An author's visual think-piece |
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Her Virtual Field Trip had turned into catastrophe and as the only Egyptologist, Sage felt responsible for their safety
A group led by a female Egyptologist dares a cyber nightmare |
‘VIRTUAL ETERNITY EGYPT’ – A journey through ancient
Egypt’s underworld - shocking reality, or
deadly Virtual Reality?
Eight very different people are chosen to road test ‘VIRTUAL
ETERNITY’, an ancient Egyptian virtual reality simulator housed in a complex on
the estate of tech billionaire Brandon Viking, a lifelong lover of Egypt’s past.
Then, shockingly, a journeyer dies... really dies, it seems.
They are in a race against time and a struggle against the
guardians and monsters of the underworld as well as against each other.
Enthralling action adventure fiction that hits the ground
running.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
The Osiris Seed Mummy. Fear that grows
AMAZON KINDLE |
Fear, murder and mythology in an enthralling novella.
A mysterious grain mummy is discovered buried in the desert
outside a remote Egyptian oasis.
Its finder, Gaia, a young historical climatologist, dreams of
saving the planet.
But what has she released into the world? Death strikes and fear
grows as a violent sandstorm traps the archaeology team and throws a heavy
responsibility on her admirer, young American archaeologist Bradley, second in charge
of the project.
Could this be the revenge of the resurrection god against climate
change and the destruction of our green planet?
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
WATCHED BY THE POPE, two investigators examine the Vatican's Egyptian obelisk...
Egyptian obelisk, St Peter’s Square, The
Vatican
(Excerpt
from The Obelisk Prophecy - our investigators, Egyptologist/Museum
curator Jennefer and Antiquities policeman, Jon, examine the Vatican
obelisk)
Flocks
of believers, and the questioning, descended like pigeons on St Peter’s Square.
Many
visitors were fearful, Jennefer noted, casting anxious eyes at the clouds of
dust up above.
This
was the Vatican, yet it put her in mind of Vesuvian Pompeii, the sky laden with
disaster.
Jennefer
caught up with her investigative partner who was busy circling the Vatican’s
four thousand year old Egyptian obelisk that stood mounted on bronze lions and
rose eighty-three feet into the dusty sky.
“What
are you doing?” she said.
“I’m
trying to tell the time.”
Jon
followed a curve of pale travertine blocks set in the cobblestones like the hub
of a wheel that fanned out in radiating lines.
“You
have a watch, don’t you?” she said.
“We’re
standing on one. This square is actually a vast sundial, the obelisk acting as
the giant gnomon casting a shadow.” He stopped. “Even with this dust, I can
tell it’s almost midday. Or perhaps midnight.”
“Midnight?”
“Midnight?”
“For
the world, that is. Ironic that an ancient Egyptian obelisk is counting down
the days to the end of civilization.”
She’d
forgotten about the square’s role as a sundial, concentrating on the obelisk’s
ancient past rather than on its present utility. It belonged to an unknown
pharaoh from around the fifth dynasty, she recalled, and had travelled a great
deal before its arrival here.
“I’ll
tell you something else that’s ironic,” Jon said. “This circle around the shaft
of the obelisk is a symbolic vagina. Those in the know are amused that there’s
an act of copulation going on right in the heart of celibate city.” He pointed
to the Pope’s balcony. “The Pope looks beatifically over it every time he
addresses the throng from up there.”
She
frowned.
They
were trying to crack a code to stop a world calamity and he was cracking jokes.
But
it was more than that. She felt uneasy to think that they were both standing on
a marker of time inexorably measuring the hours, reminding her of the urgency
of their investigation.
A
count down to the end of civilization, he’d said.
The
dust-laden sky made it look like the end.
The
red dust haze turned St Peter’s Basilica, its cupola, and the embracing arms of
Tuscan colonnades around the square into historical sepia that added to the
place’s powerful sense of mystery.
“This
obelisk is peculiar in being uninscribed,” she said, “which sadly doesn’t
reveal many secrets to us.”
“Maybe
we’re looking in the wrong place.”
“Meaning?”
He
pointed up at a metal globe perched beneath a cross on top of the obelisk.
“What
about the secret up there? That hollow globe. Great hiding spot. Legend
tells that originally the globe held Julius Caesar’s ashes. But when they moved
the obelisk here from an earlier site in Rome, they opened it and found the
missing phallus of Osiris instead... no, just kidding. Only dust inside. And no
mummy dust, either. Just plain old dust, like the stuff blowing in the sky.”
“Not very helpful, Jon. We’re
looking for answers. What can we learn here?”
They
learnt something sooner than expected - that their close inspection of the
monument had been observed all the while by two burly shadows in black that now
appeared unexpectedly at a few minutes past midday on the sundial.
“We
wish to hear an answer too,” the one man spoke in an accent that sounded midway
between Italian and… German? “You will come with us, please.”
Jennefer
blinked in surprise at the two new arrivals. Fair men in black suits.
Swiss,
maybe. Swiss guards in plain clothes?
Had
their inspection of the obelisk brought them out of the shadowy heart of the
Vatican palace?
“Have
we broken some cardinal rule?” Jon said, pretending flippant unconcern at the
intrusion.
“The
Holy Father is hoping that you have learnt something from this monument that
will help the world.”
That’s
when it seemed to Jennefer that the sun stopped in the sky, just as the sun-god
Ra’s boat sometimes paused in the heavens in Egyptian mythology.
Even
the crowds of people in St Peter’s Square seemed to freeze, growing as still as
the obelisk.
The
Holy Father.
“His
Holiness is waiting to see you.”
“Jesus,”
Jon said.
“Not
exactly. Merely Our Lord’s representative on earth,” one of the men said with a
glimmer of a smile.
An
audience with the Pope?
What
next..?
Saturday, September 19, 2015
HUNTING HATHOR A Mythic Novella
Amazon Kindle |
Hunting Hath0r: A
Mythic Novella.
Author’s
note: 'Hunting Hathor' first appeared as
a tale within a novel in my archaeological adventure thriller ‘The Smiting
Texts’, but is released here in a separate edition for lovers of mythology and
ancient romance.
“This tale
of an ancient hunter's fate to recapture the goddess of devastation in order to
save Egypt is particularly beautiful. Wonderfully clever and original.” THE
TRUTH ABOUT BOOKS
Hathor-Sekhmet was the
goddess with two faces, one, Hathor, the Sweet One, goddess of sexual love,
joy, music and intoxication, the other, Hathor-Sekhmet, the terrible lioness of
annihilation, sent by Ra to destroy humankind for their rebelliousness.
In her marauding stage they called
her The Confused One in the Night.
Were there times when Hathor slipped
from one state to another? One phase, goddess of love, shining in her beauty,
and the next a wild and dreadful lioness of destruction? What would it have
been like to come across Hathor, the young woman, and not know that she hid
another side?
'THE EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY MURDERS' - "Love this genre" Goodreads.
|
A mummy named Isis is taken to a hospital
for a non-invasive imaging scan… so begins a mystery and a string of deaths.
An ancient cycle unfolds in modern day
London - and a search for eternal love.
Can
Jennefer, a young trainee museum curator and Jon, a police antiquities unit
detective, stop the killings in time before a terrible culmination of events?
Now a series. Why not read the set - download THE OBELISK PROPHECY at the same time.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
They ran for survival in a deadly cyber Egypt. What is "VIRTUAL ETERNITY"?
New edition arriving on Amazon Kindle now |
Action adventure in an Egypt mystery thriller with a sci-fi flavour.
Space lander Philae, mothership Rosetta, now a Star Wars Tut Mask!
Is ancient Egypt out of this world? (As seen on the web) |
In the form of the lander Philae, sent from mother ship Rosetta.
Philae and Rosetta were just two more examples, and names, in
a long comet’s tail of associations between outer space and ancient Egypt.*
Think of the asteroid Apophis (the great Egyptian serpent
god of outer darkness) that threw a scare into us when it was feared it might
strike earth.
Think of the canonical use of sarcophagus-like sleep capsules used
by distant travellers in science fiction movies, with 'Interstellar' being the latest
example.
Like astronauts, mummies are bound up in elaborate white suits with masks for
their journey through eternity.
Consider the Great Pyramid as the largest ever gantry for a space
shot to put the pharaoh's soul into space and orbit among the imperishable
circumpolar stars.
In fact you might say that ancient Egypt devised the first ‘space
ship’ – a pharaoh’s barque that travelled through the heavens like the sun in a
journey of millions of years.
*(In
one of my fictional adventure mysteries, 'The Ra Virus' I build on this
tradition where a meteorite bearing a deadly pathogen is suspected to
be the cause of an 'Eleventh Plague of Egypt')
Global danger arises... one controversial Egyptologist investigates.
An Anson Hunter archaeological thriller - Amazon Kindle |
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Thoth as a dog-faced baboon, 'Mighty in his Wonderworking Formulae'
A fine statue of Thoth, British Museum |
AMAZON |
A space-borne virus in ancient Egypt. An epidemiologist trapped in the past.
"Roy Lester Pond joins my favourite Ancient Egypt authors like Christian Jacq". The Ra Virus - Goodreads
Monday, September 14, 2015
Female ancient Egyptian eyes like the outlines of fish...
Monks took up residence in many of ancient Egypt's tombs. From the novel The Smiting Texts on AMAZON KINDLE |
What if words from Egypt's ancient past could kill… and nobody listened to an archaeologist's warning
!st in the series - Amazon Kindle |
What if words from Egypt's ancient past could kill… and nobody listened to a renegade archaeologist's warning....
Could the power of ancient evil ‘smite’ across time?
Meet the archaeologist adventurer Anson Hunter in the first in an archaeology thriller series, followed by The Hathor Holocaust, The Ibis Apocalypse, The Anubis Intervention, Egypt Eyes, The Forbidden Glyphs and The God Dig.
Anson's special knowledge as an alternative Egyptologist and theorist may be the key to stopping a catastrophe.
Fantasy Egypt for younger readers 'The Princess Who Lost Her Scroll of the Dead'
Books of the Dead were magical scrolls that acted as passports to the other world. They were essential to the ancient Egyptians, a guide that allowed them to pass safely through the challenges of the gates and guardians of the underworld.
What happens when a young girl discovers she has been tricked by a greedy scribe, her costly scoll swapped for a blank one so the original can be sold again?
Now young Nefera must face the terrors of the underworld alone, clutching a worthless scroll.
Then a boy tomb robber Ipy and his pet monkey join her.
Can they help her find her way to the Fields of the Blessed?
What is the secret they are keeping from her?
They must hurry and reach the Judgement Hall before dawn or be lost forever...
AMAZON KINDLE (for younger readers written as Roy Pond)
And...
What did the museum curator's daughter do... and see? |
Sunday, September 13, 2015
What is The Obelisk Prophecy? Coded threat to the world?
NEW. AMAZON KINDLE |
Detectives and Egyptologists are in sister professions. Now the unusual team of Jennefer, an Egyptologist museum curator, and Jon, an arts and antiquities policeman, is back together in ‘The Obelisk Prophecy”.
The exciting fiction sequel to ‘The Egyptian Mythology Murders’.
Egyptian obelisks are potent symbols that pierce the skies around the world. London, New York, The Vatican…
But now one obelisk represents the clue to a world-threatening mystery.
Working against secret enemies the team must race to find and penetrate the riddle of the one obelisk on earth that holds the key to salvation.
"THE FORBIDDEN GLYPHS" - a cache of writings of unthinkable power
Archaeology adventure thriller - Amazon Kindle |
Egypt’s Lost Library of secrets and technology.
Trigger for a dangerous new age.
Imagine a cache of writings of unthinkable power.
Renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter does. In fact he has a controversial theory that somewhere in Egypt lies the lost library of Thoth, guarded by his consort the goddess Seshat.
In legend, this library contained all the forbidden knowledge of ancient Egypt, both human and divine, including secrets of lost technology that built the pyramids.
Anson’s theory throws him into conflict with international seekers who have dangerous agendas for the world.
To save a loved one, Anson Hunter must seek the forbidden glyphs in an ingenious lost sanctuary guarded by traps set by the calculating goddess Seshat.
The Anson Hunter series ON AMAZON KINDLE
Friday, September 11, 2015
Thursday, September 10, 2015
What is this little 'angel' from ancient Egypt?
Actually a Ba figure |
This sweet little Ba (Soul bird) in the British Museum makes me think of the lost soul of the young princess in my children's story: "The Princess Who Lost Her Scroll of the Dead" (Amazon Kindle)
Here's another Ba |
And a whole flock |
Rare ancient Egyptian full-frontals - faces, that is.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Mystery fiction from the home of ancient mystery, Egypt
First in the series of paranormal mystery thrillers |
A female mummy is blasted with radiation in a hospital imaging scan... could it trigger ancient evil like a terrible blast from the past?
An ancient cycle unfolds in modern day London - and a search for eternal love.
'THE EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY MURDERS' - Amazon Kindle.
Now followed by 'THE OBELISK PROPHECY'
The greatest character in my archaeology fiction? Ancient Egypt
"Compellingly brought to life" |
A dry wit with sarcastic observations
"Written through alternative Egyptologist Anson Hunter’s sphere of
perception creates a sense of experience and empathy that draws you in from
the start...
"A universally likeable lead... equally
likeable due to his sarcastic observations and dry wit as he is due to his
agreeable nature."
- Read Between the Lines.
"I never thought I’d agree with Hitler on any subject,' Anson Hunter reflected
Neues Museum, Museum Island, Berlin
“WHAT THE GERMAN
people have, they keep,” Adolf Hitler famously responded when Egyptian
authorities suggested that the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti in Berlin ought
to be returned to Cairo.
I was standing
among other admiring visitors in front of the bust of the iconic queen in a
long gallery at the north cupola of the Neues Museum, when I recalled the
Fuehrer’s response. The suggestions from the Egyptian authorities had risen to
the level of rancorous clamour in recent years, yet there were still no signs
that Nefertiti was going back to Egypt anytime soon. The queen’s image was
everywhere, on postcards, in books and on publicity posters. Nefertiti had the
pulling power of a superstar.
Was it James Bond’s
creator Ian Fleming who’d remarked that the ancient queen of Egypt could make
an entrance today in a designer gown and give the beautiful people a run for
their money?
I never thought I’d
agree with Hitler on any subject, I reflected, shaking my head in wonder at her
beauty. The timeless elegance, lovely neck and airborne eyebrows produced a
powerful effect on the beholder. If I had Nefertiti I wouldn’t part with her
either…
Excerpt from 'The Ibis Apocalypse', archaeological thriller, Amazon Kindle
AMAZON KINDLE |
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Saturday, September 5, 2015
IS THE NOVEL DEAD? Or in a care home? Or maybe in an RV?
Was Will Self getting at me as an author on the road? |
Interviewed at the Melbourne Writers' Festival here in Australia, Booker prize contender Will Self (The Umbrella, The Shark) denied that he ever said the novel was dead.
What he said was "The novel is in a care home. Or in Australia it would be in an RV".
Is this me?
Friday, September 4, 2015
'I see the mummy of my darling cat Miu coming,' Nefera thought.
"The Princess Who Lost her Scroll of the Dead" Amazon Kindle for young readers |
NEFERA was quite enjoying the
attention.
The death of a king’s daughter was a big occasion and the royal
procession of the coffin through the mud brick city to the tomb in the desert
hills was a spectacle not to be missed.
Especially this one. It was
all for her.
She stood mingling with bystanders who lined the way of the procession
as it made its way through the shimmering city before crossing the river, yet
nobody in the crowd seemed able to see her among them.
“She was just a girl,” a woman in the crowd said,
wiping her nose as she sobbed.
‘Am I a ghost?’ Nefera wondered, recalling the
Egyptians’ belief in an invisible double known as the Ka. ‘It does not seem so. I feel as alive as ever.’
At the front of the procession walked a number of solemn men carrying
flowers and trays of offerings of oil, perfumes, cakes, bread, haunches of
beef, ducks and vegetables and more. Others carried clothes, tables, chairs,
jewellery, cosmetic boxes and other tomb goods.
‘I see my golden lion couch coming,’ Nefera
thought. ‘And my golden sandals and caskets of jewellery and, most important of
all, the mummy of my darling cat, Miu.’
For young readers (Published as Roy Pond)
Thursday, September 3, 2015
"You're right, there’s a phallic link with this and all obelisks," she said. THE OBELISK PROPHECY
Excerpt from THE OBELISK PROPHECY. New archaeology thriller |
“You’re
right though, there’s a phallic link with this and all obelisks,” she said.
“Phallic symbolism was not exactly unknown in ancient Egypt. An obvious example
is the raising of the Djed pillar
ceremony, an ancient Egyptian ritual echoed in the mediaeval harvest Maypole which
revelers raised and danced around, another phallic celebration.”
“Freemasons
believe it,” Jon said. “Firmly.”
“And
in ancient Egypt, many of the golden gods in their shrines in the holy of
holies in temples were ithyphallic in form.”
“Ithyphallic.
Love you Egyptologists. You mean they had erections like obelisks. A high
priestess called ‘The Hand of the God’ would satisfy them each morning to
release the god’s creative force into the new day.”
Although
Jon was a policeman, he’d been in love with ancient Egypt since
he was a child and his
pull towards Egyptology was almost as strong as hers. He
had been a successful police detective at first, before what he called ‘his
useless passion’ drew him to work in London’s
Metropolitan Art and Antiques unit, fighting the illegal trade in stolen
antiquities.
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