Friday, March 31, 2017

"The SARCOPHAGUS" - Amazon Kindle 5 stars

5 star (Amazon UK)

"A coded tomb machine revives an age of adventure"

Kindle and paperback
https://amzn.to/2lZu6bD
 

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

“My third book by Roy Lester Pond did not disappoint..."

AMAZON Kindle and Paperback
“My third book by Roy Lester Pond did not disappoint.
Plenty of interesting historical content along with a good dose of adventure. I hope we find out whether Lucas and Giulietta ever get to return home...” Amazon Au



An Egyptian archaeology dig, 'impossible' warnings sent through the layers of time.
Was there a Ra-virus? An Aten Scourge?
Is a vanished archaeology team member trapped in Egypt’s ancient past during an age of terror – and sending warning messages to today?
‘WARNING! ANCIENT GLOBAL THREAT…’ the graffiti message appears in a newly found Egyptian tomb, along with a modern biohazard symbol.
What mysterious plague has hit the population of Egypt in the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his young co-regent, the sun-struck Akhenaten? Why is it seen as a judgement by the angry sun god Ra?
Lucas, a physician and World Health Organisation expert on pandemics, must find its source and the antidote in time to save the ancient past and the future.
Especially when his lover, the lustrous Italian-born Egyptologist Giulietta, is exposed to the deadly contagion. Can he warn her in time and save her and can they ever hope to be reunited? 




“Roy Lester Pond joins my favourite Egypt authors like Christian Jacq... A furious pace keeps the reader engrossed.”- Goodreads
 

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

The inspiration for SESHESHET in Hunting Hathor and The Smiting Texts?




 Sesheshet - her name evoked the rattling sounds made by Hathor's systrum shaken by priestesses in the temples and also the rustling sound of reeds as the lioness Sekhmet the Destroyer stalked the hunter...

Both the wicked Nefernefernefer (The Egyptian) and She (novel by Rider Haggard) probably helped spark my character Sesheshet.

Sesheshet also appears in a tale within a novel in The Smiting Texts


Monday, March 20, 2017

It's a curious reflection that ancient Egypt is the gift of climate change




Temple of Philae reflected in the waters of Africa


'Egypt,' the Greek historian Herodotus famously wrote, 'is the gift of the Nile.'

And yet it can also be said that Egypt is the gift of early desertification that first caused humankind to settle on the banks of the River Nile and gave rise to the oasis civilisation of ancient Egypt.
 
And it was of course the dry custodianship of this new climate that preserved the relics of ancient Egypt so wonderfully for us today.

Sunday, March 19, 2017

A blast of imaging radiation... brings back a blast from the mythological past...

"The Egyptian Mythology Murders" - Amazon Kindle

5-star - Amazon UK

A female mummy from ancient Egypt lay outstretched inside a hospital scanning machine.

The British Museum had brought the mummy to St. Thomas’ Hospital for a non-invasive examination of the body beneath its wrappings.

“We’ll begin by doing the head and neck in two millimetre slices. I’m just relieved that nobody will have to give this patient the bad news that she’s terminal.”

The radiologist had made the joke to bridge the jarring disconnect between ancient death, wrapped up in magical spells, and the modern day machinery of medical imaging. 

The radiation scan - at a dose lethal for the living - blasted through the linen windings. It was like a penetration of sunlight warming the bones after the ache of the desert night.

The machine hummed. A spinning cylinder curved around the mummy’s head like a night sky arching over Egypt.

The sand-dry cells of the body, spread out in an undulating landscape on the CT tray, stirred in a sudden breath.
Life! Resurgent life! It eddied, thickened, mounted in force, blowing, gusting, then blasting through the mummy like a desert sand storm.

(Excerpt - The Egyptian Mythology Murders AMAZON KINDLE and paperback)

 * (Example of my writer's pre-novel storyboard approach before I write, using a combination of my own Egypt photos, scrap art and googled images)

NOW A TRILOGY

THE IBIS APOCALYPSE A sliding-ramp Egyptian booby trap... a humanoid block... a crushing volume in stone...


From THE IBIS APOCALYPSE (Amazon Kindle)

Ibis catacomb, el-Ashmunein, Egypt





“SORRY, ANSON. Your search for the stela ends here!”

The voice of the young woman funneled down the underground passage, the echoes fluttering off the stone like startled bats.

Anson Hunter, alternative Egyptologist and theorist, felt a chill as the words reached his ears. It was caused as much by the emotional separation in her voice as by its distance. Her voice was startlingly removed. It was also hard and cold. A few minutes earlier she had been a companionable presence at his shoulder. Now this. She had deserted him, stealing back up the ramp of the passage.

Why?

A rumble of thunder came to deepen his puzzlement and then a screech, the sound of stone moving over stone, grinding, scouring. He felt a tremble under his feet. He spun his flashlight. The abrasion grew to a roar that made his eardrums cower.

A slab of darkness surged out of deeper darkness. His beam flared on a block of granite in a humanoid shape. A man mountain. It was a stone block with a carved head on top… a colossal block-statue of a High Priest of Thoth, weighing tons.

The cubic man, with head, feet and hands protruding, squatted on a base with his knees raised and arms folded across them under a cloak to form a crushing volume in stone.

In the turmoil, the passage trembled and so did Anson.

The wigged and bearded face on top of the block wore a

smile that belied the missile’s crushing intent as the statue shuddered over the floor. Hieroglyphs on the front of the block leapt into Anson’s vision like an execration hurled at him, a spell to obliterate an intruder.

The attack of the granite rock slide turned him to stone.

He had seen the block statue earlier, bulking at the head of the passage, and, fearing a trap, had urged his female companion to step over a granite flagstone in the floor, fearing it might trigger disaster.

But she had slipped back and deliberately set it off.

Now he understood the reason for the vast corridor and the ramped floor that plunged into the earth. It was built to speed the massive plug on its rush down the passage.

The cubic man gathered momentum and the sound of tortured stone assaulted his ears as he felt a blast of arriving air hit his body. It felt like a train coming down a tunnel.

He could never outrun it.

Then what?

A glance told him there was no room in the passage to jump clear. That left one option. Jump on board the block statue before it gathered more speed. Go along for the ride.

Instead of fleeing, he went to meet his fate and the stony smile on the face seemed to spread.

Jump! Hold on to the head.

The throaty roar of the slab filled his ears and sparks showered from its base.

He sprang like a suicide throwing his body into the path of a train.

The stone mass slammed into his body. He lost his torch and his wind in the impact. The polished surface tried to repel him and he felt his body skidding. He threw his arms out and hooked them around the pyramidal bulge of the block-priest’s wig, clamped on tight.

He rode the human slab in darkness broken by sparks showering upwards to illuminate sliding passage walls. The flicker revealed the statue’s brutal face and stone ears curved like bowls against the wig. The grind and screech of the block’s descent sent shock waves through the core of the colossus and it seemed to be shaking underneath him as if in a rage.

The slab thundered on. It was as if the priestly defender of the tomb were trying to sweep him off by speed alone.

Down, down Anson slid, riding a rock fall on a journey through the darkness of an underworld.

He had clung to ancient Egypt all of his life and now he was hanging on to it for his very life, not to its mystery or allure or its esoteric beliefs, but to its concrete monumentality.

He never imagined it would end like this in the hell of screaming, spark-showering stone, betrayed by a woman he trusted. Yet this was where his journey had always been going.

His obsession to find a stone book called the Destiny Stela, inscribed with the most dangerous texts ever composed, was carrying him to destruction.





The opening scene from Egypt adventure thriller “The Ibis Apocalypse” (Amazon Kindle and paperback – third in the Anson Hunter Adventure series featuring renegade Egyptologist Anson Hunter.

AMAZON PAPERBACK AND Kindle


The GOD DIG - The Egyptian afterlife conspiracy

Anson Hunter novel on Amazon Kindle - and paperback

Read this controversial novel of adventure and archaeology and decide… did ancient Egypt invent the concept of an afterlife? (A belief that found its way into Jewish and Christian belief?).
When a friend and radical theorist is murdered, independent Egyptologist Anson Hunter is torn between wanting to discover the truth and dreading the answers.

Was his friend right about a conspiracy to suppress an ancient secret and is the explosive evidence hidden somewhere in Egypt?

Anson, an Egyptologist who wrestles with a faith, faces a convergence of hostile elements - emissaries of the three book-based religions, antiquity thieves, radical Islamists and former government officials as well as New World Order conspirators.

A secret archaeology investigation in Egypt. A suppressed ancient secret that threatens the world’s stability and belief systems.


Anson Hunter, fiction's renegade Egyptologist - Updated Series

7-novel Egypt mystery adventure series and a novella



Friday, March 17, 2017

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

A mummy, a medical imaging scan, the return of an ancient cycle of love and death...


The radiation scan - at a dose lethal for the living - blasted through the linen windings.
 (Excerpt - The Egyptian Mythology Murders)

She found that she had been swallowed up in the round mouth of a vault-like chamber. Not Nut’s star-lined body, but a gullet, like that of the great serpent of outer darkness and evil, Apophis.
She stirred and the bandages, though finely wrapped, crackled like dry rushes around the length of her high-waisted and long-legged form.
“Vibrations on the screen. Is there construction work going on outside? She just twitched!”
“I certainly hope not!”
Where am I? There was no sweet chanting for her here, nor the soothing shimmer of the sistra rattled by her priestesses and no burning gum of incense from Punt to celebrate her divine aroma.
Instead the sharpness of hospital antiseptic flared her nostrils.
Her supranormal awareness told her that this was not Egypt. It was a green, island place, far from Egypt, across the expanse of the rolling Great Green.
That realisation brought a pang.
But it was nothing like the pang she felt as the first powerful emotion that she had experienced since her ‘night of ointment and bandages’ thousands of years earlier speared through her. She gave a low moan.
Osiris.
Lost to me!
Isis felt her chest rise in grief, but it felt like heaving dunes of sand and not warm flesh, and there was no moisture to rise to her eyes in tears, just a trickle of dust disturbed by her moving eyelashes.
“This is unusual. The skull shows no sign of being emptied and packed with linen…”
“She’s very early period. Her mummy case is simple and severe, the earliest typological style,” the voice of a young female Egyptologist explained. “She was obviously named in honour of the goddess Isis, an extremely ancient deity…”
A beeping alarm cut across her voice and the scanner machine plunged into darkness and so did the room.
“What’s happened?”
“Power outage.”
“Our own auxiliary generator will kick in.”
It did. Immediately. The light and the whirring resumed.
“Back on stream. But it might be wise to pause and continue this later to be safe. We’ll bring her out of here temporarily and resume when the glitch is over. If we’re quick, the tea will still be hot in the hospital cafeteria.”
She felt her body moving, being dragged out of the gullet along the sliding CT tray, vibrating under her back, and she came out through the round mouth of the scanner into a wider space.
Then the hospital’s back-up power died too and the room now swarmed with darkness again. As black as the tomb.
“Curses!” a voice said.
“Is that an imprecation or an explanation,” the CT operator said.
An uneasy chuckle.
“Anybody got a pencil light? Where’s a GP when you need one?”
“Come, this way, folks. Follow my voice. I can find the cafeteria in the dark.”
She heard footsteps retreating...

AMAZON KINDLEhttp://amzn.to/oWVTPV

UPDATE - SERIES RANGE

Monday, March 13, 2017

"Excellent, intelligently written adventure." 5-star 'THE SMITING TEXTS' iBooks Review


Also on Amazon Kindle and paperback

iBooks Customer Review


Excellent, intelligently written adventure story (5 stars)
I really enjoyed The Smiting Texts. A healthy dose of good old fashioned action adventure among the remains of Ancient Egypt. Very intelligently written. It contains much that is educational about the history of Egyptian culture as it relates to our modern understanding of religion. 

Description


Are there unseen dangers from the ancient past, and can they be re-activated today?

A clash of superpowers - ancient Egypt and modern America.

Join the renegade Egypotogist and investigator Anson Hunter in a 7-book archaeology adventure thriller series.

Anson Hunter's special knowledge as an alternative theorist may be the key to stopping a catastrophe for America, and for the Western world.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Warning! Bio-hazard! "TEXT MESSAGES FROM ETERNITY"


New issue AMAZON KINDLE


Ancient Egypt... a Bio-hazard Today....

New issue AMAZON KINDLE

Did a pandemic catastrophe strike the ancient world towards the end of the reign of Amenhotep III and the reign of the new king Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti?
Was there an 11th Plague -  a space virus seen to have been sent by a vengeful Ra? (Amazon Kindle)

Lucas Burrows, an epidemiologist, is visiting his partner Giulietta on a dig in Egypt when he mysteriously goes missing in a tomb.
Then warnings start to appear in the tomb site under layers of flaking gesso and paint... from the ancient past?
Can Lucas get through to Giulietta to save the team... and use his skills as a WHO epidemiologist to save the ancient past?
Action adventure...

“A furious pace keeps the reader engrossed.”- Goodreads
“Roy Lester Pond joins my favourite Egypt authors like Christian Jacq.” 

Friday, March 10, 2017

Where the Writing Gods of Egypt Meet






 Egypt's 2 deities of writing appear face to face behind this colossus of Rameses ll, Luxor temple


Wednesday, March 8, 2017

66 Sekhmet statues found at Luxor - further proof of a pandemic catastrophe?


Lioness goddess of war and pestilence

News of a cache of 66 Sekhmet statues discovered in Luxor.

Pharaoh Amenhotep lll (father of Akhenaten) had legions of these goddesses set up as a final defence against a viral calamity in the ancient world.

The goddess of war, plagues and destruction was also seen as a protector against pestilence if sufficiently appeased... hence the vast number of apotropaic images created.

You can read more about this violent deity in my novels:
Hunting Hathor
Text Messages from Eternity
The Hathor Holocaust


Hathor-Sekhmet - the Female Soul with Two Faces



A deadly viral castastrophe from the age of AMENHOTEP III and AKHENATEN

"Excellent, intelligently written adventure..." 5-star THE SMITING TEXTS iBooks Review

Also on Amazon Kindle and paperback


iBooks Customer Review


Excellent, intelligently written adventure story (5 stars)
I really enjoyed The Smiting Texts. A healthy dose of good old fashioned action adventure among the remains of Ancient Egypt. Very intelligently written. It contains much that is educational about the history of Egyptian culture as it relates to our modern understanding of religion. 

Description


Are there unseen dangers from the ancient past, and can they be re-activated today?

A clash of superpowers - ancient Egypt and modern America.

Join the renegade Egypotogist and investigator Anson Hunter in a 7-book archaeology adventure thriller series.

Anson Hunter's special knowledge as an alternative theorist may be the key to stopping a catastrophe for America, and for the Western world.

Monday, March 6, 2017

DOORWAYS of the Egyptian Night - a journey through ancient mystery

Travel, mystery, adventure fiction - on Amazon Kindle

A man, a mysterious female Egyptian tour guide... A journey he never thought he'd make.
But is all as it seems?

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Imagine if Cleopatra took a poison (like Shakespeare's Juliet) that merely gave her the ‘borrow’d likeness of shrunk death’

AMAZON KINDLE
Did Cleopatra really die in ancient Alexandria as history tells?
What if ‘the queen of poisons’ took a brew (like Shakespeare's Juliet) that merely gave her the ‘borrow’d likeness of shrunk death’?
Revelation, mythology and ancient evil in a startling adventure.
A group of mysteriously chosen investigators is brought together and driven blindfolded in Land Cruisers to a lost site in Egypt…
An historical fantasy writer, a young female Egyptologist, a cold-case detective, a documentary film-maker, an historical scholar…
Then the darkness turns deadly.
The sanctuary of an immortal queen.
Mortal dangers for those who penetrate its secrets.