It's a New Month, and time for a teaser...

Wow! Where has the time gone? It is November already and the New Year is looming on my calendar. I was looking at the stats to this blog and saw that friends from Europe were the most plentiful viewers in the last two weeks. I just wanted to remind you that "Ghost of the Black Bull is available at all Amazon outlets in Europe and I believe that it is available on Barnes and Noble there as well. Thanks for being such loyal followers.
Here is a short excerpt from "Black Bull":

  
"Pappy went to the mine because he knew that although JR was strong enough to work there, he was terrified of being underground. It wasn’t just the damned stories that miners told while he was around, Tommy Knockers and such, but on one trip underground the miners had put their lanterns out. It took all of them to hold JR down after he started screaming and running into the walls of the mine."

The Black Bull is Loose! Rampaging on Amazon and Nook.

 

The Ghost of the Black Bull is a story of bad luck and trouble for two families that have little in common. Yet their lives intersect in a collision that will leave you breathless. The Black Bull is a real and ethereal symbol of evil and violence that haunts them until the shocking conclusion. Available at Amazon   & Barnes and Noble

 

 

 Undaunted Publishing, LLC is proud to announce the release of "Ghost of the Black Bull" a novella by Michael D. LeFevre. He is a native of Utah and incorporates the awesome geography and rich history into his stories. The following is a short synopsis of the story.

Bitter memories of Mrs. Burnett’s past come to her mind as she stands on her porch. Recollections bring tears that quickly evaporate in the hot, dry air of Skull Valley. Miles away, JR, a big, thick kid is running to shelter behind his beloved Pappy, a fat chicken swinging from a thick fist. Cruel fate pushes the two families together in a shocking collision that will test the universe, its ironies and whims. Four people with a life of sadness, grief, and death. And yet, happiness can and does intrude into their lives, only in small and rare flashes.
But, you take joy where you can find it…don’t you? 

The Black Bull is finally on the loose! You can pick up a copy in the Amazon Kindle Book store and through Barnes and Noble's Nook store. Both of these booksellers are online. Readers of this blog may recognize portions of the story from posts under the title "Death in the Valley. I think that you will like the finished story.

Check out  Undaunted Publishing webpage. Just click on the highlighted text and follow the link.

And GOD said...

 

#1

Short play adaptation from 2001

From out of nowhere, the voice of GOD, sounding suspiciously like James Earl Jones, said,

“LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!”

James and Chris sat at a small round table in the food court of the Mall. On the table in front of them was two cups of lemonade, refreshment against the extreme heat of outside. They jumped a mile at the voice and both started to say “DID you hear…” and then realized what they were about to say. Two mouths clicked shut in unison. Nervously they looked around. Surely everyone else had heard that, but everyone else was going about their own business as if GOD hadn’t spoke at all, if indeed HE had spoken. Shaking off their confusion, they sipped their lemonade.

James changed the subject, “Whew! It sure is a hot one out there!” Gesturing towards the windows in the far wall, “This lemonade really hits the spot.”

Well, Chris, who was still shaken from the faceless voice, didn’t quite catch the context that James was striving for. “What spot is that?” he said, looking around.

“You know…the spot!” James was now becoming confused at Chris’ wandering eyes.

This really messed with Chris whose mind was racing for a way to save face. He continued on. “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What spot?”

Suspicious that Chris was messing with him, but a bit irritated as well, James forcefully answered, “Jeez, are you being obtuse on purpose or what? The spot! The spot! The place where everything is just right! A giant figure of speech. The spot! This lemonade hits the spot, it is so friggin’ hot out there!” His voice almost rose to a shriek, then thinking the other people in the food court were looking at him, he lowered it to a normal volume but still forceful.

Chris had focused on the “on purpose” part of James’ tirade. He decided to play the clown as he so often did. “You are so easy, I was just screwing with you. Hell, bro, I think I invented that figure of speech. If not me, then somebody I know.”

Indignantly, James retorted, “Yer ass! You can barely talk, let alone invent a figure of speech.”

Chris’ hands went to his chest and he slumped in the chair, “I’m wounded! Skewered by the barbed tongue of my best friend. Oh the pain!”

This drew a smile from James. He was well acquainted by Chris’ shenanigans, but even so, they were almost always funny. He often fell into the verbal trap of being the butt of Chris’ quick wit. He had decided that he could play the straight man in the joke. James thought that maybe he could change the subject so he asked, “So, what’s up?”

Chris straightened up, running his hand through his hair trying to tame the spikes raised when he rolled around in his chair, he answered with a shrug, “Just hanging out, waiting for Fall semester to start.”

“How’s your folks?” James carried on.

Chris grimaced, “The same. Nothing changes there. They are always gone to work or at the club after work. I sometimes wonder if they will ever have enough bread, money I mean.”

“I hear you. Mine haven’t changed either, I thought they might fly the coop after I moved out, but no, they’ll be here for the rest of time. Ha! Mom read one my essay’s for English class last semester. She just shook her head. I asked her what that was for and she said, “I wonder where you came from.” James paused, “I didn’t think I was that weird.”

Chris jumped on this, “Weird! Man, you’re the strangest cat I ever saw. Bent, real bent.”

“You know the pot shouldn’t call the kettle black. You’re not the straightest arrow in the quiver.” James snorted.

Chris chuckled, “Speaking of pot…You ever? You know, inhaled?”

“Me?” James said with a poker face.

Chris leaned forward intently, “Yeah, you.

“Like ol’ Cheech says, ‘a little magic dust for you, a little magic dust for me, a little more magic dust for me…’ then Farrrrr out, man.” James laid it on thick for effect.

Chris wasn’t impressed with the act, so he asked again, “So?”

“I made the mistake of my life. It’ll never be the same, my life I mean.” James’ eyes settled on a point over Chris’ head, up towards the ceiling. He kind of drifted off like he was somewhere else.

“So?” Chris waited for James to tell his story.

James snapped to and looked Chris in the eye. “You never let up do you? Remember the kid we called Fats?”

“Wasted dude, real skinny?” Chris squinted trying to remember. There were a lot of kids they hung out with that were not on the “A” list. School had been pretty well segregated by class and clique. He and James had been on the borderline of the “B and C” list. They had had friends in both groups.

James went on, “Yeah, he convinced me to smoke with him. He told me to hold the pipe stem up to my nose, then he blew on the bowl…mainlined the smoke right up my nose. Almost the last thing I remember…”

“Almost? What do you mean?” Chris was eager now, to hear the rest of the story,

 James was still in that place up near the ceiling, he went on automatically, “Well, I got to feeling funny. I decided to leave, and I ran into Julie who convinced me to go to the movie with her. It was bad, real bad.”

“Julie? The movie?” Chris interrupted.

James hardly paused, “The movie…it was Jonathon Livingston Seagull. I steer clear of ‘em to this day, I’m afraid they’ll start talking to me and lead me off into another dimension. Besides I couldn’t breathe.”

“Couldn’t breathe?” Chris’ mind was racing again, trying to find a way to make a joke of all this.

James took a deep breath, as if remembering that smothering feeling, “Yeah, my lungs felt like they were two walnuts dangling on a string in my chest. Never again.”

“It didn't affected me that way.” Chris said confidently.

James came out of his past, now curious what experience Chris had had. “Really. So did you get high?”

“So high, I could see T’peka.” Chris smiled in anticipation.

James took the bait, “Topeka, Kansas?”

“I’m tellin’ you, you are soooo easy! I think I invented that figure of speech too” Chris laughed at his own joke, pointing to James while he did.

James shook his head in chagrin, “Damn you.”

“Let’s have another lemonade before we go back out in that heat.” Chris patted his friends arm.

The Exotic Woman Book 2, Part Deux

An Irrational Dream continues...

My feet started moving of their own volition, walking directly over to where she sat, willing me to come to her with her eyes.  I felt as if I had no control.  I arrived to stand in front of her and reached down and took her proffered hand.  “Her skin is like silk”, I thought as I helped her to stand.  As she did, I took her other hand in mine and looked deeply into those dark eyes.  “What am I doing?” in wonder, I gently pulled her to me.   I leaned toward her, intending to kiss those scarlet lips. Just as our lips were about to touch, she lifted her head so that I kissed her chin.  Startled, I jerked back with a question on my face.  She chuckled low in her throat, lips curled in a smile.  She then let my hands go and took my head in hers and pulled our lips together.  An electric spark literally exploded fireworks in my brain.  The sweet fruity taste of the ruby lipstick filled my head, temporarily overpowering the clean, womanly aroma of her skin.  I wanted to crush her body to me, full length, welded together lips to knees; one hot, seething nuclear power-plant of desire.

            I held myself in check, I don’t know how, and pressed my lips back to hers a bit firmer and opened slightly.  She didn’t respond at first so I let the tip of my tongue caress her soft, scarlet lips and as she relaxed, our tongues touched in the real duel of love.  When our lips had first met, my eyes had closed in reflex to the bliss that had spread through out me.  As our kiss deepened, my eyes opened and found her looking at me, eyes dark, deep, and unfathomable.   Who knew what thoughts were flashing in their depths.

            As the desire in both of us increased to just this side of unbearable, our hands started roaming in a more passionate embrace of…how to describe what this was.  Out of nowhere, a rough hand grabbed my shoulder and jerked me away from this woman, rudely pulling our lips apart, leaving a tingling, yearning, coldness where only heat had been before.  As I stumbled back from the force of the hard treatment, my right arm drew back in an instinctive, defensive act, fist clenched hard, ready to pound the intruder.  “Get away from my woman!” this stranger’s harsh voice ground out.  “What in the hell are you doing?” he asked of her.

            The woman stepped in between, preventing us coming at each other.  My clenched fist ached to drive through the stranger’s face, it vibrated with the effort to restrain it.  The woman looked at me, shook her head slightly and turned to the stranger.  She grasped his hand and turned to go.  He turned and muttering threats, dragged this beautiful woman off like so much baggage.

            I watched them go; the clenched fist relaxed and my arm dropped to my side.  The stranger and the woman swept through the exit doors and at last, she turned and looked straight at me.  Her lips that had so recently held mine in an embrace of love mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”  Silently spoken, loudly received.  My shoulders slumped and my head drooped so that I was looking at my shoes.  “Oh my God Mike, who was that woman?”  Marla asked.  I looked back at the empty doorway, sorrow on my face, “I don’t know, but she called my name.” 

     

An Irrational Dream Begins…

The EXOTIC WOMAN Book 2

            I had gone to the theater with a friend, some trendy new play.  The type of play that seldom came to my home-town.  The kind of play that was original, verbal, situational and smart as opposed to glitzy, dopey musicals featuring a frustrated insane, physically repugnant monster with a nice baritone and an obsessive love for the hot chick.  You know, the ‘re-run’ that everyone pretends to “love”, but only because they really dig the music and ignore the dialog and plot.  Thank heaven this play hadn’t been like that.

            I was still sitting in my seat thinking about the quirky ending to the play when my friend got up to go.  “Going to the whizzer, see you outside, OK?”  I shook my head to clear the echoes of the last scene and nodded, “Yeah, I’ll see you in a minute.”  As my buddy left, I stood and stretched the stiffness out of my legs and back.  Turning to go, I saw my friends, Marla and her husband Dean talking to Phil, another of our group at the back of the theater.  Waving, I climbed the aisle and walked up to them, said hello and hugged Marla, shook hands with the guys, “How ya doing?”  They replied, “ Fine, Fine, Fine.”  Small talk broke out, each of us catching up on recent events, grandkids, dogs, gardens and the like when out of nowhere I heard my name spoken.  “Mike”.  In the noise of the conversation I couldn’t tell where the sound had come from or if it was real.  “I must be hearing things”, I told myself.  And then it came again a little louder and more insistent, “Mike”.  I looked around, trying to pinpoint the origin of the calling.  It had become important to find out who was calling to me, who owned that voice; that silky, alluring voice.  I scanned my memory for that particular sound, that exact tone of ‘come hitherness’.  Then, again the voice reached out to me, inviting, full of want and desire, “Mike”.

            At that moment the exiting crowd thinned and revealed a woman sitting in the aisle seat of the back row and she was looking directly at me.  I was startled, even though I had been looking for whoever had been calling my name. 

            The woman was beautiful, much too beautiful to be looking at me that way.  So naturally I turned around to see if someone else was standing behind me, someone else that she had to be looking at.  I was sure that I was misunderstanding her gaze.  No one was there, except my friends who were looking at me, puzzled at my actions.  I looked back at the woman who smiled slightly, just a quirk of the lips really, and she lifted one eyebrow in an invitation…question?

            She was gorgeous, sitting there a bit sideways, legs crossed at the ankles.  “What ankles”, I thought and continued to look her over.  “Lips”…had I said it out loud?  Lips, full and generous, red. Red with that favorite shade of lipstick that I like; the only lipstick that I like on a woman’s lips. Her hair was black, black as a raven’s wing, soaking up the light like a black hole, glistening only where the light was strong enough to escape the pull of the darkness. It was thick, and cut in a short flip that looked natural and inviting.  Her almond eyes were dark too, and from where I stood I couldn’t tell how dark, but they seemed to be saying, “Get over here you fool, I have got something to tell you.”  Just one more glance I thought and…”Oh my!” I sucked in my breath, “OH MY!”  My glance slid from head to toe and back again, “OHH MY! and in a yellow dress too. “

...to be continued...

Dread Prevents Action...?

 Have you ever been faced with a chore that you are absolutely dreading, and because of that dread you procrastinate until your dread builds and builds until it turns into anxiety? This is a bit dramatic I know, but this is what I am faced with right now as I come to the end of "Death in the Valley". Since the story has a real life ending and I can't bring myself to gloss over that in the fictionalized account...well, I know what's gonna happen. 

I once attended a writer's conference where Richard Dutcher (GOD'S ARMY, BRIGHAM CITY, STATES OF GRACE) was a keynote speaker. Afterwards, he signed copies of the book God's Army, that he had written from the movie screeplay. As my turn to get my copy signed I asked him if he had trouble writing the real tough scenes in his work (the loss of one elder's testimony, the death of Doc, etc.) and he told me that on the contrary, he reveled in them as it enabled him to experience the very real emotions of his characters who might be fictionalized to you and me, but to him, their creator, it validated his creation. 

I hate sad endings to stories. Even the ones that have a redeeming quality to them. Let me repeat, I hate sad endings to stories. You'll hear me repeat this often if you continue to read my stories and posts. The kicker is that most of MY stories have sad endings or sad endings in the middle before a new beginning (the redemption). There, I have said it, now after that spoiler alert, I still expect you to read my work.

Back to Death in the Valley. I have to finish this story and I am dreading the telling of it. I have procrastinated for over 5 days now, working on other stories, prettying up my social networking sites, etc. But every time I have sat down to the computer, the words describing the ending scenes of this story run through my head demanding to be birthed on to the computer screen. And every time my heart aches and my hands shy away from typing the awful words. 

The story will end, even if it is through teary eyes that I watch the rest of the story unfold. I hope you'll buy it (I am jumping the gun) and read it and appreciate the story even though it is a sad one. It has to be told. It has bugged me for many years.

Personal Essay

Starshine

            The morning rushed up like a steam locomotive, as the sun disk peeked over the Wasatch Mountains.  Golden sunlight rushed across the valley floor, chasing the mountain-shadow eastward at a thousand miles an hour.  A large, dark-haired man gathers up the hand of a young boy and walks him over to a battered old pickup truck.  After opening the dented, scratched door, the man bends down and engulfs the boy’s torso in his work-roughened hands, “Up you go, move on over.” he mock growls at the eager child.  The boy just smiles as he slides across the brown naughahyde, wincing slightly at the chill of the seat, “Where’re we going Uncle Arnie?”

            This day was preceded with a night that has been repeated countless times, but not, I must say, with the same eyes, ears, and brain as then.  I had been given the opportunity to spend a week with Uncle and Aunt, and jumped on it just as, well, just as a duck jumps on a Junebug.  My father was 10,000 miles away easing his divorce pains on a Navy destroyer in the western Pacific Ocean.  I lived with my Mother and little sister and had the man-hunger that all little boys have after a long sentence of exclusive female association.  Trucks, tractors, barns, machinery, irrigation ditches, hedges like castle walls, quail, and pheasants, all have greater attraction than a mother’s tender hugs and caresses.  Scraped knees, frogs, dogs, and bloody scabs, almost always, have more power to attract young male attention than dresses, sweet-smelling hair or soapy baths do.  And Uncle had all those things at his finger tips; he ran Grampa’s orchard.  I don’t remember Grampa being around much in those days, he must have been there, but the vivid memories of time with my mother’s older brother linger until today.  We played tag and catch with Babe, a velvet eared German Shorthaired Pointer bitch (there’s no greater sop for a child’s tears than the floppy soft ears of a dog- - others have verified my long standing belief), waiting for the day to pass.  “Do you want to go irrigating tonight?”  We get our turn at eleven.” Uncle breathes those magic words.  Words that no sane boy could ever turn down.  “What about my bedtime?”  I wonder aloud.  “I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.” he answers.  Hurray, Hurray!  After supper, the pre-daylight savings time day came to its natural end.  My head sinks down, I wonder if sleep would ever come.  Of course it does, as after every typical kid day.  I was afflicted with that inexorable gravitational pull on fatigued eyelids.  As soon as I fell asleep it seemed like Uncle was shaking my shoulder to get up.  “Better take your jacket, it’ll be chilly on the ditch bank”, Uncle gently guides my sleep numb arms into a lender jacket (a loaned heavy shirt of Uncle’s).  We go out of the house, into a pool of porch light that barely holds the dark at bay.  Uncle lifts me into the truck shooing me over so that he has room to slide in behind the wheel.  We drive a short distance to the orchard, past the farmhouse, the ruby trunks of the cherry tree; driving on down by the barn, rolling past row after soldier row of MacIntosh, the Red Delicious and finally making a left turn down between the ordered ranks of the Roman Beauties.  The incandescent yellow light thrown by the pie dish headlights, bores through the thick darkness of these fruitwoods.  Startled, small birds flutter barely out of the path of the truck.  Suddenly, a right leg stabs at the brake pedal, “Whoa! don’t want to get us stuck in the mud.” Uncle reaches out and turns off the headlights.  Immediately the dark gathers around us like my coat, head to toe, wrapped tight around our chests’ tight enough to make breathing a burden, all of a sudden.  He turns the truck engine off and the silence adds its’ load to the darkness.  Suddenly apprehensive, I slide closer to the warmth of Uncle’s large frame, but in vain, as he steps out of the truck and gathers up his shovel and my hand.  “Come on boy, we don’t want the neighbors to take our water.”  And we’re off, gliding through that black velvet darkness, serenaded by the back scratch/fiddle playing insect residents of the orchard.  Five year old legs pump furiously to keep my toes from dragging furrows in the dirt.  Uncle saunters unconcerned (that my legs will surely be worn off right up to my knees) through unseen thickets snagging at my Levi’s, flashing his light here and there, unerringly moving to some pre-determined coordinate in that grid of living applesauce.  Although I now know the magician’s trick of finding your way across a familiar tract of acreage, it was a mystery to me then.  I was wondering what would become of me if somehow my hand became separated from the giant warmth of Uncle’s grip.  Would I wander endlessly through mega-acres (just 40) of Grampa’s kingdom, what would I eat (especially eat!), did anyone even love me anymore (where was my daddy?).  When, of a suddenness, my mind’s perambulations were brought up, just as short as those five year old legs, at the edge of a wet smelling, gurgling dark void.  The warm golden beam of the flashlight struck leaden jewels on the surface of the ditch that had looked so inviting in the daylight.  Now, the shining just seemed to be some malevolent invitation to stay away.  “I’m going over there, and it’s real muddy.  Why don’t you stay right here and I’ll be back in a minute.  OK?” Uncle asks me.  My head does a fair imitation of one those rear car window dogs, describing a side to side, up and down wag/nod, as I stammer out  my nervous agreement, “OK”.  The darkness gathers in around me as that warm spot of light moves off, up the flow of waterway.  I long to be with that small glow of security instead of standing by myself in the night, not knowing where my next meal is coming from.  Restlessly, I shuffle my feet in a small dance of childish fear of things unknown.  The serenade that seemed so great just moments ago, now seemed dirge-like as the reality of my aloneness washes over my slight frame.  I glance around as if I could see the cause of my discomfort through the inky blackness.  For some reason, I glanced up.  “Oh, My GOD!” my childish brain screamed, “Look at all them diamonds in the sky!” The clear night air of Utah Valley magnified the dome of stars that shone so intensely in the absence of Sister Moon.  They put the crystal brilliance of gems to shame that night.  My uneasiness faded away beneath the warmth of icy bright stars, millions of eons away.  The dance of fear turns instead to the primal beat of a dance-step known to every human being born on this planet, if only in the genetic code of their chromosomes.  Head back, mouth opens wide, or even slightly, hands at your sides, left foot steps sideways and right slides to meet the left in a twirl of bewitched circle.  Around and around, counter clockwise, Orion, Pleides, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, North Star..........Orion, Pleides, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, North Star, on and on until you think you may fall down full length on your back, star-struck and mute.  I revel in the wash of starlight that night.  Never before and certainly not since have “i” felt so small.

            My reverie is shattered as the suck and splash of size 12 gum boots intrude,  “Ready for home?” and my slack right arm jerks fishing-line taut as the missing warmth of Uncle Arnie’s big rough hand gathers mine up and heads for that old, battered pickup and home.  My interrupted sleep is quickly resumed as I am tucked into my spare bed nest.  My dreams change from frolicsome dogs and thrown balls to the cold, distant shimmer of stars.  I am changed, and I know that I am.  I will see hundreds of awesome night skies in the years that follow but never again with those five-year-old eyes. 

Michael D. LeFevre ã Copyright  24 April 1995

News

Family, friends and readers, there is news that affects this blog. I have joined with Derek Siddoway in a venture to publish e-books. The company is named UNDAUNTED PUBLISHING. You can find it at http://undauntedauthors.com or undaunted_books on twitter. If you go to the webpage there are two more links to undaunted publishing sites on Pinterest and google+. Check us out, Derek has one book published and on the website to view and buy if the mood strikes you and we all who are involved with the company have books in the works. We are at the intersection of indie and traditional publishing. We are approaching publishing like the process we would like to encounter so, if you have a story that you would like to see published contact us through the webpage it has all of the information to get started. Thanks for checking in to see if I have new stories here. There hasn't been for a while but promise there are many more to come.