French Roast Apocalypse: Chapter 1

Time to meet our other main character (who will dominate for a while -- our first protagonist seems to have ended up in a bit of trouble already!)   -----     Chapter 1. New York City, 2010 It was a brisk autumn evening, and Central Park was lit by its swan-necked street lamps with decorative heads. The sun had set, casting long shadows across the winding tarmac sidewalks and dirt paths. The air was ominously still, and very few people were out on this early October evening. Not that Dylan O'Reily, once of Texas, [ Continue reading... ]

Demons of the Past:REVELATION, Chapter 3

Varan and Jearsen had come to a belated personal realization... ------     Chapter 3. Varan: "And that makes it three for three," I said with some satisfaction. Diorre burst out laughing. "Okay, Sash, I'm well and truly beaten. Couldn't you have let me win just one?" "I might have, if it hadn't been for the 'wussy Navy boy' bit. The pride of the service required I put a Guard in her place." "Very impressive," a clear contralto voice said from behind us. I was startled to see the Eönwyl there. "Thanks very much. How [ Continue reading... ]

Demons of the Past: REVELATION, Chapter 2

Yes, I posted about 5 chapters of this... a couple of years back. This snippeting will go a lot farther. Varan had met up unexpectedly with an old friend... -----     Chapter 2. Jearsen: She looked fondly at Varan. He hasn't changed a bit. Perhaps in pure matter of fact that wasn't exactly true, but she was hard-put to find a difference. The Mada officer's hair was still pure black (slightly matted with damp after their sparring session and the subsequent quick shower), his skin still the dusky brown, and his wide, [ Continue reading... ]

French Roast Apocalypse: Prologue

This begins snippets of French Roast Apocalypse, the first book in the Fall of Veils series by Kathleen Moffre-Spoor and myself. This is an unusual urban fantasy style series which I can sorta describe as "Supernatural meets Being Human meets Cheers, if Cheers was in a coffee bar". The series combines the day-to-day lives of beings normally called "monsters" as they try to live in our world without drawing attention with underlying plots and events that call for action to protect individuals, cities, and perhaps even the world itself. I hope [ Continue reading... ]

Demons of the Past: REVELATION Prologue and Chapter 1

Demons of the Past: REVELATION will be published in early April by Double Dragon Press. Thus, it's time to start snippeting this first volume of my space-opera trilogy!   *****   Demons of the Past: REVELATION by Ryk E. Spoor   Prologue:      The Atlantaean Empire was falling. It was a colossal empire, stretching across uncounted millions of worlds from one side of the barred-spiral that would one day be called the Milky Way to the other, one hundred thousand light-years and more under a single, never-changing [ Continue reading... ]

On My Shelves: Academ’s Fury

The second book in the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher begins with a prologue: the terrifying and alien Wax Forest has turned dead, with no trace of the spider-like Keepers and other creatures that had dwelt within the resin-coated nightmare-scape. The young Marat, Kitai, who Tavi had first competed against and then cooperated with in the Wax Forest to earn the respect and cooperation of the Marat chief Doroga, has also found something else disturbing: tracks leading out of the ruined Forest, and, along those tracks, Tavi's lost backpack. [ Continue reading... ]

On My Shelves: Furies of Calderon

The story goes that Jim Butcher – author of the Dresden Files series – was told that one couldn't write a good story based on "lame" ideas. Butcher responded that he could do so with any two lame ideas of the challenger's choosing. The challenger responded with "Lost Roman Legion", and "Pokemon". The result was the Codex Alera series, with the first volume being Furies of Calderon. Speaking purely from the geeky point of view of "how well did he do with those two lame ideas", I have to say… middling. As a combination of "Lost Roman [ Continue reading... ]

Princess Holy Aura: Chapter 33

In this final snippet, Procelli found he had been suckered... -----     Chapter 33.      Silvertail felt a cold, cold smile crossing his tiny face as he saw the Mirrortaint stagger back in disbelief. "But . . . how . . ." Seika's face was radiant with understanding. "It was you, not Cordelia's father! But he sensed the distress—" Silvertail locked gazes with Procelli, and he could see fear in the defiant Mirrortaint's eyes. "I merely allowed myself to remember the day I gave my daughter to this fate . . . and let my fear [ Continue reading... ]

Princess Holy Aura: Chapter 32

Things seemed to have taken a turn for the worse, and they were bad enough already...   Chapter 32.      Even as that happened, Procelli loomed somehow larger, though his physical form changed not a bit. "Another wish granted," he said with a slasher smile, turning to Holy Aura. She could see Cordy, now in her father's embrace, but her face showed only the shock and anguish and confusion of the impossible; even a father's presence could only do so much. "You . . . obscene . . . thing," she choked out, unable to even form a proper [ Continue reading... ]

Princess Holy Aura: Chapter 31

The tyrpiglynt was out and apparently so was their secret... -----     Chapter 31.      "Holly? Seika?" Tierra said after a few frozen moments. "Fuck," Seika said succinctly in the powerful soprano of Radiance Blaze. "But, that's the way the meme rolls, right?" Holly found she'd covered her face with one of Holy Aura's hands. "Yes. Yes, of course it is." Is Tierra going to be one of the Maidens? Or one of those ordinary characters that happens to learn the secret? If it was the latter, whether Tierra survived the [ Continue reading... ]