Mar 23, 2019 | Action & Adventure, Editors' Blog, Featured, Historical, Interviews, Mystery, Thriller
In The Sign of The Blood, two of the main characters, Juliana, a slave, and Sybellina, a Roman priestess, compete for the attention of Constantine, son of the Emperor of the West, a young man destined to become Constantine the Great.
As the book opens Constantine is about to inherit his father's title and can have almost any woman he wants. He is 34 years old and a Roman Tribune, a senior military officer serving at the front lines. Household slaves will be available to him as well as the daughters of the wealthy.
How could a woman who wants his love, succeed?
The first thing I had to set aside as I wrote this story, was the idea that love was simply a matter of attraction or suitability. For most people living at that time, 306 A.D., the gods interfered and had to be placated, and humans could both read the future and influence it through spells, charms, and potions.
Often, such charms or spells were a way for people to imagine that they had a chance with someone, to give them the confidence to seduce someone, or to keep someone they already had.
If we think about how we pray to be loved, wear rings to signify relationship status, and spray ourselves with perfume to attract, we are not that far away from the mindset of spells, charms, and potions, though we like to fool ourselves that we are all very modern and rational in the age of the iPhone.
What you may not have done, however, is what Sybellina does in The Sign of the Blood. As one of the last priestesses of the slowly dying imperial cult, she is both a spy and an assassin, the 2nd and 3rd oldest professions. She is also a skilled practitioner in the arts of divination and dark magic. Anyone who has read the astrology predictions for their star sign can understand the attraction of knowing where you are headed, especially in times of danger. It really can make you strive harder if you believe in your destiny.
>
>
But to steal the heart of an emperor's son who can have a different woman every hour, the challenge is extreme.
And it calls for extreme measures. Something involving blood and human flesh. Something that requires a sacrifice, to represent the sacrifice you would be willing to make to achieve your aim. A spell and a charm and a potion strong enough to make anyone believe in their destiny.
That could work, yes? It could certainly give you the confidence to make your move.
If you think I'm making this up, click through to The Greek Magical Papyri which include love spells and hocus-pocus meant to inspire confidence. If you believe in positive thinking you will understand the benefits of self-belief in everything, including matters of the heart.
Codex with magic spells, 5-6thC A.D. Museo Archeologico, Milan. Wikimedia Commons.
And if you want to know what was written on these charms or chanted as the blood flowed, remember your Virgil who said we could. “… tear love's cure-all from the forehead of a foal.”
Or consider the level of desire evident from the Louvre Doll curse tablet, “…do not allow her to eat, drink, hold out, venture out, or find sleep.”
I am sure you wouldn't use such tactics on the object of your affection, but if the future of an empire was at stake, you never know. And this was at a time when Christianity was being persecuted into annihilation and death loomed every day.
If you think I'm stretching things about the ancients belief in magic, have you read The Apology, where this Roman author states, “magical operations were indispensable scientific experiments.”
And before you dismiss all this as nonsense, consider these questions:
Did you ever feel, when you met a stranger, that you would meet again or had know them before?
And what would you do to hold onto the love of your life?
If you want to read what Sybellina does to get her wish to come true and how she enchanted Constantine, and how Juliana strikes back, you will have to buy The Sign of The Blood.
Laurence O'Bryan is the author of the puzzle series novels and now, The Sign of The Blood, the first novel in a new series set during the bloody and turbulent late Roman Empire.
Mar 1, 2019 | Action & Adventure, Advice for Writers, Expert, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-fi, Thriller, Uncategorized
Stephen King in Creepshow — Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Stephen King is one of the most successful authors in the world. He's written more than 60 books, all of the them bestsellers. And he writes horror.
Horror!
Yes, that much maligned genre I keep talking about. He's been doing it for 40 some years and he's still going strong.
King himself once called his writing “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.” It's not complex stuff. He writes prose that is simple and easy to follow.
He spells everything out for his readers. No literary subtitles here. If he wants you to know what a character is feeling, he tells you what that feeling is and why that character is feeling it.
Writers are weird people. When one of them makes it big, you get articles like this one. Did I mention, writers are weird?
King's simple style does not, however, limit the stories he tells. He is a master storyteller, often weaving complex plots with lots of characters and making it look easy.
His stories are exciting and fast-paced. They suck you in and won't let go. You have to keep reading and reading.
He is also very good with time and place and very good with character. And it is with his characters that his writing shines and wins over his readers.
His characters are always sympathetic, sometimes with heartbreaking backstories that he explicitly writes in detailed flashbacks, usually everyday people.
Even his bad guys are only bad because of some sort of corruption, typically from an outside evil force. And by ‘outside evil' I mean an antagonistic force, often supernatural, that is either out to get his mostly innocent and well-meaning characters (like Pennywise the clown in It), or out to make them do evil things themselves (like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining).
Here's how you do an author pic. Black and white. Stark shadows. No smiling. Intense eyes. Courtesy of Simon and Schuster.
But always these antagonistic forces come from things that are twisted, evil and not human. It's a comforting message that people like to believe. People are good. Other things are bad. A message worth noting as a contributing factor to King's success.
Personally, I have been reading Stephen King since I was 14 years old. I have read a good majority of what he was written, with only some of his newer stuff missing from my list.
Even as I discovered writers I liked more over the years, I've always come back to King's stories. I'm drawn back to them when I need something into which I know I will lose myself.
If you're like me and you grew up with a sort of high-minded ideal for your writing, born out of reading too much Hemingway and Faulkner (or whatever “classic” author you're into), then further perpetuated by college literature and creative writing courses, it's worth taking a step back and looking at the work of an author like Stephen King.
King's writing style is simple, his characters are easy to relate to, and his stories move quickly.
These are traits that sell books.
King is not famous because he writes horror, but in spite of it.
…
Oh, and my favorite King novel?
The Tommyknockers (I know, I know. Considered one of his worst. Ask me in the comments and I'll tell you why it's my favorite.)
Keith Deininger is the award-winning and #1 Amazon bestselling author of many horror and fantasy titles, including WITHIN, THE FEVER TRILOGY and THE GODGAME series. He has been called “one of the finest writers of imaginative fiction” and “Ray Bradbury on acid.” His latest novel, VIOLENT HEARTS, has been compared to Stephen King’s fantasy-based work. He lives in Albuquerque, NM with his wife and two kids. Although he loves a good nightmare, in person he’s a really nice guy. Promise.
www.KeithDeininger.com
William Brazzel
Feb 28, 2018 | Featured, Mystery, Thriller
Abduction
Do you want to read more? Get Conflux: Threat from the Troika By William Brazzel
This April has delivered the harshest and most unpleasant weather Manhattan has experienced in over two decades. Eighteen inches of precipitation has been recorded for the first half of the month. Today, once again, the rain is streaming down the bedroom windows of my condominium severely impairing my view.
When I roll out of bed and get dressed, Boynton, my five-year-old German shepherd, begins performing his usual dance; this is my cue to hurry. After getting dressed, I scurry downstairs to the living room, open the closet, grab my poncho, and walk toward the front door while Boynton runs to get his leash. His lack of traction on the hardwood floor causes his legs to slip out from under him. This unfortunate scene repeats itself on most mornings, but he never seems to learn.
Once outside, we walk briskly to Juniper Valley Park, one of the top ten parks in Queens, located just three blocks away. Boynton seems extremely anxious this morning. He’s tugging so hard on the leash that I have to wrap the handle tightly around my wrist and hand to keep him from pulling loose. When I pull back on the leash, he begins choking. I stop walking and stoop to rub his throat in an effort to calm him.
By the time we finish our walk, the sun is shining through the receding black clouds, and the rain has halted. The beautiful foliage of azaleas and freesias manifests in a gorgeous diversity of color and pleasant scents from the fresh, sweet gardens. It’s a beautiful morning.
Natashia Thewes
Jun 9, 2017 | Crime, Editors' Blog, Thriller
I don’t often give a book 5 stars. That honor is reserved for the few books that truly have it all; the ones you can’t forget. A 5-star book transports you to another world, another place or time, and always leaves you craving more. Below are the five 5-star conspiracy thrillers I can’t stop thinking about.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the tradition of The Girl on the Train, The Silent Wife, and Gone Girl comes an enthralling psychological thriller that spins one woman’s seemingly good fortune, and another woman’s mysterious fate, through a kaleidoscope of duplicity, death, and deception.
Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.
The request seems odd, even intrusive—and for the two women who answer, the consequences are devastating.
EMMA
Reeling from a traumatic break-in, Emma wants a new place to live. But none of the apartments she sees are affordable or feel safe. Until One Folgate Street. The house is an architectural masterpiece: a minimalist design of pale stone, plate glass, and soaring ceilings. But there are rules. The enigmatic architect who designed the house retains full control: no books, no throw pillows, no photos or clutter or personal effects of any kind. The space is intended to transform its occupant—and it does.
JANE
After a personal tragedy, Jane needs a fresh start. When she finds One Folgate Street she is instantly drawn to the space—and to its aloof but seductive creator. Moving in, Jane soon learns about the untimely death of the home’s previous tenant, a woman similar to Jane in age and appearance. As Jane tries to untangle truth from lies, she unwittingly follows the same patterns, makes the same choices, crosses paths with the same people, and experiences the same terror, as the girl before.
“The Girl Before is deservedly anointed the ‘top girl’ of this season’s suspense novels.”—The Washington Post
The seventh book in the gripping technothriller series, Spies Lie, perfect for fans who love Robert Ludlum, Lee Child, and Barry Eisler.
She is a CypherGhost: An untraceable hacker, someone who can be anywhere and do anything using a computer. Can an aircraft be hacked? Can a human being be hacked? Don't be so sure…
When Ann Silbey Sashakovich enters Stanford University to study computer forensics, she gets far more than she expected. During the Thanksgiving holiday of her freshman year, Ann finds that the aircraft she is a passenger on has been hacked. Its engines have stopped and everyone aboard is screaming.
When Charlette De Spain's boyfriend is falsely accused of stealing secrets from the FBI and dies in prison under mysterious circumstance, it changes her life. Once an Art History major, now a budding computer hacker, Charlette gathers the proof that her boyfriend was innocent. When no one pays attention, she decides to become jury and executioner for all those responsible.
However, the aircraft carrying one of Charlette’s primary targets also carries Ann.
In an America whose government is silently at war with its hackers, who prevails and who fails isn't limited to the two young battling women, but might also involve the fate of the entire nation.
“DS Kane, without a doubt, is a great storyteller… a highly recommended read for the lovers of popular thrillers”. —Mystery Tribune
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – An addictive new novel of psychological suspense from the author of #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon The Girl on the Train.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.
“Hawkins is at the forefront of a group of female authors – think Gillian Flynn and Megan Abbott – who have reinvigorated the literary suspense novel by tapping a rich vein of psychological menace and social unease… there’s a certain solace to a dark escape, in the promise of submerged truths coming to light.” —Vogue
A Masterful Hollywood Mystery that is sure to grip any reader and keep them thoroughly guessing until the end.
Sophia Donovan has it all: a beautiful home in the Hollywood Hills, a successful career at a high-profile celebrity magazine, amazing friends, and she is married to one of the hottest Hollywood Directors of the time. Things between her and her husband Marcus aren’t perfect, but after 11 years what marriage is? But, if the secrets that lay behind the walls of the Donovan home were ever exposed, life would never be the same for anyone.
When an unexpected visitor from Sophia’s past shows up, she is forced to come to terms with her suspicions. As Sophia unravels the truth about the people closest to her, it quickly becomes clear that fighting to save her marriage won’t be nearly as important as fighting to save her life.
“Beyond the Red Carpet is an action-packed, well-written Hollywood mystery, a modern story reminiscent of Harold Robbins’ and Jacqueline Susann’s classics.” —Book Addict
This well paced thriller has a mix of history dating back to the Hitler years in Nuremberg, suspense, and a shocking ending. If you like action, history, and a real sense of place and time, you will love this book!
Sean Ryan discovers a terrifying conspiracy to rid Germany of its refugees. After flying to Nuremberg, he sees blood on its streets, and anger boiling over.
An old friend in the city, Eleni Kibre, tells him about the anti-refugee groups spreading fast across Germany. An hour after he leaves her she is murdered. The police arrive at Sean’s hotel to question him. He was the last person to see her alive. Then Eleni’s partner goes missing.
Can Sean stop a new genocide, or will he too become a victim?
Hatred of foreigners has been buried for decades in Europe, but not deep enough. Long lost letters from Pope Pius XII to Adolf Hitler, which the Vatican is willing to do anything to retrieve, are the final pieces of this truly shocking puzzle, which Sean must solve before a modern genocide is released on the world.
“Another great book by a up and coming superstar — I have read all of the Laurence O’Bryan Puzzle” books…I love the way he weaves factual history into current fictional situations.” —Gloria Antypowich
To receive a free ebook copy of The Nuremberg Puzzle please click here.
Anthony Maguire
May 10, 2017 | 1st pages, Thriller
1 THE OWNER HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
DR JONATHAN CHASELING – young, bearded and hipsterish-looking – navigated his car around ruts and potholes on a relentlessly straight, orange-red dirt track stretching away to infinity. Up ahead he saw a lone tree, a ghost gum with thin, white branches reaching for the sky like skeletal hands.
A few minutes later, he parked near the tree, which was growing in a hollow beside the track. There was no mobile reception here, so he couldn’t take a GPS fix or use Google Maps, but the tree ghost gum was a landmark that would help him find his way back to the car, a RAV4, normally white but now coated with red dust.
A 26-year-old medical graduate on his way to Alice Springs to start a hospital job, Chaseling had detoured off the main highway to check out this place. It was renowned for marine fossils – a legacy of the time, aeons ago, when this part of Australia was covered by a vast inland sea. He got out of the car and walked into the scrub.
Taking a weaving course round scattered patches of saltbush, he kept his eyes to the ground, which was littered with small pieces of flat, rust-coloured sandstone. Every now and then he stopped to pick up a rock and look at it, turning it over in his hand, hoping to see the form of a trilobite or other long-extinct species.
He’d been walking for about 10 minutes when he saw a flat slab of stone, almost a metre long, distinctive because it was the only large rock he’d seen since leaving the track. Chaseling bent down and gripped the edge of the slab. He gave an experimental tug but it didn’t budge. Then he shifted his right foot forward to give his body some leverage and put his back into the job, hauling upwards with both hands. There was a sucking noise as the slab came away from the damp earth beneath.
Holding the rock on its edge, he looked down at the patch of dirt he’d revealed – and noticed something white and rounded protruding from it. An ancient sea shell, perhaps. He set the slab down off to the side. Then he started scraping away the ochre dirt with a finger-length, sharp-edged piece of flint that had been underneath the rock. He gave a gasp. Staring up at him was the eye socket of a human skull.
His hands shaking, he uncovered the other socket, which like the first was filled with compacted ochre dirt. Next he scratched away the earth over the mouth, revealing a perfect set of teeth. Probably an Aborigine from the times before white settlement, Chaseling thought to himself. The teeth seemed to be grinning at him. He looked down at the piece of flint in his hand. It was a dark tan colour, very different in shade and composition to the other rocks in this area. And the picture became clear. This had been the dead person’s prized knife and it had gone to the grave with him. Or possibly her, although judging by the large size of the skull and teeth, it had most likely been an adult male.
Now he knew what to look for, he could see the shape of a rib cage in the dirt. And his eyes were drawn to something else. A small, disc-shaped object the size of a dried apricot, but thicker. It was caked with earth like chocolate on a Kinder
Surprise egg. He picked it up – it was heavy, some kind of rock – and scratched at the dirt with the piece of flint. There was a flash of phosphorescent colour. Opal! His heart started thumping with excitement.
As he uncovered more of the precious stone, he saw that it had raised, spiral ridges radiating out from its centre. It glittered with a kaleidoscope of hues – now emerald green, now a brilliant magenta morphing into electric blue, each shade burning with a fire from deep within the rock. He uncapped his water bottle and rinsed the stone. He thought how 100 million years ago or even earlier, a marine snail – an ancestor of the modern-day nautilus – had lived and died in a primeval sea bed. Its shell became filled with silica-rich mud and fragments of marine life. And after the sea retreated, the contents of the shell gradually transformed into a gem which shimmered with the green of long extinct seaweeds, the blue of ancient fish scales, the iridescent purple of giant sea urchin spines and the brilliant red and orange of prehistoric jellyfish. It could well be worth of a fortune.
Chaseling put the flint back down where he’d found it. After a few moments’ hesitation, he placed the opal in the pocket of his cargo shorts. It won’t be missed, the voice of his shadowy other self whispered inside his head. The previous owner has left the building. He scooped up some dirt and covered first the grinning mouth, then the eyes and nose socket of the long-buried skull.
DS Kane
Dec 16, 2016 | 1st pages, Thriller
CHAPTER 1
February 25, 6:56 a.m. First Basement, Lubyanka Prison, Moscow, Russia
Ann Silbey Sashakovich sat on the ice-cold gray concrete shelf in the prison cell the guards had tossed her into. She had landed as if she were a rag doll, hitting the concrete floor and bouncing against the wall. She rubbed the spot on her left shoulder that had taken the brunt of the landing. The damage was just one big black-and-blue mark, but she was otherwise okay. She was soon shivering, staring into the single bulb’s light, too dim to make it possible to examine the spartan features of the cell.
She could tell that there was no real mattress. She saw only a piece of olive-drab threadbare cloth, draped over what would serve as a cot if she lived long enough to need sleep. The teenager rubbed her shoulder again. She felt a twinge as she remembered how a guard had dragged her body from the lobby down the stone staircase to the first basement. She had bounced off each slab of chipped concrete, and the snorkel parka she had worn was now ripped to shreds where the guard had grabbed her. Ann was five-feet-four inches tall and weighed less than one hundred and twenty pounds.
That wasn’t a fair fight, she thought. And this wasn’t even the worst that had happened to her.
