Stuff of minor interest

    There are things of which I sometimes speak and there are things which go unmentioned. If you have heard some of this before, forgive me. If not, then read on and perhaps, learn a little of what goes through my mind as I create. What I create may not be to your taste, or liking, but you are free to move on to some other author if you feel compelled to do so.    I will begin with the earliest novels I have written, which so far, have not been published. First, there is a series of five novels based on the similarities I noted in a variety of ancient mythologies. Gods and Goddesses who held the same attributes and things which happened to one which were replicated in the myths of yet another, or more than one, culture. Rather than write about the major gods and goddesses, I wrote about a very minor one, who by virtue of marriage was made all-important to the major deities because his wife, who became a major deity out of her desire for revenge for his death. In the myths, he was indeed killed by order of his brother, but in my story, he used subterfuge to avoid death and spent thousands of years trying to assuage his wife's anger and rectify the wrongs she had done in his name. The story becomes more complicated because though he loves his wife, he was destined to be the husband of yet another woman. As you can see, this situation gave me ample opportunity to inject a great deal of drama. After five novels, the story is finished. Or, is it?    Next up is my vampire novel, A Taste For Blood. One of the greatest tragedies of all time is the story of Oedipus and it has spun off a variety of themes that continue to be popular today. I twisted it a little, feeding off a little-known Nordic saga and was surprised. The story received little attention, though having a fair number of favorable reviews, and I believed it would someday pass into the realm of 'out of print' books. I was on the point of 'unpublishing' it on Amazon when I decided, just for the heck of it, to make it available in a free promotion. This is where the surprise comes in; it became the #1 English Language vampire book available via the Kindle Store in France and Germany for an entire weekend.    Next is my novel, Stitch in Thyme. I wanted to write an interplanetary story and of all the familiar Terran animals, landed on the cat as the beast most likely to fill the bill I needed for the story. The beast had to be sensuous, engergetic and powerful. It also had to be anthropomorphised into a form acceptable as a possible love interest. I afraid I plowed over old ground that has been cultivated by a great many science fiction authors far too many times. Though I like the story, the setting has been a disappointment for me. The premise leaves something to be desired also.    A Quart of Djinn: I was still trying to use wordplay to arrive at acceptable titles and before I go any further, I must reveal that I sometimes get these flashes of wordplay and I write them down. I'm afraid that I arrived at the idea to write a story to fit the titles I dreamed up instead of the other way around. the story is okay, but simply that. Given time and effort, I could turn it into a much better story. maybe someday I'll take the time to do so.    One of my personal favorites is Congruencies; a time travel story in which I poured all the energy and angst I felt for a period of my life for which I feel sorrow to this day. The present edition has formatting and editing issues that I really need to address. I feel that it could be a better seller than it is if I devoted some time to making it better. Oh, I wouldn't rewrite it; simply make the corrections it needs and is crying out for.    Behind the Stone: A daydream I had as a boy, born of a boulder that sat beside a ridge in a residential section of my hometown. I like the story but feel that there is something missing. Maybe I'll revisit the land behind the boulder someday.    Eggs of Empire: For some reason, I have always been drawn to the story of the Empress Theodora. I am unable to say why, the words just aren't there for me to explain the attraction. Maybe it was the humble origins of the Great Lady, juxtaposed against the heights she scaled and refused to give up, making her husband a greater Emperor than he might have been. Add to this the fact of her early death, due to the life she was forced to lead as a child, I don't doubt, and you can see that the story has the makings of a first-rate tragedy. In this story, I created the nucleus of the Shepherd, Tanner and Decker Detective Agency, intending them to be 'throwaway' characters, but found that I was loathe to waste the effort I had spent in creating them. Thus, they acquired their own series of novels. I mean, just look at all the TV shows which use characters with those names as heroes. Keep that statement in mind the next time you watch a science fiction TV series and maybe, if you're lucky, you'll see what I mean.    Taken Apart: I wanted to write from a character inside a character. Demonic possession stories have been popular off and on for the past forty years and I wondered why it had never occurred to anyone that in the event of a possession, the possessing entity would know the host far better than anyone ever could. If it was possible for a demon to know love of any sort, might they not be drawn to their host, given the intimate knowledge they had of them? And, to bring such a love to fruition, the possessing entity must be forced from the host. I failed to mention when discussing A Quart of Djinn that I had injected some of the characters from the first series of books into the story and I did the same in this one. I mean, demons are supposed to be fallen angels and if the God who created them had any compassion, mightn't He not wish to show mercy for one of His creations who had shown remorse and a desire for forgiveness?    Gulf of the Plains and Gulf of the Plains II: Fog and Bog: I intended this as a simple Post-apocalyptic story but it grew into a series. The inspiration for it was the great number of earthquakes we had been experiencing for a number of years, all around the world, in conjunction with Global Warming. That a number of those quakes occurred in Oklahoma, of all places, only gave greater impetus to my personal theory that what was once the bottom of a sea could be again. I have wanted to build an earthquake-proof, tornado-proof, fire-proof house for a long time and the way I designed and drew it up, it became a fortress of sorts. The only way I could ever afford to build it the way I wanted it was to become wealthy; a thing which will never come to pass, so I decided to make the fortress a partial reality by giving it form in a book. The characters were secondary to me in the beginning but when I began writing the story, I began with the character, Paget Redpath. Her father is a secondary character in A Quart of Djinn, and I wanted to show that when the world as we know it ends, it will end for all, no matter what their walk of life. So, why not begin with a former pop-star/party-girl? It was necessary to use two books to show the evolution of her character from a pampered pet/sex slave of a couple of wealthy men into a killer without remorse. Yes, Paget grew full-blown from my mind, like Athena from the mind of Zeus. How could she not be a major player in the story?    It Happens Every Day: A fantasy. I was processing the grief I felt for the death of a former paramour, much deferred for a number of years. I felt that she deserved remembrance beyond that of a few flowers upon her grave. This story, more than any other, was a labor of love. Her face, limned in the moonlight upon her pillow still comes to me in sleeping and waking moments.   
Questionable Interests: An effort to write a film-noir type story that got out of hand. I did get a pair of memorable characters out of it though. Barton and Clayton Linehan, better known as Bruiser and Cruiser; twin brothers, virtually unschooled geniuses who spend their time using their muscle istead of their brains.