How Colan Got Here from Shuttered Vision Coming June 2017

Colan had been no different. For most of his 36 years of life, films had sustained and carried him. He would never forget his first drive thru experience. His mother and father had taken them to see something he thought he really wanted to see until he turned around to look at another screen in the tri screen theatre. There he watched, without sound, Legend. Shortly thereafter his father had left and he fell completely into the world of moving pictures as his mother had to leave him to fend for himself as she had to work more. So he watched movies, every kind he could watch.

He had been raised in a back-water Oklahoma town called Chandler right outside of Oklahoma City. When he had become high school age he had talked his mother into letting him go to the best high school in the state located in Norman Oklahoma near Oklahoma State University. There he had started the process to get into the University of California Berkeley. From there he had gone to Tisch School of the Arts at New York University with a 4.0.

Colan had graduated full of zest, zeal and an appropriate amount of artistic angst. He had hit the independent film scene on fire. His first three movies had been shot down instantly. The people he pitched to insisted that Americans didn’t want to think. They wanted blood guts and senseless violence. He had been unconvinced. The public took what they could get. He was going to make films again.

All of his professors had seen the idealist in him and knew what that meant. One by one over the years they had warned him away from Hollywood. Make films overseas first, he had been advised. No no no, he had been a patriot. He had only wanted to give his creations to American audiences first. With the choices being Disney and Hollywood, he had chosen the later.

So, there he had gone. Hollywood was everything he thought it would be and a slew of other things he hadn’t expected. He had expected to be disgusted. To be insulted as the art he loved was being canonized and mass produced without thought or originality. What he hadn’t expected was to be lured in by the potential of ultimate power. To be held enrapt by the bright lights the lifestyle, the parties, the drugs, the sex. Some of those women he had met along the way had been willing to do anything. Anything at all for a shot. The realization of all that has been lost happens much later.

Ironically, the most seductive lure of it had been the competition. Being better, doing better hopefully in a way that shows everyone how bad someone else is at this job. Colan had started as a rigging grip. After 5 years of wheeling and dealing, flaunting his degree, his good looks, and southern charm, Colan Abrams from bumfuck Oklahoma and a broken home was the most sought after movie producer in Hollywood. He had gotten to be an assistant of a producer within a year and half of being in the company. Produced his first film within the next six months as the man he was working for cracked under the pressure. Pressure, Colan had eagerly and liberally applied. That year he had turned a summer blockbuster that would’ve fallen on its ass with the previous producer into a multi-million dollar worldwide hit.

The rules are simple for success in Hollywood. Money is the name of the game and the only resume item that’s respected. Rule one summer, it was luck. Rule two summers, the kid might have what it takes. Three summers followed by a killer Halloween and an amazing Christmas showing. Baby the kid’s a star.

Colan was a country boy at the core of his being. He hadn’t been used to women that looked like Hollywood wanna be starlets did.  He had never even let himself imagine men willing to prostitute like Hollywood wanna be leading men did. Like any naïve young man, he had lost his way. He had been exposed to it during school. Needless to say, it wasn’t the same.

In the past the purity of the art of crafting film had kept him focused and removed from much of the party life. Soon he learned that he wasn’t really making films anymore.  He was in the business of making money. With the purity of the art gone, all that was left was this sickening people pulsing floor show. When the lifestyle had started not to be enough he had become a little worried. When the drugs had started to not be enough, his worry escalated. When the sex became practically another form of currency he had started having full blown panic attacks.

Two years ago, Colan Abrams, multi-billion-dollar movie producer, film company executive, and all around Hollywood behind the scenes badass, suffered a nervous breakdown. His perception of the world had never been the same since.

Coming June 2017

Understanding Fiona from Shuttered Vision Coming June 2017

Fiona Canters grew up differently than the rest of the free world within the United States of America. When 5-year-old Fiona first told her mother about one of her extraordinary dreams her mother had smiled pleased. She asked her daughter to tell her what they meant. Confused Fiona had not answered. The very next day she had been privy to the conversations the women in her family had away from husbands, boyfriends, sons and fathers.

“Fiona dreamed last night,” her mother had told her mother-in-law excitedly.

“Does she know what it means?” her aunt had asked anxiously.

Her mother proudly shook her head then and recounted the dream for the listening gaggle. With gasps of delight and praises to the Almighty they had all regarded Fiona differently.

The Canters were a French Creole line. Originally, they intermixed with a line that had roots in Native America, Africa and Ireland. Now they were a rainbow people. The shades of relatives spanned the realm of possibility.

Fiona’s mother was Salvadorian. Her skin the color of burnished copper. Her hair fell blue black tightly curled and silky across her shoulders. Her light brown eyes always alight with seemingly forbidden knowledge.

A Canters man, her father was tan skinned by nature. His dark eyes and mixed features made it hard to place into a particular ethnic set. From that, Fiona had emerged a shade lighter than mahogany. Her eyes an almost eerie shade of dark grey. They looked lit from within as the iris closest to the pupil was a paler grey than the midnight that it changed into as it floated to the rims.

“Witch eyes,” her grandmother had said that night as the women talked. She took the child’s measure for the first time.

Fiona had starred up innocently into the clear hazel eyes of the paler woman. She felt that nagging suspicion of being in the presence of something that was more than it seemed. Of course as a child, she had no true idea of what it was. Just this sudden unmistakable unshakable awareness as she peered up at the woman. Always waiting for her to change form right before her eyes.

She had always been fearful of her father’s pale, hazel eyed mother. The woman had eyes that saw too much. They saw everything and communicated with the souls of others without their knowledge. These were things she had heard whispered growing up among the others.

The others were the ones of her family that had been born without that extra thing that most of the women had. It was a generation skipping instance. Every once in a while, a woman in their line was born without that extra sense of the world, without the vision to see into others through dreams, premonitions and senses that were a family birthright.

They were raised in a different way than those with sight. Still loved and shown the same affections and care. They were kept away from the ones who bared stunning signs and levels of awareness. It was a courtesy to both sides. The children would grow to understand and appreciate each other before they interacted. This way they could understand their differences and not treating each other badly over them.

Before the conception of every child, the women of the family dreamed. During the pregnancy, the women dreamed. They dreamed of the child they would bare. They would know before modern technology whether a boy or a girl would be born. When the mother conceived her entire existence was enrapt in the being she carried. Through their personal dreamscape, they would understand the nature of that child. How it should be raised and what it should be led to do.

Even those born without the special gifts procured to the blood line were dreamt of. Regardless of whether it had been given sight or not. One day they may raise a child that most likely would be given sight. Regardless, they needed to be raised in a fashion to be able to deal with their child’s gifts. That was why all dreams and premonitions centered on the child.

Fiona was the exception. Fiona’s mother Alejandra calls that time in her life ‘el negro’: 

The dark. For the first time in her life, she knew what it was to live as most people do. She had only common sense, instincts and logic to guide her way through. All of her dreams during Fiona’s conception and birth had been shielded from her. All premonition and sensory insight dulled to just instances of déjà vu. Her mother-in-law said it was because the child she carried was blank. Meaning there was nothing to see.

Coming June 2017

So a Psychic and a Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar - Now Available

I think I've been very wordy regarding what this book means to me.  So I felt the best way to express that was to write a Samhain blessing to accompany its release.

I shed the skin of who I once was to carry the form of who I am to become
I release those bound to me by dislike and doubt to let our harm be done
I ask that grace releases our dark desires and opens our hearts to another power
I declare there be peace between us as this time slips away in these next few hours
Leave our pain and sorrow our ill will and ill words on the pyre to disperse as it burns
Let the renewal of hope and faith take root in those spaces as the witching hour turns
I fondly send away those who lost their lights in this cycle leaving the world dark in their wake
As I prepare a place for those who will now shimmer to shine to burn for thier namesake
Honor to who came before whose bravely lived lives have hollowed the path that I pace
May the passion the fevor the will of their purpose and light forever be reflected in my face
I am who I will be, as I am what I was
I am who they were for being is what one does
Blessed be to those who light the way
Blessed be as we share this new day

Other Posts on this book:
That Scene with Sergei and Clair
Sergei
Clair Fair
Love is Queen
So a Psychic and a Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar

Grab your copy of So a Psychic and a Rocket Scientist Walk Into a Bar
Amazon (Available in Print Exclusively)
Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

Sleep Cycles, Dream Bots and Time Travel

Bear with me, I am self admittedly insane, everyone knows that by now. Most of my insanity stems from my dreams. So I often wonder about everyone’s dreams.  I know how my dreams are, the things I see, the things I do and the way I feel.  Everyone has those odd okay I dreamt this and now it's happening moments in life, but what do you do when you start having them constantly.  Besides Prozac that is.

I sleep less and less, not on purpose just residually.  I love sleeping I hate what I dream because I dream of nothing without purpose. My life is almost a daily mode of perpetual déjà vu. At times like this, it’s intensified. People like to think that being able to tell the future and understanding things about life away would be awesome.  But do you really want to know all of the awful or wonderful things that will happen to you and those you love most?  You don't dream about the winning lottery numbers, in the grand scheme of things, these material things are not the lessons you are being taught. The things I dream about are emotional, moral and spiritual. What I have learned over time is that whether you know the outcome or don't know the outcome, very rarely (if ever) can you change the outcome.  At best you usually just delay the outcome.  Those are full circle moments, the powers that be putting you on the path they set that you were silly enough to get off of and find yourself right back in that direction.  I'm living one right now actually in regards to my education.

I believe we get these directives from our dreams.  Yes little dream bots that like to set up your sleeping landscape to properly convey the message you need to be given.  Your sleep cycles determine how many of the little buggers you get. Every human being that has caused or will cause cataclysmic upheaval in my life I've dreamed of.  And depending on the level of chaos they bring, they have a recognizable role in my dreams.  Some are calming, some odd, some brief some ongoing. But I dream of no one that plays no role in my life whether right now or in the near future.

I've found out from friends that those very people have the oddest dreams about me.  Apparently I dream of no one who doesn't dream of me back, whether they know it or not.  Oddly enough in their dreams I'm this scythe of justice, telling things like it is without flinching and generally punishing those that are doing wrongful deeds. Funny but sounds too Goddess Athena with an arch angel Gabriel sidecar for me.  Because sometimes I'm told, I'm in armor wielding a sword, yeah, suitable but off putting.

So that leads directly into time travel. My dreams don't stay in one place in time they actually span a wide variety of times.  I never really understood it before. I would notice the change of dress and the environment but never really negotiated it with time travel. Then when I thought about the idea of past lives and instances of precognition, before your personality is formed in the womb you would be made privy to a wealth of information right before being sealed in flesh.  I would imagine that the whole kaleidoscope of time is spread before you for such a short time that we can't count it.  In that flash you would know everything and then it's gone.  The side effects, the residuals of that stay with you as you pick from everything what you aspire to the most.  Who you will be.

I've started a new book series where I'll start delving deeper into some of these off kilter asinine theories of mine.  The series will be about renewal, a changing of the guards so to speak.  An ascension of humanity into becoming their own shepherds keepers and guardians.  I've started the first two books of the series.  They'll have to be dubbed SCI-Fi romance because of the pairing off, mating aspect but really it's just not discounting any side of life.  So much knowledge and information passes between human beings during sex, were we more open to it we would learn so much more. It's why intimacy can be increased with sex but not created.  You have to know the person before you're able to truly understand what they are physically saying to you.  Bad communication is just that.

So through sleep cycles, dream bots and time travel a new future will be written.

The Would Be Prophet - Guest Post on Greg Dragon Blog

The first of what I hope is a series of shorts to flesh out my Nikki character.

Please enjoy: The Would Be Prophet

Always w/Love,
Sue

Time to Meet Nikki

Writing has taken a back seat to plotting and preparing to embark on a new direction with my writing. The idea is to move slowly from romance to a more sci-fi look and feel. The series I'm working on is a big one. Its very ambitious and will literally take years to finish. I think this story has been building in me from the very first time I wrote a poem as a young child. Everyone has something living in them and I am no different. Living in me is an epic tail that stars a rather grumpy and coarse female protagonist. Incidentally it will be quite a while I believe at least 6 books in before you get her. But I promise she is going to be worth the wait.  However right now I'm going to start writing her adventures in a short story format for a fellow author's blog. So I will keep all posted on when a Nikki story comes up on his blog. I most likely will not post them here I'll just make sure to post them as links on my twitter feed and Facebook page so they can be read and my author friend can get the exposure and content he is looking for.

In the meantime if you have not read any of my other books here is a listing as well as a loose schedule for the first set of books for the new series.

Always w/love,
Sue

NOTE: All books are only available in ebook formats

Make Mine a Heel 
Published  December 2010
Banner couldn't believe the words coming out of her editor's mouth. How was she supposed to report on something that was fake, and everyone knew it? The station should let her stick to what she was born to report. But oh no, her editor says she needs to go talk to the man that is currently the best at ‘pro rasslin'. So Banner countered with an ultimatum that would give her the opportunity of her dreams. Now all she has to do is figure out how to get Keith Daniels to play along.

All of which SHOULD be easy. Career choice aside, Keith is a smart, confident, athletically gifted male that radiates the kind of charisma that put the sun to shame. Okay, maybe he is also hot enough to melt ice caps. I mean if a girl likes that global warming thing. No matter what happened, her life would never be the same again.

Amazon. Barnes & Noble, Smashwords


Sandra's Social Book One of The W.A.R.M. Front Series
Published April 2011
Dr. Sandra Dalianas is a woman that almost has it all. She has a loving family, good friends, and a thriving feminist movement. Which she feels helps her deal with her historically lack luster love life. On a divergence from her normal path, Sandra meets a dark stranger that intrigues her more than any man ever has. Her gorgeous, arrogant, and disarmingly charming mystery man seems to be at the right place, always at the right time. Almost too right because her feminist shadow life unfortunately puts her in the wrong place at the wrong time. A fact she may live to regret. That is if she lives.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords


Charlotte's Chance Book Two of The W.A.R.M. Front Series
Published January 2012
Charlotte Rhoades had to stand back, and watch her best friend flee for her life with a mystery man that no one even knew she was seeing. Like any good friend she does everything in her power to keep her best friend’s life from falling apart only to realize that the bad guys have mistaken her for her best friend. So she starts running in circles fast to try and throw them off of her trail without letting them know where Sandra is. And just when she thought she was caught, her assailants would disappear. In the mists of all of this political intrigue it took her a while to notice the man that had been following her for weeks now.

But she knew this man. It was Thomas Glendel, the golden-eyed friend of the man Sandra had left with. He was always there in the background never close enough to touch, but just close enough to affect her. Always right beyond her reach. The problem was that she desperately wanted to reach him.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords


Perilous Flight
Published February 2013
Perilous Flight follows a 2 and half year odyssey of a woman’s path to self enlightenment. This multi-literary compilation mixes poetry, first person blogging, short stories, intimate letters, and journal entries detailing one woman’s descent into the most harrowing experience of her life. Through her eyes, love, respect, honor, and life are redefined in a world that seems lost to all except selfishness and avarice. With her recollections, her story telling, and brutal honesty she understands the things that are truly the most important aspects of living and being alive. Like Persephone, she travels to the underworld to see the true face of death then arises to the light of a new sun with the seeds of the future in her hands.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Smashwords

Tripping the Light Fantastic an excerpt from Shuttered Vision

Fiona was running, the earth was moving fast beneath her feet. She was laughing and playing.  The sun was bright and florid. The air rich with the scent of poppies.  She stopped running and started twirling in circles, just like she had when she was little.  The man that stared down at her was her favorite man in the world. She stopped spinning and threw herself into his waiting arms.

“Fee-Fee.” He said like he always had softly, quickly and yet insistently giving it all the French inclinations it desired. “What are you doing here?” he asked in his odd Spanish, Texan, French accent.

“I wanted to see you.”

He gave her that chiding look that only an overindulging father gives his child. “Petite, you have other things to do besides obsess over me.  How is your mother?”

“She misses you.”

He shielded his dark eyes. “And I her.  We will meet again she and I.”

“Soon?”

He gave her a firm look. “What have I told you about asking about the future?”

“Don’t do it.”

“You have something to do.” He stated as he gave her a final hug and then put her down.  He looked into the horizon of the grassy area that they were on.  It was like a still set almost.  Wind blew and there was grass and the smell of poppies but it was static, none moving giving cry to the illusion of the place.  With firm steps he walked to the edge of her vision and poked the sky.  It rippled from the spot.

“He’s eavesdropping.” He stated.

Fiona felt shock and surprise. “No one comes here but me, not even Momma. How--”

“He’s searching for you cherie. And he has found you.”

He moved now to stand behind Fiona, slowly he took her hand and moved it across the sky.  It felt like satin under her fingertips and like water the fabric of the sky parted and fell away to reveal her field and there was a tall blonde man standing in the middle of it.  Fiona turned to go back but it was too late, she was now in her field.

Instantly Fiona was enraged with the man. “What are you doing here and who in the hell are you?”

He stood there staring at her. “You can see me.” He said softly.

“Of course I can see you.”

He shrugged. “You were running and twirling, it looked like you were talking to someone but I didn’t see anyone else.”

Fiona felt herself take a deep breath. “What are you doing here?”

“Hiding.” He smiled back at her.

“Should I bother asking who you are?”

“I’m nobody darling.”

Fiona felt herself start to move towards him, but she didn’t walk.  It was almost as if he willed her to him and she merely floated over. She looked down and saw her field moving beneath her feet.  She tried a few times to stop the motion and was unsuccessful.

“What are you?” she asked in a ragged fashion.

“Just a man.” He said evenly.

“No way, no one does –“

“I know, no one controls this but you.”

She was right in front of him now. She was elevated so that she could look him in the eye.  His sea green eyes searched her face. “My those are amazing eyes you’re got.  With the right light, they’d film like a dream.  People would think they’re CGI’d.”

“I doubt I’m the filming type.”

“You’re right. You’re gorgeous but you’re built too much like a real woman for Hollywood.  It’s all about the illusion you see, trick the world into believing only filmable things should exist.  Very few men would even see your face with the rest of that displayed.”

Fiona felt herself blush.

“Beautiful lips.” And then he leaned into her.

Colan Abrams from an excerpt of Shuttered Vision

“Mr. Abrams.”

A pause.

“Mr. Abrams.”

Longer pause.

“Colan.”  From a different voice.

He jerked awake. “Yeah, yeah what is it.”

“I can’t even describe how rude what you’re doing is.”

Colan wiped his face and resettled himself in his chair. “It wasn’t intentional I had a rough night last night.  I apologize.”

The four people at the table stared at him.

“Please continue.” He gestured loosely at the man speaking.

“So here is where the film actually moves . . “

What movement Colan thought to himself.  Another horror film where people disembody each other in horrific ways.  There is no movement in a film about brutal death.  There is brutal death, a half to fully naked chick and oh yeah a glorified psychopath.  Alfred Hitchcock knew what horror was.  It was an element of the mind.  He understood that what the human mind could imagine was much more horrific and gruesome than what he could ever show on a screen.  Even with today’s technology he would only redefine darkness, horror, true terror.  He would create art.  Film making was an art.  True film making, movie making however was a tired racket.  He could always tell within the first 30 seconds of a pitch if he was talking to an artist or a hack.

The horror flick being pitched, “Until Dawn” was a movie, not a film.  The screenwriter had cobbled together the shock value factors of the last 4 years of highest grossing horror movies and was selling them like they were fresh stock. And because Colan was in the business he was in, he would have to underwrite it and start production as soon as the hack was ready.  Because he was not a film producer, he was a movie producer and never should the two actually met.

If he had known that a Bachelor’s from Berkeley and a Master’s from NYU would’ve gotten him here, he would’ve saved the money.  That way at least he’d be like Paul sitting next to him, none wiser about the difference between art and crap.

“You hear that Col, the ending, it’s totally unique.”

“No it was done in 1976.  It’s a variation on the original ending of Carrie, the one they didn’t have the funds to do during that time period, the one Stephen King actually wrote.” Colan corrected without really thinking about it.  He sat up straight.

“Bottom line, it’ll easily be the Halloween blockbuster the year its’ released.”  He paused as the pasty man’s excitement started to fill the room. His partner nodding in agreement.  It was always like this when he talked to these guys.  Had to be how music producers felt about most rap styles that had nothing to do with the original slam poetry and hip hop styles they so carelessly discarded yet have to thank for their future success.

“Any plans for sequels?” He asked carelessly.

The man grinned from ear to ear. “Well I was trying to produce a stand alone but if the studio would like a franchise I am more than willing to negotiate those terms.”

Colan stood. “Wonderful, you and Paul here can hack it out. I mean hash it out.”  He fixed Paul with a blank look. “In the current media market we can shoot for 3 total, with a possible 4^th upon villain restructuring.  Get me 2 in the can in 28 months.”

Paul was taking notes and nodding.  Colan stared down at his pristine bottle platinum blond locks carefully and artfully moussed and gelled into hip spikes. Reflexively he ran his hand through his own shoulder length blonde mane trying to remember the last time he’d even washed it with shampoo and conditioned it.  Felt pretty rough to the touch.

“Done.” Paul confirmed and looked suspiciously up at him with his dark brown eyes.

Colan smiled at the look of suspicion.  He was always wondering what he was up to.  What angle he was playing.  Wouldn’t he be surprised the day he told him there never had been one. He turned and left the room. 

Couldn’t blame Paul.  That was the life.  Movies made a lot of money, they also spent a lot of money.  Those two factors together drew a certain kind of person.  A land shark.  But there were levels of shark and cannibalism was not only tolerated it was often encouraged.  To reach the level and status that Colan had reached required a lot of guilty memories.  Paul was just being careful because you never knew when one of those beasts was going to turn on you.

Colan would’ve had a guy like Paul for lunch eight years ago.  He had been without remorse when it came to getting to the top and being able to call the shots.  He had been a fool to believe that being at the top of this industry would do anything but change his priorities. People have this fantasy that once they get to the top of something, they can just instantly change the entire institution and structure.  They think they have a noble cause and noble goals. 

Colan had been no different. For most of his 36 years of life, films had sustained and carried him.  He would never forget his first drive thru experience.  His mother and father had taken them to see something he thought he really wanted to see until he turned around to look at another screen in the tri screen theatre.  There he watched, without sound, Superman. Shortly there after his father had left and he fell completely into the world of moving pictures as his mother had to leave him to fend for himself as she had to work more.  So he watched movies, every kind he could watch.

He was raised in a back water Oklahoma town called Chandler right outside of Oklahoma City.  When he had become high school age he had talked his mother into letting him go to the best high school in the state located in Norman Oklahoma near Oklahoma State University.  There he had started the process to get into the University of California Berkeley. From there he had gone to Tisch with New York University with a 4.0.

Colan had graduated full of zest, zeal and an appropriate amount of artistic angst and he had hit the independent film scene a blaze.  His first three movies had been shot down instantly.  The people he pitched to insisting that America didn’t want to think, they wanted blood guts and senseless violence. He had been unconvinced.  The public took what they could get. He was going to make films again. 

All of his professors had seen the idealist in him and knew what that meant.  One by one over the years they had warned him away from Hollywood.  Make films overseas first, he had been advised. But he had been a patriot.  He had only wanted to give his creations to American audiences first. 

With the choices being Disney and Hollywood, he had chosen the later.

So there he had gone.  Hollywood was everything he thought it would be and a slew of other things he hadn’t expected.  He had expected to be disgusted to be insulted as the art he loved was being canonized and mass produced without thought or originality.  What he hadn’t expected was to be lured in by the potential of ultimate power. To be held enwrapt by the bright lights the lifestyle, the parties, the drugs, the sex.  Some of those women he had met along the way had been willing to do anything.  Anything at all for a shot. It isn’t until it’s much too late do you realize what you had to become to get there.

But the most seductive lure of it had been the competition.  Being better, doing better hopefully in a way that shows everyone how bad someone else is at this job. Colan had started as a rigging grip. After 5 years of wheeling and dealing, flaunting his degree, his good looks, and southern charm, Colan Abrams from bumfuck Oklahoma and a broken home was the most sought after movie producer in Hollywood.  He had gotten to be an assistant of a producer within a year and half of being in the company.  Produced his first film within the next six months as the man he was working for cracked under the pressure.  Pressure Colan had eagerly and liberally applied. That year he had turned a summer blockbuster that would’ve fallen on its ass with the previous producer into a multi-billion dollar worldwide hit.

The rules are simple for success in Hollywood.  Money is the name of the game and the only resume item that’s respected. Rule one summer, you got lucky, rule two summers, you might just have what it takes.  Three summers followed by a killer Halloween and an amazing Christmas showing, baby you’re a star.

Colan was a country boy at the core of his being.  And like any boy not used to women that looked like Hollywood wanna be starlets did or men willing to prostitute like Hollywood wanna be leading men did, he had lost his way. He had been exposed to it during school, but it wasn’t the same.  In the end, the purity of the art always held him first and kept him focused.  But with the purity of the art gone, all that was left was this sickening people pulsing floor show.  When the lifestyle had started not to be enough he was a little worried.  When the drugs had started to not be enough, his worry escalated.  When the sex became practically another form of currency he had started having full blown panic attacks.

Two years ago Colan Abrams, multi billion dollar movie producer, film company executive, and all around Hollywood behind the scenes badass, had a nervous breakdown.  And his perception of the world had never been the same since.  

Those with Sight - Shuttered Vision

Fiona Canters dreams a lot.  Usually her dreams are plain simple and about people she loves and cares for.  All of her life Fiona has listened carefully to her dreams.  As her family knows they tell stories that the world need to pay heed to.  Fiona's art is always a pale shadow of the brilliant color and light that her dreams bring into being.  So when an unknown stranger begins to appear in them, she has no idea what to do with him.  He doesn't fit the mold and worse yet, he doesn't seem to want to be there.  And yet she can't seem to stop dreaming about him.

For Colan Abrams life has seemed to exist in a constant nightmare.  His demons remain with him on waking and seem to only be pushed away by the tide of sleep.  There he gets to see her, and she drives away all the pain and anguish for those brief blessed hours that sleep finds him. Always Colan thought this specter was a figment of his imagination.  A woman created from his dreams to pull him away from his hellish existence.  Until the day he met her.

Life Goes On

All over the world awakenings are happening.  Each day an ordinary person is waking up with new extraordinary talents.  And those who already had these talents are finding themselves much much stronger. One day the world will know it's history and this time shall be known as the shift.  The brief period of time where humanity succumbed to vanity, pride, lust, envy, anger, sloth and greed to become their own gods.  The loss of life was monumental.  The true powers of the universe stood by and let it happen.  In most situations the problem will eventually weed itself out and this time was no different than the many, many times before.

But each time humanity returns more refined.  They adapt to change faster.  They understand the theories in less time.  And they build their monuments to themselves higher and higher.  This wasn't the first time they declared themselves gods. However it might be the last time.

In the preparation for the shift a select few have been chosen.  Of course in every story such as this, there are those who have actually been given divinity. They were chosen not because of what they were but because of who they could become.  Potential is not a dirty word, it is a compliment. The bottom line is, when the universe calls on one to become bigger.  The last thing one can do is deny the request. 

The world must begin again and it has been determined that when the time comes only those born of the 9 matched pairs will remain.  All else shall perish, by decree of the seven deadly sins.  They will fall for an idea or person, for power and glory.  Only the children of the 9 will survive and only they will seed the future to humanity.  Life must go on . . 

So A Psychic and Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar

Clair finally asked. “Is there any reason to believe that someone would want to hurt you?”

He nodded quickly. “Yeah, this project that I’m here for is under much scrutiny and debate.” He leveled his impressive eyes at her. “There are people who would rather not see it done.”

“How pertinent are you to its completion?”

“There’s the thing Clair, without me, it doesn’t happen.”

“You want to talk about it?”

He hesitated for only a moment, “Virgin launch.  The ideal has been humming around the aerospace industry since we first got people on the moon.” His eyes started to glow again as he started talking with his hands. “What if we could charter people into space, like airline carriers charter people around the world?  It’s a huge undertaking because you would have to be able to eliminate a bulk of the physical limitations to being in space that astronauts train years for.”

“Okay.” Clair inserted following.

“What is the one thing missing from space that makes it so damn difficult for people?”

Clair thought for a second. “Gravity.”

Sergei smiled at her then. “I have developed a rather crude and preliminary gravitational system that would not alter regardless of the gravity, or lack thereof, of space. Currently it can be isolated to a single hub.” He shrugged, “So far I’ve only been able to stabilize a hub the size of a Lear jet, but that’s just the beginning.”

Clair felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. “You’ve found a way to create gravity?” she said in a disbelieving fashion.

Sergei shrugged. “Sort of, I’ve mostly found a way to borrow gravity.  Gravity is one of the big four forces of the Universe, it just exists, the trick is tapping into it.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “Same way it exists now, orbiting bodies in a circular pattern, cyntrivical force meeting rotating atoms.”

Abruptly he grabbed a napkin and pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket.  He drew a crude looking cigar shaped vessel and drew several rings around it.  On each ring he attached various circular objects of varying size, and with arrows he displayed the directions each ring would move and the directions each circular object would rotate in.

He showed her the crude drawing. “Mankind’s problem is that we always think we need to reinvent the wheel. We don’t need anything new. The solution is in the application.”

Clair’s mind wrapped around it instantly. “A roving solar system, with the hub as the sun.”

Sergei nodded. “It would move in space just like our galaxy does, creating it’s own gravity as it goes.”

Clair shook her head. “That’s so simple it’s brilliant.”

Sergei nodded. “I had this thought for quite a while and I often thought that it really couldn’t be this simple so I never brought it up.  But people are chomping at the bit to get into space.” He shrugged. “So I put a little more time and planning into it, mapped out the physics of it all and I was able to generate a gravitational field on a model airplane.”

Clair was holding the napkin, staring at it blankly not really believing how unerringly brilliant this man was. “Talk about thinking outside of the box.”

“I find the only issues with science are all the rules. We’ve made things too complicated.  None of us can see the forest for the trees.” He shrugged. “God had it all right in the beginning, why mess with that.”

Her thoughts got captured by his mention of God. “Don’t tell me you’re a scientist that believes in God.”

He fixed her with a very serious look. “No true scientist can look at the evidence and not.  It’s too balanced, everything is.  I don’t know if religion has it right but I do know that something holds this all together.  We’ve broken things down to their smallest component and we have no ideal why everything doesn’t just fall apart.  That’s either magic or some other divine force.” He fixed her with a knowing look. “And I don’t have to tell you about all else in this world that is inexplicable.”

Clair stared at him more than a little transfixed. “You’re not surprised that I understand.”

His expression showed a large amount of confusion. “Why wouldn’t you understand?”

“I’m a musician.”

To his credit he laughed. “Clair you don’t play an egg, you play the piano and you compose concertos.” He shook his head. “The ideal that artists, musicians in particular, are not bright people is without merit.  Music is the finest thing math has ever created.”

Looking at her with a touch of awe he said gravely. “The ability to look at nothing and fill it with something that was only just a thought is the greatest genius of all.  Math, Science are easy, there are guidelines and charts, mapping and theories.  Creating something with just the raw materials given is what the pioneers of science, math, and language did, not us, we just work with what has been found.  People like you still dabble in actual creation, not us.”

Clair smiled at him as the waiter sat their plates in front of them.

“I stand by my previous assessment of you.” She said candidly after thanking the waiter.

Other Posts on this book:
That Scene with Sergei and Clair
Sergei
Clair Fair
Love is Queen
So a Psychic and a Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar

Grab your copy of So a Psychic and a Rocket Scientist Walk Into a Bar

Amazon (Available in Print Exclusively)

Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

My NaNoWriMo Offering: Holy Bounty

“For Nicolette there is nothing worth destroying more than evil.  When did you realize it would be your death as well?”

Nicki felt her mouth form a soundless moan and felt the whispers of truth in her soul as she stared into the black glowing pits that the creature holding her had for eyes. She could hear Dalen in the back of her head. “Never stare there for too long, they are infinite space, soul less, you’ll get lost in there.” She felt the pull of oblivion in his eyes and the waning of her light at her core.  All replaced by the question she refused to ask.

She knew the second the Almighty decided to interfere, moments before they were both thrown from the gate.  They landed in a heap of bloodied flesh and rendered fabric.  Neither of their outfits had survived their battle.

Nicki tensed as the beast threw her away from himself to run back to the gate. Her left eye was nearly swollen shut but she was healing as she always did. If his tantrum continued she might get back up to partial strength to attack him again.  The sound that erupted from him made Nicki’s blood curdle.  It was a howl of pain, desperation and a deep deep rage.  He had discovered what she knew moments before they were tossed away.  The crack he had so carefully cultivated was gone.  The way was shut to him once again.

He made his way over to her and Nicki geared herself for the next phase of the battle when a whisper in her soul declared. . . . submit.  She fought the thought and reached within herself for the light that burned like an unending furnace in her core, but could pull nothing from it.  Fear clutched her anew when the beast lifted her and started chanting again.

A soundless gurgle fell from her lips as her body began stretching as if pulled from every end by some unseen force. The pain started as an intense burning at first, then the monster changed his cadence and it built to a sharp intensity she had never known. 

From Dalen’s mouth it seemed, whispered in her ear, “Pain is for focus, use it to see where you went wrong.”

She shifted her mind from the pain and back to the moment this battle started. He had already gotten pretty far by the time she shifted to this plane.  The energy field that sealed off the Heavens had a substantial crack in it.  Over the past few hundred years 250 holy men had been collected.  Their souls now glowed from the crack.  Someone must have told him that would be enough to displace the amount of energy needed for him to pass through. They had been wrong.

Nicki breathed in deeply, focused on the air around him, centered her will around it and breathed out. It was a basic gravity manipulation, which normally wouldn’t work on a creature so powerful, but he had been distracted.  His energy focused on pushing through the crack.  Under these circumstances he was nearly tossed off of the mountain.  She quickly positioned herself between him and the gate.

He pulled himself back up and began stalking towards her.  There was something about this plane that suited him and Nicki couldn’t figure out why that was.  He was so dark, the surrounding so light.  The top plateau they were on was bathed in light from an unnamed source.  The blades of grass the greenest you’d ever see.  The trees never lost their leaves and were shaped like the most pleasing Bonsai tree meticulously cut to perfection.  The sky a harmony of shade from lavender to yellow.  The breeze light, tempting, and sweet to the smell.

His dark hair trailed in the breeze as he walked towards her, measuring her up.  His skin swarthy with an iridescent sheen, like glazed oak.  He was in skins, not actual clothing but the hides of animals.  His feet were shodded in sheepskin wrapped with string.  The wolf’s pelt on his shoulders nearly covered the leather vest and pants cured to a soft durable suede.  His hands were ungloved but symbols ran over his fingers painted there in blood.

Nicki knew there was something she was supposed to remember if she ever faced one garbed like this. Instinctively she reached for her hip only to realize that her blades were gone.  She looked the creature over again, realization dawning as he speaks.

“Stand aside child.” His voice felt like a cat’s tongue, wet, grated, sharp.  The tone deep and sonorous with an underlying harmony.

“You know I can’t do that.” She hoarsely answered becoming more and more sure of what he was.

“You’ve expelled much of your energy shifting here and then moving me. Use your freewill girl.”

“I serve.” She gritted back.

He laughed a joyless sound. “Don’t we all.” He moved closer, his gait resembling a prowling lion. “You aren’t fit for the fight.”

“Neither are you. No small feat, trying to power through the crack. You must be running low.”

He gave her an appraising look.  She could feel him taking in her appearance. Her reddish brown hair was braided back as always, out of her way. She always fought in leather because of durability, steel toed boots and her lucky riding jacket.  Her skintone was dusky, had been since the incident in Egypt with one of Dalen’s old curses.  She in no way resembled the Hungarian girl she had been born as centuries ago.

He closed in on her and Nicki adjusted for the height and reach disadvantage she was going to have.  She was a modest 5’ 8” to his well over six feet. Luckily her trainer had been a big guy as well.  When you were low on the core energy you needed for a normal battle, old school rules applied.

“Old fashioned now; how quaint.” He muttered before he came at her with a right cross.

She ate it, this was the only way to feel him out.  Both his speed and power.  Like most beings on their level he could alter his speed just like she could. But he was bigger, she had no choice but to be faster.  She blocked and dodged the next series of attempted strikes.  Surprisingly he was fast enough to block all of hers as well.

He’s old, she thought immediately, much older than me.

She raised her arm to block the kick coming for her head.  The energy blast pushed it aside letting him score a bell ringing shot to the temple. 

Here we go, she thinks to herself as she launched with her feet and a smidge of gravity manipulation to get him into a headlock, using her strength and momentum she flings him head over feet to fly past her.  On his way he grounded himself and grabbed her leg slamming her into the ground.

Nicki braced fort he ground and planted her hands behind herself.  She absorbed the impact through her hands and sent it shooting back up her body as she planted both of her feet in his face. He flies back but gets his barring fast as he pivots using the momentum to send him barreling towards her.

Nicki takes her push with a slight grunt and then a thud as he fits her to the crack in the gate.  Nicki needed to act fast.  If he used her energy he would get in at no time at all. Must’ve been the plan all along.

She shot a burst of energy into the crack behind her offering a patch, then she ripped the ground right from under their feet.  As they fell through the mountain Nicki shoved his face against the rock.  Eh got his footing and shot them both across the divide driving her through the mountain face first. Nicki elbowed him in he gut, then the throat. She pushed away from the side, landing on his chest feet first seconds after he hit. He shifts the rocks falling around them to pummel her.  Nicki starts deflecting with energy fields until she regains her footing. She immediately drops gravity again tunneling to the core of the mountain.  He follows her down.

Pay dirt, she thought as she felt the heat.  Bursting through she plants on a rock ledge.  She shifted the molten lava beneath her into the hole.  With an intense pressure shift she molds the lava to rock around him. Before his mouth is covered he mutters a phrase. The rock turns back to lava and lands on Nicki.  Cursing and screaming she instinctively turns it to ash.  But it was just enough distraction for him to grab her by her throat and shift them back to the gate.

He shoved her in and the crack began to widen.  Nicki struggled but he began chanting and she felt her strength begin to drain.  She tried shifting but his grip on her throat tightened, his will holding her in place. The gap widened.  She tried shifting gravity.  The ground fell away but they did not move.  The crack widened, his chanting becoming more intent.  She felt the wall at her back giving away.

Nicki closed her eyes and moved deeply within herself.  The pillar of light burned brighter than ever.  She hated to pull from it. The price for using it was very, very high. She walked up to it cupped her hand and drank the golden liquid that flowed into her palms.

Her eyes popped open and a sonic energy burst came from her, knocking her enemy back, staggering him. Nicki’s eyes grew wide as he staggered back to her.  Terrified she focuses harder, pulls even more; the most she’d ever dare to take and fires with everything she has.  He staggered back again but continued to approach to resume pushing her through.

He meets her eyes, soulless orbs are staring into her, divining her secrets, memorizing her nightmares. And then he said the words that broke her very spirit.  The pillar of light flickered and waned; her connection to the divine audibly snapped.

She slowly returns to the present, the searing pain of being slowly pulled apart a reality again.  He had been torturing her for quite a while.  But it wasn’t for her.  It was for his audience. Both her shoulders were out of their sockets, she knew the feeling well.  Now tendons were being cruelly stretched in ways not meant.  Her spine was straining to hold onto the bulk of her tendons the longest were beginning to tear.  She felt her eyes widen as her Achilles tendons went yet she uttered not a word.  Merely a loud exhalation of breath. Not that the creature noticed. He was yelling at the gate.  Words she doesn’t know, in that language that she didn’t understand.  But unlike the before the meaning she comprehends.  As the pain of the rest of her tendons ripping away from her spine forces her to pass out, his words were ringing clearly in her head.

“Where is your God now?”