Displacement
Getting back on track has been harder than I expected. The last couple of years have upset every aspect of my life. Navigating forward, I am making different choices than I would have before the world changed. These choices also effect my writing. Don’t get me wrong. I think a reset might actually be a good thing, in seeing every situation through a new light or prism and reacting in a new manner. Nothing like a pandemic and the potential onset of World War III to make it easier to let go of the past and move on.
Modulator is complete and I had a lot of fun writing it. The story is born out of displacement (it started as a screenplay) and is different in a good way, black-gloved killer and all. I look forward to sharing my first giallo.
The submission block includes: Lane Bowden 1973 and Rebel’s Edge - Suburbia. I am going to keep pushing to get them seen and potentially picked up. The industry is matter of taste and timing so who knows what will happen. I think it best to keep my chin up, march on, and most importantly, continue to create new works.
Regardless of the endgame, I plan to have a new book out by year’s end. I hope to be able to share some details before summer fades into autumn.
Below is a partial of Under the Moonbow from Anarchy - Strange Tales of Outsiders:
Maleki stood naked in a small cell of the Ponoko Asylum for the Criminally Insane. In stature and build, he resembled a healthy young man: perfectly defined muscle, all lithe and toned. The mar to normality, his tattoos—intricate in design—spiraled, told stories, and covered most of his smooth flesh, patterns with spells within the patterns. The history of his lost race was mapped out on his skin: the olden days before the fall on his torso, the breaking of the lost on each of his limbs, the mysteries on his groin, and the way to God on his neck and face.
The night was dying as a new day was born. Maleki felt a loss as his energy faded with the rising sun. The cries from the hallway outside his cell called to him, but he was helpless to answer, even though he recognized the languages of different daemons. The other inmates in the asylum howled and screamed in a hellish chorus of the damned as one of their own was dragged down the corridor.
"What is not natural must stay hidden.”
The covenant came into Maleki's mind, and he wished the one being dragged to a cell was below where it was safe.
The sky in the high window turned a soft purple as the light grew brighter. Maleki paced and turned in the small, confining space of stone walls, metal door, and granite floor. The white-and-grey striped inmate's uniform was crumpled in a corner. How he hated the restrictions of clothes and the way they held one back from truly feeling the world.
A scream of desperation and anguish came again, followed by another infernal chorus. The faint sounds of a beating, the slurs and taunts from the guards to their charge, and the iron click and lock of a cell door drifted to Maleki's keen ears. The screams grew to a fever pitch. The sun rose, a fire in the sky. The rays of light burned between the bars. Maleki shed a tear down the spiral tattoo of his cheek in knowing that the daemon in the cell would be consumed by the day, only ashes to remain.
Maleki reached up, indecipherable letters on his hand, and touched the sunlight. It did not burn but was painful, and he gritted his straight white teeth and took the pain, even enjoying it to some degree.
I am getting stronger, Maleki thought as he reveled in overcoming the touch of the light. The tattoos shifted on his flesh, as if they were fighting below the surface for dominance.
DS
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