Make a Date reprise - October 1, 14 and 31

Welcome to a new month - October.  Here's an earlier blog about dates in October (1, 14 and 31):

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/make-date-1-14-and-31-october.html

which may be of interest!

FFB – Death is another life becomes Chill of the Shadow

I got fed up waiting for a publisher to grab this book, despite the good reviews, so have self-published it as a paperback and e-book under the title Chill of the Shadow. (amendment: 27/10/2017)

This time last year, I was trying to promote my vampire cross-genre thriller set in modern-day Malta, Death is Another Life.  It has been out-of-print since March this year, so maybe it qualifies as a Friday's forgotten book.  My hope is that, like the creatures of the night, it will rise from the grave of limbo and be born again by another publisher. I would retitle it Another Life and use Nik Morton this time around.

Wikipedia commons

If you’re interested, here are some excerpts:

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/halloween-1-canker-of-soul.html - this had 78 pageviews

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/halloween-2-sepulchral-place.html - this had a phenomenal 908 pageviews

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2013/10/halloween-3-become-sacred-dust.html - this had 42 pageviews

I have also written the screenplay of the book, and though biased I feel it works very well; here is the opening sequence:

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2014/06/screenplay-death-is-another-life.html - a mere 38 pageviews

This piece was prompted by events in the news at the time, and is linked to another excerpt.

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/shameful-illegal-killing-of-birds-in.html - 24 pageviews

http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com.es/2014/03/in-need-of-another-life.html  -  57 pageviews; lists a selection of favourable reviews too.

Happy Hallowe’en, 2014.

The STAC Phenomenon

STAC stands for the Sanford Third Age Club. It’s a series of cosy crime novels, written by David W. Robinson. His first, The Filey Connection, was published in 2012 (actually self-published earlier than that but then Crooked Cat Publishing came along and grabbed the first three in the series and he’s been writing the subsequent novels at a phenomenal rate since (besides producing two much longer and darker tomes, The Handshaker and The Deep Secret).

His latest is due out any day now – Christmas Crackers. It’s a collection of short stories about the STAC characters. It's Yuletide again and faced with a demanding writer, Joe, Sheila and Brenda must deliver tales of murder and mayhem. Who slaughtered Santa? Who committed a felony on a ferry, topped a teller, killed a copper and did Lee really go gunning for a gumshoe? In the background there is the Novel of the Year award and Joe is faced with finding another brutal killer. It’s Christmas, but not everyone harbours peace and goodwill, and for the three sleuths, it means... Murder most festive.

THE FILEY CONNECTION
THE I-SPY MURDERS
A HALLOWEEN HOMICIDE
A MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS
MURDER AT THE MURDER MYSTERY WEEKEND
MY DEADLY VALENTINE
THE CHOCOLATE EGG MURDERS
THE SUMMER WEDDING MURDER
COSTA DEL MURDER

My review of The Filey Connection

This was a pleasure to read. If you’ve enjoyed Simon Brett’s Mrs Pargeter novels, then you’ll like these too.

Joe Murray, 55, a ‘short-arsed, crinkly-haired, bad-tempered old bugger’ with ‘muscles in places where people don’t know they have places’ owns and runs the Lazy Luncheonette café with the help of stalwarts Sheila and Brenda.

Joe has a bit of a reputation for private detection and prides himself on his deductive powers. Which are called upon when one of the club members is killed by a hit-and-run motorist. He feels that it was not merely an accident. The sudden death puts a dampener on the club’s upcoming weekend trip to the Beachside Hotel in Filey, but it goes ahead anyway. No sooner do they get there than another club member meets an untimely end in the bay. He is convinced the deaths are connected.

A whodunnit and a whydunnit, this is a quick read with plenty of chuckles along the way. Joe is acerbic yet likeable. Both Sheila and Brenda are great sounding boards for his theories and there’s plenty of repartee between them, inoffensive sarcasm and word-play. Coincidentally, Sheila is his age and could still ‘turn heads on a grab-a-granny nights, but they usually turned slower because most of their owners were in the deeper throes of arthritis.’ Where Sheila showed ‘tact and discretion in her daily life, both words had obviously been left out of Brenda’s lexicon.’ 

Robinson displays an acute eye for observation, useful in an author and a detective: ‘they emerged onto a broad richly-carpeted corridor, their footsteps muffled in that curious silence that was the hallmark of hotel landings.’

Yes, Joe’s a curmudgeon, but his heart’s in the right place and his two sidekicks seem to love him despite his occasional rudeness; indeed, they give as good as they get. He’s a fine departure from the usual detective. As one character says, ‘As a detective, Mr Murray, you’re probably better off running a café. You notice everything, misinterpret too much and still come to the right conclusion.’ Don’t they all?

I look forward to reading the other books in due course!

So, watch out for Christmas Crackers, the tenth in the series. It promises to be murder most festive.

 

Halloween-3 – become sacred dust

I got fed up waiting for a publisher to grab this book after it was out-of-print, despite the good reviews, so have self-published it as a paperback and e-book under the new title Chill of the Shadow. (amendment: 27/10/2017)

 In this partial chapter excerpt from Death is Another Life, we meet Maria’s antagonist – or will it be fellow protagonist? Unlikely, considering his behaviour. Still, vampires are known to mesmerize those they would seduce…

CHAPTER 2: An urgent hunger

A month ago

Zondadari never ceased to be filled with dread anticipation before the transformation.

            In the privacy of his secluded Maltese villa he stood on the stone balcony, dressed in black leather, his shoulders draped with a cloak of the same colour and material. Very theatrical, but appropriate. As the pains filled his chest and raked across his back, he hunched forward, his fingers grasping the stone hand-rail for support. Mediterranean fir-pine trees cast their deep velvet shadows onto the balcony, concealing most of the pale yellow moon. Shadows were his friend.
            Slowly the organic material of his clothing pressed against him, even into him, taking on the contours of his large muscular body. A straying wild bird flew over and shrilled and then darted away quickly, discouraged by the unholy smell that emanated from him during his change.
            One day, he feared, his heart wouldn’t hold out against the battering it took.
            Coherent thought shimmered. He started seeing double; then multiples of everything. Disoriented, he lowered himself down on one knee. It would be a few minutes more before he would be able to control the numerous images.
            Small gaping flesh-red mouths, with razor-sharp teeth, appeared on the surface of his body. Disproportionately large furry ears flicked out at all angles and black beady eyes glistened all over him, like a constellation of the devil.
            Five minutes of harrowing pain passed and already he was separating, literally coming apart. With an unpleasant sucking sound, dark shapes peeled off from the form that had been a man. But he was a man no longer.
            With a flick of thin yet deceptively strong leathery wings, the freed bats broke away from each other and landed on the balustrade.
            The shape-shifting was complete. His mind was the sum of these forty-six creatures. He could see through the eyes of a single animal or perceive separate images through all of them. They did his bidding – because they were him in every sense. Every sense.
            The hunger was upon him again.
            As one, the bats flew up into the night sky.

* * * *

His body aching in every bone, he straightened in the front pew and rubbed his strained eyes. Recovery from each transformation was the same: excruciating.
            He remembered his pains with a shiver; then gulped the revitalizing warm blood from the church’s golden chalice and licked red dribbles from fleshy lips.
            Ever so slowly, the draught would do its arcane work and heal the agonizing ache and give him new life. Not for the first time, Zondadari cursed Theresa. Still, there were compensations: and blood-lusting Desiree was just one of many.
            He turned in the high-backed wooden seat to eye Father Pont, sprawled lifeless at the base of the choir stalls. The fool’s vacant eyes reflected no beatitude at abruptly and prematurely meeting his Maker and perhaps because of this they stared at him accusingly. And with good reason. The poor man’s heart must have stopped for a fleeting second as he saw a cloud of bats swoop down from the belfry. Father Pont’s eyes were almost extended on stalks as he viewed the creatures in front of him clustering together, as if purposefully forming into a seemingly pain-racked leather-clad man. Suffused with agonizing pain, the man glared and then smiled, grabbing the nearest piece of silver to hand. The priest stayed rooted to the stone flags, an easy target. No wonder his eyes stared accusingly.
            Zondadari shrugged. Even after all these years, he wondered how he could have been taken in by such an empty religion. Of course, in those distant days, superstition reigned supreme.
            He stood and hung the plastic crucifix round his neck.
            In a moment he would drag the dead priest down to the catacombs to join his ancient brethren. With great will-power, Zondadari refrained from draining the blood from the priest; he would return for the rest later, a cool libation, after which the body would moulder and become sacred dust.
            Taking his time – of which he had plenty – he donned the dead priest’s round-brimmed hat. He paused to check his reflection in the shining silver ciborium, its rim smeared with blood and hair where he had clubbed the kappillan.
            He lifted his head, accentuating the line of his aquiline nose. His steely grey eyes shone mischievously. Quite the local vicar, he mused, but he still preferred to see himself in his ancient knight’s helmet.
            Licking the silver clean, he smiled. Today, he would have a little amusement.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN...!

This book is now out of print - until further notice...

NB – Kappillan is Maltese for parish-priest. I can recommend Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Kappillan of Malta.

Halloween-2 - the sepulchral place

I got fed up waiting for a publisher to grab this book after it was out-of-print, despite the good reviews, so have self-published it as a paperback and e-book under the new title Chill of the Shadow. (amendment: 27/10/2017)

 
Closer to Halloween still. This excerpt from Death is Another Life introduces the heroine, Maria. The scene in the autopsy room is a good 1,000 words longer than shown here, comprising back-story blending in with more character-building; I’ve excised it (without scalpel) in an attempt to keep this blog relatively short. The next excerpt will introduce the villain – or hero perhaps…

Map of Maltese islands

Story so far: a woman's body fished out of the sea...

CHAPTER 1: The deprived womb

Maria Caruana had been covering a child’s hit-and-run death for her newspaper when the ambulance crew brought in the young woman’s body.
            Hit-and-run was rare on Malta. Yet, even with a speed-limit in built-up areas of 25 – and 40mph elsewhere – and the sorry state of most roads mitigate against high speeds, fatal accidents were quite frequent. The islands boast about one car for every three people and at times they all seem to converge at the same destination at the same time, and that’s usually when she’s approaching a junction or roundabout in a hurry. And she was usually in a hurry. Panel-beating and car-repairs were growth industries in Malta.
            The only witness to the hit-and-run thought the culprit had been driving a blue Morris 1000. This information had made her friend Detective Sergeant Attard, the police investigator, blanch – Morrises were very common on the island. The police had begun calling in all cars answering the description when Maria stumbled upon a suspect vehicle in the grounds of a foreign Consulate in Floriana. While the political implications caused dithering, Maria, enraged by the diplomatic considerations, visited the morgue to see the dead child. She had every intention of writing a sensational and damning account for her paper, Niggez.

Floriana

            The morgue always affected her the same way, as though she had been immersed in a freezing cold bath and was only now drying out. Outside it may be a sunny mid-April day, but in here it was perpetual winter, uncompromisingly chilly ­– cold, appropriately like death. Air conditioning hummed from the ceiling. The white coverall over her peach embroidered cotton blouse and white skirt didn’t help, either. As she strolled down the sloping corridor, the rubber boots flapped noisily as they were two sizes too large. Fortunately, she didn’t have far to walk in them.
            She pushed open the swing door of the autopsy room.
            Dressed in green scrubs, the tall bony figure of her father Dr. Nicholas Caruana stood beside the woman’s waxy pale body on the metal table. He lifted up his weary gaze and the overhead strip-lights glared whitely on his spectacle lenses, concealing his eyes. He smiled a brief welcome to Maria as she entered.
            A smile seemed out of place here, she thought.
            He waved a bony hand distended with the blue tracery of tired old veins, beckoning.
            Seeing the naked woman’s corpse already slit open, Maria felt her skin crawl and her stomach tightened. Bile rose to the back of her throat but she swallowed her distaste and offered, “Sorry I’m late, Dad.”
            He snapped on a pair of sterile latex gloves and said in his cultured soft voice, “No problem. I haven’t started yet.”
            Maria did a double-take. The woman was cut from the upper chest down to the crotch. Now she realized that it was not her father’s usual ‘Y’ incision that extends across the chest from shoulder to shoulder and continues down the front of the abdomen to the pubis. The shape of the cut appeared to be reversed, in fact, and this alone made her blood run cold.
            Dr. Caruana directed his assistants to the next table where the little girl from the hit-and-run lay. He eyed them over his glasses and sighed, and then turned to her and whispered, “Take a good look here, Maria.” He shook his balding head, leathery lined features drawn, pallid. “Here, you’ll find all the evidence you need of our waning culture, the tide of violence besetting our Islands. Write it all, show the people the blood and gore!”
            His astringent tone surprised her but she shrugged it off, accepted his invitation and looked at the corpse.
            Stark lighting was not flattering and had little need to be. Under the harsh lights, the marred beauty of the woman touched Maria.
            The dead woman was in her mid-twenties, her long black hair lank and wet. Congealed blood glistened darkly all around the gaping wound. Her flesh was bloated, as if she had been immersed in water for some time, and there were many bruises, doubtless caused by the rocks and the buffeting of the waves.
            “Where’d they find her?” The croak in her voice sounded unnatural. This was her fourth visit to the mortuary yet the effect was no less traumatic for all the familiarity.
            He grunted, professional eyes scanning the corpse. “Fishermen off Delimara Point. About three hours ago. They hauled her in on their nets and radioed the police.” He peeled back the woman’s lips and shone a torch into the dead mouth; light glinted on the faultless white teeth.

Delimara Point

            The smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant clogged her nostrils, but could not completely relieve the stench of faeces, bodily gases and brine. She picked up a tube and squeezed out some cream and spread it on her upper lip to combat the bad odours.
            While his finger searched the mouth for any blockage or seaweed, he added, “The local policeman’s apparently having some difficulty getting any sense out of them. Very superstitious, those fishermen–”
            “Superstitious? What about?”
            “Suicides – a mortal sin, some of them think. And while I wouldn’t be so doctrinaire, I tend to agree with them. She’s been dead a good day and a half, I should say.”
            Maria nodded. She had a good memory, which was just as well for she doubted if she would be able to hold a pencil steady enough to make notes.
            He switched on the micro-recorder on his lapel and measured the size of the incisions in the woman’s stomach and chest and read out the details. He checked the scales by his side. “Lungs, 1.2 kilograms,” he read out, and placed the lungs in a plastic bag at the base of the table.
            Then he glanced up and said, “I see you’re wearing your mother’s necklace.”
            She fingered the crucifix. “Her dying wish, remember?” She added defiantly, “It doesn’t change how I feel about religion.”
            “Maria, Maria, you were always too hard on her beliefs.” He removed the victim’s heart and placed it on the scales. “Heart: 280 grams.” Automatically, he switched off the recorder. “I envied her deep faith, you know. As a scientist, I’ve lost that simplicity, that sureness.”
            “But, Dad, you were never close.”
            He shook his head, lifting the heart and bagging it and putting it alongside the lungs. “We were, my dear. You were too young to notice. When she left, taking you to America, a light went out in my world.” Now it was the liver’s turn for the scales and he switched on the recorder. “Liver: 1.4 kilograms.”
            “But you never came after us!”
            “I wanted to, but my work–”
            “You were always bringing the smell of death home.”
            “So – I’m grateful you brought her back, even if only to die here.”
            “It’s what she wanted.” She felt tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “All I wanted was for you two to get on again. Make her last days happy...”
            He shrugged. “I tried, but–”
            “Those big cuts – they’re almost like knife–” She stopped in mid-sentence as he lifted up a long cord-like appendage from the gruesome gash. It resembled a bloodless worm, engorged with fat and speckled with dried blood.
            With sudden, sickening realization, she backed away. “Oh, the umbilical cord – good God, Dad, she was pregnant!”
            “Not here, Maria.” he said urgently. His face was red. He glanced at his assistants ministering to the child victim: they seemed to accept his eccentricity and kept busy and out of his way.
            “Where’s her baby?” Maria whispered, her brow fevered and hot, her stomach squirming.
            He turned back to the corpse and concealed the gaping womb with his angular body.
            “Oh, God, the baby was cut out of her, wasn’t it?”
            “Probably.”
            “Dad, I don’t deal in probabilities – only facts!”
            “I don’t want to discuss this here,” he said softly, faintly. “I’ll speak to you later.”
            Maria shivered. She looked around at the sepulchral place. On the shelves were bottles, retorts, burners, periodicals and notebooks, journals and logs. The assistants had logged this woman in – Maria had watched them follow a set routine more than once – complete with her toe-tag resembling a luggage label, just like a mail office, or her paper’s dispatch room.
            The bizarre image of the deprived womb held on her retina, wouldn’t go away.

This book is now out of print - until further notice!

NB - Niggez is Maltese for 'sting'

Halloween-1 - canker of the soul

I got fed up waiting for a publisher to grab this book after it was out-of-print, despite the good reviews, so have self-published it as a paperback and e-book under the new title Chill of the Shadow. (amendment: 27/10/2017)

As the nights draw in, yes, even here in Spain, Halloween swiftly approaches and with it all manner of horror characters and tales emerge from crypts and cemeteries to send a frisson of thrill or fear down our spines. Here, for your delectation, is the prologue of my horror novel Death is Another Life (as written by Robert Morton). I have also written the screenplay (in other words, I wrote the novelization first!) More excerpts and comments on the book and its setting will follow up to the ‘witching eve’.

Death is Another Life by Robert Morton

Death is another life. We bow our heads

At going out, we think, and enter straight

Another golden chamber of the King’s,

Larger than this we leave, and lovelier.

Festus – P J Bailey (1816-1902)

PROLOGUE: Canker of the soul

A red and white painted eye stared out of a blue background, its black brow arching. It was wide open, an ever alert eye. The eye of Osiris was painted on the prow of three fishing boats that bobbed in the sea as dawn gilded the cliffs of Malta. The eyes on the boats were an old superstition, to ward off evil, and they did not work. Evil was already on the islands.

            Huge lamps hung over the sterns of the boats; their white glow was now no competition for the dawn spreading its golden light across the Mediterranean.
            Seagulls circled, their screeching noise accompanying the muted chugging of the motors and the constant lapping of the sea.
            Two fishermen with cigarettes dangling from their mouths struggled to haul in their net. It was just another day; another catch for the restaurants and early-bird wives to buy fresh fruit of the sea at the dockside. Water sluiced off their pungent-smelling harvest and both men suddenly gasped, their cigarettes dropping onto the deck.
            A human arm protruded through the net. The two men looked at each other in concern. They realized that they had little choice but to bring in their catch, whatever it contained.
            As they swung their haul inboard, they glimpsed bare flesh amidst the glistening fish.
            Hastily crossing themselves, the fishermen swung the catch inboard. As the net opened and disgorged the fish, the naked woman slithered out onto the brine-covered deck.
            The dead woman’s eyes stared up at the men and the sky.

 * * * *

The view of the land from the Air Malta aircraft was stark – parchment coloured, more like jaundiced skin. Bryson Spellman returned his attention to his book, the treasured Malleus Maleficarum, bound in the hide of a martyred witch. The pages were gossamer thin but would not or could not tear. Published in 1486, this handbook became known as the ‘Hammer of Witchcraft’ and received the papal seal, though Spellman was amused to recall that nowadays the Catholic Church disavowed it. It had been written as a direct result of a wave of European paranoia concerning witchcraft, vampirism and werewolvery, and became the justification for crushing evil-doers and heretics. Spellman read it partly for amusement and partly to know the thought processes of his enemies. The book’s two authors had been disturbed individuals who abhorred the entire female sex, laying the blame for all evil on women. Indeed, the ‘Hammer of Witchcraft’ contributed to superstition and was taken up with glee by Grand Inquisitor Torquemada and his blood-thirsty zealots, using it to condemn thousands of innocents to torture and horrific death. The Inquisition cost Satan many true adherents, but far more innocent souls were forever cast into Purgatory, an irony that mightily pleased the horned god. And, Spellman mused, times hadn’t changed all that much in the intervening half-millennium or so. Though, often, the persecutors now were not of the Church but the media, literally hounding people to death.

            The little old lady sitting next to him continued to snore, as she had done for the last hour. From time to time she broke wind, releasing a cloying smell, not unlike sulphur, which made Spellman feel quite at home.
            A young blonde stewardess – or, he allowed in these silly times, cabin-crew member – leaned over, clearly attracted to him. She wrinkled her nose and smiled, too polite to comment. “We’ll be landing in ten minutes, Mr. Spellman.”
            “Thank you, my dear.” He waved his hand to fan the air and returned her smile. “Truly, it has been a wonderful flight.”
            She beamed, pleased and amused.
            As he clicked his belt on again he dropped the book in the aisle and she stooped to retrieve it. He took the opportunity to eye her cleavage, which was tanned and full of promise. She straightened up, flicking through the pages, still smiling. “Your book–” But she lost her smile and the colour drained from her face when she noticed a selection of the graphic illustrations.
            “Just a hobby, my dear.” He snatched the book from her and she turned away and hurried down the aisle to another passenger, her tight skirt emphasizing firm buttocks.
            Silly ignorant bitch. Nothing could affect his good mood. He was leaving behind yet another new coven, this time in Louisiana – that was the fifth in the southern States alone. The Sicilian convention had proven most useful too: they were very interested in his visit to Malta. Canny witches and warlocks that they were, they’d detected something was in the air. Something pleasurable and profoundly satisfying.
            Unbridled pleasure fed the horned god and increased his power. While politics was the ideal soil in which to plant future talent, politics for Spellman lacked true pleasure. He felt it was a meagre substitute, these days: it merely offered a semblance of power. Real power was only savoured by dictators and murderers.
            Still, this latest power-takeover would not fail, Magus Spellman vowed, and closed the book as the plane began its descent. The islands may be small in the scheme of things, but they had influence and played host to all kinds of people. Malta could become an important centre of corruption, spreading the horned god’s canker of the soul in all directions. Besides, he had a three years’ old score to settle.
            He closed his eyes and hauntingly delicious images passed across his lids, memories of his successes in the African continent. There, he’d been able to take full advantage of the political mess and inter-tribal slaughter. He was biding his time for South Africa to implode. Sombrely, he admitted that he was not always successful – Romania, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan – yes, his power-takeovers had failed in these countries, but the death and destruction, the torture and deceit that caused so much misery had been worth all the effort, as in the final analysis it all fed evil. 
            The magus felt sure that his master was most pleased. It was only a matter of time before Iran came into the devil’s fold. Axis of Evil? The American president doesn’t know the half of it, Spellman mused with a sanguine smile.

This book is now out of print - until further notice!