Celtic Bard: Blog

Since I have had lots of alone time with the computer of late, here is another new posting, this time for Future Distorted. I know a lot of you have thought I abandoned that one, but I simply have not had any inspiration to work on it for the past year or so. Today I finally got the time, quiet, and need to finish the chapter that has been languishing unfinished for so long. So, here is Chapter Four of Future Distorted. Enjoy!
Just for those of you who keep tabs on this stuff, Chapter Four is like Chapter One in that there is no difference between the FS version and the SOL version. The differences will come up usually only when there is a scene like the sex/murder and rape scenes in Chapters 2 and 3 respectively.

All right ladies and gentlement, I finally got most of the technical issues sorted (NOOK came up with a new minor one but I am ignoring it). That being said, you can now find the announcement on my external blog http://jmfhildebrandt.livejournal.com/. As I have mentioned, I would write it here but I don't want to step on the rules the webmaster laid down so I will just direct you to my other blog. I much appreciate it and thanks for the patience and support.

On another note, look for Chapter 15 of Enter the Darkness sometime tomorrow. It will be submitted today so it should be up tomorrow by the latest. Enjoy!

OK, not the announcement I was hoping to make today. Instead, two bits of unrelated news. The first is that I hit a technical snag with my anthology (see my external blog for details-http://jmfhildebrandt.livejournal.com/). This means the announcement I talked about last time will be delayed at least a day or two while I reformat stuff for the people at Barnes & Noble's NOOK division.
Second bit of news is posting schedule related. I have finished the next chapter in Enter the Darkness and should have it up by the end of the weekend. It needs re-reading and editing and then it will be ready to submit. For those of you who have been with me on that one from the beginning, we are nearing the end of that story. I figure another three chapters or so should do it. For those of you now screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" calm down! Enter the Darkness was only ever meant to be an origin story for a character much older than Alexa was when I began that story. To help your hyperventalation, know that the next book in Alexa's tale was already started when I got smacked up side the head with an anvil by my muse. For a little flavor, here is a taste of how In the Darkness Falling begins:

Chapter One
The Week That Wouldn’t Die!

January, 1994

Splat! “Eeewww! You have got to be shitting me!”
This was the capper on the week from hell!
Literally! As I stood there spitting brains and skull and what passed for blood in Gorgons, I was trying to remember the last time I killed something this messy. I was literally scraping the insides of the Gorgon’s skull off my face after a twenty minute fight during which the damned thing managed to slash open my torso and cut the tendon connecting my right thumb to my wrist, making that hand almost useless for the foreseeable future. I was once again going to have to go begging to the Order to get myself patched up because there was no damned way anyone else in my life was going to understand six parallel cuts running diagonally across my midriff.
And what the hell was a Gorgon doing in England in the middle of winter anyway?!
Gorgons live in the Med region. What was this one doing lurking about London, sending out its minions to kidnap pretty young boys from old blue blood families? About the only thing that worked this week was me finding them alive and releasing them into the caring arms of a monk who would see that they got back home with a minimum of questions about me. Then came the hunt for the leader of this little circus and damned if I wasn’t shocked all to hell when I spotted the scale in an alley not far from this reeking cesspit of a warehouse. A quick stop to a pay phone for some advice and then a detour to a place that sold high end sunglasses.
The warehouse was in a lovely little spot in London my foster father Eoin, Baron of Spencer, his chief of security Ambrose Devlin, and even Eoin’s son William had always warned me not to go into without Eoin-level security or Eoin would be trying to explain all of the dead thugs that would come out of the woodwork to try to grab me. Most of these warehouses were nothing more than huge shells that filled and emptied of cargoes of various legitimacy on a regular basis. The criminals decided what got stored there and the unions decided who worked there and since both intermarried with one another, they were pretty much the same thing. When I tracked the scale’s owner to one of the more rundown warehouses and quickly disabled the four Humans guarding the outside, I opened the side door, trying to keep the foggy and misting outside evening air where it belonged. I lurked around, taking out two more Human guards until I located the Gorgon.
There was very little cargo in the warehouse and the lighting was dim, so I could make out very little about her. I donned the new glasses and I was ready.
Until the war hammer I was using splatted her skull like an overripe melon. I was literally covered in the slimy ooze that seemed to serve as her blood. It was an almost rosy syrup consistency and the only consolation was that the damned stuff didn’t get in my eyes thanks to the three hundred pound sterling, high mirror finish, high UV protection shades I picked up before hunting her down.

I am torn between saying that book will be posted and saying it will only be published. I guess I will see how things go when I wrap up Enter the Darkness. That is all for now. Check back in a day or two for more news.

I have a pre-announcement announcement on my external blog (http://jmfhildebrandt.livejournal.com/) concerning my writing. I would post the news here as well, but I don't want to get in trouble with the webmaster, so do me a favor and check it out on my other blog.

I got an e-mail from a reader inquiring about the stories of mine on Finestories.com and SOL that are currently "In Progress." While he did not mention the poem The Prophecy that is posted on Finestories, I will say that that particular project is part of something much larger involving the first novel I ever wrote, which is easy to tell that it was my first. With luck, nobody will ever see that in its original, finished form. EVER! The concept was good, the characters engaging, and the writing . . . well, why dwell on a novice's (started as something to do between graduating high school and going to college) first try? Let's just say The Prophecy is on a shelf until I get around to completely rewriting 600+ pages of very epic fantasy. As for the other four long neglected works currently incomplete, I wrote the following reply to the reader:

"I am actually working (albeit slowly) on all of them. Unfortunately real life has intruded since around the new year, when I had planned on having a bunch of things done that wound up going back on the shelf. Enter the Darkness has just been updated, the next chapter of Future Distorted is going to be done soon (hopefully), An Abridged History of the Order is research intensive so I have to have long periods of free time in order to be able to write with several research web pages up in the background, and I have hit something of a block on The Death of Love in Morristown (in other words, that one might be a while in getting updated). Look for the next chapter of Enter the Darkness by the end of tomorrow at the latest, as I will be submitting it as soon as I am done checking my e-mail."

As the e-mail says, Enter the Darkness Chapter 14 has been submitted and should be up either later today or early tomorrow. Enjoy!