June 21, 2004

Okay, I've been away for a while. Been working on the second act of The Blood Of Stone, and it's coming along really well. In fact, I believe it should be finished by the end of June. I am probably going to take a few weeks off in July before I complete the last act, which will complete the book. This story is not a serial, as Pariah is. It is a stand-alone novel that will be the longest I've ever written. It's also quite a departure from Salad Days and Pariah, but such a great story.

March 24, 2004

The second act of The Blood Of Stone will be available sometime at the end of April, or early May. I will not be selling it, it's yours free as a PDF file (you can save it to a disk and take it to Kinko's--it wouldn't be too expensive to print). Thing is, only Act Two is free, not Act One. If you haven't read Act One, then Act Two will make absolutely no sense to you. For those interested, contact me on May 1, or sometime around then, to see how things are moving along with it. It's available only by request, so you must send me an email to get it.

December 14, 2003

The first act of The Blood Of Stone is now available for $2.99. Click HERE to purchase.

December 3, 2003

I'm guessing, and this really is a guess, that this first act of The Blood Of Stone will be available the middle of this week. It will be as long as Rash or Talon, and will end with a bit of a cliffhanging scenario (as will the end of act two). Keep in mind, these are chapters, pretty much, not entire stories, but there's plenty in them to keep you very entertained. I have never been so excited about a story as this one, and if you read it, I think you'll see why. I will set up a pre-order system within a day.

November 17, 2003

Below is the first chapter of The Blood Of Stone, for your reading pleasure. Expect the entire first act to be available for download at this site over the next couple weeks (before Christmas).

October 27, 2003

Last night (on my brother's birthday) I finished the first act of Blood Of Stone. Very excited about that. I'm on schedule with where I want to be with this, and will begin editing today. Ideally, I will be on schedule, and that you'll be able to check out my latest sometime after Christmas. I'm loving this story, these characters, and everything about it. It's truly raising the bar on my writing, and will be the best work I've yet produced. Hold me to that, I'm sure you'll agree when you check it out! I'm thinking of having another sculpture made of a character from this story just so you can see what type of tale I'm telling here. If I do, the character will be a little girl named Cybele, whom is one of the central characters in this story.

October 21, 2003

Sometime after Christmas I will have the first act of this story completely edited and ready to be read. Blood Of Stone is written in three acts (not as individually separate as Pariah, more like three distinct chapters that each end with a nice cliffhanging situation). I am going to sell the first and second act on this website as a downloadable PDF file for a couple dollars ($3, or so) for each act. 2004 will be the first year since Salad Days came out in 2000 that I will not have a new release. To compensate for the "drought", I want to keep you reading! I would guess that the first act (essentially chapter one) would be available sometime after New Years, and then the second act sometime around summer 2004. Each act would be as long as Rash or Talon. If you're interested in seeing why I say Blood Of Stone will be my best story I've written yet, then keep checking back at this page. The third act, or the ending, will be released only when the book itself comes out (roughly this time next year). If your religious convictions are easily offended, please avoid this book. Seriously.

The cover art will be finished sometime soon. Keep checking back. Character sketches and all that stuff are also on the way.

The Submerged Crocodile.

Chasey Novak could not imagine a more fitting name for the barbarous lands that surrounded her. As she reclined on the wooden dock of the Lamanai Outpost Lodge, fighting mosquitoes and basking in the balmy tropical sun, she gazed out into the crocodile-infested New River Lagoon, wondering how many of the creatures lurked beneath the seemingly tranquil waters. She imagined them watching her, studying her, waiting for an opportunity to make dinner of her.

The Mayan ruins of Lamanai loomed in the distance behind her, partially concealed in a canopy of dense vegetation. From the peak of El Castillo, the largest Pre-Classic Maya structure in Belize, one could see the neighboring countries of Mexico and Guatemala through a dense insect-infested haze. The ruins of Lamanai were one of very few archaeological sites whose original Maya name was still in use. Its English translation: the Submerged Crocodile.

"La-Ma-Na-He," she found herself mumbling from time to time. It was no wonder to her that they kept its name in use, with it being such a fun word to roll off the tongue.

The atmosphere of the New River Lagoon was both painfully still and deceptively alive. She could hear the constant buzzing of insects interspersed with the calls of exotic rare birds from distant marshes and mangroves. Yet there was no sound comparable to the spine-tingling shrieks of the howler monkeys. After one full week, she still had not adjusted to them. She contemplated the possibility that the ones she could hear so clearly were also the same gang of black howlers that had stolen her fruit the previous mornings.

A floppy straw hat covered her blond hair, shading her pale skin from the harsh tropical sun. At the request of her fiancé, archaeologist Aldo Rivard, she had purchased a week's worth of khaki that kept her covered head to toe at all times. She felt like she was dressed for Halloween, and knew she was not fooling anyone into believing she belonged within the remote proximity of an archaeological dig. As much as she enjoyed her time away from the laboratory and laptop, she was actually very eager to return after a week of complete isolation from the modern world. She only wished that Aldo would be returning with her.

Their yearlong relationship had been relatively smooth considering how infrequently they were able to be together. With her busy work schedule and his archaeological digs in Central and South America, it was a wonder they had managed to maintain such a healthy and stable relationship.

Aldo, whom she had met through a colleague at the University of Oregon, had a magnetic quality that she would have been helpless to resist. He had wild and untamed dark eyes that clung to every soft syllable she breathed, which she also loved. His black and coarse hair with natural red highlights was just one part of his overall intensity. Her attraction to him was so great that she actually found herself overlooking his disinterest in her strict Catholic faith. In fact, part of what she adored about him was his independent and rebellious nature. Even in professional circles he was considered a bit of a loose cannon due to his unorthodox views on Mesoamerican history. His two books, The Technology of Viracocha and Europeans in Ancient America expressed his brashly radical departure from conventional theories, which did little good for his scientific credibility among his peers. Nonetheless, he was still one of the more highly respected archaeologists in his specific field due to his high level of professionalism and tireless work ethic.

Much to Chasey's dismay, her own work had recently joined the controversial ranks of her mate, garnering an overwhelming amount of criticism and notoriety in the field of biological science. In fact, her work had found its way on the latest cover of Time Magazine, and for good reason. Although she was just one of many scientists on the infamous project, the volume of attention she received, both positively and negatively, prompted her decision to take an impromptu trip into the jungles of Central America just to get away from it all. She was not the type to favor the spotlight, especially over something so controversial as the work her company, GenetiTech, had very recently produced. It all stemmed around a newborn elephant named Shaggy. Although Shaggy's mother was a common Indian elephant, Shaggy himself was a much more significant rarity, for he was not just any elephant. He was a genetic clone of a Mammuthus primigenius, or more commonly known as a wooly mammoth.

Shaggy was the first extinct species restored to nature through science. The ethical issues surrounding the technology had caused a media frenzy, dominating the topic of almost every news program and talk show in the country. What Chasey knew that had been kept away from the media was that GenetiTech was already on the brink of restoring two more extinct creatures. One was Raphus cucullatus, or the dodo bird, whose penguin mother had already been selected. The other was Equus caballus lambei, which was a very small horse that once lived in the area of Western Siberia. Their DNA was recovered from perfectly intact frozen specimens that had experienced impressively low genetic deterioration. Both shared an equally high probability for the procedure to be a success.

The thing that Chasey found most intriguing was that these controversial procedures had begun years earlier, long before she was hired. She spent a great deal of time wondering how the public would react to their more recent efforts. She believed them to be far more beneficial to society than their current "species restoration projects", which was little more than window-dressing for corporate interests. She was mostly concerned about her very own project--The Ra Project, as it was called. It was a job that required strict confidentiality due to the fact that the United States government had already expressed an interest in its development and use in law enforcement. She was not allowed to talk about it to anyone, not even Aldo.

A notebook was splayed across her lap, reflecting the sunlight onto her baby-soft skin. The clean white pages were covered with notes written in an impeccable penmanship. They outlined the results of some recent work for GenetiTech, using computer models to evaluate the effect an enzyme will have on the human body, thus eliminating heavy laboratory costs as well as the archaic practice of animal-testing. The heading atop her page of notes: Chlorophyll~Telomeres~Leukocytes.

In a separate notebook she kept printouts of news stories for her own personal interests. One in particular had especially captivated her, which involved the experiments on a genus of worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans. Scientists had inhibited certain metabolic hormones, which extended their lives by six times. In human terms, it would mean to have a life expectancy surpassing five hundred years. She recognized the names of two scientists involved in the project. They were former classmates at the University of Texas. She intended to contact them as soon as she returned to the States in the hopes of exchanging notes and insights into their respective projects. With her recent acclaim, she knew just about any scientist in the country would be excited to talk shop with her.

She capped her ink pen and closed the notebook before gingerly placing it all inside her backpack. She took a moment to straighten the collar of her button-up khaki shirt. She wiped the sweat from her brow and took a deep breath of the muggy air. Gnats and mosquitoes swarmed over her floppy straw hat. She could feel the sweat beneath her engagement ring, lubricating it like oil, loosening it around her finger.

She stood upright on the dock and stretched her stiff muscles. It would be another five hours before the excavation crew would return from the dig up the New River, which allowed plenty of time for her to dictate her notes into her laptop. As she began to walk up to the Lamanai Archaeological Reserve, she heard the sound of a motorboat. At such a distance, it sounded much like the buzzing insects that seemed so drawn to her straw hat. But she knew this sound very well. She also knew that no one was expected to return for several more hours.

She turned to face the New River Lagoon, slightly alarmed, as she watched the small aluminum boat with the outboard engine make waves through the previously stable water. She checked her watch, making sure that she had not lost track of time. She stepped to the edge of the dock, antsy with impatience for its arrival and whatever news was being brought with it.

In the distance through the thick atmosphere she could see that it was Aldo's assistant, Papo. Alone. She could faintly see the blue and white collared shirt that she remembered him wearing that morning. She could also see his thick mound of black hair that was indistinguishable among the other indigenous people of the river. As he got closer, she caught his expression, calm and sedate with that gentle relaxed smile she found on almost every native of the land. Still, his unexpected return to the Outpost Lodge shot up several red flags in her mind.

"Is something wrong?" she asked loudly.

Papo was unable to hear her, but he could tell by her tense posture what she had asked. He shook his head, all the while steering the boat toward the dock.

Papo was from the nearby village of Indian Church--a friendly, English-speaking community that contained the ruins of two 16th century Catholic missions. In a regional uprising not long after their construction, the Maya natives burned the churches to the ground. In front of its remains they constructed a makeshift Maya stelae to renounce Christianity.

"Is something wrong?" Chasey repeated once again.

"Oh, no," he replied calmly. "Aldo wants you to see something. Climb aboard, if you aren't too busy."

She flung her backpack over her shoulders and hesitantly stepped down into the aluminum boat, all the while fearing the thought of the crocodiles lurking beneath the water, waiting for a clumsy wrong move that would provide them a hearty meal. She crouched into the front of the boat, holding her knees against her chest while clinging to the edges of her flimsy straw hat.

Once she was comfortably stable, Papo steered the boat out of the lagoon and up the New River.

"Are you sure nothing is wrong?" she asked him loudly, overcompensating for the noisy engine.

"Just wait and see. You will not believe your eyes."

She smiled and stared forward, holding her straw hat with both hands as the boat split through the murky river toward the dig site.

The vegetation along the riverbanks never ceased to amaze her. Palms with fronds as large as eighty feet with a wide array of wildlife thriving in its shadows. The trees that lined the waterway were covered with howler monkeys and what appeared to be green snakes coiled around many of the limbs. They were actually large epiphytes known as Devil's Cactus.

The sight of them drew her back to the recurring dreams that involved a very similar type of living creature that actually spoke to her about complex scientific issues. She believed it to be a byproduct of her mind's absorption of her overly technical work, but she would much rather have preferred a more cuddly creature than the image of a serpent. Lately the dreams became a nightly occurrence, sometimes repeating itself several times a night.

The dream was always exactly the same. She was looking down upon the earth billions of years in the past. As she watched it slowly revolve, a comet came from directly overhead and smashed into the surface. Each time she was drawn to how similar the image was to a sperm cell impregnating an egg, with the comet's tail looking remarkably like the tail of the sperm, and the planet's atmosphere sharing a stunning resemblance to an egg's outer membrane. She felt that this was exactly what she was witnessing--the moment of the creation of life on earth. She knew that debris from space sometimes carried L-amino acids, which were the basic biological building blocks. She had even heard the theory that life began in such a way. Yet the dream was painstakingly detailed, well beyond the realms of her own imagination. When the dream ended, there was always the same question posed to her: "Do you understand?" She was not sure she did.

The boat roared passed a dugout canoe with two young men toting fishing poles and the catch of the day. Chasey knew from her weeklong visit that these particular natives were known as the Melanites. Due to the fact that the dig site was located very near their land, Aldo relied upon their unfailing cooperation. They were an indigenous people whose religious beliefs forbid the use of motorized equipment, but whom played a major role in Belize's agricultural production. It was these people who had originally brought Aldo's attention to the legend of La Estatua Sangriento.

The howler monkeys shrieked in a terrifying manner that sent chills up Chasey's spine. As exciting as it was to be somewhere so remote and exotic, she was also eager to be leaving by sunrise. It was a bit too uncivilized for her liking.

"Look," Papo said aloud from over her shoulder, "The bird, Jesus Christ."

Chasey looked up, catching a glimpse of a red and black bird with a bright yellow beak. It appeared to walk across the water, away from the motorboat.

She glanced over her shoulder to Papo, giving him a baffled expression.

"Jacanau," he explained with a friendly smile. "The Jesus Christ Bird. Walks on the water."

She focused on the bird as they passed, wishing she had brought her camera. She was suddenly startled once again by the shrill and seemingly foreboding screams of the howlers. Their cries penetrated her to the bone, knotting her muscles like wrought iron.

On the riverbanks ahead were several healthy white college students, taking a break from hours of digging and dusting. Aldo stood among them, watching attentively as the motorboat pulled up alongside the two other boats that were tied to the trees.

Both Popo and Aldo helped Chasey onto the land. It was quite clear in her stiff limbs and deep concentration on the murky river water that she was petrified of becoming crocodile food.

Aldo picked her up in his arms, squeezing her like a stuffed doll.

"Is everything okay?" she whispered in his ear.

"I'm really not sure how to answer that." His voice was tense, though excited. "You just need to see this."

Aldo was not the type to get excited without reason. With his years of experience in the field, he had seen many things, including some that defied any logical explanation. Knowing that a single discovery could warrant such a strong reaction from him, her curiosity was lavishly piqued.

He slicked back his dark hair and readjusted his glasses. Then he smiled. It was not a common expression for him, especially while knee-deep in his work. His dark olive skin was covered with beads of sweat that seemed drawn toward the heavy lines of his face. He looked as rugged as the land on which he stood.

"I'm so glad you're here," he told her as he led her into the brush.

"I'm glad to be here," she told him. "With you." She had to clarify, just in case he would get the idea that traipsing around in the jungle was a role she would enjoy as his wife.

He pushed his way through the ferns and fronds, following the narrow path the crew had created from heavy use. She was still mortified at the thought of being bitten on the ankle by a venomous snake along the way. She watched every step closely, staying right on his heels.

"You're going to like this," he assured her.

She felt strangely apprehensive, as if her senses were telling her to turn and run. She kept moving forward, following her fiancé deeper into the savage land.

Two students passed them on the trail, drinking from bottles of water and speaking to one another in hushed voices. Chasey heard one of them say, "Then it must be proof--God exists."

The legend that had initially lured Aldo to the site was a mysterious anomaly known by the locals as La Piedra de Milagro, or La Estatua Sangriento. It took very little time for them to discover the pale white stone statue that was almost entirely buried in the earth. Chasey had only seen Polaroid pictures taken of it five weeks earlier, but she was very familiar with the legend of its mystical properties. Aside from everything that Aldo had told her of it over the previous six months while seeking the funding for the dig, she had recently heard several other outlandish things mentioned by the locals as well.

She kept close to his back, watching his belt loops as she followed him deeper into the jungle. Then he suddenly stopped, causing her to walk right into him.

"This is it," he announced.

He stepped out of her way to reveal a three-foot tall stone statue that was unusually white, as though it had been carved from ivory. La Piedra de Milagro. They stood roughly twelve feet from it. The fact that he seemed apprehensive with approaching it sent chills up her spine. The howler monkeys screeched and wailed in the surrounding jungle, bringing her nerves to a fever pitch of tension. She felt as if the wilds of nature were about to collapse upon her, devouring her soft nubile body like a piece of wholesome white bread.

"I'm getting ahead of myself," he said calmly. "Remember when I told you that I believed we're dealing with two separate sites, both from approximately the early sixteenth century?"

She nodded with wide exhilarated eyes.

"Now I'm certain. The first site we found, we believed it to be Mayan. It's not. It seems to be from the Spanish Crusades. Beyond those trees, that's the other site. No doubt, it's Mayan. We have pulled out a few more serpentine figurines to add to the Lamanai Museum, some that are absolutely fascinating."

She gazed over his shoulder at La Piedra de Milagro, but he reclaimed her attention by gently drawing his hand toward her soft cheek.

"Stay with me, here," he insisted. "The Spaniards destroyed or altered many of the Mayan statues and religious icons in the hopes of converting the Maya to Christianity."

"Right," she confirmed, "I knew that."

"Well, upon closer examination of La Piedra de Milagro, I believe it may have once been a statue of Kukulcán, with the long robes and Anglo features, but it seems to have been altered slightly." He lifted his hand as if to present the stone statue that stood at the end of the lush green path. "What we have is the Virgin Mary…in the heart of the jungle."

She nodded politely with his swelling enthusiasm. Had he really dragged her all the way out here to show her a statue of the Virgin Mary?

He took her hand and led her slowly to the stone statue. His overwhelming excitement was something she had never before seen. It seemed to exude from his pores. "Come look at this."

Her feet were heavy from the tension she had carried in her muscles. With each step, the statue came closer into view, and as it did, she could see that the statue appeared feminine. In fact, it was beyond any doubt the Virgin Mary, although it was a very rudimentary representation, losing any obvious detail in its simplistic design. It shined like tooth enamel for reasons she could not understand. As she got within arm's reach, she suddenly realized exactly what the locals meant by "miraculous powers". The chiseled eyes, clean and white, began to secrete a thick red liquid. It seemed to be coming from where the tear glands would have been located on a living organism. What she was witnessing defied all reason, although she had heard of such things before.

"It's blood," Aldo informed her. "It could even be human."

"This can't be real," Chasey challenged, flabbergasted with what she was witnessing. "How did you do this?"

"As far as we can tell, it's real. It's been doing this all morning. We wipe it clean, and within minutes it does it again. I've even spent quite a bit of time standing here alone, watching it while no one else was around, and it still bleeds."

"What if it really is human blood?" she speculated with a voice so hollow and small that it came out like a whisper. His enthusiasm was now hers. The ramifications it placed on her religious faith seemed to give her soul a new set of wings. Standing before it, she felt an overwhelming sense of spiritual renewal. "I mean, what if…?"

"It wouldn't be hard for you to find out." He took a few seconds to watch the blood trickle onto the earth as the howlers sent a shrill cry through the air, startling them both. "It hasn't bled quite this much, though. Not nearly like this." He turned to look at her, fixing his gaze on her radiant expression. "It's as if it's putting on a show. It actually seems to be bleeding for you."