Deadly Company - a spooky tale that reveals an author's darker side

By Rosa Storm

What does choosing your own name say about you? What about when the chosen name is a mirror of the given name?

One of my favourite indie authors is Cinta Garcia de la Rosa, who wrote The Funny Adventures of LittleNani for children. She has a distinct voice and style, and a sense of humour that bubbles through the text. She’s not afraid to break through the “fourth wall,” engaging directly and very effectively with the audience. No matter what the subject, when you read Cinta, you see that she is enjoying the art of writing.

Now she has turned to a subject very different from children’s stories, under the name Rosa Storm. Does moving her second surname to the front signify that she is bringing some suppressed characteristic to the fore?

And Storm: storms can be dark times. Rosa Storm’s newest story, Deadly Company, is dark indeed. And very bloody. As Rosa Storm, Cinta Garcia may be letting someone dangerous out to play.

Deadly Company is based on the Spanish Galician (as opposed to the Polish Galician) legend of La Santa Campaña, the Holy Company also known as “the night ones.” The legends tells of a procession of dead spirits wearing hoods and carrying candles, led by a living person dressed in a hood and carrying a cross and a cauldron of holy water. Their appearance means someone nearby is close to death.

The person leading the procession can only be freed from this duty if he or she finds some other living person to take over.

Deadly Company follows a well-worn path in reinvigorating an old legend like this, involving teenagers, graveyards and spooky woods. But what sets this story apart are Storm’s vivid descriptions, her realistic characterization and that irrepressible sense of humour. This writer understands children and young people, and I cannot help but think she must have a vivacious presence in person. Yes, even though this is a spooky and gory story, there are laughs as she describes her characters’ motivations and reactions. Little details, like an errant tuna sandwich and the way the characters interrupt a story-teller—breaking the fourth wall within the story—bring the story to life.

Deadly Company reveals two very different sides of this writer’s personality. But most important, it’s a story that grabs your attention and doesn’t let go until the last word.

4* (a few minor editing errors)

DEADLY COMPANY: Based on the Spanish legend of La Santa Compaña (The Holy Company), this story talks about the unknown and unexplainable things that go bump in the night. When a group of teenagers decide to spend some time in their hometown's graveyard, they didn't know they were going to learn about one of the darkest periods in the history of their town. The souls of the dead, hooded figures, and weird deaths combine in this chilling story of ancient legends and facts.

Visit Rosa Storm's 

• Amazon Author page  
• Cinta's Corner

Sample Sunday: a chapter from the spooky work-in-progress

Hallowe'en is coming up fast, and in honour of that auspicious occasion, I'm posting some spooky stories on the next few Sundays. 

If you've been to this blog before, you'll recognize Dark Clouds. "The Mandrake Ruse" is the first chapter in what is slowly growing into a complete novel that I hope will cross the occult/paranormal-spy thriller genre boundary.

You can download Dark Clouds: The Mandrake Ruse as an e-book for free from the tab at the top of the page.

What follows is a short chapter, this one focusing on "pretty little Teri," the heroine of The Mandrake Ruse, What Made me Love You? and The Graveyard, and the wife of the Witch's son and hero of the tale, Matt.

Dark Clouds: Teri and the river 

Photo of Dumoine River copyright Scott Bury

The water was surprisingly warm, swirling and dancing in the setting sun, dark where it was deep, orange where it flowed over rocks, white were it leapt and spun and rolled in joy.

Teri let herself drift. She closed her eyes to let her spirit see freely. She felt the river’s joy, its happiness in its own strength, in its ability to feed the life in it and around it. Teri saw the fishes and the other creatures below its surface, hiding under soil and rocks and among the trees that pushed their roots into the river to draw their lives.

Teri’s skin tingled with the energy of life, but she ignored the sensation. She could not even be certain she was breathing, whether she was above or below the surface, but she pushed those thoughts, those fears out of her mind. She opened her spirit wider, searched for every sensation and tried to contact the river’s spirit.

A riot of sensation shocked her and her eyes flew open involuntarily. She found herself lying on her back on the water’s surface. She let the river take her. Trees drifted past on either side. The current pulled her until she drifted downstream, head-first. She felt a tug to one side and saw a boulder slide past her vision. The river had kept her from injury.

Teri took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She opened her mind again, willing herself not to think of language or any human constructs so that she could communicate with the essence of the river.

There it was: the joy, the power of the river, constant motion, different in every second, eternally the same. Dark, alive, irresistible. The river acknowledged Teri’s attempt at communication, and her mind filled with a cognizance of a powerful, dark, living and curious presence.

She wanted to ask “Where am I?” but knew that forming human words in her mind threatened to break the communion she had with the river. She explored the edges of her consciousness and found she could not exactly see, but gradually become aware of the world beyond the river’s banks, of the trees and hills and other rivers and lakes and animals, the forest stretching across the world’s curves. Life buzzed and oozed until it twisted or cramped in pain, and Teri understood that happened where humans built their cities.

But there, to her left, no, now her right as the river turned her playfully, there, far but not so far for the river, was her home. And beyond it, her parents’ home. And over there, yes, she could tell where Racine was. She could feel his rancour, feel the stink of his fear.

And in the other direction, a malevolence that could only be Helen. The Witch Queen was looking for her, but she did not have a connection with the joyous river and could not see Teri.

Teri felt the river probe her spirit. Later, her memory would translate the deep connection she had into words.

“Do not fear, little one,” the river said.

“I am not afraid. Thank you for saving me. How did I end up in you?”

“I do not know. One moment, you were there. Perhaps you fell in? The banks, though, do not remember you.”

“The last thing I remember is being in a dark room, chained to a bed,” Teri told the river, careful not to make her thoughts too concrete. “How long have I been in you?”

“A full day. Do not worry, my child. I will keep you warm until I deliver you into the waters of my brother/sister.”

Teri realized she was naked, but not cold. She wondered, briefly, if the sun had set yet, but she did not dare open her eyes in case that would sever her communion with the river.

“Who is your brother?” she asked.

She felt the presence swirl under and over and around her, like an enormous otter or fish, playing in the water. “Some of your kind call her/him the Ottawa River,” said the presence. “I will carry you to him/her by the time the sun rises again. You are tired. I can tell. Peace, child. Sleep. Trust me to take you home.”

Sleep. How long had it been since she had slept, Teri wondered. Days? Weeks? She had no idea how long Helen had kept her in that windowless room. The time had dragged; she knew that Helen had drugged her, somehow, to bring her there, and had used drugs or spells repeatedly to take away her consciousness. She remembered opening her eyes to see Helen’s only inches away, or across the room, supervising Loretta or one of her other bitches as they humiliated her. Even the water’s warmth could not keep her from shivering at the memory of two of Helen’s coven, hands on her ankles, spreading her legs apart while Helen laughed and brought a small crystal vial toward her vagina. But it had only been psychological torture; Helen would never bring herself to actually touch Teri.

Teri let the river calm her, let the water caress her skin. Her thoughts retreated from the world around her, from the embrace of the water, from the presence of the river. And then she felt the presence within her, and she knew that she had defeated Helen.

She slept, and the Dumoine River carried her gently through the night until it gave her to the embrace of its great sibling, and Teri moved with the speed of the deep natural world toward her home.

Independent book review: Reckoning, by RS Guthrie

 With Reckoning, RS Guthrie takes the fiction writer’s rule book, shreds it in mighty fingers and reassembles it into a new way of engaging audiences.

Reckoning is the third of Guthrie’s books to feature Denver Detective Robert Macaulay, also known as Bobby Mac and also known as the heir to the occult power of Clan MacAulay.

Busting through the genre boundaries

Reckoning, like Black Beast and LOST, the previous Bobby Mac novels, is a noir cop thriller, a police procedural whose villain just happens to be (spoiler alert!) a demon.

Right there, he’s broken the artificial boundaries imposed on genres. Guthrie’s Bobby Mac novels read like gritty cop stories, yet somehow the supernatural elements fit perfectly.

Another rule that he breaks: modulating between the first and third person perspective. Most of the book is narrated by Bobby Mac, and Guthrie’s command of the tough, no-nonsense cop dialect (ever notice how cops all sound the same, no matter where they come from?) is flawless. But where the story needs a third-person omniscient POV, Guthrie smoothly shifts for exactly as long as he needs to.

He has created his own style here. It's as if Bobby Mac is sitting beside you on the porch, telling you what happened. No, actually, it's more like he's sitting across a campfire on a moonless night, telling you about what is deep in those shadows. At times, Guthrie gets a little too philosophical, waxing about the relationships between parents and children or mentors and protégés; occasionally, I started to lose patience. But for all that, Guthrie kept me flipping pages (or flicking my iPad screen, to be precise).

Plot

This trilogy is all about the battle between a demon, Samhain, who is opposed on earth primarily by the Clan MacAulay of Scotland. Today, that clan is represented by Detective Bobby Macaulay of the Denver police force, who has inherited the Clan’s ancient weapon against Hell, the Crucifix of Ardincaple.

Decades ago, Pink Floyd said "One day you find, 10 years have got behind you.” The story of Reckoning picks up where LOST left off, but 10 years later. Bobby Mac has remarried, had another family — triplet girls — and is starting to think about retiring from the police force. Evil returns in the form of a serial killer plaguing Denver. In a nod to noir thrillers of yore, the first case mimics the Black Dahlia.

Like any good police procedural, the story follows Bobby Mac tracking down clues and fighting against the awful realization that the enemy he knows best, and thought destroyed, has returned.

Best and worst

The best part of Guthrie’s stories are the relationships between the characters. They’re all combinations of positive and negative qualities, inconsistent and flawed. You never really know their motivations, because the characters themselves are never really sure just what combination of attitudes, fears, desires and blindnesses are driving them.

I have always enjoyed Guthrie’s descriptions of Bobby Mac and his son trying to communicate through all the layers of love and mistrust and history and baggage. However, as mentioned, this time it seemed to get a little long. The narrative seemed to keep veering off onto tangents.

Also, I felt that with this installment of the story, you really had to have read the first two books to understand what was going on.

For example, as the book approaches the final confrontation between good and evil, Bobby Mac explains "the whole story" to his partner, but not explicitly in the story. The book reads more like "I told him the whole story,” rather than recapping it, or describing some action that would encapsulate the conflict. While this technique is a good way to abbreviate another info-dump and avoid rehashing stuff that loyal readers already know, it also risks alienating those who have not read the previous installments. (Maybe it's a clever way of boosting sales of the other books.)

Overall, Reckoning, the finale of the Bobby Mac trilogy (although Guthrie keeps saying he'll have other stories about Bobby Mac) is an enjoyable, satisfying completion to the trilogy. It wraps it all up in Guthrie's lean, aggressive writing style without missing a beat or leaving a loose end untied.

And it's engaging, one of those stories you can't put down.

If you want a good read that breaks all those worn out conventions of genre boundaries and unnecessary rules, read Reckoning. But you should probably read LOST first, and probably Black Beast before that.

To get the books, the best place to start is Guthrie's website or his blog. Or visit his Amazon author's page.

You can also get a signed copy of Reckoning directly from Rob.

Steven Montano: shaking up the genres

An independent author interview

Most authors strive to stay within a genre, occasionally mixing horror with romance or science fiction with mystery and throwing in a love interest for good measure. I've never before come across an author who aggressively tosses as many different genres into the mix as Steven Montano, whose Blood Skies series mixes military science fiction, war, occult horror, modern vampires and witchcraft, and animates the mix with supernatural energy. I had to ask him about it.

Steve Montano has published five novels, two short stories and a novella, all set in his fantastic, futuristic and horrific future timeline called Blood Skies, or the World After the Black; he released his latest, Book Five in the series, The Witch’s Eye, just last week (launched on this blog, among others), and he’s hard at work on completing the projected seven-novel cycle.

It’s a demanding self-imposed challenge for a man who is also a full-time professional accountant, a husband and a father of two. On top of that, he blogs regularly and maintains a presence on all the social media.

I had to find out more about his creations and his creative process.

Blood Skies is set in a post-apocalyptic world, but the apocalypse is different from any other I have read: a change in the physical laws that lets magic work and makes once-imaginary creatures like vampires and warlocks real. What was the inspiration for this unique, dark vision?

The idea originally began as a steampunk vampire novel, but I quickly grew tired of trying to write steampunk and instead searched for a way to make it so I could write an “anything goes” world and have it seem believable. Since the single most dramatic change I could think of in regards to how the world worked involved the presence of magic, I started with the notion of a magical apocalypse, and just built on that. I’ve enjoyed developing the setting, as it basically allows me to include whatever “real world” elements I want and just make up the rest.

 

Is there any aspect of your world that you hope readers will recognize in the current one? In other words, are you sounding a warning about anything in particular, or is this just whimsy, total imagination?

I use real-world war events and military history as inspiration for some of the horrors depicted in Blood Skies, and the way that magic is simultaneously feared and relied upon could probably serve as a sort of metaphor for nuclear power, but for the most part I try to play things straight. Maintaining some semblance of realism is important — perhaps even more important when dealing with an entirely fantastical world — so even though my stories deal with vampires and magic and fictional civilizations, I try to keep the characters and the way they behave in their insane surroundings grounded in reality.

 

Your books feature a lot of characters, and are told from multiple points of view. Tell us more about your favourite characters.

That’s difficult, because I’m fond of all of my characters (even the secondary ones) in some form or another. Eric Cross has always been the primary protagonist in the series, but it seems that in every book I come up with a new character I’m partial to, which is usually why I end up extending the narrative and making it so I can tell some of the story from their POV. Danica Black, a former prison warden turned mercenary, has always been compelling to me because she’s more of an anti-hero than Eric, and she comes across as heartless even though she struggles with a dark and tragic past. Mike Kane, a prisoner turned soldier, is a relentless smart-ass who blends heroism with comic relief. Ronan, a swordsman and former assassin, is my “hitman with a heart of gold” character, whose incredibly warped sense of the world is put to the test in The Witch’s Eye when he inadvertently finds himself in the unlikely position of holding what’s left the team together once they’ve all scattered to the wind.

Do you base your characters on real people in your life? If so, are you one of them?

I don’t make my characters exact duplicates of anyone I know in real life, but of course I take aspects of different people’s personalities and blend them into these fictional people. It’s safer that way…if I tell someone I based a character on them, I have to listen to how I got them all wrong. ;D

There’s no question Eric is the most like me (poor guy), but even he and I have our differences. Many of Cross’s insecurities bear a striking resemblance to my own, and he’s the easiest for me to write in terms of knowing how he’ll behave in any given situation, because I feel like he and I are pretty much on the same wavelength. Cross makes his fair share of stupid moves every now and again; one of the reasons I like writing him is because I know I probably would have done the same thing, whereas with some other characters, I’d be tempted to change things up to make it more realistic.

 

How do you handle the challenge of writing from multiple points of view? What makes it hard, and what makes it possible, at all?

Aside from the prologue of Blood Skies, I actually didn’t start writing from a second POV until Book Three, when Cross’s disappearance mandated a new character take over as the eyes and ears for the readers. For me the trick is to keep it simple: if you’re writing from multiple POVs, be sure to make them different enough individuals that the reader never gets confused, and try to use them in such a fashion that it makes sense to switch perspective — i.e. you’re still advancing the story by switching characters, not just re-telling every event from multiple viewpoints.

Blood Skies is the name of both the series and the first novel in it. Did you have such a good experience with the first novel that you decided to expand it into a series, or did you envision a long story arc and plan all the installments in it, first?

The former. The original draft of Blood Skies was actually quite different from how things wound up. As I mentioned before, the first version had strong elements of steampunk, and it was only about half as long as the finished novel. The original draft also had no survivors, so it definitely wasn’t intended to be an ongoing series. ;D

But as I revised and prepared Blood Skies for publication in early 2011, I got hit with a number of ideas for potential sequels, and decided I wanted to leave things more open-ended. Then, just a month before I released the book, I had an avalanche of ideas for Black Scars, so in the end I was very happy I’d decided to give myself the option for writing Book Two and beyond.

Can you describe the story arc? Where are you so far, and where will the next four books go?

Blood Skies (the series) at a glance is about the war between the humans of the Southern Claw and the vampires of the dreaded Ebon Cities, but before long the story turns to humankind’s struggle to protect their world from the dark powers behind The Black, a cataclysmic event that transformed the world into the wastelands it has become.

Blood Skies introduces Eric Cross, the protagonist of the series, and establishes many of the rules of the setting. Black Scars introduces Danica Black and Mike Kane and shows the formation of Cross’s team of mercenaries. Books four to seven (Soulrazor, Crown of Ash, The Witch’s Eye and Chain of Shadows Parts One and Two) chronicle the team’s struggles against the forces behind the creation of The Black. The final three books in the series (Vampire Down, The Ending Dream and Darker Sunset) will deal with the aftermath of the struggle, and show how the team’s victory was anything but complete.

All of your books seem to feature many of the same elements: witchcraft, horror, vampires and a damaged, changing world. Are they all based in the same alternate time-line, or are they different tales, entirely?

I’ve always tried to push the idea that the World After the Black is a conglomerate of multiple realities: the shattered remnants of different worlds, realities, times, or planes of existence having all crashed together with Earth as the focal point. The truth is, no one really knows where most of the elements came from originally — Earth and all of its disparate parts have been forcefully fused into a new paradigm. Part of the reason I did this, honestly, was to enhance the horror of the situation, for it means the world that humans are trapped in is all but impossible to break down and understand.

Do you ever find elements from your novels or from your life as a novelist have an impact on your other identity, as an accountant?

I do wish I had an arcane spirit with me at work, if that’s what you mean. ;D But seriously, the only real effect I find is that I wish I was doing more writing than accounting. With luck, I can continue to move toward that goal.

Do you have plans for any other types of stories outside of the Blood Skies world, or the genre?

This year I plan to publish City of Scars, which I wrote a few years back, the first novel in my epic fantasy Skullborn series. I’ll also eventually publish another stand-alone horror novel called Blood Angel Rising, about a pair of hit-men tracking down a fallen angel. On top of that I’ve written dozens of horror and dark fantasy short stories which I should probably allow to see the light of day at some point.

What is your favourite type of book to read?

I like dark epic fantasy, military sci-fi, and some horror. I enjoy some paranormal romance and urban fantasy, though it has to be taken in short doses. I’m also a sucker for a good murder mystery.

Who would you say are your major influences as a writer?

To this day my biggest influences remain J.V. Jones, China Mieville, Clive Barker, Tanith Lee, John Marco, John Meaney and C.S. Friedman. I’ll eat up pretty much anything those authors write. In the Indie field I’m a huge fan of Michael Hicks, Jon F. Merz, Jen Kirchner, Alan Edwards, Mike Berry, Candice Bundy and that Bruce Blake guy.

If there was one thing about your published work that you could change, what would it be?

I hate that it took me so long to produce those books. ;D I also know my first novel wasn’t as crisply edited as some of my later work, a fact that I plan to remedy as soon as I have some spare time. I’ve toyed with the notion of releasing an Omnibus of the first three novels of the Blood Skies series, and I’ll doubtlessly re-edit the lot before I do that.

Thanks for having me, Scott!

Thank you for coming, Steven.

Steven Montano’s books are all available on Amazon. For a full list, visit his Amazon author page.

And don’t neglect visiting his website, bloodskies.com, his blog, and grab the Ebon Cities Gazette.

Follow Steven on Twitter @Daezarkian

On Unfaithful Wings: A sure-footed supernatural thriller

An independent book review

Bruce A. Blake’s first novel is a thoroughly entertaining, as well as thought-provoking and heart-wrenching novel that breaks the author out of obscurity as well as out of several genre conventions.
Blake demonstrates from the first sentence that he’s a professional writer, a novelist with chops:

“I stood with my back to the church, much the way I’d lived my life.

Rain poured down the eaves, splashing against my shoes. Each drop pattering against the leather felt as though it landed directly on my mood.”

What I liked about this book

First, the style: Raymond Chandler meets Stephen King. Spare and terse, it presents characters clearly and sets the ideal tone for this occult horror/mystery thriller story. It shows not only Blake’s ability, but also his commitment to professionalism — it has obviously been edited by a professional. There is not an extra word, not a misplaced phrased, not a single malapropism, and maybe four typos in the whole e-book.
Second, the plot: a tight, fast-paced plot suitable for an action thriller. Blake doesn’t waste time, getting into the main action immediately, and there is not a throw-away scene anywhere. Every scene, every word adds to the plot as much as to character development, mood or scene.
Third, the characters: all solid and believable. The main character, Icarus Fell (yes, that’s his name and Blake has lots of fun with it) is fallible, thoroughly human, not too smart nor too stupid. One reason the plot flows so fast is that it’s seen through the protagonist’s eyes, and his foibles are so easy to identify with. The ex-wife is nasty, but also believable — who hasn’t met at least one woman like Rae? Who hasn’t regretted it? The angels and archangels carry a very believable lack of worry about humans’ plans if they don’t mesh with Heaven’s, too.

And the Angel of Death is one of the best villains ever. Of course, with that as your template, how could a writer go wrong?

Even the shining lamp of goodness in the story, Sister Mary-Therese, hits the right note. She has a heart of gold, but she’s believably good.

Plot

The story is written in the first person. It begins as Icarus Fell, waiting under the eaves of a church for a rainstorm to abate, is murdered outside a church, in the rain, as he is on his way to bring a birthday present to his estranged teenage son.

Yep, that’s where the story begins. The main character dies.

He wakes up six months later in a seedy hotel room, where the Archangel Michael explains his destiny as a harvester of souls. His new job is escorting newly dead souls to a place where an angel can take them to heaven. Michael doesn’t take no for an answer, but explains that if Icarus carries out his new duties faithfully, he will have a chance to see his son again.

Like every action story, though, his job immediately gets more complicated than first explained. Agents of Hell want those sames souls just as much, and they’re powerful and dangerous and nasty.

True to the thriller form, the cops are no friendlier to Icarus. They’re suspicious when he turns up in the city six months after the coroner signs his death certificate.

Throughout the book, Icarus has to dodge the cops, the agents of Hell and the ghosts from his own past, all while discharging his job. It becomes even more complicated when one of his “clients” is an old drinking buddy.

The author avoids the error that many first-time novelists make, the information dump. We readers get the back-story bit by bit, as we need them to understand the motivations of the characters. We learn just how Icarus “screwed up” his relationship with his wife, Rae, and the nature of his relationship with his perhaps-son, Trevor. We learn how Icarus grew up in the orphanage connected with the church where he was murdered.
And like a true professional author of mystery thrillers, Blake ties together all the threads. There is nothing random, nothing unnecessary, nothing unexplained in this book.

Limitation

I won’t say this book has any weaknesses, but one limitation occurred to me fairly early on in the book: the paranormal universe Blake has created is firmly based on the Judeo-Christian bible. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — lots of literature is firmly rooted in the same mythos. The only trouble is that Blake is presenting a universe that basically says the Bible’s conception of the universe is correct. So, where do Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and other religions fit into this?

It’s not a big thing, but something that nagged me as I read this.

Overall, On Unfaithful Wings satisfies. I’m upgrading my earlier assessment from four to five stars.

Well done, Bruce!

Get On Unfaithful Wings on Amazon

Visit Bruce Blake's blog.

Bruce Blake is a member of the Guild of Dreams fantasy writers' collective and Independent Authors International.

Hallowe’en Treat, part 4: Six spooky sentences

The ride of fear



Photo used under Creative Commons from wwarby


It’s the last Sunday before Hallowe’en, and this is the last installment of my Hallowe’en treat to readers of this blog. Don’t worry, I’ll have lots more posts in the future, including more excerpts from various works.

This six-sentence excerpt comes from Part 2 of The Bones of the Earth. Here, Javor is riding with a column of Roman Legionnaires because … well, you’ll just have to read the book for the “because” part.

At any rate, they column is riding two wide along a long, twisting forest path, when suddenly they’re attacked by something they cannot see. Their only hope is to gallop as fast as they can to the end of the path and hope …

Three times, they heard screams; three times, legionnaires at random points in the column fell to the side. But the column dared not break stride and flew along the path. Horses stumbled, but righted themselves. Men gripped their saddle horns and prayed for salvation. Javor heard nothing but thundering hooves and jangling steel, and the amulet was vibrating so hard it felt like it was on fire.

Up ahead, he could see light as the path came to some kind of clearing, but at that moment, something cold and damp clutched around his neck and yanked him from the saddle.

Want to find out what happens to Javor? Click the cover image on the right and get the whole book!

For more great six-sentence samples, visit SixSunday.com. And leave comments on every one that you visit today!