No Excuses--Revisited

            

        As I sat down to write a blog for this week I came across an older blog which seems very fitting for my life at the moment. 

  

 No Excuses.

Do you ever feel as if time flies by and at the end of the day you wonder what you’ve accomplished?

            There were days I came up with more excuses of why things weren’t done than achievements.  At one time I thought of writing a book of excuses. I could think of hundreds of reasons why I didn’t put pen to paper and do any writing that day.

                           Unable to focus.

2                       Didn’t exercise today or exercised too much.

                          My computer wasn’t working, it didn’t matter that I had a dozen of pens and a full ream of paper.

4                     The plot wasn’t going the way I planned (do they ever?).

5                      I had a family situation to take care of. I don’t know about your family but mine always has some drama going on which I feel compelled to deal with.

                       The sun was shining (in Oregon there are times this is a rare sight) and I had to go outside.

  Well you get the idea. The excuses were endless. I had so many reasons I didn’t accomplish something I could fill a book. While I was coming up with excuses someone else wrote the Excuse Book. (There are actually several books of excuses.) Since someone else had more motivation than I did to finish the book I used the excuse it had already been done and there was no reason for me to continue.

         Then I came up with the no excuse clause. I decided to glue my butt in my chair and write every day. On a busy day a minimum of one paragraph is required it isn’t much but it would help keep the flow of the story smooth.

          This is June and I’d hope to have my work in progress completed by now. Unfortunately this year I’ve used up too many excuses and my WIP is not complete. So I’ve decided to reinstate my no excuse clause. So everyday I’ve committed to sit down and write. No excuses. 

           I’d requested a check in day with Rogue Phoenix and Chris has set up Thursday as a day to comment on our progress. Unfortunately, I seldom blog my progress so I’ve decided I have another area of my writing which the no excuse clause applies. So check the Angel’s blog on Thursday to see my progress for the week. 

Cinnamon Angel 

It's Check in and Share Day

It's Check In Day.

Let's Make Fireworks

Time to pay the piper! How did you do? How much did you write? Did words explode on your WIP?

This is the Rogue's Angels weekly check-in. Every Thursday we encourage the Angels and visitors to let us know how their writing is going.

How well are you doing?

Had problems this week? That's ok. Just sit down this coming week and write. Whatever you do, don't let difficulties from the week before get in your way this week.

Every word is one word closer to the finished product.

I'm thrilled to say I finished Sweet Surrender and my novella Twelve days to Love. Monday I started on a new ms. Gotta Have Fayth. And finally in several years my characters are talking to me. Since Monday I've written 5,736 words. So happy to have my voice back.

How was your week? 

Rogue's Angels Present: Jak Barley Private Inquisitor and the Case of the Annoying Assassins

Please welcome Dan Ehl author of Jak Barley Private Inquisitor and the Case of the Annoying Assassins.

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Jak Barley, Private Inquisitor, is tired of adventures and is ready to take on only hum-drum cases offering no drama–those of missing husbands, unfaithful spouses, or fat merchants paying well for outing thieving employees–anything not involving traveling, swords, or the darker magics.

Yet once again his otherworldy friend, Lorenzo Spasm, drags him into cases involving corrupt CIA (Clandestine Information Authority) agents, murderous bank robbers, nasty goblins, furious dragon chases, demonic foes, and going uncover at an elders’ RW (recreational wagon) park set atop a butte overlooking a harsh desert floor. To top it off, Jak finds himself the quarry of the Assassin’s Guild after an anonymous adversary takes out a whack contract on him.

Helping him get through this will be his intended, the beautiful witchling in training, Morgana.

EXCERPT

“What-t-t-t?” I managed to croak in answer to the incessant hammering on my sleeping room door. I keep it bolted along with several magical wards after a number of tedious attempts upon my life by diabolical assassins, blood-thirsty necromancers, and numerous bat-turd crazy priests and neophytes of ancient and deranged deities. Other than that, my life is fairly normal.

I am back to yawn-inducing cases dealing with unfaithful spouses, stolen silverware, and runaway teensters—and I intend to keep it that way. You will not be kidnapped by piss dragons for investigating a horse theft, hounded by nasty wizards over a missing spouse case, nor forced to traipse through monster-laden wastelands to answer a simple paternity question. I now choose my private inquisitor cases wisely in my hometown of Duburoake, and again, that means no adventures. I hate adventures.

“Come on Jak, open up.”

What kind of hedge-born miscreant would be trying to wake a person this early in the morn?

“Jak, it’s almost afternoon. Open up, you dipsomaniac.”

“Ugh-h-h,” was all my dry throat could sound. I tried opening my eyelids, but it appeared some twisted jester glued them together. I was forced to pry them apart with palsied fingers.

What had that demented lunatic been shouting last night as he kept refilling my ale mug? “There be no tomorrow.” Yes, in principle there be no tomorrow. The clock strikes midnight and it be today, with tomorrow pushed another twenty-four hours away. We all chase a tomorrow that never comes. Unfortunately, today has again arrived and it be not pleasant.

My idle thoughts were just about to lure me back into a feverish slumber when the caller again began shouting. “Jak Barley, get out of bed, you lazy ne’er-do-well sot.”

Like some pitiable prisoner coerced to climb the steps to the gallows pole, I forced myself to sit up and then fight the sudden centrifugal force that threatened to send me rolling across the room to be plastered against the wall like some youngster in a harvest carnival ride. The spinning slowly receded to where I could safely pull on my trousers, though it set off an angry outburst behind my eyeballs.

“Jak, get up, you wretched lay about.”

I lurched to the door and waved my hand across the latch, letting the ring cancel the charms placed upon it. The magical band and its wards were a gift from my betrothed, Morgana, a novice witch at the Kuu Academy of Mystical Arts and Witchcraft. Beginning at the top, I slid the five bolts over and then hesitated at the latch. I knew the grotesque vision I would see on the other side. I sighed in resignation and opened the door, there to view the huge, mocking, obnoxious, leering, and gleeful smile of my supposed friend, Lorenzo Spasm.

“Holy crap, Batman, what wizard cursed you with that aging spell?” he exclaimed.

I was used to his outlandish phrases and words because that is what they literally are—outlandish. Spasm claims to be an inhabitant of a parallel firmament, one similar to our world in many ways, but devoid of any magic. Partial proof of that claim is Spasm’s immunity to spells. Any enchantment will rebound off my friend and back onto the mage or witch who cast the curse.

“What in Hades do you want? Cannot you see I am ailing?” I managed to moan. I could not even lift my head to look in him eye-to-eye without setting off another round of thunderbolts.

Lorenzo is about six-foot, two inches, to my five-nine. I took in his droopy mustache and slightly greying hair that went to his shoulders—and the outlandish mixture of clothing reflecting his exotic wanderings. It is difficult to estimate his age, though I would guess in the late forties. He was taciturn when it came to personal details and background.

“Downed by the brown bottle flu is my guess,” Lorenzo observed with little sympathy. “You reek of a brewery.”

My answer was a glowering stare that failed to wipe away his enthusiastic demeanor. “What do you want?” I finally asked.

“I have a job for you. It seems . . .”

I slammed the door in his face and staggered back to bed. Anything Lorenzo found so enjoyable could only mean peril and hardship. I made the mistake of not locking the door and Spasm pushed it open. He crossed the room to open a window and then took a chair at the foot of the bed.

Author Bio:

Dan Ehl has been a journalist and editor at both weeklies and daily newspapers in Iowa. The winner of numerous journalism and photo awards, including first in humor from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, he enjoys breaking out of dryer newspaper writing to pen fantasy novels. He served in Germany as an Army photographer during the Vietnam War. “With a lot of Vietnamese people digging pits with sharpened stakes at the bottom for people just like me, I knew I wasn’t really wanted. I didn’t want to be rude and show up anyway. Being from Iowa, we always try to be polite. And Germany during the early 1970s was interesting enough with the barracks always reeking of beer, vomit and hashish every weekend.” His favorite hobbies are hitchhiking and hopping freights.

Keywords: fantasy, private inquisitor, goblins, witches, demons, adventure

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Building the perfect hero.

The Perfect Hero?

I'm sure many of us would say yes! But what is a perfect hero to one, barely rates a second glance to another. How would you go about building the perfect hero for a story? 

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Sable Angel

It's sooooo hot....

The verdant green landscape swelters beneath an orange haze of smoke, exacerbated by 100 degree temperatures. Is this Hades? Not yet. Record breaking heat has the Northwest of the country searching for every tiny bit of relief they can find. Even the devil is leaving town.

As if scorching temperatures was not enough to fill your date book, we're directly in the path of the ECLIPSE. Over a million people are expected to flood our small state to view two minutes--TWO MINUTES--of the moon covering the sun.

I believe I'll pack my bags and flee to the land of the wee folk.

Sable Angel

Rogue's Angels Present: Mayaki's Doll by Francis Benedict

Please welcome Francis Benedict author of Mayaki's Doll.

Francis will give a digital copy of Mayaki's Doll to one randomly drawn commenter.

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Mayaki is reportedly dead, with her car having been discovered to have fallen over Tariaah, the sacred hill, and making front-page on the morning daily. 

Gloria Reginald rushes to Lohada to verify and arrange for her friend to be brought home for burial but, shockingly, the body in the morgue has a matted face under a roll of bandages and looks nothing like her, raising questions that beg for answers. The police can’t be trusted and the doctors seem suspect. To the natives of Lohada, Mayaki is merely another victim of the anger of the god of the hill. 

But when Mayaki’s wooly red doll providentially turns up in the outcrops, Gloria’s intuition quickly leads her closer to uncovering an ingenious plot hidden behind her best friend’s mysterious disappearance. With the conviction that her friend is still alive, Gloria must take charge of matter if she hopes to get to the root of the goings-on.  

Soon the puzzle unravels and she finds herself locked in a dire struggle to save her friend from the hold of a dreadful and powerful drug-running organization that demands just one thing that only Gloria can provide in exchange for Mayaki.

EXCERPT

The helicopter blew to smithereens, a huge ball of fire in the sky. The flaming debris cascaded down on the forest in a massive shower of fireworks and the resultant effect of the explosion created a momentary tremor in the earth underneath us that I actually shifted on my feet. Then came a sudden uproar of jubilation; the entire village of Rihuku was agog. A tremendous victory for them.

There wasn't a moment to waste, and Chief Mahiri again began issuing new orders. At his command, the women and children began disappearing back into the huts. I followed him back to the clearing. Able-bodied young men amounting to sixteen in number had assembled themselves before him. Dabilu was evidently the leader of the pack.

Chief Mahiri's voice was fierce as he bellowed words to the men. Like soldiers heading out to war, they listened raptly. When he was through speaking, the men turned and followed Dabilu away from the clearing. Then one after the other, all disappeared through one of the dark crevices between the huts.

"Chief, what are you proposing to do now?" I asked.

He turned his face to me. "I'm leading the men out to Inua's. It has been ordained that he dies today!"

"Are you talking about an ambush—a surprise attack then?"

"If we don't move fast, he will send his men out here to hunt for you. Already the helicopter is late in returning, though unknown to him it has met with a fate far greater than he can ever imagine."

"But Chief," I said, "my friends are there at the villa. They can easily be mistaken for Inua's thugs. They are innocent. If your people should…"

He looked at me innocuously. "It can't be helped, I'm sorry. This is war. In a war, lives are sacrificed. Inua has to be taken out, and to achieve this anything will be compromised."

"Including the lives of my loved ones? Your war is with Inua and not them. Your men are not trained in the requisite military maneuvers required in a situation like this. Look, Chief, it can be helped. You can get Inua, and at the same time save the lives of my friends trapped there. If you order your men to—"

It was hopeless; the chief was inattentive. Mahiri's soldiers were re-emerging, all fully armed with a variety of modern assault weapons: automatic rifles, and a couple with mortar guns. They looked like savages—which was actually what they were at the time. Without pausing for a moment, they walked with heavy feet past us, marching their way into the waiting jungle, and disappearing one after the other through the curtain of tall grasses.

"Chief Mahiri, please!" I pleaded, clutching at his arm. "Please, you must halt this madness!"

In a single jerk of his hand, he loosened himself from my grip. He stared at me, all the sanctity gone from his face. He was now somebody different: a warrior—leading his men out to an unpredictable war.

"Madness, you say?" he spat out in anger. The bulging veins in his neck were budding as though they were being fed compressed air. "I am the chief of this village; it is my duty to look after my people. Already, in whispers they speak that I am weak. Is it madness to avenge the lives of those Inua has killed? My daughter? We have consulted with the oracle, and even now that we go, four from our party will not return. It pleases my heart if I should be the only one. The guilt of my daughter's death weighs heavily on my conscience." Then again turning his face toward the huts he barked, "Kaila!"

Keywords: Mystery, Crime, Drug Runners, Murder

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Two states are under siege of an unknown strain of meningitis outbreak among children…

Eight highly reputable laboratories are in the race for a potent cure within the shortest time possible...

Of the lot, only IngoSmart is on the threshold of coming up with a deliverable vaccine, but this is so because scientists there are using indigent children kidnapped from the streets as guinea pigs. It is a well kept secret, right up to that night Dr. Adeishi Omini opened the door she mistook for the antigens storage room.

Consequently for Adeishi, her inadvertent discovery has led to the gruesome murder of her boyfriend and set her on the run for her life. What she has discovered hidden in the dark basement mustn’t reach the knowledge of the outside world. IngoSmart’s owner, Morgan Nicholson, has sent killers on her trail and nothing will stand in the way of their finding her.

But another figure deep within has a different plan in mind. Working in synergy with Obed Ringim, an ex-army investigator, the duo are bent on thwarting IngoSmart’s every move concerning the use of children for an unwholesome experiment. But for their plan to work, first, they will have to be quick enough to locate Adeishi and, possibly, her shadow confederate, Mike Ellams, before the wealthy American’s assassins can rid the one major witness of her life.