My ninth book: Raymond's Secret

Raymond's Secret is now released! 

 

Cover by the splendid DrRiptide. 

You can read a short blurb at my blog post here, or go straight to the book's page at Smashwords here. You can also find it at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iBooks.
In a couple of days, the price of the book will be raised to US$2.99, but if you have pre-ordered the book or if you purchase it before the price rise you'll get it for US$0.99.
Thank you to those who pre-ordered the book, and thank you to everyone who buys and reads it.
For the past three years, at the end of December, I have published a Raymond book. I have really enjoyed this tradition, and I hope my readers have too. However, Raymond's Secret is the last Raymond book for the time being – at this point I have no idea if there will be a fourth in the series.

2019 was a bumpy year for this author, with a handful of joys and triumphs and a handful of heartbreaks and miseries. Whatever it was like for you, I wish you a happy transition to the new year, and, in 2020, more joys and triumphs than heartbreaks and miseries.

Peace to you.

The cover for Raymond's Secret

Behold: the cover for Raymond's Secret.

Cover by the splendid DrRiptide. 

I continue to be in awe of the beauty of the covers that DrRiptide makes for me.

Raymond's Secret will be released on 31 December 2018 – though if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, that will be the 30th for you, and websites that are based in the Northern Hemisphere will show the release date as the 30th. 
Pre-orders for Raymond's Secret are now open at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iBooks. You can also view the book's page at Smashwords, though pre-orders won't be available there (but you will be able to buy the book there when it is released). The pre-order price is US$0.99, which is about $1.57 in New Zealand dollars as I type this. However, a couple of days after the book is released the price will go up to US$2.99, so it's worth pre-ordering! 

Some Raymond trivia

The third book in the Raymond series, Raymond's Secret, is scheduled for release at the end of December. If you have been following the series, you might be interested in some trivia pertaining to it. These are details that have not been mentioned in any of the books so far, plus some 'behind the scenes' minutiae.

• Raymond signs himself 'R.D.V.S.': 'Raymond Dimitry Van Stelte'.  

• Raymond speaks three languages: Romanian is his first language, English his second, and he also speaks Italian. 

• Wilson has mentioned that he doesn't know why people call him 'Wilson' instead of 'Toby'. You may notice that the adults in his life — his parents, Sandra, teachers — call him 'Toby', but his peers, enemies, classmates and friends all call him 'Wilson'. The extradiegetic or 'out of universe' reason — also called, fittingly, the Doylist reason! — for this is that I chose the name 'Wilson' for its similarity to 'Watson': Toby Wilson is to Raymond Van Stelte what John Watson is to Sherlock Holmes. As for the intradiegetic, or Watsonian, reason, it is as much a mystery to me as it is to Wilson!

• The first Raymond book was inspired by a wikiHow article titled something like 'How To Act Like A Modern-Day Vampire'. The article itself no longer seems to exist in the form it had when I read it, but this article is close to it. I stumbled across the article late one night, was intrigued that someone would write such an article and that people might be interested in its content; and then started wondering how such a pretence would play out in real life, and why someone would choose to engage in it long-term. Within days, I was writing Raymond. Raymond cites this article as the inspiration for his game; Doylistically, it is the inspiration for Raymond's existence.

• In Raymond, Wilson thinks to himself that vampires are based on the historical figure of Vlad the Impaler (Vlad III of Wallachia) — "that gross guy in Transylvania". This is, in fact, a fallacy: we now know that Bram Stoker, the writer of the seminal novel Dracula, knew very little about Vlad the Impaler: he borrowed his appellation, 'Dracula', which meant 'son of the dragon', and that is quite possibly the only genuine link between Vlad the Impaler and Dracula the vampire. I don't generally like to include misinformation in my stories, but it is a very widespread misconception and I believe that Wilson, not having personally done any research into vampires, would believe it.

• In all the Raymond books, many of the details of school years and classes have been glossed over, for the sake of not bogging down the story or burdening the poor beleaguered author with yet more research into nitty-gritty worldbuilding. I nearly put a disclaimer at the front of the books: something like, The author frankly admits that while some research has been done into certain details contained in this story, very little research into school terms, classes, et cetera, has been done for the purposes of this book, the author deeming it simply too complicated and largely irrelevant for a short novella such as this. The author begs the reader’s indulgence and understanding.  

• As recounted in this blog post, Raymond was written at lightning speed by my usual standards: twenty-one pages in three days. It also preferred to be written in darkness: when I tried to write in daylight, the words would not come.  

• I did not intend to write a sequel to Raymond; I thought it would be a single story. However, less than two weeks after finishing it, I found myself writing Raymond's Nemesis. It took a few weeks to complete, and after it was finished, I was sure that there would be no further Raymond stories ... but, a few months later, I was writing Raymond's Secret. The latter is the longest and most complex of the Raymond stories thus far, and it took two years to finish.

Pre-orders for Raymond's Secret are now open at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iBooks. You can also view the book's page at Smashwords, though pre-orders won't be available there (but you will be able to buy the book there when it is released). The pre-order price is US$0.99, which is about $1.57 in New Zealand dollars as I type this. However, a couple of days after the book is released the price will go up to US$2.99, so it's worth pre-ordering!

Pre-order for Raymond's Secret

Raymond's Secret, the third book in the Raymond series, is now available for pre-order!
Here is a blurb.

–––––

Toby Wilson’s best friends from school, Callum and George, are starting to become more and more worried about Wilson’s other friend and fellow student: the polite, mysterious Raymond. Is Raymond just foreign and a bit weird, or is he genuinely dangerous? If he is genuinely dangerous, would knowing the reason why be more dangerous than not knowing it? Wilson struggles to allay his friends’ fears without lying to them or betraying Raymond; and then another problem appears: Raymond has a stalker. And she even knows the contents of his lunchbox. Wilson finds that he needs to learn to emulate Raymond’s poise and acting ability very quickly – preferably without going mad, hurting any of his friends, or getting into huge amounts of trouble that would be extremely difficult to explain to adults.
Raymond’s secret threatens to explode in his face – and take Wilson, Callum, and George with it – in this story, the third in the ‘Raymond’ series, about the ‘sort-of vampire’ and his long-suffering friend Wilson.

–––––

For the past two years I have published a Raymond book at the end of December, as an end-of-year treat for my readers. Raymond's Secret is scheduled for publication on the same date this year: 31 December 2019 – though if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, that will be the 30th for you, and websites that are based in the Northern Hemisphere will show the release date as the 30th.

I invite you to pre-order Raymond's Secret so that you can get it the moment it is released, and at a special pre-order price.
If you're not familiar with pre-orders, they are quite simple: you can order the book in advance, but you will not be charged until the day the book is released.
Pre-orders are open now at Barnes & Noble and Kobo, and should soon be available at iBooks. You can also view the book's page at Smashwords, though pre-orders won't be available there (but you will be able to buy the book there when it is released). The pre-order price is US$0.99, which is about $1.57 in New Zealand dollars as I type this. However, a couple of days after the book is released the price will go up to US$2.99, so it's worth pre-ordering!

The cover is to be revealed in November.

In which G. Wulfing experiences a Winter

As I have said before, I would dearly love to pretend that I do not have a life outside of my writing; but even my most eager attempts at self-delusion fail in the face of bitter and annoying reality. 
And reality is currently exceptionally bitter and annoying: globally speaking, every month seems to bring a fresh wave of wickedness and disaster. It is hard to write when the world is on fire and the apocalypse looks disturbingly near. Personally speaking, for the past three years, and this year especially, I have been dealing with some foes that had lain hidden, dormant, or quietly grumbling, for many years, and which finally woke and required open confrontation and vanquishment; in addition, some massive changes and losses, including a few heartbreaks; and the effort of fighting all of these battles and coping with all of these tectonic shifts has left me emotionally exhausted.
Combined, all these things have pummelled my ability to write. — Or, at least, to write anything publishable. I am in a 'Winter of my creativity'. 
It is not pleasant. Writers do not like to not be writing.
I had been hoping to publish two books this year. Instead, I have ended up doing a post-publication edit (yes, really!) of The Enemy Soulmate. Nonetheless, I will soon be preparing Raymond's Secret, the third book in the Raymond series, for publication in December; so I should manage to publish one book, and one is better than none. Writing The Enemy Soulmate proved that I cannot write to a deadline (and the fact that I am editing that book again, after publishing it, is simply further proof); so pushing myself to finish another book this year as planned would simply result in stress and a total lack of productivity. I must accept the Winter. I will not beat myself up for not publishing two books; I will not worry about it. I will simply focus on doing what I need to do in the other aspects of my life, so that when my creativity resurfaces I will have everything else under control and thus can make full use of it. 
The world goes through phases, as do individuals. If this is a bad phase in world history, it will pass and we will all do our best to survive it. If the end of the world really is nigh, we will not survive it anyway, so panicking is pointless. 
In the so-very-apt words of others: keep breathing. Keep calm, and carry on. Don't panic.

Poem: O Cat!

O Cat! 

17 March, 2011.

O Cat!
Thou purring portion of magnificence!
How sleekly, softly perfect thy fur;
How divinely, deeply beautiful thine eyes,
Those pools of the universe in which God Himself
Put something of His majesty.
Thou the savage, death-dealing hunter;
Thou the serene, beauteous demi-god.
Surely, of all creatures, good and evil is mixed most strangely
And most purely in thee.
Thou art at once
God's perfect creation
And His curse.
And here, purring in my lap, 
Thou art
My adored pet
And my ruler.

Poem: When The World Is On Fire

When The World Is On Fire


15 May, 2019. 



A unicorn ran through the world,
Through fields, through rivers,
Over mountains and hills.
It danced through streams, purifying the water,
And passed through forests like a dream, leaving perfume and sweet thoughts
For all who were blessed with a glimpse of it.
The goodness of the unicorn, its gentleness and strength,
Made the world a better place,
And the unicorn knew that people led better lives
Because of the unicorn.
And the unicorn laughed.


One day the Spring was less joyful than usual.
One day the Summer was too hot.
One day the Autumn seemed too bitter.
One day Winter came and never seemed to leave.


The skies never brightened with the Spring.
In Summer, the forests caught fire.
The streams flowed brown, then turned bitter,
And then the fish started to die.


Grass withered and did not grow back.
Rain did not fall — or it fell and flooded.
Plants shrivelled. Animals vanished.
The herds were thinner. The flocks were smaller.
The bears starved. The wolves stopped howling.


And the unicorn wept.


But still the unicorn danced in the streams,
Danced on the mountaintops,
Breathed on the leaves to make them grow greener,
And did all the good a unicorn can do.
Still the unicorn ran through the world.


Then war came.
People screamed.
People died.
Tyrants poisoned the world,
As though they thought they had the right to do so;
As though they thought their cruelty would never affect them.
Suffering flowed like a river,
Glutted with unimaginable evils.
The unicorn did not understand how this could have come to pass.


The unicorn sobbed, and hung its head.


But still it kept running,
Trying to find some streams to purify,
Trying to dance when every whisper of the breeze brought the scent of new evils,
And more pain.


The clouds became darker — darker than the unicorn had ever seen them.
The sounds of war became louder and more horrifying.
The smell, the smell — the stench was overwhelming.
The unicorn choked.


The screams became more numerous. More, and more, and more.
So many. Too many.
The whole world was screaming.
The whole world was on fire.
The seas were boiling, animals dying; 
Flames licked at the unicorn’s hooves.
Birds dropped from the sky —
Lifeless bundles of feathers with closed eyes and silent throats. 
All the green in the world was blackened with blight.
Everything good that had ever existed —
Everything that the unicorn could remember as being good or beautiful —
Seemed to be spoiled, tortured, ruined.


And the unicorn stumbled.
Knees bending, legs weakening,
Strength and grace flowing away and dissipating
Like the clean rivers that had turned to toxic steam.
What is the point of a unicorn
When the world is ending?


How can I bless the world,
Thought the unicorn,
When what it really needs is saving?


And how can I save it
When it is beyond my power to save?


I was not meant to save the world.
I am meant to inspire it, not save it.
But when the world is ending,
What good is inspiration?
What good are sweet air and refreshing dreams
When all the air is poisoned and sleep is a luxury?


The unicorn looked around.
Nowhere was safe.
Nothing was untouched by the blight, or unspoiled by cruelty.


Except me, thought the unicorn,
Looking down at its white legs 
With their satin hide and silky feathering.
I am still untouched.
I still desire good things. I still have a pure heart. I am unspoilt by cruelty.
I am the only place in this world where goodness still reigns.


I can lie down and die here,
And relinquish the last good thing in this world.
Or I can keep moving.
I can run through this miserable, ruined place
And be the last good thing on this planet.


The screams tear my heart to pieces.
My eyes burn from crying as much as they burn from the poisonous fumes.
Every innocent creature that suffers
I mourn.
And my jaw hurts from grinding my teeth because I cannot save them.


But if I am the last good thing on this planet,
I will not let myself die.
I may have no hope for this world,
But if I lie down and die,
I will take away the last beautiful thing from this world,
And I will not be the one to do that.


So the unicorn stood.
Its legs trembled.
Its ears drooped.
Its tail dragged in the ash.


But it lifted its head.
And it started walking.
Because as long as there is one unicorn left on this planet,
The world is not completely evil.