Oxygen Restriction - Lucy Harlow

Hi, I have been working on a new short story today in order to introduce a new character - a risque female sleuth. The story is based on a readily available idea - babysitter snooping around her employer's house finds a disturbing photo. The story is a murder mystery and the uncovering of a serial murderer. As implicit in the title there is S&M content. I am not an explicit writer and try to let the reader's imagination find what they wish in the adult scenes. I reside in the main stream of literature and not in pornography. However, sinners always make better stories than saints for me, and so I will write this and publish probably free of charge. Lucy, or course, lives now and I will make good use of her character in the future in more short stories and perhaps a full length offering.

Regards and best wishes

Saul

Switch

Hi, somewhile back, after completing an earlier draft of The Scorpian Visitant I wrote a number of short stories as entertainment, and perhaps with one eye on entering a competition. In the end, I didn't enter up the stories and they have lay in files in my bedroom under a pile of books. One of them is called Switch and I looked at it for the first time in years yesterday. While I can remember the plot of some of the other stories, this one had escaped all memory. But I really enjoyed reading it again, so much so, that shortly I am going to bring it out on Smashwords and Amazon Kindle free of charge.

Here is a short synopsis:

 

Ahead of a difficult birthday date with his girl, Richie Butler decides on cheap earrings as a gift. At the jeweller's he meets up with his identical twin, Ray, who is buying an expensive engagement ring for the love of his life. There is a simple mix up at the counter, which has vastly differing consequences for both men...

One of my prime motivations for writing The Scorpian Visitant was to create a fantasy novel in which the protagonists were neither completely good nor irredeemably bad. Clearly, there is a starting point for the main characters of Robbie and Louise and naturally both change as they journey through the narrative. I'd like to share the development of these and other characters in a series of blog posts.

Robbie begins as a complex synthesis of psychosis and paranoia. He is an immature seventeen year old whose obsession is causing fires and explosions on the chemical dumps of Maldervale. He does this at considerable risk to himself, since he comes from a respectable working class background and is employed as an apprentice fitter (mechanic) in one of the many chemical factories in the town. His worry about getting caught induces a suspicious mistrust of others, which is often unjustified. However, all worries go out the window in the critical moments of fire-starting...

 Here's Robbie starting a blaze in the hayloft of a barn in the fantasy town of medieval Oakwood. An act which starts out as a diversion to allow theft from the adjoining property soon turns into a crazy celebration of destruction...

He fumbled in his pocket for his matches. He opened the box upside down and several fell out to lie scattered on the wooden floor of the gallery. Steady son. His hands were shaking terribly. He picked out a match and struck it. Damn thing was damp and left a red trail on the sandpaper. The phosphorous head was through to the wood. No good, he dashed it down. The second match spluttered halfway along the rough strip. Then it flared, and he held the stalk downwards in cupped hands, so that the flame climbed the little splinter of wood, broadening as it came.

Robbie grinned, as he always did, at the golden light warming his curved palms - the Power and the Glory. He had to let it out. His head was wringing wet with sweat. He knelt and offered freedom to his little flame. One by one, the yellow stalks caught, smoked, blackened, shrivelled, went out. But just as the flame in his hand was dying, one hollow stalk snatched it like an Olympian and carried it into the dry harvest. At the crisis, Robbie could not care less whether he lived or died. Everything outside the precious little bundle of flames sharpening his pupils was obliterated by a blackness in which nothing mattered. He felt a great yell building towards the point of no return, when the flames would assume a life beyond his control. That moment was coming fast as the fire went deeper in, while a slow but increasing emission of grey smoke and flammable combustion gases rose to gather between hay and roof.

Suddenly the hot gases flashed and the inferno erupted. Robbie did not cry out, but stood teetering in glory upon the edge of the loft. The whole damn lot burned and he loved it - the crackling, the heat, and the firelights dancing about his head like golden phantoms. The flames mounted higher and higher to lash the rafters, and then a surge of air rushed through his hair as a halo appeared in the roof to let out the tide of smoke. It was impossible to leave it. But someone was shouting outside. Some bloody rotten busybody in the street had seen smoke billowing from the roof and was bawling the place down, curse them. It was always this way. Robbie stumbled along the edge of the loft to the ladder, and then slid down the stiles. At the big exit, he gave the bright roaring galleries one last hopeless look. Then he was gone.

Hi, I'm Saul Moon, several years ago I embarked upon writing an epic fanasty novel, The Prism. After many iterations, last year in August 2011 I decided to change the name to The Scorpian Visitant. This was prompted by a realisation that there were many more stories to come out of the original writing. This week I published TSV on Smashwords and Amazon Kindle as the first in a series of seven Robbie Higgins novels, here is the Smashwords link:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/126521

and the amazon link

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Scorpian-Visitant-ebook/dp/B0072IBQ6U/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327789130&sr=1-2

A brief synopsis of this ripping yarn:

On a wet November Saturday afternoon, delinquent fire starter Robbie Higgins and his snooty cousin Louise Carlton visit Maldervale market. Robbie steals a magical glass from a junk stall - a prism with the images of Scorpio and Sagittarius in its triangular ends - right under the gaze of the normally goody-goody Louise. Next day Robbie meets up with the owner of the glass, mysterious rag and bone man Morgan Digbone, who coerces him to embark on a journey with Louise to find another prism, the Death Stone of Izar. By moonlight on the stolen glass, Robbie and Louise travel to medieval Oakwood, where Robbie starts a barn fire as a diversion to steal clothes and money. Robbie and Louise take lodgings in the town and begin an unlikely love affair. But the enigmatic Jade Finn knows who burned down her mother's barn and, since she has taken a fancy to Robbie, uses blackmail to come between him and Louise. When Jade and Robbie are kidnapped by the dictatorial regime of Morgan's daughter, Gloria, Louise sets out to rescue her lost love. She is aided by rebels opposed to the regime and becomes embroiled in their bitter struggle with Gloria. As events unfold Louise discovers not only who Robbie is but who she is too...

The Scorpian Visitant is an epic tale of mystery and dark magic, of dictatorship and rebellion, of medieval conflict and civil war. Yet above all it is the story of the love triangle of Robbie, Louise and Jade which resolves into who the Maldervale teenagers actually are...

You can sample or buy the book at Smashwords or Amazon and I will be writing further about the story and the others I have planned.

Best wishes

Saul