C.W. Gardner's Blog

My heart was in my throat. She was on the edge and I knew there wasn’t much I could do to keep her from going over. I took a step closer. “Lola, sweetheart. Let’s go down now. Maybe we can go hiking tomorrow.” She just stared blankly down at the waves crashing below. I could tell she was coked out again. The haze was on her face along with the spray of the Pacific. 

But it wasn’t the drugs that brought her up here. It wasn’t even the other stuff; her mom, her brother. That son of a bitch, Jerry. The drugs just made it a little less scary. She would tell you that she wasn’t afraid of anything. And with those eyes that looked like liquid fire even when she was strung out, well god dammit, you would believe her. 

I knew the truth though, and I might be the only one that would ever know. She was afraid. She was afraid of becoming nothing and proving them all right. That’s what she couldn’t handle. That’s what brought her up here at sunset. “To go down with the sun,” she liked to say. 

“What if it can fly?” She asked. 

“What if you can’t?”

She shrugged. “Then I’ll fall.”

What goes around comes around. The concept of Karma originated in ancient India, weaving its way into philosophies such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Essentially, it is a cause and effect principle. Good deeds (Karma) beget good results (Vipaka). In Buddhism, Karma is a way to explain inequality. Those living in misery, the poor, even the ugly, all deserve their plight due to actions in a past life. Sure, listing all who suffer as past evil doers may seem a bit harsh, though Buddha did address this, but the principle is traditionally meant to promote good action. 

Today, in the world of hyper information and social media which has skewed basically every notion in existence, Karma means something completely different. With one Facebook post, suddenly, you can become a Buddhist without ever really knowing what the hell Buddhism is. The problem with Karma today, is the belief that it will do my dirty work. Meanwhile, my hands are completely clean. With literally millions of memes (a word I never thought I’d use), Karma is now, well . . . a bitch. And that is all. People, can now stand on their hill of morals, point a righteous finger at those who have “wronged” them and go about feeling pretty damned good about their own behavior. The thing is, wishing ill on someone, dealing out your own judgement on others, that’s fairly shitty Karma. Unintended actions do not qualify. Volition is key and volition is clearly evident when one chooses to cast his or her own judgement upon another. When you presume that Karma will “bite someone on the ass” for something they’ve done to you, you are no better than they are. Go ahead and “Dress up as Karma for Halloween” (because that’s totally possible). Just remember, your name will be right there on the list of those who should “watch out.”    

Personally, I do not hold to the concept of Karma, though I understand and appreciate the concept. I believe that my actions are for others and not for myself. Do good not to sow good later, but because its right.  

I became a fan of Mike Lee a little over a year ago. The author of “Fey”, “StarFire”, and “Horker’s Law” is quickly becoming one of the hottest authors on Amazon. He was kind enough to sit down and answer, very passionately, a few questions about the military, Psychotherapy, and the importance of checking facts.  And, to be clear, he has nothing against the Navy.

StarFire, Amazon

Much of the Vince Lombard series is written as a very insightful look into military procedures. Furthermore there is a not-too-subtle pro-marine theme running throughout. Did you serve in the Marine Corps?

I never served in the military. I came of age under the Carter administration, which was a difficult time for the military anyway- the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict, draw downs in military spending, and then the Iran hostage fiasco. But I was always interested in military science, and my father spent much of his brief retirement doing what he could for the US military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He passed shortly before I wrote “Fey,” and in going through his things we found letters, mementos, etc. from his correspondence with our troops. I still have his US Army uniform hanging in my closet. He was a captain, though most of his military service was as a reserve officer.

All of those things combined probably influenced me in making Vince a military man, though for the first story written (Fey) he could as easily have been a retired detective or any of many other things. The happenstance of making him a retired military man led to “StarFire.”

My bias towards the Marine Corps is really just happenstance for the story. I needed some inter-service rivalry, and I needed some bureaucratic ineptitude and corruption. I needed Vince to be good in a fight, and to have the ruthless will to hurt someone, if necessary. So, in the end, I tried to paint characters with the honor and integrity of our military, and left the double-dealing and incompetence that I needed for the story with the high command. Generals and admirals don’t need me to pat them on the back; soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines actually doing the work don’t get enough of our admiration and respect, in my opinion. And that’s not even mentioning the Coast Guard, or other organizations that deserve it just as much.

I was concerned, though, that I would appear, as an author, to favor the Marine Corps above other branches of the military. If I had joined, I probably would have joined the Marines, that is true. But really, I wrote this from a First Person perspective, and that perspective character is a Marine. I think it has to come out, through that character, as favoring the Corps. I made it a point to draw the Linda Tillman character as an honorable Navy officer, and I hope I can work in some others as the series progresses, to make clear that, while Vince is a Marine, and favors the Marines, I admire and respect all those who serve.

Sorry to hear about your father. I’ve always thought of Vince the character as the catalyst for the story of Fey, where he was developed and the story was created around him. From what you said, I’m probably wrong about that. So, how did Fey develop?

Yeah, well… A Freudian psychologist would have a field day with this one, for real.

I actually had a dream in which an ex-girlfriend was represented in miniature. Like, really, really small. Fairy-sized, maybe. Which probably means something sick and twisted, but who knows exactly what? Seriously, this is an ex-girlfriend whom I actually think very highly of, a woman I respect even today, so I have no idea where that image came from, but there it is.

So, I got up from this dream at something like 3:00 AM, and made some notes for a story idea formed around that dream (you know, Saul Bellow said, “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” I agree.)

So, the fairy character in “Fey” is really a McGuffin; a prop in the story that could be anything. In the original Star Wars, it was the little droid, R2D2, which had the plans to the Death Star in its memory; in every old spy movie it’s always “the papers.” We may never even find out what’s IN “the papers,” what’s important for the story is that everyone is trying to GET “the papers.” Same with The Pelican Brief- it didn’t matter that the information was about ecological shenanigans by some corporation, what mattered was, there was a secret everyone wanted to either find, or protect. But because it was about ecology, it raised the emotions of the audience with anyone who really favors ecological causes. That’s the role Fay plays. She could as easily have been an artificial intelligence program, or a memory module with some information, or whatever.

One part of what I wanted to do was put into the story a juxtaposition of the children’s story fairy creature and the hardcore Marine. Drawing relationships and contrasts is part of what makes good fiction work, and certainly high contrast between characters makes for more opportunity to entertain.

In the end, you are right; “Fey,” and even more, “StarFire” are Vince Lombard stories, not Fay stories. But Fay helps us to see other sides of Vince that we might not otherwise have a chance to present in the storyline. And when you stumble on to a good combination of characters, the story moves fast, and pulls emotions a little better… and frankly, writes a lot easier. “Fey” took about sixty days, start to finish. Pretty fast by any standard, I think, but WAY fast for me. And in spite of the fast writing, “Fey” still enjoys the highest percentage of positive reviews by readers, at 4.6 out of 5 stars on Amazon right now, I think, with well over 150 reviews listed. You don’t see a lot of books rated higher than that, though I worked much harder at trying to get other stories “right.” I’ve been very gratified at how well “Fey” has been received by readers, even though I still get a lot of comments like, “I would never have expected to like this… it just seemed too silly, but I’ve been won over,” or similar sentiments.

“Silly” isn’t really what I get from you or your writing. There seems to be something bordering an obsession for detail. Of course science fiction and military science fiction are, at their core, fiction. But, with Fey and StarFire, the science and the military aspects come across as entirely plausible. Did you put effort into researching the scientific and military elements or, was it all just born out of common sense?

I don’t do much “research” in the science area. I believe that much of what we see in standard space opera is so well known and accepted that it doesn’t really have to be addressed anymore. Things like, faster-than-light travel. We couldn’t even HAVE space opera without FTL travel, so it’s kind of a given, in my opinion. Nevertheless, I have been criticized in reviews for failing to “explain FTL travel,” as if saying, “warp engine” or “stargate” or “hyperspace” actually explains anything. In early sci-fi, there had to be an explanation for star travel, because folks weren’t used to the idea, and it would have been a big “hole” in the plot, the same way Superman had to be from an alien planet as a reason for his abilities. But now it’s simply a matter of choosing circumstances that work best for the plot- like in Alien, they use suspended animation to cross space, while Star Trek references “warp engines.”

The other side of this coin is, if an author isn’t careful, it’s easy to overlook something and make it appear that there’s a hole in the plot, just because he or she DIDN’T explain something. For example, I recently got a review where someone points out that in “StarFire” I said that a ship entered a star system “at about 80% of maximum velocity.” The reader pointed out that since the ship could travel at several times the speed of light, 80% of “maximum velocity” would flash through one system in a few seconds, maximum. Ok, good point, I guess. I should have said, “80% of IN SYSTEM SPEED.” And I would have, if I had bothered to come up with some scheme of pointing out the difference in “warp engines” and “impulse engines.” Or “normal space” and “hyperspace.” But the truth is, I think that’s kind of nit picking, personally. I’ll make it a point to avoid that error, and write enough words to cover the gap next time, but I don’t worry much about that standard science of sci-fi, unless I’m trying to do something new and different. Like, I AM doing some research for the explanation regarding what happened to the crew of StarFIre. But I won’t ever be likely to sweat the details of what kind of beam the beam weapons shoot. I’ll just say, “here’s how they are OPERATED, and here’s the limitations on that, for this story.”

The military issue, though… I have to say I look at that differently. Comparing the military philosophy of, say, American military and Russian military in WWII, you get an entirely different picture. So I think it’s important to use images, tactics and characters that show exactly what kind of military we are talking about in a given story. In some senses, whatever kind of “star drive” a story has reflects little on the characters, but the kind of military you have reflects on the characters and the culture they live in. So I do research the military culture and the tactics used. And that seems to have paid off. I get a lot of letters from military and ex-military personnel who appreciate the way I have painted the military, which is modeled on our own American military in micro, while being entirely fictitious and stylized in macro.

And, yeah, I have to admit to having something of an obsession for detail. I hate it when I miss a detail, like the “80% of max. velocity” issue (or maybe I just hate being corrected?) But I also think detail is what makes these stories more credible. I get frustrated with things like, snipers and “weapons-expert” characters that think a pistol with a scope is not as accurate as a rifle with a scope. Not true. The rifle is just easier to shoot straight. If you put both weapons in a vice, and removed the human error factor, they are both capable of the same accuracy. The reputation of snub-nosed revolvers for accuracy is to do with the short site-radius and the lack of a shoulder-bracing stock on the weapon. And anybody who really knows guns will tell you that (even though your crazy old uncle who just THINKS he knows guns will get it wrong… but he’s probably one of those guys writing this claptrap.) I want these authors to get these things right, so I want even MORE for me to get it right. Here’s another one: The whole “point blank range” thing irritates me. Point blank range simply means, close enough so that if you aim right at the center of the target, the bullet-drop will still hit the lower-most acceptable point of impact on the target. So, say you are shooting at a man, and you decide that a hit to the area between the bottom of the neck and the belly button is a “kill.” Point blank range for that shot, aimed at the center mass of the target, is however far away the bullet can go before it falls below the height of the belly button before impact. With a 9mm pistol, that’s in excess of 100 yards. All it takes is a quick Google search to learn this, but most writers don’t bother. They just think they understand “point blank range means… really close.” I would hope I would Google it, if I didn’t already know what it really means. And that’s probably where my detail-fixation stems from. In fact, there’s probably an equation for calculating the exact probability for that being the source of my fixation, if I can find it here… (ok, just kidding)

You are simultaneously writing two separate story arcs for Vince Lombard, occurring in two different eras of his life; one revolving around his meeting of Fay, and one following the events of the StarFire years earlier. Do you ever find it difficult to keep it all straight? 

Well, with just two stories out, it hasn’t been a problem yet. I’ve been working on something unrelated since “StarFire” published. But what I did run into on “StarFire” was the limiting factors of the parts of the story I had already told in “Fey.” Since “StarFire” was written as a prequel, based on a short monologue by Vince, written into “Fey,” I found a lot of problems that were hard to resolve, but which I was stuck with, having already published an off-the-cuff synopsis of a story I hadn’t written yet. Of course, that was before I knew I was going to write “StarFire.”

To avoid that kind of problem in future, I intend to pick up the pre-Fey stories from the beginning, Vince just joining the Galactic Marines, and move forward chronologically. At the same time, the sequel(s) to “Fey” will move forward chronologically. That should prevent creating future problems by boxing Vince in with what he says “after” events have taken place. But I still have constraints. Since I didn’t foresee the popularity of the Vince Lombard character, he said a lot of things in “Fey” that have to be true in other stories now. For example, he says more than once that humanity has only fought two previous wars with alien species “in the last hundred years.” So, I can probably push both those into Vince’s military career… but if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have specified that in “Fey.” I’d keep Vince’s comments about his past more general, and kept the freedom to make it up as I go.

  Fey. Amazon 

You were a psychotherapist before deciding to write full time. What, if anything, did you learn about story and character development working in that field?

 I was a psychotherapist for 18 years, and about 80% of my client caseload consisted of criminal court referrals. In the early years I did a lot of DUI and domestic violence offender treatment. Later, I was approved by the Colorado Department of Corrections to work with violent offenders who were released from prison on parole. That group included all kinds of violent offenders, including some folks with quite a bit of notoriety, for high-profile crimes. Obviously, I can’t be too specific, but I saw clients that had been relocated from other states, because they testified in organized crime proceedings and were finishing out their own sentences, as well as individuals whose crimes were well known because of media attention. I also carried a smaller caseload of clients who were voluntarily seeking treatment for a variety of issues, including couples counseling, behavior issues, and similar cases.

How have those experiences have influenced my character work? That’s a complex question, and to be entirely honest, I think that general life experience is probably more important to authors than specific vocational experience, when it comes to character work in particular. In other words, at age 18, an author has interacted a lot with teenagers, quite a bit less with older folks, and mostly within the culture his or her parents are comfortable in. By age 30, that same author has worked a couple “career” jobs, perhaps moved to a very different kind of neighborhood, maybe changed his or her cultural surroundings drastically. By 50, multiply that times 300% or so… That’s getting to be a lot of experience.

With that said, I can tell you this: in psychology, we talk about a concept called “identity process,” and we can boil that down to a simple proposition. What you do becomes who you are. If you lie, you are a liar. If you steal, you are a thief. If you murder, you are a murderer. Conversely, we can also say that your identity determines what you are most likely to do. Liars are prone to lie, and thieves are prone to steal. We usually don’t change these things without good reason. A charitable person who gives a dollar to the homeless guy more often than not will probably keep doing that, unless he loses his job, and doesn’t have a dollar. Then, when he’s flush again, he will start doing it again. But what if the homeless guy robs him, one day? Or, what if he stumbles across the dead body of the homeless guy, with a needle sticking out of his arm, because he was using the pan-handled dollars to buy heroin and he overdosed? NOW we have a reason for that guy to change his behavior… and he’s very likely to change his behavior. That’s real life, and that’s also how we should write characters.

If I want a character to change over the course of a story, I will give him a reason to change. If I’m deciding what a character is likely to do, I have only to look at what she was doing in previous chapters, and if her identity doesn’t lend itself to the decision I need her to make, then I have misrepresented who that character is in previous chapters, and I need to make some adjustments. People don’t tend to change in a vacuum; they change for good reasons, or they don’t change much at all. That has to be reflected in our stories. Characters need to be consistent, or they need to have motivation for changing. That might be the most significant single thing that my experience as a psychotherapist has taught me.

What exactly is Breakwater Harbor Books and how did you get involved with them?

 Breakwater Harbor Books is an association of authors who have stumbled across each other in a variety of places. By coming together to form an organization with standards for the kind of material they present, BHB lends its “imprint” to authors and books they find to be well done and worth reading. They don’t take a percentage of the royalties or anything, but they offer two advantages as an organization. First, every BHB author agrees to promote some other BHB author’s work in the back of their own publications. Which ones an author supports is entirely up to that author, but he or she is required to support SOME other BHB books, whichever one’s he or she likes best. The idea here is that each of us, as an independent author is telling our own readers who the other independent authors we recommend are. Second, BHB has started developing anthologies of short stories by BHB authors. The purpose here is to allow readers something by a good selection of BHB authors, and give the readers a chance to check them out for free, or for very low cost. I won’t be presenting a story in the first BHB anthology, simply because my schedule didn’t allow me the time to submit a story for it, but in future one might suppose that fans of Vince Lombard might pick up a BHB anthology for the short Vince Lombard story therein, and then be exposed to several other BHB authors in the same volume. Likewise, someone who picked up the anthology because of another author’s work it contains would then have the chance to read one of my stories, and perhaps choose to go purchase another of my books. Essentially, the primary purpose of BHB is to select independent authors who are doing good work, and expose their work to a larger reading base. The organization hopes that, over time, the BHB imprint will become a standard that says, “This book is quality work. We recommend it.”

Now, with that said, I have to go a step further and say that I am very impressed with some of the work coming out of BHB already. Melissa Simonson is producing books at a fast rate, and they are all darn good crime and horror stories. Claire C. Riley is an author out of the UK who has produced an outstanding zombie-genre story which will be released very soon, under the BHB imprint. Those are the last two releases I know of as I write this, and I think they’re both top-drawer, but there are several other authors doing well on Amazon and in other (primarily) eBook markets. I’ve been very happy to be associated with them.

As to how I got involved with them, the founders, Cara Goldthorp and Scott Toney were trading critiques with me, and I think I was one of the first few authors they contacted when they decided to do this, shortly before “StarFire” was published. Knowing both of them fairly well through trading reads and comments, I was happy to be involved from the first time they mentioned it. Organizations like this tend to grow and change rapidly, or they tend to fold up within a few months, but BHB seems to be doing well, and so far, they have kept their standards and requirements very workable for me. That could change, as the needs of the organization change, but at this time, I intend to remain involved with that group for the foreseeable future.

Lets talk about independent publishing. “StarFire”, “Fey”, and “Horker’s Law” (your biggest seller to date), have sold tens of thousands of copies. You reached number one on Amazon Kindle for sci-fi, number two in overall books, number three in sci-fi/fantasy, and number 30 in author rankings. I’d call that a decent success for someone doing it independently. Is there ever a desire to seek a publisher and/or agent? 

 Thanks, I’m very happy with the level of success I’ve had to date, and very grateful to my readers. Truth be told, publishers are a good news/bad news proposition for a writer like me. The very first thing a publisher would do is raise the price of my books, and take enough of the royalties that I would make less per copy sold than I do now, at the lower price. The truth is, I couldn’t afford that right now. In theory, publishers help you sell more copies over time, so in the long run you might make more money and get wider exposure, but unless something changes, I don’t think I would be willing to pay the price of less income on the books over the short run. Not to mention, publishers move very slowly, whereas independent writers can make decisions very rapidly. It’s typically a year or two from contract signing to income with a book that’s already finished and ready for publication, with the big houses. It’s about two months for me, as an independent author.

However… there is a certain legitimacy offered by a publishing contract with one of the large publishing companies, and that’s tempting in and of itself. I have corresponded with agents on previous work, and got some interest, particularly with “StarFire.” It’s very satisfying to have a professional agent tell you the work is salable. I suppose if I had something I thought had outstanding wide market appeal, something that really stood a head and shoulders above the rest of my work, I might explore traditional publishing again, and perhaps more aggressively. But overall, I’ve been very happy with the independent route. It’s paying the bills, my deadlines are my own, and nobody tells me how I have to change my stories to meet their own criteria.

 Horker’s Law, Amazon 

Finally, what’s next for Vince Lombard and, more importantly, Mike Lee?

 I don’t have the details all worked out yet, but I think I can predict a little of what’s in store for Vince. We last saw Vince getting on a small ship and headed out into space just ahead of his pursuers. He’ll be ducking and weaving through space a bit, running into some old friends from his days as a G-Marine, and getting ready to face down what happened to the crew of StarFire. Right now, it looks like two more books to tell the rest of that story, and in the meanwhile, I have two books planned to get him from a teenaged recruit up to company commander. There’s a lot more room, by the way, for more stories in the pre-Fey side than the post-Fey side, but I’ve pretty well committed to Vince’s fans to get at least two of each out.

I’ve also committed to write a total of five more in the Horker series. To be honest, those books are much slower to write, but I don’t anticipate quitting before I get all six done. I work a little on the second one, Horker’s Gold pretty regularly.

The next book published is fairly certain to be Dr. Zimm’s Elixir. A twist on the zombie-theme, this is really more of a detective genre story, in the same way Fey is a detective story. There’s some skullduggery going on, and the protagonist, caught up in the whirlwind of events, has to sort it out and find the bad guys, save the good guys, and deal with his own problems along the way. My editor, and the friends and family I discuss my books with as I am writing them are all particularly interested in Dr. Zimm’s Elixir, so I have pretty high hopes for that story.

On a different front from book production, I was at ComicCon, Denver this year, just as a customer. It was great fun, and hugely interesting. When it was over, I immediately looked into Mile High Con, but I had just missed the deadline for taking a vendor table there. So, starting with ComicCon, Denver next spring, I expect to make it a regular part of my schedule, and I would like to add a ComicCon or other sci-fi convention in other cities to my schedule thereafter, up to perhaps four a year. I really encourage fans of sci-fi and fantasy to check out their local conventions. It’s a great way to get exposed to the authors, artists, performers, really every aspect of the sci-fi and fantasy community and entertainment industry. I’m looking forward to that almost as much as I am to finishing out my next books!

There is a rule of life which states: once a man procures the means to own a fast car, he no longer has the will to drive it very fast at all. Such is Fate's obsession with proving her sense of humor. As if anyone would doubt her. So, then. Are cars built for speed, or incentive? Give the young bastards something to aim for. "I'll have that some day." Sure you will, but will it do you any good?

They tell us, it's not the destination, but the journey. Of course it is. Because, once you've reached the destination, you find that it went bankrupt years ago and is now simply a shell which is inhabited by an ill tempered woman who's traded her wits for an entire army of cats. You look back on the road you've spent your life traveling and realize your real destination is miles behind you. A place where you found real happiness and didn't even know it. A place that you can never reach again. Because we can't go back, can we. Your shoulders slump, your chest tightens, as the weight of a life wasted sinks upon you, and, if you have any energy left, you cry.

As cynical as that sounds, because it's evident that whatever else I lack, I make up for with cynicism, there is a rainbow of hope. There is always the road, and as long as your willing to walk it, it'll be there. Forward. And, this time, maybe you will have learned to enjoy the stops along the way. Maybe you will learn that a car is only as fast as you're willing to drive it.

Having only one completed novel and a handful of to-be-finished pieces under my belt, I’m not going to pretend to be a wise and learned story teller. However, I’ve definitely become privy to things I weren’t privy to before I began writing. I’ll be honest. When I began my first novel, I was naive to say the least. I thought, hell, I’ll make up some characters, tell them what to do and where to go, and they’ll listen. Damn right they’ll listen. ‘Cause I’m in charge here and what I say goes. Turns out, my characters did what I told them about as often as my kids do. And, like my kids, they sometimes went against, taking their own paths, they kept me up at night, worrying. Soon enough, I learned that all I could do was offer a little guidance and allow them to reach the end their own way. And that was one of the more joyous surprises about writing a novel, because, in so many ways, writing a story is a lot like reading a story. It goes where you don’t expect and it evolves naturally, becoming what it was meant to be. Not always what you mean it to be.

Having only one completed novel and a handful of to-be-finished pieces under my belt, I'm not going to pretend to be a wise and learned story teller. However, I've definitely become privy to things I weren't privy to before I began writing. I'll be honest. When I began my first novel, I was naive to say the least. I thought, hell, I'll make up some characters, tell them what to do and where to go, and they'll listen. Damn right they'll listen. 'Cause I'm in charge here and what I say goes. Turns out, my characters did what I told them about as often as my kids do. And, like my kids, they sometimes went against, taking their own paths, they kept me up at night, worrying. Soon enough, I learned that all I could do was offer a little guidance and allow them to reach the end their own way. And that was one of the more joyous surprises about writing a novel, because, in so many ways, writing a story is a lot like reading a story. It goes where you don't expect and it evolves naturally, becoming what it was meant to be. Not always what you mean it to be.

"Keep your weapon ready," Pyraven said, as he turned toward the stirring uncertainty beneath the fog and began ascending the stairs leading up from the docks. Blood painted the wood at his feet and, with great care, he stepped over a severed hand resting on the final step. Aravelle followed, her hammer bouncing in her hand. The sun had long been hidden behind the clouds, but it was apparent that it was setting. The thick clouds were becoming black with the coming evening.

Above her, Aravelle watched as Pyraven disappeared into the dense gray which had settled over Luna. Tightening her grip on her hammer, she followed, plunging her into the dark fog. It was almost like closing her eyes. She could see but a few inches before her. Within the fog, she could hear feet shuffling across the stone, making her jerk her head each way. She risked a whisper. "Pyraven!" In a flash, a white hand reached through the smoky gray and wrapped around her wrist. Before she could scream, another hand was over her mouth and Pyraven's eyes were an inch from hers. Releasing her hand, Pyraven raised his finger to his lips then gestured to his left. From where he had pointed, a moan rumbled through the fog and Aravelle nodded in understanding.

Silently, the two continued through the fog. Though she made every effort to step as lightly as possible, she noticed that each of her steps sounded as stomping oxen compared to Pyraven, who moved as soundlessly as smoke. To her left, came the horrific cries of the undead mere feet away. Her body tensed. The monster could not see her through the fog, but could it sense her some other way? Scuffling sounded to her right, followed by another hateful scream. Looking forward, she found that she could no longer see Pyraven. Fierce growling came from behind and she fought the urge to run aimlessly away. Raising her hammer, she turned but saw nothing. Her beating heart seemed to echo off the wall of fog around her.

A few feet away, scuffling broke out. She could hear the sound of the eaters' snarling, of Pyraven's sword slicing through flesh, and of heads falling to the cobble-paved ground. Another growl erupted to her right and she turned swiftly, meeting dead eyes, glowing with hatred and hunger. Startled, she swung her hammer at the image. The weapon struck the skull of the creature, dropping it to the ground. Another face appeared, and another. She cried out, swinging her weapon and nothing and at everything, unable to see her target. She wanted out of the horrible blindness of the fog. Her legs shook, nearly buckling beneath her. She swung her hammer again just as a hand seized her around her waist. Wriggling free, she bolted away, running full speed through the fog.

Aravelle stumbled over pieces of bodies, strewn about on street at her feet, but remained afoot. Before her, a wall materialized and she turned just in time to avoid it. She was panting, tears rolling from her eyes, but she held a firm grip around her hammer. She would not lose it. Something snarled behind her. How many were back there? She imagined a horde of the creatures on her tail. Another wall appeared in front of her. She ran into it smashing her lip into the stone. She turned, but again, hit a wall. She was at a dead end. Behind her, glimmering eyes and chomping teeth began appearing out of the fog. A ruined face leapt at her and she hammered it down with her weapon. One more skull was crushed beneath her weapon, but more eyes appeared in the fog, burrowing deep into Aravelle, awakening her darkest fears. Where is Pyraven?! Slowly, she stepped backward until her back collided with the wall. The stone felt frigid against her palm. There was only one hope. She shoved the hammer into her belt and turned to the wall. Frantically, she began scrambling upward, fighting for every hold in the wall. A hand gripped her ankle but she kicked it free with a shrill cry and climber further up the wall.

Looking upward, she saw a crack running along the stone of the wall. She reached for it, digging her fingers deep into the crevice, and began to pull herself farther up. With a crack, the stone crumbled beneath her grip and she fell. Her body swung down toward the crowd of monsters below, but her right hand held firm. Her muscles strained and popped. The fog was thinning, revealing the mass of creatures below her. She could not fall. Straining, she pulled and scrambled until her feet found purchase and she pushed herself up, farther and farther away from the demonic beasts below until she reached the top of the wall.

The other side of the stone wall was a mere four foot drop to a cobble stone path. Aravelle fell to it, wincing and gripping her throbbing wrist. She wiped tears from her face and looked around. The rain had stopped. Up here, the fog was absent and, it seemed, so were the eaters. The moon cut through the haze in the sky, scarcely lighting the scene around her. To her left, the path was glistening wet and empty. To her right, far off, a light shimmered in the night. Then, she heard it; sounds of laughter, tinkling glass, boisterous noises of merriment.

Rising to her feet, she stumbled toward the light, shining like a beacon in that seemingly dead city. When she drew closer, she saw the windows of a tavern aglow from the inside. Silhouettes danced to the twang of a stringed instrument. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. But she found it difficult to trust. Her hand crept to her hammer, lingering momentarily on it, before drawing away. She wanted so desperately to not need it, to stop fighting for her life for a single moment. If she had to draw her weapon at every sign of life, then what was there to fight for?

Above the door of the tavern, Aravelle noticed a sign upon which was scrawled the words: The Sagging Hag. The sign was new, the old having been painted over. "Hold there, girl," called a voice from above.

Looking up, Aravelle saw a man atop the tavern's roof. His face was a mass of dark, curled hair lit by a single candle. In his hands, the man held a crossbow, the bolt trained at Aravelle's torso. Instinctively, her fingers drifted toward the hammer at her belt. Even if she reached it, the weapon would be useless at this distance. "So you're what got the howlers stirred up. Now, I'd prefer not shootin' you," the man warned. "But I've had to kill people near and dear to me. Won't be nothin' to drop you. Right now, this is my job. I'm the man standing between the party inside, and any harm that might come through the door. You get me?" Slowly, Aravelle nodded her head and lowered her hand from her waist. "What be your business here?"

Aravelle opened her mouth to answer, but, a smooth voice from behind her took over. "We're just here for a drink, sir." She saw the man above blink his enormous brown eyes, momentarily confused before composing himself. Turning her head, her heart was lifted by the sight of Pyraven, standing like a pale spirit in the moonlight. I'm sorry, he mouthed before turning his attention back to the man above them. "We have payment, sir. Is this place open for business?"

"Course it is. But it aint that easy, traveler. Either of you been bit, scratched? Any wounds, anything? Be best to show 'em to me now."

Slowly, Pyraven removed his cloak and nodded at Aravelle to do the same. Together the two turned in a full circle. Aravelle caught Pyraven's eye and shrugged. "Do you need further proof, sir?" she said, slipping back into her coat.

The man glared down at them for a moment, then lowered the crossbow. "You'll be watched. Anything funny from either of you, you'll be dead. You understand?"

"Once we're inside," Aravelle began. "We will be grateful for your diligence."

At a gesture from the tavern guard, the two approached the door. The heavy door creaked open on iron hinges, letting loose a torrent of light and smoke into the night. For a moment, the image blurred as Aravelle's eyes adjusted to the bright light of the lanterns. When the haze cleared, she could see over two dozen bodies, and hear the calls of merriment. Not a soul seemed to notice the two of them enter the tavern, their attentions focused on the joy of the moment, joy which was rare in this new world of ruin and decay. "Welcome!" boomed the barman, who stood behind a tall counter, a dingy cloth slung over his shoulder. The man's mouth curled into a smile, showing his yellow teeth.

Together, Pyraven and Aravelle moved to the bar. "Welcome to The Sagging Hag; the one and only place for a pint and a bite in all of Luna Lake. My name's Hodge. Back there," he shot a thumb behind him at a broad man stirring a large, steaming pot. "That's Mingo. Now, we got ale and we got meat pies. What's got yer fancy?"

"I'd love a meat pie," said Aravelle happily.

"All out of meat pies, got cat pies," Mingo grumbled without looking up from the pot.

"Well cats is meat," Hodge protested as he turned to his partner.

"No, cats is cat," Mingo barked, banging his spoon on the edge of the pot with a harsh finality.

With a roll of his eyes, Hodge turned back to the two travelers. "Fine. We've got cat pies. How many will it be?"

"Nothing for me," Aravelle said, holding up her hand. "Just something to drink, thank you."

Pyraven watched as the woman turned from the bar and took a seat at a table a few yards away. When she was gone, he set a pile of silver coins on the counter and saw the barman's eyes light up at the sight of it. "Bring her anything you can find that does not contain cat. We clear?" With a broad smile, Hodge nodded and wrapped his dirty hand around the pile of coins.

C.W. Gardner is the author of The Revenant Fire, Book one of The Decay of Man series. It can be downloaded here http://www.amazon.com/Revenant-Fire-D...

This week's impending horror of becoming 30 has me slightly on edge. To take my mind off of such nonsense, I've put The Revenant Fire up as a free download. The results have been a fabulous diversion, garnering around 150 downloads in a few hours. I offer a huge thanks to all who've purchased (or "purchased" for those who took advantage of my inability to cope with aging) my book. Many well wishes and happy fricken birthday to me.

I flipped through the pawn shop's vinyl collection as I watched the zombies begin to gather outside. Debbie Reynolds? Was there any room for this sort of weirdness in the world now?

"Now this is something I can use," Cockswine said, pulling some kind of samurai katana from a shelf. I called him Cockswine because he had one of pig noses that I didn't trust. I was sure I'd been told his name a dozen times, but I couldn't get past that fucking nose long enough to remember it.

Poor dumb prick, I thought. All that blade would do is slice up a bit of skin. You wanted blunt when dealing with those undead bastards. Break their fucking skulls and move on. A weapon that would stick in flesh would only slow you down.

I had been in Cockswine's office when things got weird. He was another big shot agent trying to get me to sign away fifteen percent of me. I told him I was from Kentucky. He went on to say something about fitting four Kentuckians on a barstool, which he seemed to find hysterical. I kept the bastard around in case things went bad. Toss him to the fucking wolves and be on my way. His secretary, Jane, had other uses. She was wearing a skirt that wasn't much more than a belt and her blouse had no buttons above her naval. Obviously a uniform issued by Cockswine himself. But she was more than just a vision of sexual energy. Jane wasn't a bad shot with the .38 she kept in her purse. I imagined her stashing it there after being raped on her way home from the office. She'd been burned and the fire still lingered.

Through the pawn shop window, I watched the bastards growing thicker. They knew we were in there. It was like they could sense our brain waves. Well, they could sense their brain waves. Cockswine and the woman. Mine I kept dulled with downers. I knew the score.

"Fucking brain waves," I muttered. The other two didn't even look at me. They had grown accustomed to my mumbling. Had they figured me out? Poor fuckers. They looked strung out. Freaked beyond all reason. Their minds weren't made for this kind of strange savagery. My mind was different. I had seen worse crawling up my leg on a bad morning, and I understood this entire ordeal might just be some kind of drug fueled, paranoid hallucination. I could have woken up at any minute with the blood of a dozen poor bastards on my hands. "Hallucinations Lead to Killing Spree." That'd be the headline. In a way, it was what I was counting on. It kept my mind at ease.

After salvaging what we could at the pawn shop, we had eight rounds for the .38, two slug rounds for the shotgun, an assault rifle with an empty magazine, half a film canister of cocaine, twelve capsules of mescaline, half a bottle of tequila, and a Louisville slugger. The real score in the pawn shop was a case of hand grenades and a Cadillac in the garage.

I took another look through the grunge covered window. The zombies had doubled. "I got the car ready," I said. "We better get in it and get the hell outta here." I looked over and saw that Jane was alone. Cockswine was gone. Never trust a man with a nose like that. From the garage we heard the engine growl to life. Tires squealed and I saw the woman's face twist with rage.

"That son of a bitch!" she screamed and took off toward the alley. I made it to the back door just after she did, but I stayed inside. The drugs had turned me paranoid. Or maybe it was the bar stool thing. The natural way of the Kentucky man, according to Cockswine. I always prepared for getting fucked.

I saw the confusion wash over her face when she watched the rope tighten as the car sped into the horde of zombies in the alley. One end of the rope was tied to a water pipe on the building. The other end was racing away with the car. We could barely hear the sound of the pins hitting the pavement as they were yanked from the grenades I had fastened to the Cadillac. I pulled her inside, just as the blast blew out the pawn shop windows, spraying us with glass.

If there's a higher power weird enough to have created the world and insane enough to have made man, this is how he'd want us to be. Scavenging the world for what we need. Holding that fire in our souls in order to stay alive. That's what we were; hunters, survivors, fucking savages.

If you knew the sort of day I've had, you'd understand that title. Otherwise, you surely wont get what the hell that's all about. This post had nothing to do with kanab other than it is where I am and will remain until the end of time.

I've begun the gut wrenchingly masochistic process of querying agents for a novel. Rejection is never something to which one can get accustomed, but I've expected it. However, among all the "this project is not for me or anyone else"'s that I've received, I have had one request for a manuscript read. As a matter of fact, this was the first response on the list. Sure, this may seem a bit exciting and all. But I have to wonder if looking for an agent should be handled in the same way my mother always told me I should go about looking for a wife? (Son, any woman who'd go around marrying someone like you, has poor standards and isn't someone you should be getting involved with any way! Of course, my mother never said this, but I imagine I would have grown up to be a much more interesting person had she done.)