3. March 2012 by admin.

The San Diego Reader has resurrected its fiction blog and the first feature is a sample chapter from our new Mythic Tales: City of the Gods anthology! The post includes a complete tale by writer and comic artist Jay Allen Sanford loaded with art from the book, additional images, and a bonus discussion of how the illustrations are put together.

Stop by FICTIONWRITER at the San Diego Reader to read “Wanted: Mordecai.”

Posted in excerpts, books | No Comments »

17. October 2011 by admin.

First a novel, then a game, now a brand new comic! Announcing the first release in the City of the Gods Universe comic line, The Last Goddess #1. If you have already read about D’Molay’s adventures with the gods in the City and the realms, you might be curious about what’s going on back on Earth. The Last Goddess #1 is a stand-alone story which references the retreat of the gods from our planet and the power of the Council, but tells a tale all its own.

At Dunwich Asylum, two evil gods secretly attempt to rebuild their powers and gain new converts. One remaining goddess of the light is reborn to thwart them. Can she rediscover her godhood, adapt to the modern world, and succeed?

The Last Goddess #1 is for mature readers and contains some nudity and supernatural horror elements.

Available exclusively at DriveThru Comics, this 53-page publication is priced competitively at $1.75 for the digital download. Story by M. Scott Verne and Wynn Mercere, with art by Seppo Makinen and S. Crompton. There is a free preview of the first six pages at the link.

Posted in comics, excerpts | No Comments »

26. May 2011 by admin.

Work is going very well on the second novel in the City of The Gods series. D’Molay’s adventures continue as he continues the quest to bring Circe’s head to the water god Glaucus. He will need the help of old friends and new ones to succeed. Here’s a sneak peek.

Chapter 6 - The Cursed and the Blessed

D’Molay was tempted to throw his fishing pole into the lake as another in an endless stream of gnats tried to crawl into his eye. Instead, he rammed the end of the useless stick between his knees and reached for Quan’s pipe. Perhaps a cloud of smoke would keep the bugs away, or even encourage them to go chew on Quan instead. As he loaded the pipe, he shot a suspicious look at Mazu’s favored man. He still couldn’t see why Mazu placed such a high value on him. Perhaps his pure loyalty was cause enough; but sometimes D’Molay felt Quan was up to something. In camp this morning he could have sworn he’d heard him opening his pack. Yet when he turned to check, Quan was napping in the boat, nowhere near D’Molay’s belongings.

Right now Quan was busy detaching a fish from his line and tossing it into a bucket already populated by earlier trophies. The boat barely rocked as the fisherman worked. D’Molay noted his skill and ease on the water with a touch of jealousy. Quan met his gaze and a grin spread across his face.

“That’s five fish, Freeman,” he said. “I’ll let you eat one.”

“Two,” D’Molay bargained. “Mazu says I’m still too thin.”

“She can’t see how fat you are under that heavy coat.” He hiked the long tail of his own thin silk shirt up around his hips as he settled in front of the bucket. Quan shook a long finger at D’Molay to caution him. “I hope you can float. Not even good Mazu could save you if you fall into the lake with that weight on your back.”

“My coat is made of wool, not lead,” D’Molay said wearily. “And it keeps me warm.”

Quan began to clean the catch, his small knife glinting brightly. “I am not cold. I am the most blessed one of the goddess,” he said smugly. D’Molay couldn’t argue. If a different man was clad only in the silk threads that covered Quan, the day’s biting wind would reduce him to a huddle of shivering flesh. He listened stoically as Quan soliloquized further about his favored status, fighting the urge to dispute the man’s inflated view of himself. Quan was still talking when D’Molay heard the yell from shore.

“Quiet,” he interrupted. The men listened. The voice called out again, allowing D’Molay to pinpoint its source. A woman was wading at the water’s edge, holding out a sign and waving to the boats. Her dress was short and she’d shrugged out of its sleeves, tying them up under her breasts. When she noticed D’Molay and Quan looking at her, she held the placard higher and called out something that was lost in the brisk wind.

“What does it say?” Quan asked. D’Molay finally felt a flash of superiority over his traveling companion. Quan could not read.

“It says ‘I’m hungry’ in the old English tongue. Poor choice of language. Who can read that in Olympia?”

“You.”

D’Molay turned back to Quan as he felt the boat rock a bit. The fisherman had set aside the knife and the fish and was reaching for the oars. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you over so you can give her one of your fish,” he said.

D’Molay was flabbergasted by Quan’s presumption. “What if I don’t want to?”

“You want to,” Quan dismissed. “Besides, she’s pretty. And I’m handsome.”

D’Molay bit down on the pipe irritably as Quan rowed them toward the girl. As boring as their wait was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to make it less so by engaging random wanderers on the shore. The last time he helped a girl he stumbled across hadn’t turned out so well.

When it became obvious to the woman that the boat was headed her way, a broad smile broke out across her face. She stepped out of the water and pointed toward a sandy shelf that was a good place for the craft to pull in. D’Molay looked beyond the potential harbor to the woods, suspicious of a trap. He reached out to Quan’s arm and made him stop rowing before they got too close.

“Who are you?” D’Molay called out.

“My name is Everild.” Her voice was strong, with a faint Celtic accent to it. “Do you have any food?”

“We do,” D’Molay said. “But with a little industry you could get your own. There are berries to your left, and this lake is full of fish.”

“If you can catch them,” Quan needled. D’Molay gripped his arm a little tighter to pay him back for the jibe.

“I can’t,” she insisted. “Look.”

Everild stretched out her hand to a bush that hung heavy with fruit. The moment her fingers came near a berry, it disappeared. D’Molay, unconvinced of her plight, suspected some sleight of hand.

“Do it again,” he demanded.

She grabbed an entire branch. Every berry on it vanished. But this time D’Molay noticed that the fruit had instantaneously reappeared on another part of the bush.

“The wizard at New Camelot punished me for stealing food,” Everild said bitterly. “Now I can only eat what another freely gives.”

“Surely you can buy food. Freely give me a coin, and I’ll freely give you a fish,” D’Molay proposed.

Everild’s shoulders slumped. “I cannot barter coin or body or soul,” she said, reaching into the fabric tied about her chest and pulling out a coin. “I am cursed. Try to take it from me.”

“Let me,” Quan said, rowing again energetically. “I am blessed.”

A few moments later he was out of the boat and next to Everild. She stood passively with the coin in her outstretched palm. Quan touched her hand only to find that the piece of copper was stuck tightly to her flesh.

“What if you – ”

Everild anticipated Quan’s suggestion and dropped the coin onto the pebbled shore. He knelt to grab it, but it vanished before his knees hit the ground. He looked up at Everild, who was again holding the coin sadly between thumb and forefinger. D’Molay watched all of this and felt pity for Everild, even if she was a self-admitted thief.

“Please. I’m hungry.”

“You’re in luck,” D’Molay said. “So am I. And I happen to have an extra fish.”

[end excerpt]

Posted in excerpts | No Comments »

30. January 2011 by admin.

Enjoy this excerpt from a novel in progress.

“Mama, Jim’s here,” Winnie called as they stepped into the big room. Jim looked at the wall, noticing that Homer had not taken down the 1908 Peters Cartridge Co. calendar. The current year’s monthly flip sheets hung right beside it, the hunters of 1909 in the colorful artwork aiming their guns in static resentment at the sportsmen on the defunct calendar. Jim was about to make a jest about that when Mrs. Daniel came out to greet them.

“Hello, Jim,” she said warmly. Her whitening blonde hair was barely contained by the large bun seated on the back of her head. “I’m so glad you were able to help Homer with the barn.” She stepped in close and placed a motherly hand on his shoulder as she whispered in his ear. “Don’t let him know I said so, but he isn’t that good with carpentry.” Mrs. Daniel stepped back with a wink. “But you’ll always be around to help him, won’t you dear?”

“Mama, really,” Winnie laughed. “Watch out, Jim. She’ll sew you to the rug so you can’t leave if you’re not careful.” Sometimes Winnie felt her mother was more enthusiastic about Jim as a potential son-in-law than she was over Jim as a husband.

Caroline Daniel waved her daughter’s warning away as she untied her apron. Its pockets bulged with spools of thread and carefully trimmed geometric scraps of colorful fabric. “I bet you want some cornbread,” she suggested.

“No, no, don’t go to that trouble. I just came in to get a look at the quilt you’re working on,” Jim said, causing Caroline to eye him for a moment as if this was one of the young man’s many jokes. She stared him down for a sufficient time to verify that there was no jape in his request.

“Why of course, Jim. You come right with me.” She turned and led them to the much smaller chamber that adjoined the Daniel’s big room. Among dress fabrics by-the-bolt and baskets of needle-studded pin cushions was a wooden frame. A section comprised of eight large squares was stretched within the rectangle. Just as Jim suspected, Caroline’s quilt reflected the pattern he had seen in his vision. “If that ain’t odd, he said. “I was telling Winnie and Homer that I seen this pattern today.”

“Jim rode the man who’s taking over the newspaper into town,” Winnie added for her mother’s benefit. “Something about him stirred Jim’s sight.”

Caroline looked worried. “Lordy, Jim. Why on earth . . . ”

Jim folded his arms and squinted at the stars within the frame, trying to coax another vision out. Nothing came. It was useless to try anyway, without Gem and Gravy to interpret. The mules had told him the flash didn’t signify anything important, but he still felt the need to puzzle it out. He confessed the same to Mrs. Daniel. “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m sure it’s nothing bad. I have it on the best authority that it just means you and . . . Browning, that’s his name, will have some dealings. Probably be friendly ones. Maybe he’ll join up with that group of yours.”

“Wouldn’t that be grand, Winnie, if Mr. Browning wanted to be in our postcard club? He’s a traveling man of letters already.”

“I bet he writes better than he talks, too,” Jim smirked. Mrs. Daniel and Winnie didn’t seem to notice the comment as the conversation turned to their hobby.

“Jim can introduce us and then we can invite him,” Winnie proposed. “Maybe Mr. Browning could help us put an ad in the newspaper to find more pen pals.”

“Don’t see why not. There ain’t enough interesting things to fill up a newspaper about Utopea as it is,” Jim opined. “Well, I need to scoot. I’m supposed to ride Launy home with me for dinner.”

“You tell your sister I’ll have her dress finished as soon as the grocery gets that ribbon she wanted,” Caroline said.

“I will,” Jim promised. “Walk out with me Win?”

“All right,” she smiled. When they came back outside, Homer was playing checkers with a smoke man. Jim and Winnie stepped carefully around the game so as not to churn the air overmuch. The checkerboard seemed precariously balanced atop the milk can, but the touch of the smoke man was so light that his moves caused not the slightest wobble. The arrangement of the pieces indicated it was a competitive game, and Homer was completely absorbed by the need to carefully plan and execute his moves while keeping his partner conjured. A tendril of smoke from the tobacco pipe clenched between Homer’s teeth stretched into the phantom’s chest, preventing his gray partner from escaping. Homer’s farewell to Jim was a preoccupied grunt.

“He ever win?” Jim asked, taking Winnie’s hand as they walked back out to the barn where Gem was waiting.

“You can’t beat a smoke man,” Winnie shrugged. “But it don’t stop him from trying.”

Posted in excerpts | Comments Off

30. January 2011 by admin.

Enjoy this sneak peek at another of my upcoming novels.

Gaius was struck by his instant transition from adolescent pupil to newly-minted man. Somehow he’d expected a more remarkable life event than his tutor being let go to usher in his adulthood. Argus had taught him many things. Some topics were not ones the teacher had intended to instruct, such as the art of flirting with kitchen maids or the way to make insincere flattery of one’s betters sound convincing. Gaius felt momentarily bereft, fearing there were far too many topics left unexamined to leave him fully prepared to be the proverbial Roman man his father decided he was ready to become.

 ”No religion, no law.” Argus mused as he wrote. “Those are unfortunate interests to be lacking, if you ask me, which no one has. Best pray you don’t get Pavo sued over some mistake. I’m not sure which god grants protection from lawsuits these days.” He looked up from his parchment with skepticism evident on his face. “Perhaps you should just walk backwards dropping beans for your first few years with the company to keep the jinx off.” Gaius snorted at the suggestion, but then gave his tutor an openly eager look. Could he ask him about what he’d experienced the previous night without giving away the horrid details? He wondered what Argus might know about ghosts, about the afterlife, about distancing oneself as far as possible from anything to do with them. This could be his last chance to find out.

“Jinxes, hexes, ghosts,” Gaius began, taking a seat on another garden bench and adopting a lazy pose. “What should a man believe about such things? Half the houses in town were boarded up last night to keep the manes out.”

“Traditions are worth following for the sake of society. Whether they are worth believing in is another thing entirely. Do you think that nailing dolls and garlic heads to a door keeps death at bay?”

Gaius frowned. Argus was still speaking to him like a tutor, not an equal. “Just tell me if you believe in spirits.” Gaius thought he saw a glimmer of approval for his direct question in his former teacher’s eye.

“I do,” Argus said. He was silent for a few moments as he stroked a few more sentences into the letter. “I saw one on the road to Pisae near a traveling stop. It seemed real, at first, like any other man. But then it saw me looking and it dropped into the earth.”

“Dropped?”

“Like a stone into water. It was quite unsettling. The wagon master said it had been haunting that part of the road for years, and that hundreds of people had seen it besides me,” Argus said as he went back to his writing.

If not for placing him at the scene of Marcus’s death, Gaius would have soundly wished that someone else would have observed what he had seen. “So it was haunting the place,” he said, emphasizing the last word. “At least it couldn’t follow after you.” He was careful to make his next few words sound skeptical. “I don’t suppose ghosts can do that anyway.”

“If not, why was there a festival last night?” Argus countered. “Why the rituals to keep the ghosts away?”

“Because people will believe anything and festivals are good for business,” Gaius said, in a fine imitation of his father. “Perhaps I’ll become a merchant. What should I sell to keep people safe from the manes?”

“You sound like banker Ambrosius now. Are you sure you won’t embark upon manhood as his apprentice?” Finished with the letter to Pavo, Argus put his writing tools away. “Insurance is always the best game. Losses must be proven to get compensation. Think of the premiums you’d collect versus the difficulty of anyone actually proving that they were being haunted! By Jupiter, I may suggest that scheme to Quintus Ambrosius myself.”

Posted in excerpts | Comments Off