The Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son

That title and that pic have nothing at all to do with this post. I just needed something that had to do with seven, and as it turns out, the Magnificent Seven are surprisingly meme free. My esteemed partner in crime Norma tagged me for something a few days back (she used the term shame him into doing it), and I figured, why not? So, here are seven sentences from the seventh page of Heaven & Hell, which I am (finally) getting back into polishing up.

Several days later, the Old City was busy as always in the afternoon of an early March day. The tension was always lingering there, though. Living in the midst of turmoil meant never knowing if today was going to be one of those very bad days. For two uniformed policemen on foot patrol near the Jaffa Gate, a routine day shifted suddenly into bloodshed and violence.

Yehuda Rabat was the senior officer, shepherding a young officer through his first year on the street. Rabat was experienced, in his late thirties, long since schooled in the ways of Jerusalem, of the obstacles and issues to be faced here. He looked the part of a veteran officer, proper in his uniform, his dark eyes constantly scanning his surroundings. 

Extended Families And Lone Wolves

"People are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's families. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own." ~ Douglas Coupland

"Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops." ~ Cary Grant

"Blood relatives often have nothing to do with family, and similarly, family is about who you choose to make your life with." ~ Oliver Hudson

"The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going." ~ George Carlin

"Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds. They're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Yes, I know. It's April Fool's Day, and you might have thought, surely William will mark it with some splash of inappropriate humour, right? Well, no, not really. Today I'm going to pull an April Fool's joke by being serious. Though I can direct you over to our joint blog, where we did precisely that, marking the day with a Without A Word image blog. Head on over and take a look.

Today I thought I'd touch base on a few things writing wise. One of the blogs I follow is from JE Fritz. At Still Writing, she often blogs about word origins, and back in March, she was writing about the origins of the letter N. It seems that in its earliest roots, the letter was symbolized as nahas. Incidentally, that word also means snake. This surprised me, of course. You see, in Heaven & Hell, one of my characters has the surname Nahas. He's a Palestinian politician, who's an exceedingly rare thing for someone of that profession: an inherently decent and honourable man. Whose name means snake. Oh well. Too late to change it now, right?

Another blogger I follow, Tracy Krauss, posted back in March a writing exercise that I liked. Check out that link for her original look at this. I'll paraphrase the terms she's used...

1. Think of the story you have written or are writing, and define it with a single word.

I'll cheat here a bit by saying that I'll use two words, but they're bound together. For my protagonists, the events of Heaven & Hell are about justice. For the antagonists, the story is one of revenge.

2. Focus in on this by asking a question about that word. The question ought to be as specific as possible.

Where is the fine line between revenge and justice? Can a terrible wrong be made worse by giving in to vengeance?

3. What is the answer to that question? This is the message or idea the reader's going to take away from your book or story.

This has been a theme that's shown itself through the book time and again as I've written and revised. For my protagonists, justice is about stopping a greater evil, defusing a crisis, even if that requires violence. For my antagonists, violence is a tool to indulge their anger, their need for revenge. Justice is restorative. Vengeance is destructive.

I've been reading a novel by Carla Neggers lately. That Night On Thistle Lane is a romance with a dash of mystery to it, set in New England, in a small town called Knights Bridge. She's written about this place before, and characters from that book turn up here again, though in this book another couple finding their way together take the forefront of the novel. I was first introduced to Carla's work through Norma, and have read quite a bit of her novels since. One of the things that she often uses in her novels is the theme of family- mostly family by blood, but also the friendships that form close enough to count as family. As an author, it allows you to continue to use the same settings and characters in future books if you like (with this book, she has twin sisters who could always turn up in future books of her own). It's been typical of her earlier books, where family dynamics play a big role in the relationships Carla writes. It would seem to be a reflection of her own life, as from everything I've seen of her online, she seems to have a large, close family.

I contrast that sense of family bonds in her work with my own work, which I would use the term lone wolf for. In Heaven & Hell, my two spy protagonists, Tom Stryker and Meredith Devon, are both only children. Stryker's parents are deceased, and he has no other family. Devon's father is dead; relations between she and her mother are strained. Her mother doesn't particularly approve of her profession, but that's just the surface of things, which I'll no doubt explore in future books. It leads me back, so to speak, to the recent James Bond film Skyfall, with the observation of how orphans seem to make good spies. Bond lost his parents years ago, and the loss hardened him. The film fleshes out that background, giving us more insight into the man. Likewise, in my work, Stryker is an orphan, and for all intents and purposes, so is Devon. These are two people who have been stripped of family, alone in the world. They're lone wolves.

This also reflects itself in our joint work in Same Time Tomorrow. There I write the point of view of our male protagonist, Gabriel Miller. He's an orphan too, his parents killed by a drunk driver when he was eighteen. In the book, his closest family is his grandmother Bridget; his friendships form the rest of his family. Our female protagonist, Chloe Masters, whose point of view is written by my partner in crime Norma, is also an only child, her father no longer part of the picture, her mother facing a crisis. Both of these characters have something of that lone wolf sensibility about them, the lack of extended family. It's a touch we extend to some of the supporting characters in the book; Dana Butler, Chloe's best friend, never speaks of family, so there's a friction where that's concerned. Olivia Shaw, Gabriel's close friend, is an only child and orphan whose parents were emotionally distant. And Rachel Mitchell, Olivia's fiancee, has been disowned by her family when she came out of the closet. What family ties these characters lack, they make up for by making family of the people they choose to consider as such.

I know where this comes from, of course. A good dose of who we are as people works its way into our writing. I think having characters who are isolated in terms of family dynamics is reflected in part from my own family history. No, I'm not an orphan, and I do get along with my parents. Sibling relationships are a different story, however, and that's why only children seem to be a recurring theme in my writing. I've come to think that family can be the people you're closest to and who you choose to think of as family, even if that relationship is based in friendship. It doesn't always mean those you were brought up with. Sometimes you can be hurt the worst by those you were brought up with. These past two years, I've had to learn that the hard way. Cathartic moment coming. Ready? Here we go.

I have from time to time referenced the strained relationship where my sisters are concerned, more often than not in comments in other blogs. Two and a half years ago, they did something awful to my parents, and never apologized. It was the last straw after years of keeping my mouth shut to keep the peace in the family, years of patiently putting up with their barbs and thorny personalities, years of the less than savoury men in their lives (we're talking complete sleaze, racists, alcoholics, just the real dregs of society). Where one used hard words like a blunt sledgehammer, the other was more likely to use her words like a dagger, stabbing deep. The effect of their words was the same: painful. It amounted to verbal abuse and bullying. And I internalized all of it, and when that last straw happened, all of the negativity and resentments I'd kept in check came pouring out. I ended up in a very dark place; I hit rock bottom, but that's what I needed to seek out help.

You can only be hurt so many times before you say enough. No more. My sisters have never done the slightest thing to make amends to my parents, and now so much time has gone by that it would just feel hollow. I can't trust them not to do something equally awful someday. They remain the same bitter, vindictive, toxic people they were. And the cost of letting them in is more than I can bear. So the end result is that I have no more sisters. They're strangers to me. 

I'm in a better place now. They'll never change, and I've dramatically lowered my expectations that they ever will. It's not going to happen. I do have some good sibling dynamics. My brothers and I get along quite well, and the same applies to my sisters-in-law. Still, all those years of walking on proverbial eggshells, biting my tongue, and hiding the effects of that verbal abuse took its toll, and it reflects itself in my writing lone wolf characters. It's wishful thinking, I'd say, writing characters without siblings. Strained families in my fiction are influenced by my own strained sibling dynamics. The good thing about writing.... it's cathartic.

Lots to get off my chest. Thanks for letting me vent. Now you're no doubt thinking, "he's like that???"

True Believers In Life And On The Page

Every once in awhile you learn something about a complete stranger that you would have preferred not to know. I stop most days at a library close to home in the evenings, and spend some time online. Generally I book the same computer when I do so; we all have our preferences. Back in December, someone started regularly turning up at that computer in the time slot before mine, a guy who's probably past fifty. Looking at the guy, he's unremarkable, nothing to make him stand out in a crowd beyond the fact that he has long hair. And in this case, I know more about him than I would have ever liked to have known.

One day last month, I turned up a minute or two before my booking, caught a glance at what was on the screen, and was puzzled by the title of the site. After he was gone, I looked at the site, and found it to be a profoundly repulsive white supremacist conspiracy site with a particular anti-Semitic slant. It's one thing to look at that in terms of research, or in terms of stumbling across it. It's another if it becomes repetitive.

He's turning up now quite regularly at the same computer, before my booking, when I'm there. I've taken to calling him Der Fuhrer. I've arrived a few days after that first occasion to see a prominent Nazi swastika on the computer screen; upon his departure shortly thereafter, he had a happy expression that was the face of a true believer. Any other time since then that I've arrived early, sure enough, there's something on that screen that looks decidedly white supremacist in nature. This is the sort of person who takes racial hatred to heart. A strange thing, knowing something like that about someone and not knowing their name. Personally, I find racism repulsive and abhorrent. I have mentioned my idiot ex-brother-in-law before; one of the many, many reasons I disliked him was his rampant bigotry and racist views. I feel the same revolted response to this guy.

I wrote a passage in Heaven & Hell that I'm adding in here. It's a passage that was very difficult for me to write, for the simple fact that I was getting into the head of a white supremacist. That's not the kind of mind I want to spend any time in, yet I felt the need to flesh out their backgrounds. These two unnamed characters, both true believers, are very unpleasant people, far more than the terrorists I write as antagonists. The passage doesn't really tie to the key events in the novel, but those events form part of the backdrop of this sequence. I have thought of using white supremacists in some future book, but the prospect of getting into their minds again for anything more than a brief sequence is a deeply unpleasant one. And so without ado, here it is. Let me  know what you think.

New York City

They had come into the city hours earlier, from their homes upstate. It was a trip they didn’t particularly like making- this city was one filled with those they considered the enemy- but it was a necessary one. Some of those enemies were of different races or faiths, the sort they would consider sub-human. Others were people who merely had different political thoughts. Most of them would never share their leanings. All of these reasons made them enemies. And all of them were freely considered to be targets in a war that had to be won.

            They had come down through the towns and villages along the Hudson River, pulled into the orbit of the sprawling city as they got closer. New York was home to a melting pot of culture, a swirl of people of various races and creeds, few of whom would agree with the way the two men thought, the loyalties they held. It was home to banks, to financial institutions, to the cultural elite and intellectuals they and their friends railed against. In short, it was a place that disgusted them both.

            The older of the two men was in his fifties, a farmer in northern Vermont, and a cell leader for their group. He looked undistinguished, had the sort of face that could be easily forgotten. He had inherited his loathing for anyone who wasn’t white from family. His father and grandfathers had been in the Klan; he knew they had committed their share of lynchings in their time. His mother and grandmothers had been fierce white supremacists. He himself would have ended up in the Klan, but that organization, finally broken, was a mere shadow of what it had once been decades ago. He had found like- minded people in the survivalist groups, the rabidly anti-government far right extremists. There he had people he understood, and who understood him in return. Gradually over time, he had worked his way up the ladder. The group he belonged to wasn’t as well known as some of the others, but there were advantages to that. There was less of a likelihood of infiltration by the hated federal agents who would seek to break them.

            The younger man had been in the group for five years now. He was in his late twenties, firmly committed to the cause. A good soldier, the leader thought. He might have never come to the cause had circumstances been different. He had ended up in a factory, mindless assembly line work, frustrated by watching others get ahead, and had found an outlet for his frustration. Immigrants and people of other races had gotten the promotions that should have been his. His frustrations had continued to fester, to build inside him. Finally his wife had left him, had walked away from their marriage. It had been yet another reason to be angry, to spend his nights drinking, listening to the hard right talk radio shows and the apocalyptic talk about how they were responsible for what was wrong in his life. They might be liberal thinkers, the government, ethnic groups... but the talk he heard built up in his mind, and gave direction to his anger.

            And then she had come along. She had been a member of the group, devoted to white supremacy, to the cause. She had listened to him, had given him a friendly ear so that he could vent. And she had given him much more, taking him to her bed. It hadn’t taken long before he had become fully devoted to the cause, willing to give his life in the war that was soon to come, the final war against the New World Order their allies on the radio and in the far-right anti-government groups insisted was coming. Both men had already shed blood, had killed enemies, and had successfully gotten away with those crimes. The younger man had learned well, knew how to cover his tracks, to conceal evidence. Yes, he’s a very good soldier, the older man thought as they made their way to their next target of the evening. They had already made one such stop.

            They had been at their homes, watching the news- FOX was their preferred choice, since one of their heroes occupied prime time space on that network. The explosion and subsequent violence in the Middle East dominated it all. Given their low opinion of people on all sides in that region, both men would have gladly preferred that nuclear weapons be dropped along a line all the way from Morocco to Pakistan, wiping the whole region and its peoples out of existence. Watching the locals rise up and be at each other’s throats instead would have to be enough.

The older man had received a call at his home, instructions from the group leader in Idaho. The timing seemed right to take advantage of the turmoil unfolding half a world away. From there it was a simple choice of who to take along. The two men had made the trip to both of their targets on previous occasions, a rehearsal of sorts for this day. They had driven down with sufficient explosives, well hidden out of sight. In the past, they had driven right into the city with explosives and back out again. Once again, they had succeeded, bringing their customized bombs into the city.

The first target had been a mosque, with minimal security and easily infiltrated. They had worked in the darkness, assisted by compact night vision goggles, a gift from members of the group who also served in the Army Reserves. The explosives had been placed, both men well acquainted with them and with the blueprints to know where the most damage could be done. The explosives had been wired for remote detonation, and the men had left as quietly as they had come.

Now they moved through the shadows to the side door of a synagogue a few blocks away. Like the mosque, it had minimal security arrangements, had never been the target of any threat. The younger man quickly defeated the lock, and the two men donned their night vision goggles, and went inside, toting kit bags. Both men worked in silence, placing and wiring explosives at key places throughout the building, particularly in the sanctuary. The older man made a point of placing a set close to the Torah ark cabinet on the east wall, and the bimah, the reading platform at the heart of the hall.

It didn’t take long, and they were finished. They verified that the explosives were active, both men examining the work of the other, and withdrew from the building, taking their empty kit bags with them, removing their night vision goggles. They walked away, down the street, to a side street, where their car was parked. No one was about at this time of night, even in the city that never slept.

The older man removed the detonator from a pocket, knowing that the distance to both sites were in range. It was a custom made device, much like the explosives they had placed. All it required was the press of a button, and he did so. The explosion rocked the neighbourhood, a loud roar that set off the car alarms close by. Another explosion was heard, somewhat more distant. They could see a glow down the street, beyond the corner from where they had come. The two men got into the car, and the younger man started it up. They pulled away, down the street. The older man saw smoke out of the corner of his eye as they went through the intersection. He smiled to himself, congratulating himself on a good night’s work.

 

We Always Knew That Lunatic Dictator Would Meet A Bad End

Last time out, I had a passage that will end up in some future book. Today I have something similar, though I know exactly the place I have in mind for it. I have been doing final polishes on Heaven & Hell, and one of the characters, a supporting character turning up in the latter stages of the book, struck me as needing a bit of expanding.

The events of the Arab Spring in general, and the situation in Syria in particular, have been an underlying influence throughout Heaven & Hell, given that much of the book takes place in the Middle East. Syria itself factors into the story, particularly its military and its leadership. Straight off, I knew that I could not use the current dictator in the story, even unnamed. President Bashar al-Assad is busy fighting a civil war against his own people these days, committing atrocity after atrocity. Where it all ends is anyone's guess, but for the purposes of my novel, the civil war in that country had to be over, and the Assad regime gone. The Syrian President in the novel has been unnamed (though I've changed that in the polishing), meant only as an interim leader, a caretaker. I wrote him as a man of principle (as much as you might get in a politician) who gets caught up in the wrong situation, and I wrote another character, a Syrian general, with much the same qualities. In the novel, I refer in passing to the civil war, to this general making the right choice at the right time, and thought of expanding that.

A few days ago I wrote the following, and I expect to incorporate it early on in Sword of the Faith, which will be the prequel to Heaven & Hell, set mostly a year earlier. It's from the point of view of this general, at a pivotal moment in his own life and that of his nation. At the moment, it's rough, with a share of backstory, and will no doubt be changed when I set it into the book.  Let me know what you think!

Damascus, Syria

            He had been in danger before during his military career, though this was new even to him. The brigadier general was surrounded by soldiers from his First Corps, moving down the lavish hallway of a residence in central Damascus. They moved almost as one, careful and as quiet as a group of a dozen armed men could be. Outside, tanks and armoured vehicles of the First Corps had breached the property, taking up station, a final end to the civil war that had shattered the country. Troops had stormed into the presidential residence, and while some of the personal guards had fought back, others simply surrendered, understood that they were at the end of it all, outgunned and outmanned. The President’s wife and children were among those who had been taken into custody.

            The general heard the distant sounds of people off in the city, through broken windows as they passed. In the last few months, the rebels had put more pressure on the President, bringing the civil war directly into the capital. They had been bolstered by his own forces, united under his command, when he had decided to take a side in the bloody conflict that had torn his country apart for years.

            His name was Yassin Mazloum, a career officer in the Syrian Arab Army. A man in his early fifties, he had close cropped brown hair sprinkled with grey, and brown eyes. Like the soldiers accompanying him, he wore desert fatigues, and unlike them, was lightly armed, a handgun in a holster. Mazloum had been an officer in the First Corps for over a decade, one of the main wings of his nation’s armed forces. Much of that time had been spent in the south, covering the approaches to the Golan Heights down to the Jordanian border. His Corps had stayed out of the escalating conflict in the country, the efforts of the President to put down the growing unrest, the rebellion that had only built after each atrocity.

            Mazloum had been privately appalled, out there in the south, watching his land tear itself apart, seeing the President use the Armed Forces against his people. Tens of thousands butchered by a man incapable of empathizing with his people, of accepting that they wanted something different for their lives, that they wanted him gone. Finally the general had reached his breaking point, a pivotal moment in his life. Mazloum had taken a stand, fully aware that if he ended up on the losing side of things, it would mean a bullet to the head in the best case scenario, and torture and an excrutiating, long drawn out death in the worst. He had addressed his subordinates first, reminding them that their duty was also to the people, to the country. The President, he argued, was slaughtering his own people, and that could not be allowed to continue.

            To his surprise, there had been no dissent, no quiet defections. As one, the First Corps stood behind him as he made the formal announcement that he would support the rebel cause, that his forces would no longer serve at the behest of a tyrant. He pledged full military backing to the rebels, followed up by dispatching officers to seek out the connections, to coordinate efforts against the mad man in Damascus. Columns of refugees, fleeing the armed forces that stayed loyal to the president, found safety beyond his lines, south to the Jordanian border. There were engagements with forces still loyal to the regime, which Mazloum made efforts to minimize casualties. More often he convinced opposing commanders to stand down, to accept that they were fighting on the wrong side. Finally, his combined forces, and that of the loosely organized rebellion, put the stranglehold on Damascus itself. While the world had waited and watched, Mazloum had kept remaining opposing forces at bay with some of his forces, and worked with rebel commanders to put pressure on the remaining government presence in the capital. Swarms of civilians had left the city, given safe passage away from the fighting, and day after day, the insurgency had taken more and more of the momentum.

            It had all led to this particular early autumn day. The remaining forces still loyal to the President had been routed in the city and beyond, and Mazloum himself had forced his way into the presidential residence with the strength of tanks and armoured vehicles. The last of the guards were down, though the troops with him would take no chances, moving with caution and precision through the halls, the debris strewn about from artillery blasts through the walls.

            The group made their way around a corridor, and Mazloum remembered being here once, years ago, to give a briefing. The President’s study was directly ahead, though there was no presence in the hallway, no guard. It seemed likely that the man might be there... their information from one of the captured staff indicated he hadn’t been able to escape as the troops had breached the property, and to his knowledge, there was no secret escape route.

            Mazloum gave a terse nod to one of his officers, a captain. The officer spoke up in Arabic, his voice echoing down the hall. “Come out immediately, and you will not be harmed. It is done. It’s over.” There was silence as a reply. Mazloum waited, thought back to his last meeting with rebel commanders and opposition political leaders in the night, barely nine hours earlier. They had all agreed that the dictator needed to be put on trial, that war crimes had been committed. The best way forward for the country was justice, and so Mazloum had every intention of taking the man alive.

            Finally there was a voice, defiance in the tone, coming from that study. “It is only over when I decide it’s finished,” the man said, and Mazloum recognized the voice of the President, the tyrant who had torn his own land apart.

            “It is finished, Bashar,” Mazloum replied, deliberately using the man’s name, thinking that it might unsettle him. “You will stand trial for what you have done to this country. Be a man. Take responsibility for what you’ve done.”

            There was a long silence. Finally there came one last burst of defiance. “My fate is my own, General.” Mazloum shook his head, realized the bastard did recognize his voice. A moment later there was the sharp sound of a single gunshot from the study, and then silence. Mazloum nodded, and two of the men in the lead moved forward, down the hall, carefully stopping at the door, looking in. They looked back, and one shook his head. The group started forward, Mazloum at the centre.

            They stopped at the doorway, and Mazloum looked into the study. The President was alone at his desk, a gun lying there before him, close to his hand, a bloody mark at his temple. His short dark hair, with the familiar widow’s peak, and the trim moustache, were familiar to the general’s eyes, as they had been familiar to much of the world through years of civil war in the country. There was no apparent exit wound that Mazloum could see from here. Suicide, he thought. He’d have to make sure- there would have to be a full investigation of the scene, and proper identification of the body...

            The general sighed, thinking of the conversations he’d have with his rebel colleagues, with the political opposition that would have to step in and build some stability for the future of the country. More than anything, his people would need to heal from what this sociopath had done to the land. And so it ends, he thought. Not with a verdict, but with a coward’s way out. The war is over.

To Quote Jamie Lee Curtis: Ciao, Stupidissimo

For a number of years, Italian businessman turned politician Silvio Berlusconi spent his time in high office, making a fool of himself, causing countless dignitaries to roll their eyes, and chasing much younger women when he wasn't busy getting charged with various criminal charges, abusing power, and running Italy into the financial ground. He finally got turfed out of office, though he keeps musing on coming back and interfering with things. Needless to say, the sleaze isn't one of my favourite people in the world. Dirtbag, clusterdouche, pig, dog, and lecher are words that come to mind where he's concerned.

This decidely short hobbit with a hairpiece and a standing appointment with plastic surgeons (especially these days) rates as one of those jackasses of the first order in the world, the sort of person who you wish would just go away. And given his insatiable appetite for women fifty years younger than him, our boy Silvio is likely to meet his end during... ahem, an intimate encounter with a stripper from Monaco or a debutante at one of his bunga bunga parties.

In writing Heaven & Hell, I stopped briefly in Italy at one point, to examine things from the point of view of another world leader (incidentally a much better human being than our boy Silvio could ever be). In future books, I intend to bring my main characters to Italy at least once. Since the books are meant to have a real world sensibility to them, I've already written unnamed world leaders into this book, and will do much the same in future books. I recently wrote this passage, something that might just fit into some future book down the line. The character is unnamed, of course... but pretty obviously, yes, it's meant to be Silvio the first rate jackass. It's a rough draft, so let me know what you think....

This was living. The old fool smiled, lying on his back in bed, a nubile young woman straddling him, as naked as he was, groaning as she rode him. Whether or not she actually was enjoying the encounter or faking her expression wasn’t all that relevant to him. All that mattered to him was getting what he wanted out of it.

They were at one of his villas, outside Rome, in the master bedroom. Over years, he had amassed a fortune through his various business interests, hiding much of it from the authorities whenever possible, indulging in luxury and whatever temptation might cross his path. Mostly that involved young women, an appetite that had finally driven away his wife and their children. This one, he thought, was at least over the age of majority, though he’d been wrong before.

His smile was broad, not a surprise considering what she was doing to him at the moment, the long dark hair spilling over her shoulders, the come hither look still in her brown eyes. His own hair was partially transplanted and dyed dark, and he’d undergone plastic surgery treatments with increasing regularity, a nod to his rampant ego and an attempt to hold off the ravages of time. The old fool let his eyes wander over her flesh, and fondled her waist with his hands as he listened to her moans. The fact that she was over fifty years younger than he was didn’t matter... though at his age, Viagra had become essential for performance, a fact he jealously kept to himself. I’d never hear the end of it, if the press found out I needed help to get it up, he thought with a smirk.

After business had come politics. He had spent years building up connections, bribing the right officials and politicians through Italy and beyond, finally rising to leadership of a party. After convincing the electorate that he was a man of the people, he had won election to lead the country, and his tenure in office had been marked by rampant corruption, boorish behaviour on the world stage, and criminal charges he had successfully dodged his way out of repeatedly. At his prime, he had waved off all of the allegations against him and the raised eyebrows of other world leaders at his antics, claiming he simply liked to live the Italian way... la dolce vita. If that good life happened to include strippers, prostitutes, and decadence to rival Caligula, so be it.

Finally he had been forced out of office, after trying his luck one too many times. He still harboured a desire to get back into office, and regularly threatened and cajoled his former colleagues- underlings, as he would have properly thought of them- with that very idea. The old fool believed his country would welcome him back, that they wanted a strong hand to lead them forward, despite his abysmal record in office. They have short memories, he told himself as the woman arched her back, her hands coming to rest on his slightly chubby stomach. He reminded himself to get some work done on his belly. His plastic surgeons could work wonders.

He was close to climaxing... he knew it. She knew how to please him, knew exactly what he’d want, and she was good at it. He smiled up at her, ached to wrap his arms around her.... he felt short of breath, and a tension in his left arm. The sweat across his brow was just an effect of the sex, and he felt this way whenever he got in bed with a woman these days. She was groaning in just the right way, her hips swivelling, riding him, bouncing on him in a way that delighted him... So close, he thought to himself. Does life get any better than...

He groaned, felt a sudden vice-like grip on his chest. What...? His eyes widened, and he couldn’t speak, just saw her above him, crying out as he would have expected. It felt like there was a tremendous weight over his upper chest. He drew a hand back from her hip, up to his heart, felt it pounding... Too fast... too damned fast... He managed to cry out, to gasp, and his vision started to fade, to go to black... what’s happening to...?

                                                            ***

The girl stopped her groans and sighs, smiling in the way the old man would have expected, a satisfied expression on her face. She knew well how to fake that expression- the old man wasn’t particularly capable of satisfying her, and the fact that he was selfish in bed only proved that. Still, he did spoil her with great regularity, and filled her bank accounts to her heart’s content. For that, she’d put up with the distasteful notion of sex with a man more than old enough to be her grandfather. Besides, if she got bored, she could always see someone on the side...

She gazed down at him, and frowned. “Caro?” she whispered. He wasn’t moving, his eyes half open, not particularly looking at anything. That smug satisfied grin he had after sex wasn’t on his lips. “Caro,” she repeated again, louder. No response. The girl reached a hand up to his neck, found the vein... Nothing. No pulse. She pulled back from him quickly, felt a wave of revulsion come over her. "Oh, hell,” she muttered.
Explaining this was going to be complicated...

All My Sins Remembered

Awhile back I wrote something set in my proverbial backyard, in the Gatineau Hills. It was a sequence involving a murder, late at night, on the grounds of the Mackenzie King estate, a place that's open to the public. If you haven't seen it, the original sequence ended up in a blog, which is right here. The sequence will feature early on in A Cold Day In Hell, which will be the third book down the line. The primary antagonist of that book, a terrorist named Cain Reilly, has been introduced in Heaven & Hell (it's really useful writing a series, you can lay the groundwork for future works). The passage I'd originally posted would be the beginning of the present day action, I think, and represents the settling of a score.

Some weeks ago for a writer's meeting, I stepped further back in time and wrote the reason why Cain and his sister would want to settle a score in the first place. That passage will, in time, be the very beginning of A Cold Day In Hell. And so without ado, I present it to you below. Give it a read, and let me know what you think.

Just a word of advice: probably best not to read this one with a weak stomach....

Belfast, Northern Ireland

              He saw the hot steel come closer, and tried to brace himself for the pain. A moment later, it was pressed against his right side, and Peter Reilly screamed in pain, clamping his eyes shut. The heat finally faded away, and he realized the steel had been withdrawn. He opened his eyes, looked at the men before him, saw the contempt, the cold, hostile expressions. He wanted to kill all of them, but he knew that wasn’t to be. Reilly understood he was the only one who would meet a bad end tonight.

            The bastard who had applied the heat to him stood closest; he was a bear of a man, brown hair, blue eyes. Like the others, he was dressed casually, jeans and light shirts, their jackets somewhere else. It was much too hot here to be overdressed, and the man was sweating. He wore a thick utility glove over his left hand, and clutched a steel bar, its tip slowly fading from the glow of heat. Where did he heat it up? Reilly had to ask himself. All around them were large furnaces, vats of molten steel that lit up the large space in a reddish glow, a foundry setting. Reilly wondered if this was one of the foundries in Belfast... he remembered being knocked out while walking in the early evening, on his way to confer with some of his colleagues at a pub on the Falls Road. He tried to jog his memory, to figure out if he had ever been here before.

            There were five other men. Four of them were like the first; the enforcers, the muscle. They were the sort of men who took orders, broke legs, and shot anyone else their boss told them to shoot. Reilly recognized them, though from the heat and the pain in his side, he couldn’t draw their names out of his memory. Not quite yet, he thought to himself. The last man, however, he knew very well. Jamie O’Shea was the furthest away, but he was the man in charge. A cell leader in the Provisional Irish Republican Army, he was a handsome man, late thirties, with curly brown hair and hard blue eyes. Reilly considered him to be the enemy, a vicious, sadistic bastard if ever there was one.

            He felt chains at his wrists, suspended above him, his bare feet barely touching the floor of the factory, his lean, muscular torso aching from the strain and the lingering pain of the wound. They had stripped his shirt away, leaving his pants when they had chained him up. Glancing above, he saw the chains at his wrists, suspended five feet from an overhead mechanical claw, lowered from the ceiling. Reilly felt the sweat at his brow, his unruly red hair wet with perspiration. He was in his late thirties, like O’Shea, and had blue eyes- very Irish, he would have thought. And he shared a profession in common with his enemy, but that was all. Reilly was a feared cell leader in the Ulster Volunteers, had long since established a reputation as a ruthless enforcer, fighting a guerrilla war with the IRA and any Republican activist he deemed a target.

            Reilly looked around, saw a vat of molten steel off to the right, and could feel the heat even from here. The claw ran on a cable line going directly over it, and he realized what they intended to do. Bloody cowards, he thought, glaring at their faces. You’ll remember me, you bastards. And you’ll pay for this. He tightened his face, swore to himself not to let them see any sign of weakness. It was one thing to yell in pain when they inflicted it; it was another to beg for mercy. They wouldn’t give him any.

            He thought, just for a moment, of his children. He had three of them- that he knew of- from different mothers. His sons were older, enough that he thought of them as men. His daughter was just a child. Her mother kept her away from him, had wanted no part of his world for their child. Was she right? He shook his head. Don’t, Peter. What’s done is done. Regretting it now... it’ll make you weak. These bastards will use it against you. Don’t give them that.

            “And so here we are, Peter,” O’Shea said with a smirk, his accent very much the southern Irish variety, unlike Reilly’s hard Ulster accent. “The end of the line, at least for you.” Reilly stared at the man, seeing the amused expression in his eyes.

You bastard, he thought. Do you really think you’ve won? You think it ends with me? That brought out a smile. My sons will learn what you’ve done, Jamie. And one day, you’ll meet the bad end that you’ve got coming. Reilly laughed, despite the pain in his side. “I’ll meet you in Hell, you Fenian bastard.”

“Finn, get him up,” O’Shea ordered. The man who’d driven the hot steel into his side set that down on a table, and picked up a bulky box, linked to a wire, with some buttons on it. He pressed one button, and Reilly felt himself being lifted from the floor, up towards the roof of the foundry. The chains stopped moving up, and Finn pressed another button. The mechanical claw started moving Reilly off to the right, towards the vat of molten steel. He saw the hellish mix of yellow-orange light, the liquid steel that would spell his end. Damn it, there won’t even be anything of me to bury, he thought, feeling the horrendous heat as he moved closer, hanging overhead. “You lost, Peter. And I won,” O’Shea called out, laughing. “Give my regards to your Prod friends in Hell.”

Reilly looked back towards him, feeling the machinery come to a stop overhead. He was directly above the molten vat, the heat overwhelming. He wondered if he’d be dead before dropping into the steel. “You’ll pay for this,” he shouted. “Every one of you!”

“Drop him,” O’Shea said, still smirking, as if he found it funny. Finn pressed one last button. Reilly glanced up above, and saw the claw opening up, the chains coming loose from their grip, and felt himself starting to fall towards the steel below. He couldn’t even manage a scream.

                                                ***

O’Shea smiled to himself, watching Reilly plunge downward. He thought Reilly might have caught fire in mid air, but wasn’t sure. The body dropped into the vat, there was a bit of splatter of molten steel on the floor around it, and then stillness. And that’s that, he thought to himself. Good riddance to the bastard. Who knows, Peter? Whatever traces of your body are left might make part of a good bridge sometime.

He glanced around at his men, all of them with hard faces. There were others outside, keeping any workers who might be about this time of night away. O’Shea knew the owner and the manager of the place- both solid supporters of the Cause- but there was no accounting for a stray worker at one of the other foundries on the property who might wander in. It was just as well to post men to watch for anyone approaching. Not that he thought he would have needed it. And the job was done. Peter Reilly’s roasting in Hell right about now, he told himself, a satisfied smile on his face.

“Come on, lads,” he told the others. “Time to celebrate.”

Of Press Releases And Plaid Shirts

A few days back in my last Six Sentence Sunday Blog, I made note of Collin's updated ad for Heaven & Hell. Collin's been busy at other things as well; if you haven't seen it, check out the press release for Norma at her blog. Collin can be found at collinbeishir@beishirmedia.com. I highly recommend his work!

Today I've got two pages from Beishir Media myself, a press release for the book. Have a look, tell me what you think!

Six Sentence Sunday

Greetings, salutations, and a hundred thousand welcomes!


Well, at the moment, my book is in the hands of beta readers for editing and going over, and so that's keeping things going. The end of the line's in sight, so to speak, and it took long enough for Heaven & Hell to come to fruition. In the meantime, I think, I'd say it's a good time for another Six Sentence Sunday. This little bit is from early in the book, with my two main characters, Devon and Stryker meeting up for the first time in the book. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Leicester Square, London

She turned, heading for the exit, and he followed, past the customs lines and into the Arrivals space. They weaved in and out of the crowd in silence, until they reached the exit. There was a light rain falling outside.

“What a surprise,” he remarked with a straight face. “Rain in London.”

“Go to hell, Stryker,” she told him, her lips curling into a smile.

And this is Collin Beishir's updated ad for the book; he's an outstanding graphic designer, and I've really enjoyed what he's come up with. You can find him at his Facebook page or at his website for Beishir Media.

The International Intruder Meets An International Terrorist

A few days back I mentioned the International Intruder, as a tabloid style inside joke of sorts. If you haven't seen it, just click on the Intruder tag below and you'll find it soon enough. At our joint blog a couple of days ago, we did an interview with one of our characters in the tabloid style. Check it out if you haven't seen it. Today, I'm doing the same with one of my characters, and it's an introduction. Navi Rauf is the primary villain in the next book I'll be writing, called Sword of the Faith. It takes place a year before Heaven & Hell, and the character and his organization rate a mention or two in the latter book. Obviously the character himself, as you'll see... probably wouldn't have nearly as much patience with a real reporter as he does with this tabloid one, let alone a sense of humour. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Exclusive to readers of the International Intruder, an interview with a wanted terrorist.

Navi Rauf, leader of the group calling itself Saif al Din, or in English, Sword Of The Faith, agreed to speak with this reporter at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Middle East. This reporter met with associates of Rauf, was blindfolded and taken by car well out into the desert. There, at a non-descript home late at night, this reporter personally interviewed Rauf. The man himself has the hard look of someone who’s lived on the rough edge of life. For over twenty years, Rauf and his group have been hunted by intelligence agencies, police organizations, and military forces across the world. They are implicated in multiple attacks, bombings, and assassinations.

Intruder: Mr. Rauf, you are considered one of the most wanted men in the world among law enforcement and intelligence communities, though you’re not as well known to the general public. Why do you think that is?

Rauf: Unlike some of the higher profile resistance groups, we don’t have spokesmen or media outlets on speed dial. That’s the sort of behavior that tends to end up with unmanned drones launching missiles on you, after all. We do try to be careful.

Intruder: And yet you’re speaking to us, as a reporter, now.

Rauf: True. There are times when it’s required. And we’ve been careful with you. We know you are not being traced in any way, and even if you were to find your way back here, we would be long gone.

Intruder: You’ve committed a large number of attacks and operations against multiple targets since the founding of your organization. What is your purpose?

Rauf: That’s for me to know and for them to find out.

Intruder: That doesn’t qualify as an answer. Who’s them?

Rauf: The law enforcement and intelligence communities, as you say.

Intruder: Surely you can answer the question, sir. What drives your group?

Rauf: They would call us terrorists. Zionists. The fools of the West. Those who would seek to accomodate, to be at peace. And yet too often, they are the ones who have brought terror, with their smart bombs and their indiscriminate killings. If that is the only language they understand, then we will reply in such words. We bring their terror back upon them ten fold. You ask what drives us? Look at a child or a young mother slaughtered by a bomb that fell off course. Look at what’s left of them. That is reason enough, don’t you think?

Intruder: We imagine that’s sufficient, yes.

Rauf: I wasn’t being too overly dramatic, was I?

Intruder: Our readers will make that decision for themselves.

Rauf: Very well. You don’t mind if I ask a question of you, do you?

Intruder: Of course not.

Rauf: Why do you do that whole referring to yourself in the plural thing? You say we imagine, or our readers. Is that some sort of personal eccentricity, or a journalism default position?

Intruder: We have no idea what you’re talking about.

Rauf: There. You just did it again.

Intruder: Did what?

Rauf: Never mind.

Intruder: Shall we get back to it?

Rauf: Do you mean we in the sense of you and I talking, or we in the sense of referring to yourself?

Intruder: We swear, we don’t know where you’re getting this from.

Rauf: Just ask the next question before I start to get into a bad mood.

Intruder: Your organization was implicated in the Geneva bombing last year, and in the assassination of the Jordanian ambassador to the UN the year before that. These are but two incidents on the record of Saif al Din. What do you have to say to those who had family members killed in such attacks?

Rauf: Casualties that were required in an ongoing war.

Intruder: And yet just moments ago you spoke of indiscriminate killings.

Rauf: Our operations are directed and focused. Yes, there are times when innocent lives are lost, but such is war. And this is a war, believe me. Who else will stand up to those who would seek to crush us beneath our heels, if not those of us with strength? Who else will do what needs to be done?

Intruder: You know, you almost sound like you could be running for office speaking like that.

Rauf: Not a chance. I don’t like politicians.

Intruder: We don’t think much of them ourselves.

Rauf: You did it again.

Intruder: Did what?

Rauf: Speaking in plural, you idiot.

Intruder: We said no such thing.

Rauf: Why did I agree to sit down with a reporter?

Intruder: If we could carry on? Your group, Saif al Din, translates in English to Sword of the Faith, does it not?

Rauf: It is a name steeped in history. The godless invaders during the Crusades met heroic men of that name. Others have carried it since. Those who follow me use the name with pride. We are the sword, the weapon of the righteous. We will drive hard into the heart of any enemy who stands against us.

Intruder: Does saying that help in the recruiting process?

Rauf: Oh, yes, you have to have something that stirs the blood, and gets your people behind you. It also helps that we don’t require anyone to become suicide bombers. Or martyrs, as they say in Hezbollah. You know, if you ask me, those guys are a little crazy.

Intruder: Have you ever wondered if maybe you should slow down? Retire? Take up a hobby? Has it occured to you that one day your luck might run out?

Rauf: I have a mission in life. When that’s the case, you don’t retire or take up a hobby. You carry out what must be done. That’s what I do.

Intruder: And if your luck does run out?

Rauf: Luck is for fools gambling on horses.

Intruder: We happen to like betting a c-note from time to time. Last time we did that, it was a horse named Lucky Never Loses. Of course, Lucky Never Loses wasn’t so lucky that night. Came in dead last. Oh, well, these things happen, but we have to just keep soldiering on.

Rauf: You’re doing it again.

Intruder: Doing what?

Rauf: Never mind. Just get out. Before I decide to have you shot. My men will take you back to where you came from.

Intruder: But we still have more questions for you...

Rauf: Next time I do one of these interviews, I’ll ask for Anderson bloody Cooper.

Arnold Vosloo

Faran Tahir

Post script: I could see Navi Rauf played by either Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy) or Faran Tahir (Iron Man)...