Monday, April 30, 2012

Do you know this ancient Egyptian tomb?


 


 
An underworld - in outback Australia


As I take my fiction writing on the road, echoes of ancient Egypt... in Australia?

Do you know this ancient Egyptian tomb?
It’s actually not a tomb at all and it’s not in Egypt, but in the heart of Australia’s outback.
This is an underground dugout in Coober Pedy, outback Australia, opal-mining capital of the world, and also an underworld where people live in homes carved out of the living sandstone to escape the harsh outback climate.

It’s a world away from Egypt, my favourite dreaming place, but as an adventure author, outback Australia has the same sense of deep time for me… and other echoes of ancient Egypt itself.

The feeling of Coober Pedy gets my creative juices flowing – it’s like being back in Egypt... in tombs and passageways on some archaeological adventure with the fictional hero of my novels, Anson Hunter, the alternative Egyptologist.
Now I appreciate how life was for the Egyptian Coptic monk Abuna Daniel who also lived in a man-made cave in my Egyptian adventure thriller novel 'The Smiting Texts' (Abuna becomes an ally of my hero in his investigation of global conspiracy and dangers from the ancient past).


And speaking of conspiracies, we have just come from Woomera, an X-Files style defence town and the world's biggest testing range (the size of England). It’s been dubbed Australia’s Area 51, a place where the dust of an ancient land combusts in the flash of science fiction, rocket firings and UFO sightings.
 Woomera is partly mothballed today, although tests still take place here. It’s also disturbingly deserted with street of empty residences and mysterious buildings. (Nobody can actually own a house here.)  
On a quiet weekend Woomera has a blanket of silence and secrecy spread over it. The place reminded us of the dummy town where Indiana Jones took refuge from an atomic bomb test in that notorious refrigerator scene from The Crystal Skull…


Saturday, April 28, 2012

Book Poster, The Smiting Texts introduces the first in the Egypt adventure series

A different adventure hero and a different kind of adventure


Four adventures - four dangers from Egypt's ancient past.

KINDLE AND PAPERBACK.

Friday, April 20, 2012

“An intellect's version of The Mummy...” says Book Reviewer (The Smiting Texts by Roy Lester Pond).

Let's get back to the source


With the popular fiction hunger for 'death stories' in the form of death games (The Hunger Games) vampires (Twilight series), zombies (The Walking Dead) and the like, and news of the ‘darker’ re-boot of the Mummy movie franchise, I have to accept this critic’s comment with some gratitude.

Even though my Egyptology adventure thriller series - now a quartet - offer a very different take. Mummy schlock it isn't. As an Amazon female reader commented: "I loved the intrigue without horror and it was full of interesting twists and turns. I also really enjoyed the characters and their development." 

Of course all these other death stories are relative beginners in the field.

Ancient Egypt owns death, dissolution magical afterlife and supernatural malevolence expressed in curses and execrations.

Let’s get back to the source.

The Reviewer continues: “Roy Lester Pond provides a sumptuous feast on which to devour multiple strands of Egypt's ancient past and potential future.
Initially set out as an ambiguous investigation by the US Homeland Security into a possible terrorist threat culminating in the recent murder of controversial Egyptologist, Anson Hunter's father - the plot is interspersed with a tale of ancient Egypt. An ancient hunter's fate to recapture the Goddess of devastation and entomb himself with her in order to save Egypt is particularly beautiful and lifts the overall book beyond the normal conspiratorial-action-thriller… a wonderfully clever and original story.” - The Truth About Books, UK

Go to the original source of mysterious excitement and danger at Amazon (Kindle and paperback)

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Hathor Holocaust follows the Smiting Texts in the Egypt fiction series

2nd novel in the Egyptian adventure quartet

(Amazon Kindle)

"The HATHOR HOLOCAUST" second in the series of Ancient Egyptian adventure mystery thrillers by Roy Lester Pond

Can a renegade Egyptologist stop the re-activation of an ancient apocalypse of plague, pestilence and global scorching?

An apocalyptic danger has arisen from the ancient past in Egypt today bringing a threat to the Middle East and also to the West - of plague, pestilence, fiery destruction and global scorching.
Anson Hunter, controversial, alternative Egyptologist, theorist, blogger and phenomenologist is the hero of this historical adventure novel with a rich mythological vein. Followed by Western Intelligence organizations, shadowed by a mysterious androgyne assassin, he must race to avert a crisis in a quest spanning USA, Britain and Egypt. Who is behind the plan to trigger an apocalypse? Neo-religionists, Torchbearers with a dangerous New Age agenda, Christian dispensationalists who are eager to bring on the 'end times' or radical Islamists with a hatred of the West?
In mythology, Ra Egypt's sun god, hurled an execration upon a rebellious humankind and, in a hot rage, despatched the scorching Eye of Ra, a holocaust sun in the form of the goddess Sekhmet, to destroy them. A marauding lioness, her breath spread pestilence and plague and her claws and teeth death as she swept through Egypt in an orgy of killing. Then Ra had second thoughts and halted her apocalypse.
But the execration had been uttered and it was always feared that the inherently unstable agent of destruction - the Female Soul With Two Faces - would one day return to finish off what she had started, cleansing the earth. 

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Lose yourself in ancient Egypt fiction

Egypt, my dreaming place (Medinet Habu Temple)

Lose yourself in a series of investigative adventure novels that "bring Egypt compellingly to life".

The Smiting Texts, followed by The Hathor Holocaust, The Ibis Apocalypse, The Anubis Intervention and Egypt Eyes.
Also The Delta Dilemma.

Lose yourself in ancient Egypt here

I'm a writer who once said "Ancient Egypt is my useless passion!"



Thursday, April 12, 2012

Egypt fiction series investigates 'the First Mystery' - death and the afterlife


My renegade Egyptologist fiction hero blogs on death and afterlife
'Everyone knows that the Egyptians were preoccupied with the afterlife, but they took it even more seriously than many imagine.
Humans, they say, are the only creatures that must live life with the knowledge that one day they’re going to die and our culture was the world of distraction we create around ourselves to shield us from this knowledge. But the Egyptians’ culture did not serve as a mere distraction to the pitiless cruelty of death. Instead their culture came to grips with death in an attempt to overcome its tyranny.
The glowing underworlds of the tombs, the Books of Coming Forth By Day, or the Book of the Dead as they called these religious texts - were the results of government-funded research into the ‘first mystery’- death and the afterlife. The early pyramids were like nationally financed space-shots designed to launch the god-king pharaoh into the hereafter. The Egyptians even had maps showing the routes to the underworld painted on the bases of coffins...'

(Musing of the renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter, hero of my Egypt adventure series)





Egypt fiction series - Amazon Kindle and paperback

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The power of ancient Egypt in fiction

Power... and forbidden power
The monumentality and power of ancient Egypt has a hold on my renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter, as well as the forbidden power and secrets of an endlessly fascinating civilization.

Discover both in the quartet of investigative adventure thrillers (Amazon Kindle and paperback.)

Start here