in the tradition of Star Wars mixed with subtle religious and Christian allegory, this first of five proposed volumes begins on a dystopian Earth in 2026. Teenager Alan Benedict Dillon was adopted after removed from an abusive northern Ohio home at age five by the leftist Stern family who relocated with him and their three biological daughters to the newer community Solar City, Arizona about 25 miles northwest of Phoenix. The youth and his friends, currently on a summer break in year-round schooling, are having normal summer activities when experiencing a protest march turned violent riot in downtown on the eve of another Independence Day holiday the next day. Alan sees his parents killed by federal police units while participating in the protest, and then gets dragged into an alley by schoolmates wanting him to rape a social worker they had grabbed off the street. Refusing to comply Alan is beaten until a federal cop intervenes. The cop, social worker and Alan then vanish from that alley in a blinding light to appear inside a specimen gathering facility on planet Goram (at the center of the known universe). Failing to escape as a malfunctioning specimen gathering energy sphere hurtles toward the facility, Alan and the other are all killed by the android drone guards or the catastrophe destroying the facility and its alien staff. In those ruins, Goramite Zone Troopers investigating the crater made by that explosion discover one living survivor, a Goramite male with no body hair or recorded identity. This Goramite (actually Alan resurrected and transformed by a super-science accident in that disaster) is incarcerated at a regional prison for failing to follow the citizen ID laws, but escapes into the alien ghetto provinces of that continent and adopts a new identity Albeon (formed from fragments of a half-forgotten human name) Gra'mn as a bounty hunter. Gaining new allies in his initial travels - the talking canine-like alunicore Mondoj, short blonde Dexamite junk dealer Carye Wyoust and swarthy former fellow inmate Squieri thief Taron Seech - Albeon has visions of a past life (Alan Dillon's from Earth plus a few from another blue-skinned alien male brought to Goram from another planet in the Milky Way galaxy inside that earlier malfunctioning collection sphere) and seeks out a star map of the universe to locate the source of those alien memories. Going to Star Citadel, Goram's main space command lanuch facility operating for thousands of years, after learning earlier the planet is isolated from its multi-galactic empire by the radiation caused when the star Kolabus expanded 23 years earlier, Albeon finds his map pointing to Earth, but also two new traveling companions - forgotten space exploration pioneer Goramite Rexx Van'some locked in his suspended animation pod until accidentally released by Taron, and the android CORA, Van'some's companion on his ciurcumnavigation of the universe thousands of years earlier. Fleeing Star Citadel, Albeon and Rexx initially mistrust each other. but find a hidden underground chapel of Goram's outlawed monotheistic One Religion and fight a demon having taken alien physical form before exorcising it back to exile. Realizing he is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy in Goram's holiest book The AWSOK, Albeon makes plans to discover his destiny. Meanwhile throughout the story, its principle villain, an aged deposed former Goramite emperor known as The Tra'gurr plots with a cult of followers not merely to regain his lost power, but also replacing God Himself over all Eternity through using three hidden holy phrases and becoming an all-powerful immortal. In the end, Albeon will be stalked by a bounty hunter hired by The Tra'gurr after his cult's efforts to kill Gra'man fail, the Quotan Holjenla Kydeen, a female who figures more prominently in the remaining book series after her minor introduction here.
This volume is the first of five planned for my Planet at the Center of the Universe Sage. I have written rough draft versions of the second and third installments - subtitled Journey to the Greatest Depth and Shroud of the Fire Storm Waste - and stopped with the fourth a few chapters into it - To the Stars with Difficulty. The final volume - The End and the Beginning - is mostly an outlined idea with part of one page written to date. Once The Prophecy of Kolab sells, I will begin revising parts two and three and finish four and five. I also have a short story collection idea and a biography of Goram's great priest-king Kolab Jak'raa (essentially a Moses or Mohammed-type historical figure) planned for this series.
I count the two rough draft completed sequels in with my more polished novels, making ten completed novels to date as of December 2010.
My first effort at epic space opera science-fiction in the tradition of Star Wars mixed with subtle religious and Christian allegory, this first of five proposed volumes begins on a dystopian Earth in 2026. Teenager Alan Benedict Dillon was adopted after removed from an abusive northern Ohio home at age five by the leftist Stern family who relocated with him and their three biological daughters to the newer community Solar City, Arizona about 25 miles northwest of Phoenix. The youth and his friends, currently on a summer break in year-round schooling, are having normal summer activities when experiencing a protest march turned violent riot in downtown on the eve of another Independence Day holiday the next day. Alan sees his parents killed by federal police units while participating in the protest, and then gets dragged into an alley by schoolmates wanting him to rape a social worker they had grabbed off the street. Refusing to comply Alan is beaten until a federal cop intervenes. The cop, social worker and Alan then vanish from that alley in a blinding light to appear inside a specimen gathering facility on planet Goram (at the center of the known universe). Failing to escape as a malfunctioning specimen gathering energy sphere hurtles toward the facility, Alan and the other are all killed by the android drone guards or the catastrophe destroying the facility and its alien staff. In those ruins, Goramite Zone Troopers investigating the crater made by that explosion discover one living survivor, a Goramite male with no body hair or recorded identity. This Goramite (actually Alan resurrected and transformed by a super-science accident in that disaster) is incarcerated at a regional prison for failing to follow the citizen ID laws, but escapes into the alien ghetto provinces of that continent and adopts a new identity Albeon (formed from fragments of a half-forgotten human name) Gra'mn as a bounty hunter. Gaining new allies in his initial travels - the talking canine-like alunicore Mondoj, short blonde Dexamite junk dealer Carye Wyoust and swarthy former fellow inmate Squieri thief Taron Seech - Albeon has visions of a past life (Alan Dillon's from Earth plus a few from another blue-skinned alien male brought to Goram from another planet in the Milky Way galaxy inside that earlier malfunctioning collection sphere) and seeks out a star map of the universe to locate the source of those alien memories. Going to Star Citadel, Goram's main space command lanuch facility operating for thousands of years, after learning earlier the planet is isolated from its multi-galactic empire by the radiation caused when the star Kolabus expanded 23 years earlier, Albeon finds his map pointing to Earth, but also two new traveling companions - forgotten space exploration pioneer Goramite Rexx Van'some locked in his suspended animation pod until accidentally released by Taron, and the android CORA, Van'some's companion on his ciurcumnavigation of the universe thousands of years earlier. Fleeing Star Citadel, Albeon and Rexx initially mistrust each other. but find a hidden underground chapel of Goram's outlawed monotheistic One Religion and fight a demon having taken alien physical form before exorcising it back to exile. Realizing he is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy in Goram's holiest book The AWSOK, Albeon makes plans to discover his destiny. Meanwhile throughout the story, its principle villain, an aged deposed former Goramite emperor known as The Tra'gurr plots with a cult of followers not merely to regain his lost power, but also replacing God Himself over all Eternity through using three hidden holy phrases and becoming an all-powerful immortal. In the end, Albeon will be stalked by a bounty hunter hired by The Tra'gurr after his cult's efforts to kill Gra'man fail, the Quotan Holjenla Kydeen, a female who figures more prominently in the remaining book series after her minor introduction here.
This volume is the first of five planned for my Planet at the Center of the Universe Sage. I have written rough draft versions of the second and third installments - subtitled Journey to the Greatest Depth and Shroud of the Fire Storm Waste - and stopped with the fourth a few chapters into it - To the Stars with Difficulty. The final volume - The End and the Beginning - is mostly an outlined idea with part of one page written to date. Once The Prophecy of Kolab sells, I will begin revising parts two and three and finish four and five. I also have a short story collection idea and a biography of Goram's great priest-king Kolab Jak'raa (essentially a Moses or Mohammed-type historical figure) planned for this series.
I count the two rough draft completed sequels in with my more polished novels, making ten completed novels to date as of December 2010.
A Legacy of Blood: Jack Petrov - Private Investigator/Vampire Hunter (first written in 2004, self-published 2011).
Genre: Period Piece (20th Century) Mystery/Horror. Published by CreateSpace as my second self-published novel on December 12, 2011. ISBN 13: 978-1466308152. ISBN 10: 146630815X. List price: $12.99. 262 pages. Available at for sale at Amazon.com using this website link http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Blood-Private-Investigator-Vampire/dp/146630815X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324138943&sr=1-1 and at CreateSpace here https://www.createspace.com/3684905. The Kindle e-book for this title is found here: http://www.amazon.com/A-Legacy-of-Blood-ebook/dp/B00728BWV4/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1328462770&sr=1-3
The Kindle version sells for $6.49 also at Amazon.com at this link:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Legacy-of-Blood-ebook/dp/B00728BWV4/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_4
The story opens in Northwestern Russia February 1919 where a US Army infantry squad guard the telegraph route from Pinega to Archangel, part of the single American batallion sent as the American Expeditionary Force to North Russia during the Allied intervention in Russia's Civil War. After dark, 17-year-old US Army Corporal Jack Petrov's rifle company is attacked by Cossack cavalry (vampires) who destroy the American garrison, except for the young man as sole survivor. Petrov slays some of the vampires with inherited supernatural hunting instincts from a dead Russian maternal grandfather (Dr. Fyoder Ulvanov M.D.), including their leader, but must also destroy a local teenage girl he had fallen in love with turned into another bloodsucker. By April 1925 in Gotham, New Jersey (a town along the Raritan River in central New Jersey), Petrov has been recently pardoned from a prison sentence inflicted after being framed by superiors in the police department the previous year, and begins his own detective agency. His first client, retired railroad vice-president Mr. Joshua Sloane, hires Petrov to investigate an estranged younger wife named Helena who took the couple's son Jeffrey and moved into a smaller townhouse away from their mansion. Aided in his investigation by an old mentor, retired cop turned bookseller Willy Krauss, former police partner and new Detective Dennis Dooley, and the intrepid local social worker Annie Mertz (whom Petrov meets in her investigation of Jeffrey Sloane's educational needs), Jack discovers Hungarian-born Helena (Egeresi) Sloane is in fact not the 20ish woman she seems, but the illegitimate granddaughter of infamous 16th-17th Century Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory, killing people to drink and bathe in their blood for retaining eternal youth and exist as her grandmother had. Thwarted by Helena's cleverness and powers, with powerful allies willing to offer the lady protection for participating in monthly blood rituals to gain a taste of her immortality and vitality, Petrov loses Annie to Helena's hypnosis after they are briefly captured snooping in her home's basement. Petrov tries several angles to expose Mrs. Sloane, each effort failing or costing other lives. In the end, Jack pretends to join Helena's cult, but springs his plan to stop her when ordered to kill Annie as a loyalty test, and aided by Dooley and Krauss along with captured uniformed policeman Elroy Moody, breaking up Helena's blood ritual. After she escapes with Jeffrey and the hypnotized Annie to confront Joshua at his Raritan Hills manor Helena is finally captured by Petrov when cornered in a back yard hedge maze during that night's violent thunderstorm. Despite his slowly falling in love with the social worker, Petrov loses her in the end to newly-single Joshua Sloane, son Jeffrey possibly having gained Helena's powers by drinking her blood on that earlier rainy night. Helena is confined to the Trenton State Mental Hospital where she begins aging visibly when denied blood, as if her actual 331 years of existence are catching up with her then.
This novel is the first of a series I plan to write about private eye Jack Petrov and his vampire hunting adventures stretching from the mid-1920s to mid-1970s, chronicling his two failed marriages, fathering four children (one dying in 1956) and seeking redemption against the backdrop of corrupt Gotham, New Jersey. The hero is a gritty hard-luck gumshoe fighting darkness even after it swallows parts of his personal life, but never the man's soul. A Jack Petrov sequel novel is now in the planning stages set around April 1928 entitled Beware any Dark Lands Mirrored which I hope to release in 2012. This story will pit the vampire hunter against a powerful aristocratic vampire in an alternate universe's Earth-like region resembling somewhere in the Balkans, where the detective and his new legman Elroy Moody seek out a missing Gotham heiress.
The Kindle version sells for $6.49 also at Amazon.com at this link:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Legacy-of-Blood-ebook/dp/B00728BWV4/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_4
The story opens in Northwestern Russia February 1919 where a US Army infantry squad guard the telegraph route from Pinega to Archangel, part of the single American batallion sent as the American Expeditionary Force to North Russia during the Allied intervention in Russia's Civil War. After dark, 17-year-old US Army Corporal Jack Petrov's rifle company is attacked by Cossack cavalry (vampires) who destroy the American garrison, except for the young man as sole survivor. Petrov slays some of the vampires with inherited supernatural hunting instincts from a dead Russian maternal grandfather (Dr. Fyoder Ulvanov M.D.), including their leader, but must also destroy a local teenage girl he had fallen in love with turned into another bloodsucker. By April 1925 in Gotham, New Jersey (a town along the Raritan River in central New Jersey), Petrov has been recently pardoned from a prison sentence inflicted after being framed by superiors in the police department the previous year, and begins his own detective agency. His first client, retired railroad vice-president Mr. Joshua Sloane, hires Petrov to investigate an estranged younger wife named Helena who took the couple's son Jeffrey and moved into a smaller townhouse away from their mansion. Aided in his investigation by an old mentor, retired cop turned bookseller Willy Krauss, former police partner and new Detective Dennis Dooley, and the intrepid local social worker Annie Mertz (whom Petrov meets in her investigation of Jeffrey Sloane's educational needs), Jack discovers Hungarian-born Helena (Egeresi) Sloane is in fact not the 20ish woman she seems, but the illegitimate granddaughter of infamous 16th-17th Century Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory, killing people to drink and bathe in their blood for retaining eternal youth and exist as her grandmother had. Thwarted by Helena's cleverness and powers, with powerful allies willing to offer the lady protection for participating in monthly blood rituals to gain a taste of her immortality and vitality, Petrov loses Annie to Helena's hypnosis after they are briefly captured snooping in her home's basement. Petrov tries several angles to expose Mrs. Sloane, each effort failing or costing other lives. In the end, Jack pretends to join Helena's cult, but springs his plan to stop her when ordered to kill Annie as a loyalty test, and aided by Dooley and Krauss along with captured uniformed policeman Elroy Moody, breaking up Helena's blood ritual. After she escapes with Jeffrey and the hypnotized Annie to confront Joshua at his Raritan Hills manor Helena is finally captured by Petrov when cornered in a back yard hedge maze during that night's violent thunderstorm. Despite his slowly falling in love with the social worker, Petrov loses her in the end to newly-single Joshua Sloane, son Jeffrey possibly having gained Helena's powers by drinking her blood on that earlier rainy night. Helena is confined to the Trenton State Mental Hospital where she begins aging visibly when denied blood, as if her actual 331 years of existence are catching up with her then.
This novel is the first of a series I plan to write about private eye Jack Petrov and his vampire hunting adventures stretching from the mid-1920s to mid-1970s, chronicling his two failed marriages, fathering four children (one dying in 1956) and seeking redemption against the backdrop of corrupt Gotham, New Jersey. The hero is a gritty hard-luck gumshoe fighting darkness even after it swallows parts of his personal life, but never the man's soul. A Jack Petrov sequel novel is now in the planning stages set around April 1928 entitled Beware any Dark Lands Mirrored which I hope to release in 2012. This story will pit the vampire hunter against a powerful aristocratic vampire in an alternate universe's Earth-like region resembling somewhere in the Balkans, where the detective and his new legman Elroy Moody seek out a missing Gotham heiress.
Sister Helena of the Sword (first written in 2005, self-published in 2012).
Genre: Epic Fantasy. 290-page paperback novel available at Amazon.com as of August 11, 2012.
My first foray into an other worlds fantasy story was inspired after having read Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars and John Norman's Tarnsman of Gor, taking the Barsoom/Mars and Counter Earth/Gor ideas and creating the alternate universe containing planet Sepharata, a world where humans from other planets and times (upon Earth and other planets in different universes) appear through the manipulations of a living cosmic energy force called The Nexus. From November 1957 rural western Oklahoma, former juvenile delinquent and new initiate nun Evelyn Lynn Weiss is transported by the cosmic lightning bolt (from The Nexus)
during a violent thunderstorm to a rural farm community on Sepharata and the continent Magarus in the land called Yuar. Captured along with other Earth refugees by the gatherer patrols of Yuar's despotic (16th Century English-born) Sword-Despotrix Saffron, Evelyn is sentenced to die after a brutal telepathic examination for having a Catholic background, but escapes burning at the stake through a miracle only to be captured again later hiding out as a serving wench at one tavern outside the citadel Rayak Yuar. Surviving a poisoning second execution, Evelyn ships out on a cargo vessel of the Sea Guild as a cabin maiden under fatherly protection of the Ambergris Wake's Sea Master Angus Magellan, changing her name to Helena Soror (or Sister Helena - inspired by her old convent's patron Saint Helen). Surviving perils at sea and later a mutiny against Magellan when he takes the ship on a treasure hunt far south of known sea coasts, Helena is offered as a sacrifice with other shipwreck suvivors on a tropical island by its natives to the Wizard of the Dome on a high mountaintop. Helena becomes instead the guest of that Wizard (astronomer Professor Richard Cunningham from 1954 South Dakota) and his girlfriend (former 1963 stewardess Shirl Sukoshi), before being sent through The Nexus (inside the mountain beneath that man's radio telescope dome and home) to the far southern frozen continent and the hidden citadel Magus - home of the advanced mysterious Magi. Trained in body and mind by the Magi instructors, Helena becomes more thoughtful and holy in her behavior after a life of wild times on Earth and a few earlier indiscretions living in Sepharata. Passing final tests from the Magi leadership and accepting God's calling for her to spread a variation of Christianity across Sepharata's lands, Helena is transported back to Cunningham's island, enlisting
he and Shirl to accompany her back to Magarus and Yuar. Flying there in a 21st Century designed solar/hydrogen-powered aircraft (one of the toys The Nexus also draws to Sepharata seemingly at random), the trio rescue two more Earth refugees originally captured with Helena after she arrived on this world - 21st Century Cosmonaut Red Air Force Lieutenant Mikhail Kamarovski and 17th Century African-Spanish slave Quentin Corazon de Leon - as sailors on the sinking cargo ship Charon's Bough attacked by a gigantic squid-like beast called the kraken. Forced to ditch their aircraft off the southern Magarus coast, Helena befriends prairie nomads after proving her holy credentials by surviving trials and performing miracles, slowly marching north and gathering an Army of Light to spread God's gospel and confront Saffron in Rayak Yuar. She eventually has several allies and their forces to penetrate Yuar's borders to besiege Saffron's citadel, after losing Richard and Shirl to a Serbian refugee sniper senti by Saffron to kill her miles from Yuar weeks earlier. Sister Helena makes the Grand Challenge of Blades to Sword-Despotrix Saffron and the two women fight atop one of the ruler's towers in her fortress in single combat to the death, until a lightning bolt strikes the Englishwoman dead as an earthquake tears Rayak Yuar apart. Rescued by a giant flying bird pair (avirapts) from the Magi and Saffron's former army leader Commandant Frederik Maygard who defected to the holy army days earlier, Helena is rescued and begins her ministry across Sepharata with victory over Yuar secured. The novel flashes forward to Mother Helena leaving her religious order in the rebuilt New Rayak citadel for a missionary journey to the distant Jaffian Coast, also planning to find her missing husband Frederik (the holy knight's expedition vanished a few years
earlier there) and maybe even Cunningham's island again.
This novel is the first in a potential multigenerational trilogy featuring Sister Helena, her only daughter Shirley Maygard/Sister Catherine (in Sister Catherine vs. The Volcano People), and granddaughter Diana Grant/Sister Lara after that (in Sister Lara the Redeemer saves the World).
http://www.amazon.com/Sister-Helena-Sword-Sepharata-Saga/dp/1478386584/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347676687&sr=1-1&keywords=Sister+Helena+of+the+Sword
My first foray into an other worlds fantasy story was inspired after having read Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars and John Norman's Tarnsman of Gor, taking the Barsoom/Mars and Counter Earth/Gor ideas and creating the alternate universe containing planet Sepharata, a world where humans from other planets and times (upon Earth and other planets in different universes) appear through the manipulations of a living cosmic energy force called The Nexus. From November 1957 rural western Oklahoma, former juvenile delinquent and new initiate nun Evelyn Lynn Weiss is transported by the cosmic lightning bolt (from The Nexus)
during a violent thunderstorm to a rural farm community on Sepharata and the continent Magarus in the land called Yuar. Captured along with other Earth refugees by the gatherer patrols of Yuar's despotic (16th Century English-born) Sword-Despotrix Saffron, Evelyn is sentenced to die after a brutal telepathic examination for having a Catholic background, but escapes burning at the stake through a miracle only to be captured again later hiding out as a serving wench at one tavern outside the citadel Rayak Yuar. Surviving a poisoning second execution, Evelyn ships out on a cargo vessel of the Sea Guild as a cabin maiden under fatherly protection of the Ambergris Wake's Sea Master Angus Magellan, changing her name to Helena Soror (or Sister Helena - inspired by her old convent's patron Saint Helen). Surviving perils at sea and later a mutiny against Magellan when he takes the ship on a treasure hunt far south of known sea coasts, Helena is offered as a sacrifice with other shipwreck suvivors on a tropical island by its natives to the Wizard of the Dome on a high mountaintop. Helena becomes instead the guest of that Wizard (astronomer Professor Richard Cunningham from 1954 South Dakota) and his girlfriend (former 1963 stewardess Shirl Sukoshi), before being sent through The Nexus (inside the mountain beneath that man's radio telescope dome and home) to the far southern frozen continent and the hidden citadel Magus - home of the advanced mysterious Magi. Trained in body and mind by the Magi instructors, Helena becomes more thoughtful and holy in her behavior after a life of wild times on Earth and a few earlier indiscretions living in Sepharata. Passing final tests from the Magi leadership and accepting God's calling for her to spread a variation of Christianity across Sepharata's lands, Helena is transported back to Cunningham's island, enlisting
he and Shirl to accompany her back to Magarus and Yuar. Flying there in a 21st Century designed solar/hydrogen-powered aircraft (one of the toys The Nexus also draws to Sepharata seemingly at random), the trio rescue two more Earth refugees originally captured with Helena after she arrived on this world - 21st Century Cosmonaut Red Air Force Lieutenant Mikhail Kamarovski and 17th Century African-Spanish slave Quentin Corazon de Leon - as sailors on the sinking cargo ship Charon's Bough attacked by a gigantic squid-like beast called the kraken. Forced to ditch their aircraft off the southern Magarus coast, Helena befriends prairie nomads after proving her holy credentials by surviving trials and performing miracles, slowly marching north and gathering an Army of Light to spread God's gospel and confront Saffron in Rayak Yuar. She eventually has several allies and their forces to penetrate Yuar's borders to besiege Saffron's citadel, after losing Richard and Shirl to a Serbian refugee sniper senti by Saffron to kill her miles from Yuar weeks earlier. Sister Helena makes the Grand Challenge of Blades to Sword-Despotrix Saffron and the two women fight atop one of the ruler's towers in her fortress in single combat to the death, until a lightning bolt strikes the Englishwoman dead as an earthquake tears Rayak Yuar apart. Rescued by a giant flying bird pair (avirapts) from the Magi and Saffron's former army leader Commandant Frederik Maygard who defected to the holy army days earlier, Helena is rescued and begins her ministry across Sepharata with victory over Yuar secured. The novel flashes forward to Mother Helena leaving her religious order in the rebuilt New Rayak citadel for a missionary journey to the distant Jaffian Coast, also planning to find her missing husband Frederik (the holy knight's expedition vanished a few years
earlier there) and maybe even Cunningham's island again.
This novel is the first in a potential multigenerational trilogy featuring Sister Helena, her only daughter Shirley Maygard/Sister Catherine (in Sister Catherine vs. The Volcano People), and granddaughter Diana Grant/Sister Lara after that (in Sister Lara the Redeemer saves the World).
http://www.amazon.com/Sister-Helena-Sword-Sepharata-Saga/dp/1478386584/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347676687&sr=1-1&keywords=Sister+Helena+of+the+Sword
The Circle of Light (first written in 2008, self-published in 2012).
Genre: Contemporary Setting Comic Book Superhero Fantasy. 310-page novel in paperback and as a Kindle edition on May 10, 2012.
On the Saturday before Easter 2012 in a parallel world where costumed superheroes operate as part of that Earth's normal routine, the Florida-based Christian seven-member superhero team The Circle of Light responds to an emergency on Jekyll Island, Georgia where a small meteor has crashed and deposited a 10' walking hairless raging humanoid somehow dubbed The Great Terror by the news media. Engaging the
rampaging menace, three team members (Mr. Amazing, Mighty Woman and Sword & Shield) are killed during the battle and three others (Ghost, Golden Bullet and Night Stalker) crippled, wounded or otherwise incapacitated. Only the superstrong red-violet skinned Brute manages to destroy The Great Terror in his rage at losing friends to the monster. Recovering from losing his legs in the fight, Night Stalker recruits and assembles a new Circle of Light during May 2012, this new team consisting of experienced (Justiciar and Lady Justice) and less experienced (Black Avenger, Blue Flame, Dynamo and The Source - the latter a sentient android built by 19-year-old science genius Tabitha Solon) heroes, but one potential new legacy member - Overman (son of Mr. Amazing and Mighty
Woman) - will have nothing to do with the group, preferring solo heroics. The new team, with The Brute again becoming the seventh member, must face their first battle on Flag Day when a larger Greater Terror lands on Earth from another artificial meteor near the Washington Monument. The Circle of Light and other American hero teams go into action, along with Overman acting as a solo hero, against the Greater Terror, but even The Brute cannot stop this 14' creature threatening the greater DC area. The military then decides on evacuating all Federal facilities and dropping two cruise missiles from a B-3 Bomber - one a neutron device and the other a low-yield nuclear weapon. Holding the monster on the Washington Mall until detonation, The Brute perishes with his adversary that afternoon. After that loss, Overman still refuses to join the
Circle of Light, tracing the conspiracy behind the Terrors to a former Circle founding member Shining Light - forced to resign in disgrace from the team twelve years earlier while twisted to evil and murdereing the hypnotizing villainess who controlled his mind briefly. Captured by paroled villains working for Shining Light, Overman is placed inside an experimental antimatter rocket's magnetically-contained combustion chamber at the villain's industrial space launch complex in central Florida. The old and new Circle members manage to free him and defeat the villain's revenge scheme against the team, with all the remaining older members dying and The Source being destroyed, but Shining
Light's other ongoing plan to discredit superheroes enough for pushing the US Goverment to regulate superheroes and criminalize heroic vigilantes is realized with a new law by Independence Day 2012. Overman has finally agreed to join the Circle, as Tabitha constructs a second Source, but with the new hero registration law coming and a more sinister force behind the late Shining Light's revenge plans, the Circle of Light's future appears uncertain.
This novel was meant to be the first part of a trilogy in which the reconstituted hero team would face a trio of villains masquerading as heroes with themes from the Book of Revelation seeking to control or destroy all superheroes through their one-world government plan, and the heroes also facing a former heroine friend of the old team having turned evil over the intervening years. With the poor reception of my superhero novel, any future installments might have to wait for better timing in the future.
Paperback edition
http://www.amazon.com/Circle-Light-John-X-Grey/dp/1475195710/ref=sr_1_6_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347677782&sr=1-6&keywords=The+Circle+of+Light
Kindle edition
http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-of-Light-ebook/dp/B00865T39U/ref=sr_1_6_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347677782&sr=1-6&keywords=The+Circle+of+Light
On the Saturday before Easter 2012 in a parallel world where costumed superheroes operate as part of that Earth's normal routine, the Florida-based Christian seven-member superhero team The Circle of Light responds to an emergency on Jekyll Island, Georgia where a small meteor has crashed and deposited a 10' walking hairless raging humanoid somehow dubbed The Great Terror by the news media. Engaging the
rampaging menace, three team members (Mr. Amazing, Mighty Woman and Sword & Shield) are killed during the battle and three others (Ghost, Golden Bullet and Night Stalker) crippled, wounded or otherwise incapacitated. Only the superstrong red-violet skinned Brute manages to destroy The Great Terror in his rage at losing friends to the monster. Recovering from losing his legs in the fight, Night Stalker recruits and assembles a new Circle of Light during May 2012, this new team consisting of experienced (Justiciar and Lady Justice) and less experienced (Black Avenger, Blue Flame, Dynamo and The Source - the latter a sentient android built by 19-year-old science genius Tabitha Solon) heroes, but one potential new legacy member - Overman (son of Mr. Amazing and Mighty
Woman) - will have nothing to do with the group, preferring solo heroics. The new team, with The Brute again becoming the seventh member, must face their first battle on Flag Day when a larger Greater Terror lands on Earth from another artificial meteor near the Washington Monument. The Circle of Light and other American hero teams go into action, along with Overman acting as a solo hero, against the Greater Terror, but even The Brute cannot stop this 14' creature threatening the greater DC area. The military then decides on evacuating all Federal facilities and dropping two cruise missiles from a B-3 Bomber - one a neutron device and the other a low-yield nuclear weapon. Holding the monster on the Washington Mall until detonation, The Brute perishes with his adversary that afternoon. After that loss, Overman still refuses to join the
Circle of Light, tracing the conspiracy behind the Terrors to a former Circle founding member Shining Light - forced to resign in disgrace from the team twelve years earlier while twisted to evil and murdereing the hypnotizing villainess who controlled his mind briefly. Captured by paroled villains working for Shining Light, Overman is placed inside an experimental antimatter rocket's magnetically-contained combustion chamber at the villain's industrial space launch complex in central Florida. The old and new Circle members manage to free him and defeat the villain's revenge scheme against the team, with all the remaining older members dying and The Source being destroyed, but Shining
Light's other ongoing plan to discredit superheroes enough for pushing the US Goverment to regulate superheroes and criminalize heroic vigilantes is realized with a new law by Independence Day 2012. Overman has finally agreed to join the Circle, as Tabitha constructs a second Source, but with the new hero registration law coming and a more sinister force behind the late Shining Light's revenge plans, the Circle of Light's future appears uncertain.
This novel was meant to be the first part of a trilogy in which the reconstituted hero team would face a trio of villains masquerading as heroes with themes from the Book of Revelation seeking to control or destroy all superheroes through their one-world government plan, and the heroes also facing a former heroine friend of the old team having turned evil over the intervening years. With the poor reception of my superhero novel, any future installments might have to wait for better timing in the future.
Paperback edition
http://www.amazon.com/Circle-Light-John-X-Grey/dp/1475195710/ref=sr_1_6_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347677782&sr=1-6&keywords=The+Circle+of+Light
Kindle edition
http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-of-Light-ebook/dp/B00865T39U/ref=sr_1_6_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347677782&sr=1-6&keywords=The+Circle+of+Light
Worldjumpers: An amazing Journey to Parallel Worlds (first written in 2009 - self-published 2011).
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Parallel Universe Science-Fiction. Published on August 23, 2011 by CreateSpace as my first self-publishing venture. ISBN 13: 978-1463767570. ISBN 10:1463767579. List Price: $11.99. 182 pages. Available currently for sale at Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Worldjumpers-amazing-Journey-Parallel-Worlds/dp/1463767579/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314405165&sr=1-8) and at CreateSpace.com (https://www.createspace.com/3645450). The Kindle edition is available for $5.99 at this link: http://www.amazon.com/Worldjumpers-ebook/dp/B0072PMYI2/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5
The story begins on a parallel Earth in its calendar year 2012 (July 4 to be exact) as the last inhabited area after World War III fifteen years earlier, Hope Valley, Ohio (a few miles southwest of Athens) celebrates Independence Day as an empty leftover ritual. One of the town few orphaned teenage mutants Alon E. Strange Chance and some of his fellow unwanted outcasts march in the town's parade in an important role, but afterwards he is chased by 'normal' bullies and forced to hide in a basement filled with strange devices. One of these (a dimension transference machine - experimental and previously non-functional) sends Alon to another parallel Earth where Great Britain rules North America. Rescued by the basement's owner, local celebrated physicist Thadeus Woodcock whose experimental force field has kept Hope Valley's 5,000 inhabitants alive since 1997, the teen is adopted by the old man (secretly his maternal grandfather) and recruited with six other teenage mutants (or mutts for short) as scouts for trips to other Earths seeking a suitable one to evacuate the townspeople to, since Woodcock reveals to his ward the force field will run out of fuel sources and collapse by December 21, 2012 finishing Hope Valley. The seven teens begin trips to parallel Earths, first through Woodcock's machine and later using Alon's inate dimensional travel powers going from world to world. Losing two of their number on different hostile Earths and never finding one suitable as a haven for Hope Valley's people, the teens abadon their quest after a few months when Alon senses Woodcock being killed by the townsfolk for hiding the truth and causing a mini civil war in the town. Wandering merely to survive and find some better Earth after figuring out Hope Valley is finally dead, the teenagers eventually make it to a seemingly perfect Earth, but anger God in corrupting the innocent descendants of Adam and Eve there they meet. Forced to seek atonement after a six-day journey west at a high mountain with its celestial waterfall of life, only Alon has the faith to take a literal leap into the water and be changed into a perfect human fit for that Earth in God's sight.
This novel was written during my horrible work experiences as a telemarketer (the office was okay, the boss was very understanding and the co-workers were basically decent - but the job itself sucked pretty much) and one of my former co-workers described the plot as a New Age Sliders (the 1990s Fox TV/Sci-Fi Channel series), which is one way of looking at its parallel world ending in a religious allegory story. I was aiming to write a young adult sci-fi adventure novel. At least I finally have a published novel. And now for something completely different - the next one awaits my attentions.
The story begins on a parallel Earth in its calendar year 2012 (July 4 to be exact) as the last inhabited area after World War III fifteen years earlier, Hope Valley, Ohio (a few miles southwest of Athens) celebrates Independence Day as an empty leftover ritual. One of the town few orphaned teenage mutants Alon E. Strange Chance and some of his fellow unwanted outcasts march in the town's parade in an important role, but afterwards he is chased by 'normal' bullies and forced to hide in a basement filled with strange devices. One of these (a dimension transference machine - experimental and previously non-functional) sends Alon to another parallel Earth where Great Britain rules North America. Rescued by the basement's owner, local celebrated physicist Thadeus Woodcock whose experimental force field has kept Hope Valley's 5,000 inhabitants alive since 1997, the teen is adopted by the old man (secretly his maternal grandfather) and recruited with six other teenage mutants (or mutts for short) as scouts for trips to other Earths seeking a suitable one to evacuate the townspeople to, since Woodcock reveals to his ward the force field will run out of fuel sources and collapse by December 21, 2012 finishing Hope Valley. The seven teens begin trips to parallel Earths, first through Woodcock's machine and later using Alon's inate dimensional travel powers going from world to world. Losing two of their number on different hostile Earths and never finding one suitable as a haven for Hope Valley's people, the teens abadon their quest after a few months when Alon senses Woodcock being killed by the townsfolk for hiding the truth and causing a mini civil war in the town. Wandering merely to survive and find some better Earth after figuring out Hope Valley is finally dead, the teenagers eventually make it to a seemingly perfect Earth, but anger God in corrupting the innocent descendants of Adam and Eve there they meet. Forced to seek atonement after a six-day journey west at a high mountain with its celestial waterfall of life, only Alon has the faith to take a literal leap into the water and be changed into a perfect human fit for that Earth in God's sight.
This novel was written during my horrible work experiences as a telemarketer (the office was okay, the boss was very understanding and the co-workers were basically decent - but the job itself sucked pretty much) and one of my former co-workers described the plot as a New Age Sliders (the 1990s Fox TV/Sci-Fi Channel series), which is one way of looking at its parallel world ending in a religious allegory story. I was aiming to write a young adult sci-fi adventure novel. At least I finally have a published novel. And now for something completely different - the next one awaits my attentions.
Claws of T'birsk (first begun in 2001/completed in 2009, available from Dark Moon Press October 2012).
Genre: Contemporary Werewolf Horror Story. Statistics: 78,000 words in 400 published pages. Now available from Dark Moon Press for $19.99 (ISBN 13: 978-1479383702). The horror novel can be found at the following Dark Moon Press page link.
http://darkmoonpress.com/general-horor.html
The book contains a prologue opening in 1581 Russia and a village called T'birsk attacked and destroyed by the raiders of a commander named Yermak pursuing the invading King of Siberia's soldiers east through the Ural Mountains. There, a surviving fur trapper Sergei Simfanov becomes the werewolf after surviving a wolf's bite and cursing the local church,
accusing the priest of being in collusion with Yermak's raiders (killing his entire family among others) since that building was spared. Moving to a present-day Los Angeles home's backyard swimming pool patio, actress Hayley Ann White awaits her co-stars from the prime-time drama Pretty Young Things visiting after a dream about being seduced by her family's closet bi-sexual housekeeper. Having fun with the other three girls, Hayley's mother arrives to remind her of a publicity junket/vacation during the TV show's scheduled winter filming break in Alaska, where the teenager will be reunited with her estranged father (long divorced from the mother). Once in the 49th State, Holly begins feeling strange emotions as her male and female co-stars start on their week-long stay beginning in Anchorage before heading to Fairbanks and other tourist spots. En route north their caravan (including the show's executive producer, his assistant. a photojournalist and magazine writer and the two hired SUV's drivers) are diverted off the main road closed by a blizzard and drive west seeking shelter for the night in some small town off the beaten path south of Denali National Park and unable to backtrack south toward Wasilla. Finding a ski lodge completed but not yet open for business, Hayley and her friends meet the grizzled old caretaker and his recent college graduate grandson watching the place. Given some shelter but cut off from the outside world effectively (even without cell phone service there), group members begin turning up missing or found dead from some vicious animal's attack. Hayley takes a shine to magazine writer Tad White (no relation) and young caretaker Peter Gorski during this experience, soon feeling more drawn to Peter for some unknown reason. As more of the traveling group's members go missing or dead, a few of them discover this lodge (The Wandering Wolf's Lair) is sheltering and aiding local werewolves from the nearby village of T'birsk, where Hayley's dad Ted Krytchek was from before becoming a successful Anchorage-based real estate developer (the Donald Trump of the West). Toward story's end, Krytchek (after a long dangerous trip to find his daughter) and the local authorities show up as the few surviving actors' rescuers, only to side with caretaker Stephan Sharansky and Peter (both also werewolves like almost all of T'birsk's population). Hayley and Tad escape the lodge in an old pickup truck, but the girl is finally transforming from her fluctuating hormones into a werewolf on their drive south toward the main highway. She bites the writer but leaves him alive to escape alone, heading back toward the lodge. In the epilogue, Tad has been imprisoned in an Anchorage mental hospital for his wild tales about werewolves and accused as the killer (by reason of insanity) of the actors and others associated with the Pretty Young Things TV show at the lodge. Hayley White will return to California and star as her show's character in a spinoff to explain so many cast member loses, Tad reads as he hears her mind speaking to him encouraging the man's escaping and hiding out with his new kindred lycanthropes in T'birsk. The magazine writer then changes to werewolf and escapes heeding Hayley's advice.
I began this novel way in 2001 with two chapters, put it aside for years before continuing on it while working as a telemarketer, but could only get two more chapters finished (making four in all) and stopped at a fifth until moving on to Worldjumpers as a central project with my limited free time. After being laid off I finished that fifth chapter and wrote the remaining nine to finish the book by early December 2009. It was my first attempt at writing a Young Adult horror novel and took me about eight years to finish technically, the longest a project has ever taken for me since starting writing in 1999 (by contrast my first novel only took on-and-off 10 or 11 months to finish). Dark Moon Press has published the finished novel as of October 2012. It is available at their website for $19.99.
http://darkmoonpress.com/general-horor.html
The book contains a prologue opening in 1581 Russia and a village called T'birsk attacked and destroyed by the raiders of a commander named Yermak pursuing the invading King of Siberia's soldiers east through the Ural Mountains. There, a surviving fur trapper Sergei Simfanov becomes the werewolf after surviving a wolf's bite and cursing the local church,
accusing the priest of being in collusion with Yermak's raiders (killing his entire family among others) since that building was spared. Moving to a present-day Los Angeles home's backyard swimming pool patio, actress Hayley Ann White awaits her co-stars from the prime-time drama Pretty Young Things visiting after a dream about being seduced by her family's closet bi-sexual housekeeper. Having fun with the other three girls, Hayley's mother arrives to remind her of a publicity junket/vacation during the TV show's scheduled winter filming break in Alaska, where the teenager will be reunited with her estranged father (long divorced from the mother). Once in the 49th State, Holly begins feeling strange emotions as her male and female co-stars start on their week-long stay beginning in Anchorage before heading to Fairbanks and other tourist spots. En route north their caravan (including the show's executive producer, his assistant. a photojournalist and magazine writer and the two hired SUV's drivers) are diverted off the main road closed by a blizzard and drive west seeking shelter for the night in some small town off the beaten path south of Denali National Park and unable to backtrack south toward Wasilla. Finding a ski lodge completed but not yet open for business, Hayley and her friends meet the grizzled old caretaker and his recent college graduate grandson watching the place. Given some shelter but cut off from the outside world effectively (even without cell phone service there), group members begin turning up missing or found dead from some vicious animal's attack. Hayley takes a shine to magazine writer Tad White (no relation) and young caretaker Peter Gorski during this experience, soon feeling more drawn to Peter for some unknown reason. As more of the traveling group's members go missing or dead, a few of them discover this lodge (The Wandering Wolf's Lair) is sheltering and aiding local werewolves from the nearby village of T'birsk, where Hayley's dad Ted Krytchek was from before becoming a successful Anchorage-based real estate developer (the Donald Trump of the West). Toward story's end, Krytchek (after a long dangerous trip to find his daughter) and the local authorities show up as the few surviving actors' rescuers, only to side with caretaker Stephan Sharansky and Peter (both also werewolves like almost all of T'birsk's population). Hayley and Tad escape the lodge in an old pickup truck, but the girl is finally transforming from her fluctuating hormones into a werewolf on their drive south toward the main highway. She bites the writer but leaves him alive to escape alone, heading back toward the lodge. In the epilogue, Tad has been imprisoned in an Anchorage mental hospital for his wild tales about werewolves and accused as the killer (by reason of insanity) of the actors and others associated with the Pretty Young Things TV show at the lodge. Hayley White will return to California and star as her show's character in a spinoff to explain so many cast member loses, Tad reads as he hears her mind speaking to him encouraging the man's escaping and hiding out with his new kindred lycanthropes in T'birsk. The magazine writer then changes to werewolf and escapes heeding Hayley's advice.
I began this novel way in 2001 with two chapters, put it aside for years before continuing on it while working as a telemarketer, but could only get two more chapters finished (making four in all) and stopped at a fifth until moving on to Worldjumpers as a central project with my limited free time. After being laid off I finished that fifth chapter and wrote the remaining nine to finish the book by early December 2009. It was my first attempt at writing a Young Adult horror novel and took me about eight years to finish technically, the longest a project has ever taken for me since starting writing in 1999 (by contrast my first novel only took on-and-off 10 or 11 months to finish). Dark Moon Press has published the finished novel as of October 2012. It is available at their website for $19.99.
Invasion Bubble of the Eternal War (first written in 2010).
Genre: Contemporary Setting Science-Fiction Story. Statistics to date: 61,000 words in 200 pages as of last revision. Still in rough draft form since a winner in 2010's National Novel Writing Month Contest.
Eight friends headed to Spring Break 2010 in Baja Mexico from UCLA make a planned brief detour to an abandoned bankrupt small film studio's lot. Sneaking inside to look around, since most of them are studying the arts or related fields in college, they must avoid the four uniformed security guards patrolling that private property scheduled to be liquidated in federal bankruptcy court that summer. Phil Markham, his girlfriend Wednesday Alcott, roommate and best friend Dudley Jefferson Jr., fellow students George Pak, Toby Rice, Valerie Moon Hawk, Bo Martin and Tammy Sue McKenzie become trapped inside the studio lot with the four Sunburst Security guards (Sergeant Bernard Jackson, Officers Maggie Wright, Dean Foster and Willy Brand) when strange alien gelatinous blob-like humanoids begin appearing as a strange dark lightning-projecting dome forms overhead to ground level. From another extra-dimensional portal an intruder from some other world, thief Vik Zan Thorzen, also appears having left his realm where these invaders already took it over and he seeks escape through stolen magic. Officer Foster is killed becoming trapped inside the energy barrier at the security station, and the others all flee in small groups to evade the invaders from taking them prisoner also. Soon after the invaders, other humanoids appear in dark uniforms (resembling albino-skinned goth or vampire types) and wielding advanced weapons capable of destroying the blobs (directed by an unseen malevolent Cosmic Intelligence). Befriendind and allying with the trapped humans, these new arrivals call themselves The Brood, a race waging continuous warfare across many dimensions against the blobs (called The Unspeakable Horror) and their master, sometimes winning and other times losing. Phil slowly falls in love with this Brood clan's queen Nyanna as she seduces him and changes the human into one of their kind through sex and the clan's only breeeder (all others male and female are warriors). Some of Phil Markham's fellow students (Toby, Valerie, Bo and Tammy Sue) are later contaminated by Unspeakable Horror energies from their transportation devices bringing reinforcements of the Cosmic Intelligence and work against their fellow Angelinos and the Brood. In the end, the Brood and their human allies defeat the invasion, the guards and compromised students also getting killed, but not before the bubble expands into neighborhing city blocks to the small studio changing anyone coming in contact with it into undead allies of the Unspeakable Horror. Phil decides to leave with his new alien mate Nyanna and her people for one special R&R dimension to replenish their losses from this battle by reproduction. Wednesday, George and Dudley watch them depart through dimensional portals with the energy bubble finally gone, the Unspeakable Horrors destroyed and sunrise of a new day coming.
I wrote this novel (from an idea I had outlined a few years earlier) for participation in the National Novel Writing Month November 2010, reaching the minimum 50,000-word length in 26 days and the rough draft of 60,800 after 28 days of the 30 allotted to be counted one of the contest's winners. Time permitting, I plan to write another short novel in November 2011, and that project idea is listed below.
Eight friends headed to Spring Break 2010 in Baja Mexico from UCLA make a planned brief detour to an abandoned bankrupt small film studio's lot. Sneaking inside to look around, since most of them are studying the arts or related fields in college, they must avoid the four uniformed security guards patrolling that private property scheduled to be liquidated in federal bankruptcy court that summer. Phil Markham, his girlfriend Wednesday Alcott, roommate and best friend Dudley Jefferson Jr., fellow students George Pak, Toby Rice, Valerie Moon Hawk, Bo Martin and Tammy Sue McKenzie become trapped inside the studio lot with the four Sunburst Security guards (Sergeant Bernard Jackson, Officers Maggie Wright, Dean Foster and Willy Brand) when strange alien gelatinous blob-like humanoids begin appearing as a strange dark lightning-projecting dome forms overhead to ground level. From another extra-dimensional portal an intruder from some other world, thief Vik Zan Thorzen, also appears having left his realm where these invaders already took it over and he seeks escape through stolen magic. Officer Foster is killed becoming trapped inside the energy barrier at the security station, and the others all flee in small groups to evade the invaders from taking them prisoner also. Soon after the invaders, other humanoids appear in dark uniforms (resembling albino-skinned goth or vampire types) and wielding advanced weapons capable of destroying the blobs (directed by an unseen malevolent Cosmic Intelligence). Befriendind and allying with the trapped humans, these new arrivals call themselves The Brood, a race waging continuous warfare across many dimensions against the blobs (called The Unspeakable Horror) and their master, sometimes winning and other times losing. Phil slowly falls in love with this Brood clan's queen Nyanna as she seduces him and changes the human into one of their kind through sex and the clan's only breeeder (all others male and female are warriors). Some of Phil Markham's fellow students (Toby, Valerie, Bo and Tammy Sue) are later contaminated by Unspeakable Horror energies from their transportation devices bringing reinforcements of the Cosmic Intelligence and work against their fellow Angelinos and the Brood. In the end, the Brood and their human allies defeat the invasion, the guards and compromised students also getting killed, but not before the bubble expands into neighborhing city blocks to the small studio changing anyone coming in contact with it into undead allies of the Unspeakable Horror. Phil decides to leave with his new alien mate Nyanna and her people for one special R&R dimension to replenish their losses from this battle by reproduction. Wednesday, George and Dudley watch them depart through dimensional portals with the energy bubble finally gone, the Unspeakable Horrors destroyed and sunrise of a new day coming.
I wrote this novel (from an idea I had outlined a few years earlier) for participation in the National Novel Writing Month November 2010, reaching the minimum 50,000-word length in 26 days and the rough draft of 60,800 after 28 days of the 30 allotted to be counted one of the contest's winners. Time permitting, I plan to write another short novel in November 2011, and that project idea is listed below.
A Damsel in Distress saves the Hero (first written in 2011).
Genre: Alternate world (Wyche-Realms) Epic Fantasy Story. Statistics to date: 55,500 words in 182 pages. Still in rough draft form since a winner in 2011's National Novel Writing Month Contest
The first novel ever written I derived from one of my earlier short stories (specifically "Saved by a Damsel in Distress" first published by Leucrota Press for their Abaculus III Anthology in November 2009), this was written for the National Novel Writing Month 2011 competition and finished in 26 days (reached the 50,000-word minimum to be considered a winner one day before that).
Set in the Alternate Earth-like fantasy world called Wyche-Realms, for which I wrote a number of stories over the years (including the one that inspired this novel), the story begins in the mountainous central Plaropean kindgom of Schweitzen where its crown prince Stephan enjoys an evening out at his favorite local tavern where a troup of three Gensipks (gypsies on this world) perform for the crowd - two male relative musicians and a female dancer whose beauty captivates the patrons. Kidnapped later that evening and taken from Schweitzen's capital citadel Kronenberg, Stephan is to be executed by six assassins for preventing his inheriting the kingdom's throne, but he and the gensipk woman (her kin killed and their wagon used to spirit the prince away) are rescued from death or worse by some shaggy beast that slays all the killers. Forced to travel back to his homeland in a roundabout way after deciding to investigate what forces wanted him dead and why, Stephan and the gensipk Mariskka Pechova travel first to the coastal city of Venetzia where they and a thief named Jinelle Jyori deal with the assassin's guild hired to kill him by the neighboring Holy Serelethian Empire - again aided by the shaggy wolf-like creature from the mountain pass earlier. Traveling to Romulus further south on the Latium trident-shaped peninsula, Stephan and the others befriend Brother Dmitri Vosk from Dalmacia after aiding his carriage against brigands attacking it. In the Vatican compound of western Romulus, Stephan eludes more attempts on his life from a strange armored warrior and flees with his allies north for home, vanquishing (with aid from the shaggy beast) the mystical armored killer at one bridge crossing. Captured by a band of humanoids, the group is saved by the shaggy beast and an elf hunter named Ganus Liberne who joins their travels. After Mariskka befriends the gensipk winter camp conclave in the mountains they enter headed for Schweitzen, and her outcast status gets their group in trouble, the arrival of a local ruler (the Grand Duke of Neuchatal) attacking the gensipk camp allows their escape. Before reaching the city of Kronenberg, the prince's allies are all killed off by an ogre, except Mariskka who changes into the shaggy beast that has aided the group in other battles and slays the humanoid to save Stephan from possible death fighting it. He is then bitten by her and almost kills the gensipk in her werewolf form with his silver-coated sword, but uses clerical magic and first aid to revive the woman whom he has slowly fallen in love with on their travels together. Unable to marry a common woman, much less a despised gensipk in Plaropean society, Stephan passes Mariskka off as a Perseid princess kidnapped and brought west by Berberak slave traders so they might wed. The two werewolves in the House of Schweitzen then track down and kill everyone involved with Stephan's kidnapping and marking for death as their curse will change the royal family's character for generations.
I hope to revise this novel further and smooth out any rough edges and plot weaknesses on the middle half of its story (added to the original material from the short story that comprised part of the first three and final two chapters out of its ten) before ever marketing the novel.
The first novel ever written I derived from one of my earlier short stories (specifically "Saved by a Damsel in Distress" first published by Leucrota Press for their Abaculus III Anthology in November 2009), this was written for the National Novel Writing Month 2011 competition and finished in 26 days (reached the 50,000-word minimum to be considered a winner one day before that).
Set in the Alternate Earth-like fantasy world called Wyche-Realms, for which I wrote a number of stories over the years (including the one that inspired this novel), the story begins in the mountainous central Plaropean kindgom of Schweitzen where its crown prince Stephan enjoys an evening out at his favorite local tavern where a troup of three Gensipks (gypsies on this world) perform for the crowd - two male relative musicians and a female dancer whose beauty captivates the patrons. Kidnapped later that evening and taken from Schweitzen's capital citadel Kronenberg, Stephan is to be executed by six assassins for preventing his inheriting the kingdom's throne, but he and the gensipk woman (her kin killed and their wagon used to spirit the prince away) are rescued from death or worse by some shaggy beast that slays all the killers. Forced to travel back to his homeland in a roundabout way after deciding to investigate what forces wanted him dead and why, Stephan and the gensipk Mariskka Pechova travel first to the coastal city of Venetzia where they and a thief named Jinelle Jyori deal with the assassin's guild hired to kill him by the neighboring Holy Serelethian Empire - again aided by the shaggy wolf-like creature from the mountain pass earlier. Traveling to Romulus further south on the Latium trident-shaped peninsula, Stephan and the others befriend Brother Dmitri Vosk from Dalmacia after aiding his carriage against brigands attacking it. In the Vatican compound of western Romulus, Stephan eludes more attempts on his life from a strange armored warrior and flees with his allies north for home, vanquishing (with aid from the shaggy beast) the mystical armored killer at one bridge crossing. Captured by a band of humanoids, the group is saved by the shaggy beast and an elf hunter named Ganus Liberne who joins their travels. After Mariskka befriends the gensipk winter camp conclave in the mountains they enter headed for Schweitzen, and her outcast status gets their group in trouble, the arrival of a local ruler (the Grand Duke of Neuchatal) attacking the gensipk camp allows their escape. Before reaching the city of Kronenberg, the prince's allies are all killed off by an ogre, except Mariskka who changes into the shaggy beast that has aided the group in other battles and slays the humanoid to save Stephan from possible death fighting it. He is then bitten by her and almost kills the gensipk in her werewolf form with his silver-coated sword, but uses clerical magic and first aid to revive the woman whom he has slowly fallen in love with on their travels together. Unable to marry a common woman, much less a despised gensipk in Plaropean society, Stephan passes Mariskka off as a Perseid princess kidnapped and brought west by Berberak slave traders so they might wed. The two werewolves in the House of Schweitzen then track down and kill everyone involved with Stephan's kidnapping and marking for death as their curse will change the royal family's character for generations.
I hope to revise this novel further and smooth out any rough edges and plot weaknesses on the middle half of its story (added to the original material from the short story that comprised part of the first three and final two chapters out of its ten) before ever marketing the novel.
The Dark Mirrored Land: Jack Petrov Private Investigator/Vampire Hunter Book 2 (first begun 2012 and completed in 2013)
Genre: Period Piece (20th Century) Mystery and Other World Fantasy/Horror set in 1928 Gotham and the land of Varlochia in the world called Wycherealms.
The second Jack Petrov: Private Investigator/Vampire Hunter novel set three years after A LEGACY OF BLOOD in the spring of 1928, our hard-luck private eye and his legman/partner ever since 1927, the laid-off Gotham police officer (African-American) Elroy Moody, are called in on a missing persons case the Gotham police and private detective agencies have been unable to solve - the disappearance of socialite Valerie Mae Bloomfield from her family's mansion in west Gotham's Raritan Hills neighborhood. Canvasing the house and grounds, Petrov and Moody stumble upon the secret in a strange mirror the woman kept in her bedroom - where it opens a portal swallowing the two investigators following her to an alternate Earth-like world and a southeastern European style valley within high mountains where a tyrannical Archduke's family has ruled for centuries isolated from civilized lands further north. Befriending locals in the only village settlement, Petrov and Moody learn about Archduke Istvan Mardok and that Valerie is currently his guest/prisoner who will be released when the villagers give him a local innkeeper's daughter Tanya Kolmyir (a young woman Istvan believes is his reincarnated bride-to-be Irina Kolym from five centuries earlier). Jack Petrov will discover the Archduke is in fact a powerful vampire who was cursed to an undead existence after slaying his bride and younger brother, drinking of their blood from an uncontrollable new hunger that would lead to a massacre of wedding guests that evening. The detective and legman must protect Tanya, organize the villagers to defy their local ruler, and somehow rescue Valerie from the Archduke's high mountain castle overlooking the valley. This story was in part inspired by the Ravenloft story from Dungeons and Dragons. Begun in September 2012 and mostly written during the next two months, I finished the rough draft between September and October 2013. After some revisions and proofreading, I intend releasing it as another self-published novel.
The second Jack Petrov: Private Investigator/Vampire Hunter novel set three years after A LEGACY OF BLOOD in the spring of 1928, our hard-luck private eye and his legman/partner ever since 1927, the laid-off Gotham police officer (African-American) Elroy Moody, are called in on a missing persons case the Gotham police and private detective agencies have been unable to solve - the disappearance of socialite Valerie Mae Bloomfield from her family's mansion in west Gotham's Raritan Hills neighborhood. Canvasing the house and grounds, Petrov and Moody stumble upon the secret in a strange mirror the woman kept in her bedroom - where it opens a portal swallowing the two investigators following her to an alternate Earth-like world and a southeastern European style valley within high mountains where a tyrannical Archduke's family has ruled for centuries isolated from civilized lands further north. Befriending locals in the only village settlement, Petrov and Moody learn about Archduke Istvan Mardok and that Valerie is currently his guest/prisoner who will be released when the villagers give him a local innkeeper's daughter Tanya Kolmyir (a young woman Istvan believes is his reincarnated bride-to-be Irina Kolym from five centuries earlier). Jack Petrov will discover the Archduke is in fact a powerful vampire who was cursed to an undead existence after slaying his bride and younger brother, drinking of their blood from an uncontrollable new hunger that would lead to a massacre of wedding guests that evening. The detective and legman must protect Tanya, organize the villagers to defy their local ruler, and somehow rescue Valerie from the Archduke's high mountain castle overlooking the valley. This story was in part inspired by the Ravenloft story from Dungeons and Dragons. Begun in September 2012 and mostly written during the next two months, I finished the rough draft between September and October 2013. After some revisions and proofreading, I intend releasing it as another self-published novel.
FUTURE PROPOSED NOVEL PROJECTS.
SISTER CATHERINE VS. THE VOLCANO PEOPLE - The proposed sequel to SISTER HELENA OF THE SWORD will be set about five years after the first story's epilogue in which the title character (aka Shirley Maygard) goes seeking her lost mother superior and biological mother in the wild jungles beyond the Jafian Coast of Planet Sepharata, finding not only Sister Helena and father Frederik Maygard (the old man near death), but also meets missing American barnstorming pilot and amateur explorer Jack Grant with the arboreal-dwelling natives beset by a larger tribal empire living upon and around their gigantic volcano while worshiping it. The story is currently a rough outline as of September 2012, but I hope to have it written fully by 2013 for publication. The Sepharata Trilogy would later conclude with SISTER LARA THE REDEEMER SAVES THE WORLD about Jack and Shirley Grant's daughter Diana returning to the Magarus continent for fighting some apostate forces that have taken control of Sister Helena's founded church during her absence, and feature an impending extraterrestrial conspiracy and invasion darkening that world's doorstep.
THE LIFE EATER - The third Jack Petrov novel planned concurrently during 2012, this story is set in the winter of 1931-32 as Gotham, New Jersey struggles through a frigid winter and the ongoing Great Depression. Jack Petrov has lost his original office/apartment and now lives and works out of his older brother Ivan's apartment, the WWI disabled veteran, his wife and five children having relocated from NYC due to hard times. A new serial killer has come to crime-plagued Gotham in the form of a strange gangly German teenager who has the power from his parents' exposure to radioactive isotopes as scientists during the war to draw the life from anyone he touches for an extended period of time. Jack aids the police in trying to track down this vampire-like fiend, but his best friend Detective Dennis Dooley is left half-dead by the Life Eater during a confrontation on the Gotham Narrows Bridge in which Jack almost falls to his death. The undead Dooley still aids Petrov and fellow cops as the detective's recent immigrant cousin from Finland becomes the Life Eater's next potential victim. The villain of this novel was inspired by C. M. Kornbluth's 1950 short story "The Mind Worm."
VAMPIRE HUNTER FROM OUTER SPACE - MORE DETAILS TO COME SOON.
THE LIFE EATER - The third Jack Petrov novel planned concurrently during 2012, this story is set in the winter of 1931-32 as Gotham, New Jersey struggles through a frigid winter and the ongoing Great Depression. Jack Petrov has lost his original office/apartment and now lives and works out of his older brother Ivan's apartment, the WWI disabled veteran, his wife and five children having relocated from NYC due to hard times. A new serial killer has come to crime-plagued Gotham in the form of a strange gangly German teenager who has the power from his parents' exposure to radioactive isotopes as scientists during the war to draw the life from anyone he touches for an extended period of time. Jack aids the police in trying to track down this vampire-like fiend, but his best friend Detective Dennis Dooley is left half-dead by the Life Eater during a confrontation on the Gotham Narrows Bridge in which Jack almost falls to his death. The undead Dooley still aids Petrov and fellow cops as the detective's recent immigrant cousin from Finland becomes the Life Eater's next potential victim. The villain of this novel was inspired by C. M. Kornbluth's 1950 short story "The Mind Worm."
VAMPIRE HUNTER FROM OUTER SPACE - MORE DETAILS TO COME SOON.