Sitting cross-legged on the rough stone floor, she sees the world through a gauzy film of unreality. The chunk of dark sky at the end of the stone chamber looks thick, like the canopy of the leaves in the jungle at night, and the stars are larger and brighter than they should be. They move forward and then back, shrouded in shimmering light, that brightens and darkens in rhythm with the movement of their ethereal dance.

Relaxed and happy after consuming large amounts of maize beer and coca, a lump of which remains in her mouth, she half smiles at the shadowy spectral shapes, with no discernible faces, moving around at the entrance of the cave. She can hear their voices, indistinct and rumbling like distant thunder, but she cannot understand what they are saying. It doesn’t occur to her to try and speak to them and, even if it had, she could not have forced her cold lips to form the necessary words.

Neither the icy wetness of her fine clothing, the result of her bladder letting go earlier in the Capacocha Ritual, nor the uncomfortable tightness of the mat of finely braided hair that covers her strangely elongated head, permeate her dreamlike state. The blood in her limbs is slowing down and her eyes are fluttering closed from time to time as hypothermia sets in.

She forces her eyes open and watches one of the faceless shapes metamorphosis into the form of a large raven with spread wings. “Tap, tap, tap,” she fancies its beak goes on the rocky walls surrounding her. Her drug induced dream is ending and this harbinger of her doom has come to escort her into the great darkness of death. A horrid, croaking giggle forces its way out of her slack throat and then she closes her eyes for the last time.

This piece is written for Sue Vincent’s write photograph weekly prompt. You can join in here: https://scvincent.com/2019/09/26/thursday-photo-prompt-harbinger-writephoto/

It is every entertaining to go abroad on holiday and see all the amazing historical and natural beauty sites that make other countries and places famous and interesting. We were recently in Budapest, Hungary and these are ten of the great places we visited.

Wall of locks

The monument of Ignác Roskovics – famous Hungarian artist, graphic, “first professional artist in Uzhhorod”.

Me standing outside the Castle of Vajdahunyad on the Széchenyi-island in Városliget

Heroes Square

Jubileumi-park

The Great Synagogue in Dohány Street (also known as Dohány Street Synagogue) is the largest Synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world, capable of accommodating 3,000 people.

The Holocaust Memorial, also known as the Emanuel Tree, is a weeping willow tree (by Imre Varga) with the names of Hungarian Jews killed during the Holocaust inscribed on each leaf. 

St. Stephen’s Basilica is a Roman Catholic basilica in Budapest, Hungary. It is named in honour of Stephen, the first King of Hungary, whose right hand is housed in the reliquary.

One of the fountains at József nádor tér Square

Statue near St Michael’s Church

Our internet is still giving us trouble as the service provider has not been to fix the cable. I am still having to use the back up wifi which is not as strong or quick. I did manage to get these 10 photographs uploaded which I thought was quite a feat of determination.

This post is for Linda G Hill’s Saturday Stream of Consciousness prompt. Linda is away so Dan Antion has graciously hosted the prompt this week. You can join in here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/09/27/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-28-19/

This week’s topic is an interesting one for me. I have given it some thought and  concluded that, other than for While the Bombs Fell, I have not deliberately based any of my characters to date on real people. On reflection, however, real people have influenced my characters, as have the fictional characters from the many books I have read.

When I wrote While the Bombs Fell, I imagined my mom as being a little bit like Laura Ingalls in her Little House series and I built a few of Elsie’s characteristics around my idea of Laura based on my reading of this series. Obviously, as this is a fictionalised biography of my mom’s early life, these subtle additions are melded together with her actual personality traits and how she has portrayed her memories of herself and her family.

I have loved the Little House series all my life and I have read the whole series countless times. I wanted to create a book that depicted regular life for a small girl growing up in a country town in England during World War II in a similar manner as Laura did in her books. I always found the details of her everyday life and how her Ma made cheese, butter and even straw hats totally fascinating. The details relating to her Pa such as how he cleaned his gun and smoked meat from the animals he kills also delighted me. Of course, other people would build up their own ideas of Laura so my view of her could be very different from that of someone else.

The character of Sir Chocolate, from my Sir Chocolate series of children’s books, was influenced by my reading of Mr Pink Whistle, the series written by Enid Blyton. I wanted Sir Chocolate to have similar characteristics of kindness and a desire to right the world’s wrongs. Sir Chocolate is the go to person in Chocolate Land when there is a problem in the village. Lady Sweet and he, together with various of their friends, are always able to solve the situation through co-operation and teamwork.

My writing of Through the Nethergate, had a few literary influences too. The character of Katharine, the nun who runs away with her lover, William, reminded me a bit of Tess from Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Like Katharine, Tess’ life also ends in tragedy as a result of her love for a man and his manipulation of her.

Father Merton shares the characteristic of having an open and inquiring mind, despite his extensive book knowledge, with Professor Van Helsing of Dracula fame. Father Merton also takes a practical approach to solving various crisis’s in a manner slightly reminiscent of Ben Mears in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. He also shares some characteristics of two ministers I had a lot of regard for, one of whom died unexpectedly in 2016, in that he is guided by his own sense of what is right and exhibits a common sense approach to the interpretations and dictates of the church.

Grandfather Baker shares a lot of my father’s characteristics. He is innovative and a survivor. He is a big reader of books about specific things that interest him and he uses that knowledge to help the group survive the unusual situations they face in the book. He is also stubborn and a strong leader, just like my Dad.

In my new novella, A ghost and his gold, my main character, Pieter van Zyl, a burgher who fights for his country during the Second Anglo Boer War shares his belief that a better life can be attained for his people with Winston Smith from 1984 by George Orwell. Pieter is a quite and reticent character, with a rare interest in books for his time and situation. He has a much clearer idea of what could happen in the Anglo Boer War than most of his peers.

Of course, my characters develop in their own way in the specific circumstances of my stories, but my admiration for the strong characteristics demonstrated by certain book characters, and for some people who have impressed me during my life, have a subtle influence on how I chose to portray my own characters. I think this comes from having spent far more of my life with my nose in a book than actually socializing with people.

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What Amazon says

Don’t even think about messing with Brooke.

Two young American tourists are brutally murdered in Cancun. A private investigator in Connecticut is desperate to uncover the truth about a missing coed. At the heart of both matters is Brooke Walton, a young medical student. When her summer internship in a Medical Examiner’s Office exposes a disturbing mystery and her ruthless brilliance, authorities take a closer look. Can Brooke save her own beautiful skin with someone watching her every move? Will one more murder solve her urgent problems, or dig her an even deeper grave?

“From the delightfully creative mind of Jenifer Ruff, The Intern delivers chills, suspense, and an ending that was completely unpredictable.”– -Allison Maruska, author of The Fourth Descendant
“Brooke Walton is a top-of-her-class medical student and destined for success as a surgeon. But, the bodies . . . they keep piling up. A nail biter and a compelling psychological portrait.” – Reita Pendry, author of China White
“This book grabbed me from the first page and held on tight to the end. Impossible to put down, both terrifying and fiendishly amusing, this is a winner.” – Amazon Reviewer
“I liked the first two books in this series a lot. But I LOVED this one! I couldn’t stop reading and when I had to, I couldn’t wait to pick it back up again. I stayed up past my bedtime, but it was so worth it.!!”- Amazon Reviewer

From Amazon bestselling author Jenifer Ruff–a dark suspense thriller featuring a fascinating, twisted protagonist. Brooke Walton will make you wonder just how well you know your friends, neighbors, and classmates. Fans of James Patterson, Karin Slaughter, Hannibal Lecter, the Dexter series, and Gone Girl will be hooked.

My review

The Intern is book 3 in the Brooke Walton series, but can easily be read as a stand alone book.

This book starts off with Brooke participating in a rather horrific event in Cancun, Mexico. As always, Brooke feels perfectly justified in her response to the attempted attack on her, but she does make a rather unfortunate mistake this time around which has an impact on future events in the story.

Brooke is as focused and perfectionist as ever and has managed to get a great job as an intern at the local medical examiners office. She is hoping to have opportunities to participate in autopsies and learn more about the functioning of the human body as well as find out about the effects of diseases and unnatural death. Brooke quickly discovers two things at the medical examiners office. The first is that the doctor in charge, Dr Gold, does not seem to like her and relegates her initially to data entry and the second is that someone has been making some serious mistakes and entering certain bodies as having being autopsied when they have not. Brooke feels she must bring these errors to the attention of Dr Gold and, by doing so, sets in motion a series of events that results in her being out of control of her own life for the first time ever.

This book was a bit different from the first two books in the series and redirected the path of Brooke’s life to a certain extent. This needed to happen if the series was to continue and it added a lot of new thrills, excitement and some interesting new insights into Brooke’s fascinating physiology. As always, despite Brooke being a serial killer, I found my self routing for her and hoping for a good outcome to the story as far as she was concerned. The outcome certainly takes a must unexpected turn, but this added greatly to the story and the series as a whole. I will definitely be reading Book 4 when it comes out.

Purchase The Intern: A Dark Thriller

During the brief interlude between their visit to the burned-out farm and re-joining their commando, Pieter’s hair and beard became streaked with grey and new lines creased his skin burned brown by the sun. A shadow of desolation filmed his once bright eyes and his mouth curved down at the sides. They speculated that their families had been taken to the Mafeking concentration camp, but they could not be sure. They did not even know if they were still alive. Terrible stories about the poor conditions at the camps circulated among the various commandoes as they traversed the countryside.

The above 99-word piece of flash fiction is for Charli Mills’ Carrot Ranch challenge. You can join in here: https://carrotranch.com/2019/09/20/september-19-flash-fiction-challenge/

She sits on the hard wooden chair, murmuring softly to herself. She has been dried and dressed in warm clothes, but she hasn’t noticed. A bruise, shockingly dark against her alabaster skin, runs along her cheekbone where one of the nurses hit her with a broom handle.

She had clung to her sanity for weeks. Mentally steeling herself against the pain and humiliation when they beat her with the broom handle and jumped on her body. Fortifying her mind against the horror of being restrained using a straight jacket and left in a dark isolated cell for up to forty eight hours. She had even manage to preserve her sanity by cushioning her mind with happy memories from the past when they had tied her hands and feet, thrown a sheet over her head, twisting it tightly around her throat to prevent her screaming, and submerged her in a bathtub filled with cold water for hours.

It was their administration of the drug, metrazol, that had done it. Her frail body had twisted and jerked with seizure-like convulsions that had fractured her vertebrae and her mind.  All conscious thought had receded into deep crevices in her mind, away from the pain and the constant torment.

A nurse enters the room and sits down opposite her, a bowl of coarse bread and milk on her lap. She fills a spoon and pokes it towards the girl’s slack mouth, which opens like the beak of a baby bird.

After she is fed she sits on the hard wooden chair, murmuring softly to herself.

This piece was written for Sue Vincent’s weekly write photo prompt. You can join in here: https://scvincent.com/2019/09/19/thursday-photo-prompt-murmur-writephoto/

What Amazon says

Things aren’t always as they seem…

Stephanie Harris is no stranger to mystery and suspense. The author of several best-selling thrillers returns to her hometown of Driscoll Lake twenty years after her father’s suicide when her great-aunt Helen dies.

She hopes to settle Helen’s affairs as quickly as possible and leave behind the place where she suffered so much heartache. Soon after her arrival, Stephanie stumbles upon information that leads her to believe that all is not as it seems.

When she digs deeper into secrets long buried, she begins to receive warning notes and mysterious phone calls. The threats soon escalate into deliberate attempts to harm her. Stephanie soon finds herself caught in a web of deceit and danger.

Undaunted, Stephanie searches for clues about the scandal surrounding her father’s death. But discovering the truth places her in the path of a cold-blooded killer.

My review

Unseen Motives is the first book in the Driscoll Lake series. Stephanie Harris, a successful author, has never returned to her home town which she and her mother fled from when she was just fourteen years old. At that time, the residents of the town turned against them following the deaths of Stephanie’s father, Robert, and the wife of his employer, Madelyn Denton. A suicide note is discovered but it makes no mention of Madelyn. Despite this and a few other misfit facts, such as the strange disappearance of Phillip Denton, Madelyn’s second husband, a short while before this incident, the case is determined by the investigating chief of police to be a murder/suicide. There is even speculation that Robert may have been having an affair with Madelyn.

Stephanie has not returned to Driscoll Lake for twenty years following the death of her father. She is bitter about the blame laid at the feet of her and her mother due to her father’s believed actions and she doesn’t want to face the residents of the town. The death of her aunt, of whom is is very fond and who has no other surviving relatives, results in her making a decision to return, largely at the request of her aunt.

Stephanie’s walks into a maelstrom of mixed emotions and events when she arrives back at Driscoll Lake. She receives threatening notes, delivered to her aunt’s home where she is staying, reads a recent newspaper article by the local reporter and son of a prominent local businessman, which questions her father’s guilt and meets up again with the town’s malicious gossip who is still aggrieved by these events of twenty years ago. Stephanie also discovers that her aunt had reason to believe, before she died, that her dead daughter’s diaries contained clues as to the identity of the real murderers of Robert and Madelyn that fateful night.

This is an intriguing book, with an exciting murder mystery plot and some interesting insights into the lives and psyche of people living in a small town, especially when they have suffered financially from the actions of a specific individual. Was Robert Harris really guilty of murder all those years ago and would he have committed suicide? You will have to read the book to find out.

Purchase: Unseen Motives by Joan Hall

Through the Nethergate which has recently been released on TSL Publications and Lulu.com and which will be available on Amazon in a few weeks’ time, is my first full length novel. It ended up approximately 72 000 words and would have been longer if I hadn’t taken the advice of my two developmental editors, and removed the death stories of a number of the ghostly characters in the book.

When I first started writing Through the Nethergate, it was going to be an interconnected collection of short ghost stories based on real people and real events, but fictionalised to fill in the detail and gaps. I wrote about the deaths of all the main characters, both good and bad, including:

• Lizzie, a young girl who dies of starvation chained to the wall of a cellar after stealing a half a mug of beer;
• Rex Bacon who murders his wife and her lover after discovering their infidelity and commits suicide;
• A monk who worked at the Glastonbury Abbey and was a victim of murder while performing an important task for the Abbot;
• Katharine, who is forced to become a nun by her family and who runs away with her lover, becoming pregnant and being immured in the wall of the abbey when she is finally caught and returned to the monastery;
• Henry Scarle who is murdered by thieves and whose body is thrown into the river;
• Jack, a young boy who, together with his fellow chimney boys, murders his abusive employer and is hung when he is caught;
• Amelia Dyer who is considered to be the most prolific female serial killer in English history and who was eventually hung for her crimes;
• The children who drowned in the Huskar Colliery on 4 July 1838 after a flash flood above ground; and
• John Collins, one of the leaders of the Chartist movement in Birmingham.

I had feedback from both of my developmental editors and they both said the same thing. We love your ghost stories, but there are too many included. You need to cut some of them. I knew I had to cut some of my darlings and so I removed four of the stories.

I still like these pieces so much that I decided to expand them into stand-alone short stories and that is how the three short stories I wrote for Death Among Us, an anthology of short murder mystery stories by ten authors, came to be written. The fourth piece, about the life of Katharine, I published as a short story on Christopher Graham’s blog, The Story Reading Ape.

I believe that I was given the correct advice about cutting some of these stories out of my novel, after all, it didn’t end up being a collection of short ghost stories, but rather a full length novel with its own main story. I am glad I was able to put the cut out pieces to good use and build them into something worthwhile in their own right.

This post was written for this weeks Open book blog hop.

September 16, 2019

What did you edit out of your most recent book? (or another book…let’s see those outtakes!)

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On Thursday morning at 10am, Terence and I arrived home after a two week holiday in York and Scotland and then, exactly a week later, a 5 day work trip to Budapest in Hungary.

I was happy to see blue skies as rain seemed to have followed us from York to Scotland, back home and then to Budapest.

It has been a whirlwind month with all the travelling and a fair bit of work in between. Wednesday, particularly, was awkward as I was in the middle of a document that needed to be finalised. I had to put it on hold from 3pm on Wednesday until 10am on Thursday morning while we were in transit. When I arrived home on Thursday, our Wifi was not working so I struggled to connect to the office and all my social media sites. That made me feel blue. I hate being out of touch and not being able to work effectively.

Our Wifi cable has a break in it so the company can only come on Monday to repair it. We only discovered this late yesterday afternoon when the service provider came to see what was wrong. They couldn’t fit it as a different technician is required. We have purchased a temporary service for the weekend so life goes on.

The Danube under a cloudy sky

Shoes on the Danube in the rain

The Danube and Pest from the Buda side of the river

A beautiful statue in the rain in Budapest

You can join in the SoCS prompt here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/09/13/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-14-19/

What Amazon says

Generations of Jillian Cley’s family have been tasked with a strange duty—tending the burial plot of Gabriel Vane, whose body was the first to be interred in the Hode’s Hill cemetery. Jillian faithfully continues the long-standing tradition—until one October night, Vane’s body is stolen from its resting place. Is it a Halloween prank? Or something more sinister?

As the descendants of those buried in the church yard begin to experience bizarre “accidents,” Jillian tries to uncover the cause. Deeply empathic, she does not make friends easily, or lightly. But to fend off the terror taking over her town, she must join forces with artist Dante DeLuca, whose sensitivity to the spirit world has been both a blessing and a curse. The two soon realize Jillian’s murky family history is entwined with a tragic legacy tracing back to the founding of Hode’s Hill. To set matters right, an ancient wrong must be avenged…or Jillian, Dante, and everyone in town will forever be at the mercy of a vengeful spirit.

My review

This is the second book in the Hode’s Hill series of books by Mae Clair. I read and thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the series so I had high expectations for this new book. These were certainly met in End of Day which I enjoyed even more than the first book.

End of Day is a fairly dark and compelling reading, told on two timelines separated by over two hundred years. Gabriel Vane is an orphan, who is becoming a successful farmer in his small community, through hard work and determination. He has fallen in love with his best friend, Jasper’s sister, Dinah, and is hoping to win her hand in marriage. In order to increase his chances of a successful outcome to his courtship of Dinah, he undertakes to seek out and kill a savage beast that is stalking their community and killing livestock. The beast has struck terror into the hearts of the villagers and people living in the surrounding area. Following Gabriel’s brave gesture, Jasper and another unmarried farmer in their community, Hiram, volunteer to accompany him on his quest.

In the present day, we are reintroduced to Jillian, a minor character from book one, who has strong empathetic abilities. Her sister, Maddy, shares her gift and, after witnessing the brutal murder of her husband, Boyd, has withdrawn from the world and is living in a care home as she is unable to look after herself. Boyd’s murdered has never been found and Jillian spends a great deal of time, visiting her sister in the hope that she will emerge from her catatonic state. I really liked the character of Jillian and enjoyed her portrayal as a strong woman who is able to overcome her own fears and take the steps necessary to prevent her home town and its inhabitants from succumbing to catastrophe. I also liked the role played by Jillian’s care dog, it is always nice to have a relationship between a human and a dog in a story.

Dante DeLuca also plays a much bigger role in this book than in book one. I wasn’t that keen on his character previously but grew very fond of him while reading End of Day. A lot more information about his father’s death and the last haunted years of his life comes out and it provides more background and texture to Dante’s character. His psychic abilities and experience with seances come to the fore once more. I enjoyed the development of Dante’s character and the subtle hints at a future romance between him and Jillian. Dante had a psychic experience as a young boy which ended with one of his best friends being killed in a car accident. This incident is inextricable tied to the turbulent set of circumstances that he, Jillian and his young nephew, Elliott, find themselves involved in.

End of Hill is exciting and fast paced with lots of mystery and mystic. The supernatural element is dark and frightening but these parts are written tastefully and are not unduly graphic. I recommend End of Day to lovers of supernatural and action paced stories with interesting and believable characters. You do not need to have read book one in order to enjoy book one, but it adds to your appreciation of the character development if you do.

Purchase End of Day (A Hode’s Hill Novel)