Wednesday, January 15, 2014

A clean office makes such a difference!

Usually when I enter my office I keep my eyes straight ahead so I won't see the mess. But, yesterday, I decided that Cleaning my office was a priority and I spent four hours filing, organizing, and chunking unwanted papers. I wish I had a before picture for comparison.









Okay, I can still see where some works needs to be done, but gee whiz! And, for some reason, a clean office makes for a happy writer!




Sunday, January 12, 2014

Ninth Lord of the Night

Ninth Lord of the Night was a difficult novel to write. It literally took years of research and then a trip to Guatemala for background information. What I wanted was for the reader to actually experience the majesty of Tikal and the wonders of the rain forest through reading the book. Nothing can compare with actually being there, but so many people can't make a trip like this and I wanted to share my experiences.


Then, there was the actual writing itself. I chose a circular storyline where the ending comes full circle to the beginning. In the beginning, a Mayan shaman sees Zack in a vision and in the end, Zack sees the Mayan shaman peering through the jungle brush in a photograph.


Between the beginning and the end of the novel is an exciting coming of age story of a boy on a journey of both self-discovery and knowledge who will risk his life to return to the Mayan people a valuable lost artifact.
And, of course, there has to be a girl. The girl Zack falls for is Maria, also fighting her own demons of self-discovery.


Then there is the bad guy who's an artifacts smuggler. Smuggling of precious artifacts is a major problem in Guatemala. Raymond is mean and vicious and will stop at nothing to get what he wants - even murder.


Ninth Lord of the Night is available as an ebook at Amazon or in print through any retailer.