roh morgon

~ musings of a moonlight writer

Yay! It’s fight time! Thanks to J. C. over at The Fighter Writer who’s hosting the Fight! Fight! Fight! BLOGFEST! Be sure to visit her site and check out the other fighters in the ring.

I love fight scenes. I’ve been mulling over what to enter for this blogfest–I’d hoped to write something new, but just don’t have the time. Since I’ve featured a few excerpts/alternative scenes from Watcher lately, I’ve decided to give you all a taste of something a little different.

This is from the Forbidden Doorways young adult series I’m working on. The characters are Mason, a rather nasty vampire, and Crit, his reluctant shapeshifter partner.

Enjoy…

~~~~~~~~~

“Crit, they’ll be waking soon and we are completely unprepared. Keep a watch over them ‘til I get back.”

Groaning, I nod again. I hate being there when newborns first wake up, especially if Mason’s not. But I can generally tell when it’s useless to argue with him, and this is one of those times.

He walks to the door and looks back at me.

“Don’t leave them alone or they may turn on one another. You need to be in there, now, in case they wake early.” He pauses. “And stay out of their teeth.”

Giving him a mock salute, I head to the back room as he slips through the alley door.

~~~

The darkness of the small room has an eerie feel to it. I turn the lock on the outside of the door as I walk in, then close it behind me. My leg bumps the table. I grope its surface for the flashlight and, finding it, flip it on. The beam bounces around the room, coming to rest on the graves.

Good. There’s no sign of movement yet.

Turning, I kick the floor bolt closed at the bottom of door and set the flashlight back on the table.

I shift, tissues squirming, compressing, and the bones click into place. The inky feathers feel so weird as they burst through my skin, much weirder than fur. A big shudder settles them into place, all but one that’s poking me, and I reach under a black wing with my beak and smooth it out. A second shake and I push up into the air to hover at the top of the door next to the upper latch. Wrapping a foot around the knob, I tug it and it falls into place. I drift down, then circle back up to the perch anchored into the wall near the ceiling and settle onto it to wait.

Mason better get back here soon. He should’ve let me round up dinner, like I usually do. One vamp wakening I can handle, but I don’t know about two, especially a couple. I dunno why he decided to do this– a couple is always more difficult to deal with than two people who didn’t know each other.

Sounds from below interrupt my musings and I fix an eye on the graves. Bits of soil are starting to tumble down the mound closest to the wall. Brent.

Aww, crap.

A hand shoots through the earth, startling me, and waves around in the air, then is followed by the other. They drop, and feeling the soil around them, start clawing it away as fast as possible. Brent’s torso bursts through the surface and he sits up. A squawk escapes me as I nearly fall off my perch. This stuff still creeps me out, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. Blinking, he brushes the dirt from his face and looks down at the lower half of his body that is still buried.

“Uhhh…” Black eyes wide, he panics and launches himself out of the grave. He hits the door and starts pounding on it, still making the ‘uh’ sound. After several minutes he spots the doorknob, grabs it and pulls. He keeps pulling, jerking it back and forth, but isn’t thinking enough to try and turn it. He goes back to pounding, then switches to yanking.

Lame brain in life, he’s even lamer in death.

He finally stops and looks around the room, then starts circling it mindlessly, round and round, like an animal in a cage. Which basically he is. Wonder if his brain is going to kick in at all.

A sound from the middle of the floor snatches my attention away from Brent.

Uh oh.

The soil moves and goes still for a moment, then Kelly explodes out of the mound. Brent shrieks and tries to hide in a corner as Kelly hits the door, hard. She pounds twice, grabs the knob, and gives it a single tug before trying to turn it.

Oh, bad sign. They don’t usually remember how to work doorknobs right outta the hole.

She looks closer at it, then notices the latch at the bottom of the door and starts kicking it.

No problem with her mind, which could be a big problem for us. We count on them being zombied when they first wake–it’s easier to control them. It usually takes a few days before they start to think again.

Kelly stops kicking and looks around the room. She zeroes in on Brent, who’s nose-first in the corner stepping back and forth, still making that ‘uh’ sound. In a flash she crosses the room, grabs his hair and yanks his head back.

He screams and shoves off the wall against her just as she’s opening her mouth to bite him. They both go down into the dirt, and I’m on them, beating their faces with my wings in an effort to distract them from one another.

I squawk as one them gets hold of my tail feathers and barely manage to pull myself free. I fly back up to my perch as Brent, still lying in the dirt, examines the feathers. Kelly rolls away from him then turns, seizes his arm and sinks her fangs into it. I dive down into her face and she snarls and grabs at me as I flap away.

But I’m not fast enough. She catches my wingtip and yanks me down. I hit the ground shifting and she lets go. Her surprised expression is quickly replaced by that of bloodlust at the sight of my human form. I barely shift into the wolf in time to leap to the other side of the room.

But now I’ve got Brent’s attention as well, and as the bloodlust flares in his eyes, I realize I’m in big trouble. I double-shift back to the raven and hurl myself into the air just as they both launch at me. I feel the brush of fingertips as I push higher. With great relief I settle back onto the perch. Beak open, I pant from the efforts of the last several minutes as I watch them circle below me.

Kelly studies me a moment, then suddenly springs straight up and grabs the perch. It snaps off from the wall as I take wing and she smiles at me in triumph.

This sucks. I can only stay in the air in this small of an area for so long.

A tap from outside the door is the best thing I’ve heard in awhile and I start cawing up a storm. Mason unlocks the door, then slams into it. The latches I’d installed tear through the wood as the door bursts inward and I hightail it out into the warehouse and land.

“STOP!” Mason roars.

I listen with satisfaction as first one body hits a wall, then the other. Shifting into the wolf, I race back into the room.

~~~~~~~~~

© 2010 Roh Morgon. All rights reserved.

I had decided not to commit to this blogfest, especially in light of the fact that I missed the Weather Blogfest and barely made it to the Rainy Day Blogfest (you can check out my entry here if you missed it).

But then this scene came flooding into my head, and I had to write it.

When ya gotta write, ya gotta write.

So here’s my entry for Dawn Ember’s Word Paint Blogfest – be sure to visit her site to read the other entries.

This is an alternate scene from my WIP, Watcher, the story of Sunny Martin and her struggles to survive in a personal hell from which she cannot escape.

Hope it’s been a little while since you had breakfast (or lunch).

~~~~~~~~~

A red river tumbles over me, creating eddies around the angles of my body. I lift my head from the crimson flow, gasping, choking, as I struggle to escape its sticky clutches. My arms claw the air in vain, and when I open my eyes, all I can see is a wall of blood bearing down on me. As it crushes me, shoving me deeper and deeper into the thick torrent, I scream.

I’m still screaming as I climb from the coma-like sleep that the sun forces upon me every morning. The horror coursing through me is nothing compared to the hunger burning through my veins. It rips through my belly into my throat, its fiery need sending waves of agony into my very soul.

Nicolas appears next to the bed, concern etching his brow.

“Oh, Nicolas! What’s happening to me?!” I cry as I fling myself into his arms.

“Sshh, my sweet. It is just a blooddream.” He strokes my hair, as though calming a frightened horse. My body responds, as it always does to him, and begins to relax.

He eases me back, his eyes searching mine, and asks, “Haven’t you had them before?”

“No,” I whisper. “Never.”

His silence tells me this is unusual, and I can visualize the checklist in his head as he adds another item to the list of my oddities.

The hunger flashes through me, reminding me that it will never let me go. I press myself tight against his chest, and as he wraps his arms around me, I know he’ll never let me go, either.

It’s a heavy price for his love, and sometimes I wonder how long I can pay it.

~~~~~~~~~

© 2010 Roh Morgon. All rights reserved.

(special note - today is a nine-day for those who care about such things!)

It’s kinda hard to think about rain right now. It’s over 100° F  outside and temps are expected to reach 103° by this evening. Not a cloud in the sky…

But today is the Rainy Day Blogfest, hosted by Christine at The Writer’s Hole, so to help remember what it’s like to be cool and damp, I’m featuring a short excerpt from my WIP Watcher. We join Sunny just after she’s had ‘dinner’ and is feeling content for a change.

To help set the mood, here’s a quiet little piano tune by Justin St. Charles and Nine Inch Nails:

It starts to sprinkle as I run along the shoreline of Lake Cachuma. I don’t care. Being wet doesn’t bother me and neither does the cold. In fact, sometimes I find the cold invigorating. Warmth, on the other hand, is quite pleasurable, especially on the inside after a hot meal. Warm days are great too, if I can protect my skin from the direct sun, which isn’t easy. People look at you funny when you’re wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck and gloves and it’s 90 degrees outside.

Jogging back to the BMW, I catch the scent of wild pig and veer off to follow it. Pigs are tough to kill because they’re so low to the ground and their barrel-shaped bodies are difficult to grip. Their necks are short and stout – breaking them is not very feasible. And they have tusks, right near my target area. I did kill one once, though, a young adult, and I thoroughly enjoyed his buttery-sweet blood.

Scent trails are easier to follow when the weather’s damp. I detect several now and slow as the scents become stronger. Weaving through the bushes, I freeze – foraging along a marshy area are three adult females and six babies. I watch for a moment, then melt into the brush.

That is one thing I will not do. I will not kill mothers or babies – of any species.

Retracing my steps, I pick up my trail again and continue on to the car. Between the deer and my twenty-mile run, I’m finally relaxed, and I smile from the sheer joy of being in the woods.

The sprinkling has turned to rain, and I stop and lift my face to the sky. I rejoice as the drops hit and trail down my cheeks, and open my mouth to see if I can feel them on the inside as well. Rain dances across the leaves and rocks in a liquid ballet, and I listen as each drop makes its own music, creating a soft woodland symphony.

Laughing, I shake my head, flinging water off my hair to add to the concert, and take off running again.

© 2010 Roh Morgon. All rights reserved.

~~~~~~~~~

looking for this?

click here for enrollment info!

Blogfests!

I’ve decided that I really like them.

They give me a chance to visit other blogs and discover new writers that I enjoy.

And they force me to write–something short and sweet, something without the emotional investment and time commitment of a novel.

Blogfests allow me to play in my WIP if I’m in the mood, by either reprinting a scene already written, or creating a side story for a minor character.

But they also give me the freedom to write about something completely different, a way to step foot into another world. And if it’s a world I find intriguing once I’m in it, I may explore it more fully in future works.

So in honor of the blogfest, which in reality is a form of writing exercise, I’m going to host my first one.

In fact, I’m not only hosting one, I’m going to jump in with both feet and host TWO.

The first one is in honor of the month of September, the month when the heat of summer fades and the cool, crisp air of fall begins to creep in.

It’s also the month many schools start their year after summer break (although some jump the gun and start in August).

I’m calling it:

September’s Back-to-School Daze Blogfest

Your assignment?

Write a scene that takes place on a campus. It can be in a classroom, on the football field, in a locker room… (grin – but nothing explicit, please!) – just as long as the setting is on school grounds.

That’s it. Keep it short – 999 words is a nice length, but if you go a LITTLE over, I won’t slap your knuckles with a ruler.

AND – if you’re late to class, I won’t send you to the principal’s office. In honor of those of us who are always tardy, I’m running the blogfest through Saturday, September 18 to give everyone a chance to contribute and time to visit all the blogs. However, you must sign up on or before the blogfest date of September 15.

Oh, and please spread the word – copy the banner at the top to paste on your blog and link back to this page so that visitors can read the other entries. I’m sure there are some GREAT school stories out there!

I also ask that you leave comments on the blogs you visit. Let the writers know their works are being read – they’ll appreciate the time you take to acknowledge their efforts.

September’s Back-to-School Daze Blogfest date: Wednesday, September 15, 2010.

You can sign up with the Mr. Linky thingy below.

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But – before you go any further, make note of my second blogfest.

It’s taking place on October 23, 2010, and is called:

October’s Monster Mash Blogfest

The title should tell you all you need to know for now, so mark your calendar – I’ll announce more about it as we get a little closer to the date.

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That said, here’s the sign-up for September’s Back to School Daze Blogfest:

First of all, I want to mention a couple of contests that are going on right now.

Today is the last day for the 100 Followers Contest over at  Critique This WIP. Prizes are chapter critiques by the gang over there – click on the link now to enter!

Roni, of Fiction Groupie, and Julie, of  Diary of an Unpublished Wanna-Be Writer, are hosting Roni and Julie’s Totally Epic Summer Contest.  They’ve been interviewing authors and agents all week, and are offering a variety of fabulous prizes, including books, critiques, and query opportunities. Hurry on over there to enter – contest deadline is Sunday, August 8.

And now, to introduce you to a new blogger!

Melanie Smith is a member of the Fresno Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers and a dear friend of mine. She’s also an editor and a word-crafter par excellence!

Mellie’ new blog is called Thursday-ish. Why? In her words:

“Why Thursday, you ask? Monday and Tuesday are very busy for me.  Wednesday is too finely balanced in the middle of the week, and Friday is busy again, with my mind on other things. Thursday, though, is like an eddy of time in my busy life.  It’s the day I’m most likely to spend with a friend, or painting a watercolor, or writing.  I’m not all that good at deadlines, however, so I’m only promising Thursday-ISH.  It might be later, or I may feel perfectly balanced and write something brilliant on Wednesday.  One never knows…”

So join me in welcoming her, and hop on over to see what she says about her love affair…with words.

Tessa’s got another fun blog event going on! It’s a bloghop to help readers and writers introduce themselves. This is what Tessa says about it:

The Life Fantastic

Do you write fantasy stories/novels (any subgenre welcome)? Do you read/review fantasy books?  Maybe you create fantasy art?  Join the list (at the bottom of this post) and meet other like-minded creatures of the web!
~~~~~~~~~

Here’s my bit:

Paranormal. Dark Fantasy. Swords and Sorcerers. Dragons and Mythical Lands. With a sprinkling of Aliens and Other Worlds.

That’s what I love to read, and what I love to write.

I just finished reading NYT bestseller Shiver and its sequel, Linger, by Maggie Stiefvater. OMG – Stephanie Meyer, move over. New werewolves have come to town, and they’re…disturbing. Heartbreaking. Wonderful in that wolfish sort of way.  How good is all this? Linger was just released in the US. It hit NUMBER 1 on the NYT bestseller list its first week!

Check out Maggie’s website. She has two cool book trailer videos that she created and wrote the music for. They make me all shivery, just like the books. I’ll be doing a more extensive review of the Wolves of Mercy Falls series in the near future, but for now, I only have 3 words: Go. Read. Them.

OK – this blog is supposed to be about visitors getting acquainted with me. Hmm…I hate to reinvent the wheel, so if you want to know a bit about me, hit these two links:

bio

11 things about me (skip past the award stuff to get to the list)

And if you want to know what I write, here’s a taste:

The Monster’s Growl (this is a piece about a minor character from my main WIP, Watcher. He was also recently featured in Tessa’s Blogfest of Death).

I have several excerpts from Watcher posted, as well as one from my MG short story, Fur Before Feathers. You can check them out in the links at the left under “this site.”

That’s it for now. See ya around in the blogosphere.
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~~~~~~~~~

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Also – I just discovered I’m signed up for Lisa’s blog hop as well. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but I do recall Mr. Linky and I having a knock-down drag-out fight when I signed up on Tessa’s…so without further ado, here’s Lisa’s bloghop info:

Well, my first contest is officially over!

Roh’s Character Contest #1 has not one, but two winners!

The Random Drawing – all this required is that the entrant comment on the Character Contest post. That’s it. Pretty simple. A few of the entrants also participated in the writing contest and received a bonus entry in the random drawing if their writing piece met a special word count criteria (their word count was a multiple of nine). Prize: an e-copy of the Nebula Award-winning novella The Unicorn Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas.

The name of each commenter was dutifully written on a ticket and placed into The Official Random Drawing Contest Bin (aka as the red tupperware bowl).

To the tune of Queen’s We Are the Champions, my Very Patient Husband (VPH) drew the winning name, which I will reveal in a few moments.

The Writing Contest – the requirements were simple. The goal was to write about your favorite character and convince readers to buy the book. Inclusion of the character name, title, and author, along with a limit of 198 words or less, were the only guidelines. Prize: a new softcover copy of Suzy McKee Charnas’ The Vampire Tapestry, along with a $10 gift card to either Borders or Barnes & Noble.

Our official judge was a fellow writer from the Fresno Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers group. Melanie Smith, affectionately known as Mellie, is a free-lance editor and a friend of mine. When I asked for her help in judging the entries, she was thrilled to do so.

The entries were numbered and sent to her, so she had no idea who the various authors were.  I felt this was important to remove any possibility of bias. Submissions were judged on grammar, punctuation, word craft, and strength of argument. (many thanks, Mellie!)

So, without further ado, here are the contest winners:

(drum roll, please!)

Winner of the Random Drawing

Ryan, aka R. Garrett Wilson

Ryan is a member of the Fresno Sci-Fi & Fantasy Writers group. His short story, Meeting the Bakrra, will be appearing in our group anthology, I Dreamed a Crooked Dream, to be published this fall. Ryan’s blog is full of introspection and information that pertains to writing (and babies – he’s a new daddy). I’m sure he’d welcome a visit.

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Winner of the Writing Contest

Tessa of Tessa’s Blurb

Tessa recently hosted The Blogfest of Death, in which participants portrayed a death scene from either a WIP or something entirely new. Her blog is fun – and she has cool Haiku riddles, too. Be sure to check it out!

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In addition to the prizes mentioned, I’ve created a nifty little award to add to the winners’ blogs.

Of course, it’s obvious by this that I should confine my creative interests to writing and leave artwork to those who can actually do it…

Anyhow, congratulations to our winners!

Character Contest #2 will be taking place this fall – stay tuned to this blog.

I leave you with a final note…today is a nine-day! (7/26/2010: 7+2+6+2+0+1+0=18; 1+8=9)

Well, due to some unusual circumstances, I was unable to post my contribution to Tessa’s Blogfest of Death yesterday. But it was too cool of a ‘fest to pass up, so here’s my entry, albeit just a tad late. This is an alternate scene to one in my current WIP:

~~~~~~~~~

“Are you ready?” Janos lifts a corner of his lip, a sneer accenting the demonic hunger shining through crimson eyes. His thick blond ponytail drags across the back of his broad shoulders as he turns his head to look at me. The trembling young woman hugs herself as she settles deeper into the couch, away from where he stands over her, like a golden lion looming above his prey.

Standing between the two burly bouncers, I try to wrench free, but the steel fists trapping my arms only grow tighter. I pause, panting in fury, then lunge at the shorter guard, my teeth bared and reaching for his throat. A hand clamps around the back of my neck and lifts me off the ground. Cold breath against my ear sends icicles of fear down my spine.

“Ahh-ahh-ahh, Steven. Not too rough. We can’t damage our little traitor–remember?” Janos warns in his silky growl.

“Traitor?!” I spat as my feet meet the ground. “Me, the traitor? You’re the traitor, you and Éva and the others. Nicolas is–”

“Nicolas is no longer here, or haven’t you noticed?” Janos snarls. “And that’s your fault, you ball-busting bitch. Someone had to step in to run things when you left him unmanned and holed-up in his estate. But then, that was your plan all along, wasn’t it? Seduce and distract him to keep him from noticing the enemy incursions into our territory.”

He steps toward me, hatred blazing out of those red eyes. His expression shifts as he reaches out to smooth back my hair and I tense, still immobilized by the hand gripping my neck. The lust blossoming on Janos’ face is far more frightening than the hate, and I cringe as his hand moves down my cheek. It lingers a moment, tracing the silvery scars it finds there, then trails down to caress my breasts. I fight the impulse to struggle, knowing it will trigger him, but I can’t help myself. He growls and moves, lighting-quick, and as his icy lips touch my jaw, a roar rips from my throat. My teeth snap on empty air as he jerks back and grins.

“Oh, little kitten. You would be so much fun. Perhaps I can persuade Éva to let me have you for awhile before she rips off your head.” He turns and saunters back over to the terrified woman on the couch.

“Now, where were we? Oh, yes…dinner. Come, my sweet. I have something special for you.” Janos reaches out to brush her dark hair back from a face that looks disturbingly like my own. Her blue eyes glance at mine, unable to disguise her fear, as his hand drifts down to wait, empty, for hers. Quivering, she places her hand in his and he guides her to a stand.

“Unfortunately, sweet thing, I’m all out of Nicolas’ special ‘liqueur’, so I’m afraid this will be much more pleasant for me than for you.” A soft whimper escapes her lips as he draws her close. The hunger flaring anew in his eyes, he tips his head and smiles at me. His eyes stay locked on mine as he slowly turns her around, and with her back to him now, he wraps one arm around her waist. He yanks her tight against him and she cries out again, louder this time. Her ineffective thrashing to escape only intensifies the excitement animating his face as he breathes into her hair and growls. The thugs, momentarily distracted by the macabre performance, tighten their grip on me when I take advantage and try to squirm free.

“You son-of-a-bitch…is this really necessary?” I snarl as numbing pain spreads up and down my arms from the vise-like holds.

“Don’t tell me you have Nicolas’ weakness for such as this.” Janos leans back and combs his fingers through the dark strands. “I’ve always thought his efforts to make it pleasurable for them were a waste. I mean, what’s the point? And his edict against killing them? That’s against our very nature. We are, after all, the superior species, you and I.”

“We are nothing alike. What you are is despicable, worse than any animal. There’s nothing superior about cruelty and murder.”

Janos laughs, the rumble in his chest ominous, then one-handed, gathers the woman’s hair and drapes it over her shoulder. I swallow at the sight of her bared throat, and Janos laughs again at my discomfort as I meet his gaze once more. Still staring at me, he lowers his face to that porcelain flesh and nuzzles the softness there. He groans, then wraps his free arm around the woman’s breasts and crushes her to him. Unable to look away, I watch, the crimson veil dropping over my vision and hunger beginning to boil in my veins. He opens his mouth and slowly sinks his fangs into her throat.

She shrieks, but he only clamps her tighter to him as he begins to draw, one mouthful after another. Disgust with his brutality rivals the desire in me to feast alongside him, and again I attempt to break free, to leave this room, to do anything but be a witness to the horror unfolding in front of me. But I might as well try to bend iron. Her screams fade to low moans as he drains the life from her, one swallow at a time. I shut my eyes to the sight of her blood trailing down from his lips, blood that is fueling my own raging hunger, but I can’t block the smell, nor the sounds of his feeding.

She gasps, and gasps again. My eyes fly open of their own accord to see her limp body hanging from his teeth and arms. Her final sigh is accompanied by his groan of triumph, and the air in the room electrifies as he drops her, throws his head back and looses a roar that shakes the very walls. He roars again, then snaps his head around to stare at me. The crimson in his irises and pupils is gone, replaced by a white so bright it nearly glows.

A shockwave of power batters me and my knees weaken as I nearly collapse from it. The bouncers waver as well, their grips relaxing as they take in their maker’s energy overflow. Reeling, I slip free of their grasps to turn and dive headfirst through the window, accompanied by shards of glass. I twist to land on my feet and hear a sound at the broken third-story window. As I leap into a run, Janos’ words drift out above me.

“Let her go. We’ve delivered our message.”

Outrage at their Game-playing fuels my feet, and as I blur towards my car, a snarl tears from my throat.

I will pay you back, you bastard, for betraying Nicolas, and for this poor girl’s unnecessary death, hers and the countless others before and after. And when I’m done with you, you’ll wish you were mortal and will beg me for a mortal’s end.

~~~~~~~~~

© 2010 by Roh Morgon. All rights reserved.

I just found out about a contest being hosted by a new follower of my blog, Bekah at Bekah’s Stories.  It’s called the Worst. Query. Ever. Write IT! The entries are hilarious – you should check them out. I had a lot of fun writing mine, which was totally off the top of my head. If you’re feeling a little blocked or frustrated, participating in this exercise may unlock your muse and help bring a little humor into your day. Contest deadline: August 1, 2010

Another interesting blog event, hosted by Tessa at Tessa’s Blurb, is called The Blogfest of Death:

The title alone got my attention. Here’s what it’s about (as quoted from her blog):

Kill someone.

(a fictional someone, pretty please)

To learn more (and have an excuse to off someone as a writing exercise), visit Tessa’s blog. Blogfest date: Sunday, July 18, 2010.

And don’t forget, the deadline for my Character Contest #1 is fast approaching