The 'Other Egypt ' Blog by author Roy Lester Pond

Writing Egypt Fiction was my 2nd job – now it's my 2nd career

2012-01-31T15:12:00.000-08:00

My Living Flame TVC for natural gas won gold at Mobius International Film Festival, Chicago

What does a young writer do before he can afford to write books full time?

(I wouldn’t wish an author’s salary on anyone - at least not in their early days!)

I joined the Mad Men, working as an advertising copywriter and Creative Director in various multi-national agencies. I eventually worked in an agency with my own name on the door for almost a decade (Pond, Rice, Ogilvy & Mather).

Here are some more of my ads from my Mad Men days of my first career.

I coined this phrase back in 1979! It passed into the language somewhat and even turned up decades later on an American Cancer site

Towards the end of my ad career I chose to work for causes - like this campaign for World Vision worldwide. It also appeared on television. Along with the TV, it won a Mobius award 'best
cause campaign'

Lest we forget - for dementia

My second career... so far

Today, writing fiction is my finally my career - and writing advertising for causes is my second job.

Egypt fiction - for your Kindle or iPad - "a wonderful way to lose yourself in what you love."

New. "The Mummy's Revenge" Egypt children's fiction hit... returns on Kindle

2012-01-29T02:48:00.000-08:00

Long before Harry Potter there was cousin Harry and his scary Egypt computer games...

This time for young Egypt fiction readers...

DEAD FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS…

Harry is really weird. But he is family, so Josh and Amy try to make their cousin feel at home during his visit. That’s when Harry shows them the game. The Mummy Monster Game. A game where the players find the pieces of a mummy – and put it back together again.

But each time they play, the game become more and more realistic, leaking dangers into their lives. So when Harry and Amy become trapped in the mummy’s tomb – inside the game – Josh realizes that this is a game like no other. This game is very real. And very deadly.

The first in a trilogy of Egypt adventures with Josh, Amy and Cousin Harry. Now on Kindle

A great favourite with US children and schools, now in an Amazon Kindle edition

Click here

2nd thriller in the Egypt series after The Smiting Texts

2012-01-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

The Hathor Holocaust - scorching Egypt adventure thriller. 2nd in the series after The Smiting Texts

See the series here

My opening novel 'The Smiting Texts' in the Egypt Adventure Thriller Series. FREE... Kindle promo. Only days to go!

2012-01-23T22:07:00.000-08:00

FREE. The Egypt thriller that will "live with you long after you turn the last page..."

START HERE

KINDLE PROMO OFFER: BEGIN EGYPT SERIES WITH THE SMITING TEXTS, just 99c

2012-01-20T03:58:00.000-08:00

What Readers and Reviewers said about the book that started it all -

“An intellect's version of The Mummy...
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

"An amazing read that grabs your attention straight away. I'm very into mythology and especially love the Egyptian era as there is so much scope and potential... I did like the inlaid mythical legend about the Cat of Destruction that was a woman at times and then changed into a marauding giant cat at others - awesome!” - A reader’s comment, The Truth About Books.

“Compellingly brought to life in modern day Egypt… The Smiting Texts is a fast paced adventure story that will pull you in and won’t let go, even after you turn the last page.
The Smiting Texts was a very enjoyable read which fans of Indiana Jones and the Stargate franchise would do well to dive into. Although the book is written in the third person, the reader is only ever exposed to information within the protagonist – ‘alternative Egyptologist Anson Hunter’s - sphere of perception, creating a sense of experience and empathy that draws you in from the start.
I believe Hunter will be a universally likeable lead in that, although the book deals with some controversial ideas, Hunter himself holds no strong opinions that could interfere with the reader’s own involvement in the story. He is equally likeable due to his sarcastic observations and dry wit as he is due to his agreeable nature.
An entertaining novel which will probably have you searching for “The ‘Other Egypt’” as soon as you put it down – just in case.” - Read Between the Lines, Edinburgh

“The Smiting Texts is a thrill from the beginning and it will appeal to anyone with an interest in the archaeological thriller. Each page begs the next and the dynamic writing style contributes to the book’s readability.
The network of characters is developed in such a way that the reader is not instructed what to think, but rather is allowed to form an opinion based on dialogue and thoughts… the likeable characters will make you cheer for their good fortune and shudder at their mistakes. A memorable book that will certainly leave the reader wanting more.’ - Reviewer

Begin here

Do you prefer ancient Egypt historical fiction – or modern adventure set against Egypt’s past?

2012-01-19T03:27:00.000-08:00

Egypt fiction set in the past - or modern adventure set against the past?

A childhood favourite

Wondering what should I write next...

I began by relishing historical ancient Egypt fiction - especially Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian – but in my own writing so far I prefer to explore the ancient past through a modern sensibility. (The only exception would be my story 'Dynasty Zero: Egypt', which I would classify more as Egypt fantasy fiction, set in a mythical realm before the pharaohs.)

I prefer my main character, such as my controversial rogue Egyptologist Anson Hunter, to be a hero who brushes against the ancient past – or collides with its dangers - rather than be a character who lives in another time.

I’m not sure I would even read a costume drama about Egypt any more, let alone attempt to write one.

What sort of Egypt fiction do you prefer?

A lost, 2nd Great Sphinx? Just one of the dangerous secrets in this new novel

2012-01-18T00:16:00.000-08:00


What secret would a second Great Sphinx hide?

Early books speak of two great sphinxes like a pair of colossal bookends guarding the entrance to the Nile.

And in fact there did exist a second sphinx, according to Arab historians, a clay structure destroyed by earthquake and flood.

But was this second, earthen sphinx on the Nile a poor relation of a sublime counterpart, an echo of another great structure from a distant age?

Controversial archaeologist Anson Hunter theorizes exactly this in 'The Anubis Intervention' and fears that this second sphinx guards a dangerous secret.

But where is this lost chimera hidden?

It's just one of the revelations in this new archaeological thriller, fourth in the series after The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse (Kindle and paperback from Amazon)

Now the complete series of Anson Hunter Egypt adventure novels is available

2012-01-16T19:48:00.000-08:00


Now for the first time, the complete set of novels featuring renegade Eyptologist Anson Hunter is available in both Kindle and Amazon paperback editions

Please take a look inside and see opening chapters here

BOOK POSTER. The New Adventure Thriller with the mysterious ancient Egyptian theme

2012-01-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

'And in the great Barque of Ra, journeyed the doubles of all
those who had died that day and were on their way
to the judgement hall of Osiris.' - Egyptian myth

Anson Hunter, alternative Egyptologist, surveyed the room. A
sweep of his eyes told him that they had surrounded the dinner
guests and were guarding the doorways, square-shouldered men
and snake-slender women, covered in gold and wearing the heads
of ancient Egypt's divinities. Who were they? Extremists?
Criminals? There was at least a dozen that he could see.

Jackal-head, dressed as Anubis, God of the Funeral Wrappings,
the god who led the dead into the Hall of Judgement,
spoke to the frozen assembly of Egyptologists in a harsh voice.

"Do you know what is happening here? Could it be that the
gods of Egypt have finally risen against Egyptology?" He gave
a laugh that thundered inside the mask. "Which of you thinks this
would not be justified? None, I see. We have on this boat, the
greatest assembly of Egyptologists in the world. What a blow to
the world's obsession with Egypt's past if you should all perish.
What a blow, if you, the men and women who feed the ancient
Egypt industry, should be lost. We could have destroyed this boat already,
but we have a more entertaining idea. Since this is your
gala night, we shall play a party game - a game where we shall
play the role of judges."

What is this? Anson thought.

Some kind of bizarre intervention designed to correct the failings
of ancient Egyptian archaeology?

Excerpt from ‘The Anubis Intervention’ – new in Kindle edition and paperback

BOOK VIDEO - YOUTUBE

The Anson Hunter series is available in KINDLE EDITION

- AND NOW IN AMAZON Paperback (see thumbnails below)

Have the gods of Egypt risen against Egyptologists on a Nile cruise? New Fiction.

2012-01-14T00:37:00.000-08:00

Egyptologists on a cruise... invaders masked as Egypt's gods... judgement on the Nile!

What is the dangerous secret that the mysterious invaders are so desperate to unearth?

Fourth story in the Anson Hunter series, ‘The Anubis Intervention’, crackles with the mystery of the numinous - and with high tension.

A taut, fast moving mystery adventure with a startling twist, it brings nightmare echoes of the ancient Egyptian underworld to life today.

Discover the truth. New on Kindle and soon in paperback.

A lost pyramid, the lost 2nd Great Sphinx, a cataclysmic secret...

2012-01-11T19:33:00.000-08:00


Masked attackers take over a Nile cruise boat filled with the world's top archaeologists. Have the gods risen up against Egyptology?

Here is a Kindle screen grab - the Prologue to the new Egypt suspense novel that follows The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse

Anson Hunter, renegade archaeologist and theorist, must find three of ancient Egypt's greatest lost treasures... in order to save a boatload of souls...
in a daring mission of guerilla archaeology - at gunpoint.

Egypt Adventure Thriller Trilogy becomes a series - 'The Anubis Intervention'

2012-01-10T13:47:00.000-08:00

Can Anson Hunter, renegade Egyptologist, save a boatload of souls... the world's top Egyptologists, seized by mysterious masked assailants on a Nile cruise boat?

Who are the interrogators dressed as Egypt's gods and goddesses?

Have the gods of ancient Egypt risen up against Egyptology?

Or are they members of a dangerous conspiracy in search of a secret that will affect the entire world?

Now available on Kindle

NEW. THE ANUBIS INTERVENTION - mystery & suspense on a Nile cruise

2012-01-08T01:25:00.000-08:00

Judgement on the Nile... for a boatload of Egyptologists?

A golden horde of invaders disguised behind the masks of ancient Egypt’s gods and goddesses…

Divine gate-crashers at a dinner party of the world’s top Egyptologists aboard a luxury Nile cruise boat…

Suddenly a rich US entrepreneur and sponsor of archaeology, Thompson Rush, finds himself facing an intervention - an ancient Egyptian style judgement… or is it a reckoning for all of Egyptology?

Who are the invaders? Criminals? Fundamentalist ideologues? Neo-pagans? Some secret masonic-style conspirators with ancient Egypt and the mystery religions as their inspiration?

And what is the secret discovery that the masked interrogators are so desperate to unearth, ‘a golden monument to stand in its glory beside the sphinx and the pyramid’? Could the revelation have consequences for all of humanity?

Anson Hunter, rogue Egyptologist, must go on a nightmare dig at gunpoint. A ‘black ops’ style dig in search of Egypt’s lost treasures… a lost pyramid pinpointed by satellite… a second Great Sphinx in the underworld… and a cataclysmic revelation for all of humankind. He must try desperately to save a boatload of souls, including his friends, the glamorous Egyptologist Dr Melinda Skilling, the young high-tech Space Archaeologist Dr Katy Parkinson and the mysterious collector known as The Diplomat.

Fourth story in the Anson Hunter series, ‘The Anubis Intervention’, crackles with the mystery of the numinous - and with high tension.

A taut, fast moving mystery adventure with a startling twist, it brings nightmare echoes of the ancient Egyptian underworld to life today.

NEW ON AMAZON KINDLE

5 Blurbs For Ancient Egypt Adventure Novels

2012-01-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

Ancient Egyptian adventure.. "compellingly brought to life"

THE SMITING TEXTS. A clash of civilizations… ancient Egypt and modern America (Out in Kindle).

First in a trilogy of Egyptology adventure mystery thrillers, followed by The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse.

The murder of an Egyptologist rings alarm bells with the US Department of Homeland Security. Before he knows it they co-opt his son, controversial historian Anson Hunter, into an investigation that has stunning implications for US security.

Yet soon their search attracts the attention of radical Islamists as well as the Egyptian authorities. Dark suspicions surface, suspicions that Anson's father found evidence of a secret that will shake the foundations of every major world religion.

Soon, whichever way they turn, Anson and his team find themselves trapped in a labyrinth of intrigue and menace that becomes too hideously real.
Anson Hunter's special knowledge as an alternative Egyptologist, theorist and phenomenologist may be the key to stopping a catastrophe.

THE HATHOR HOLOCAUST. Can a rogue Egyptologist stop an ancient Egyptian apocalypse of plague and global scorching? (Available in Amazon Kindle edition and paperback.)

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.

THE IBIS APOCALYPSE. Ancient Egypt’s forbidden power… the world’s fate written in stone. (Amazon Kindle and paperback.)

Third in the series of Egyptology adventure mystery thrillers after 'The Smiting Texts' and 'The Hathor Holocaust'...

Was Egypt's magical Book of Thoth originally carved in stone - on a stela - rather than written on a scroll?

Anson Hunter, controversial alternative Egyptologist and theorist, is obsessed with locating the forbidden Stela of Destiny before the wrong people get hold of it.

The Stela, or stone book, of Thoth, Egypt's god of magic, is the most powerful and malefic source of esoteric texts ever written. The texts bring frightening power but also a terrible backlash. Twice in history the contents have come to light - the first time in the reign of Rameses the Great, linked with the Plagues of Egypt and the suffering of the Hebrews, and in 1939 when a German Egyptologist took rubbings of the stone texts to Hitler's Germany before the horrors of World War II.

Israeli Intelligence and its allies in the USA become alarmed when the Destiny Stela threatens to break into history once again. As they are all too aware, the Stela of Destiny is the Holy Grail for organisations and conspirators with dangerous political and religious agendas, both in the USA and in Europe.

Anson embarks on an investigation under the cover of shooting a screen documentary, pursued by enemies and shadowed by striking Israeli Mossad agent Zara Margolin and suspicious Egyptian authorities, in a hunt that covers USA, UK and secret archaeological sites in Egypt.

Can he find and penetrate the deadly series of chambers of the Sanctuary of Thoth that guards the Stela of Destiny before a dangerous new dawn breaks for humankind?

'The Ibis Apocalypse' is a danger-fraught adventure that unfolds against the background of ancient Egypt's enthralling legend and mythology.

Other Egyptian fiction titled available in a Kindle edition include:

DYNASTY ZERO: EGYPT An enthralling fantasy set in a predynastic realm that Egyptologists now refer to mysteriously as 'Dynasty Zero' - an age of gods and demon demigods.
The Egyptians called it 'the First Time' - or Zep Tepi.

The 'Dynasty Zero' cycle first appeared as inset mythological fantasies within my ancient Egyptian thriller novels 'The Smiting Texts' and 'The Ibis Apocalypse' - and are separately presented here for fantasy adventure lovers.

There are two stories in this fantasy cycle: "The Hunter and The Lioness Goddess of Destruction" and "Stela Wars"

THE DELTA DILEMMA. ‘Choose: your love of ancient Egypt, or today!”

The Delta Dilemma is a suspenseful, fantasy romance adventure novella with supernatural elements and takes place amid the turmoil of post-revolutionary Egypt.

Jed is a time-torn archaeologist enamoured with both his young archaeologist wife and with an image of the Lady Tetisheri in an Egyptian tomb.

Then chaos strikes across time and Jed is launched on a dangerous mission to stop the return of primeval chaos. He must penetrate a nightmarish sanctuary of The Ogdoad, Egypt’s eight gods of chaos and creation, where he will also face the terrible, ultimate dilemma - save his passionate wife in ancient Egypt… or his glamorous, yet independent wife of today…

Look inside...

The gods and goddesses of Egypt, assailants in masks, take over a Nile cruise boat filled with the world's top Egyptologists

UPDATE: 9th January, 2012. NEW. 'The Anubis Intervention', the latest Anson Hunter archaeological mystery adventure novel, is now out, available through Amazon Kindle. It follows The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse. The trilogy is now a series...

Praise for THE SMITING TEXTS... #1 in ancient Egypt adventure series

2012-01-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

#1 in an an Egyptian adventure series...

Praise for THE SMITING TEXTS

“A sumptuous feast of Egypt's ancient past. The interspersed tale is particularly beautiful. Wonderfully clever and original.” - The Truth About Books, UK.

“Compellingly brought to life … a fast-paced adventure story that pulls you in and won’t let go, even after the last page.” - Read Between the Lines, Edinburgh.

"Such a great book! Very imaginative and factual at the same time... hopefully will reach a far wider readership than the Egyptology community." - Egypt Then and Now.

About The Author

The author's depth of knowledge as a writer of books on Egypt comes from a lifetime spent studying ancient Egypt and Egyptian archaeology and from numerous research trips to Egypt.

He is fascinated by the mystery of ancient Egypt and its potency and relevance for today's world.

Start the Egypt adventure series here

After the Arab Spring, a new Islamist Winter for Egyptology?

2011-12-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

My fears for Western Egyptology

I can’t help feeling concern about the new era for archaeology in Egypt. Especially when an Egyptian imam recently suggested that pharaonic statues were no better that idols and they should have the heads covered in wax.

Maybe these new people hope the tourists will come in their millions to see their mosques and Islamic Cairo. Good luck with that.

It’s not that I lack appreciation of Islamic architecture.

I think much of it is breathtaking, but then I think the same about many Western cathedrals. Yet I can’t imagine people in the Islamic world dreaming about seeing them and willing to spend a quarter of a year’s salary to do so.

My new archaeological adventure, about to be released in the New Year, is set in these turbulent times and follows on from The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and the Ibis Apocalypse.

The Egypt adventure trilogy - about to become a series

Your favourite ancient Egypt fiction genre?

2011-12-25T23:56:00.000-08:00


All on Kindle now

What is your favourite ancient Egypt reading?

If you enjoy archaeology adventure and mystery thrillers, begin the series with The Smiting Texts (on offer at just $2.99 on Kindle) then follow it up with The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse. Number four in the series will be released very early in the New Year, 2012.

Of if you enjoy history and mythology and the ancient past, dig down into Egypt's mysterious First Time in Dynasty Zero.

Want to read a taut adventure romance in a novella fiction format? Try The Delta Dilemma, about a time-torn Egyptologist who must decide between his love of ancient Egypt and his love of today, (just $2.99 on Kindle).

Find your favourite Egypt fiction for your Kindle, iPad, computer or other e-reader here

Special Holiday reading offer - The Smiting Texts Egypt adventure, just $2.99 on Kindle

2011-12-22T12:38:00.000-08:00


Begin the enthralling Egypt series with the novel that started it all

With a new Anson Hunter adventure out in early 2012, following The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse, there's no better time than the holiday season to escape into the mystery of Egypt.

Begin the series here

Happy and mysterious reading this Christmas with the Egyptology adventure thriller series

2011-12-16T00:55:00.000-08:00

The tremendous mystery of the sacred...

Anson Hunter is the rogue Egyptologist who specializes in dangers to the modern world from the ancient past.

This may seem absurd to many in our desacralized society where many people have no belief in unseen forces.

Yet Anson is a man with an open mind, one who struggles with a faith and yet is no stranger to the terrors of the ancient past, the mysterium tremendum of the sacred.

You can experience the tremendous mystery of ancient Egypt in the Anson Hunter series on Kindle - The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse...

with a fourth story due for release in early 2012.

Happy, and mysterious, Christmas reading!

The gods and goddesses of Egypt, assailants in masks, take over a Nile cruise boat filled with the world's top Egyptologists
UPDATE: 9th January, 2012. NEW. 'The Anubis Intervention', the latest Anson Hunter archaeological mystery adventure novel, is now out, available through Amazon Kindle. It follows The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse. The trilogy is now a series...

Now you can begin the series with The Smiting Texts for just $2.99 on Kindle.

Christmas fiction reading: Escape to sun, sand and suspense in Egypt fiction series

2011-12-11T23:56:00.000-08:00

Add ancient Egypt to your Christmas holiday reading

News: The ancient Egyptian fiction trilogy, featuring the controversial Egyptologist Anson Hunter, is about to become a series with a fourth story to be released in January 2012...

uncovering new dangers from the ancient past to follow The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse.

More details soon.

Egypt of the imagination... everywhere the glint of gold

2011-12-03T14:08:00.000-08:00


What is it about ancient Egypt's fascination and gold?

Visiting the Tutankhamun 'Golden Age of the Pharaohs' Exhibition, reminded me of the strong association of gold and ancient Egypt in the public imagination...

Howard Carter, on peering into the tomb of Tutankhamun, summed it up with his description...."everywhere the glint of gold."

The lustre of gold glows in the mysteries of The Smiting Texts trilogy of adventure novels and others in my Egypt series... as it does in this scene...

They reached another passage that opened up around them into a vestibule and then passed into a vast porticoed hall.

It was a hall that represented the chest cavity of the god. It was also a treasure chest of staggering proportions.

“Dear God of our Fathers!” Daniel said in a gasp.

“Out of the magic of its gold, heaven was born,” Anson said.

They were looking at the amassed hoard of the Neteru.

“Truly this is the Mother of all Treasures,” the veiled woman whispered.

Chapter 81

IT STRUCK HIS EYES with the impact of an eruption.

It was as if a mountain of gold had exploded and disgorged rivers of golden magma into the hall.

Gold choked the place like a glittering slag heap, spewed from chests in chains and necklaces, crusted in heaps of gorgets, amulets, cups, urns and crowns, pooled in dishes and plates, twisted and writhed in a tangle of statues thrown together like corpses. The excrescence solidified in thrones and tables and chairs and erupted in great shrines jammed together like a golden shantytown. Gold winked, flashed, lusted and glowered sullenly in darker corners. A fleet of golden boats lay in a tangle of masts and oars like the aftermath of a naval battle among the gods. More boats lay foundered among jeweled caskets.

In the Book of Revelation, God sat with the firmament beneath Him, and the brilliance of gemstones sparkling in His presence. Heaven was blinding in its beauty! There was no heaven after death. Instead, the traditions of a material heaven, handed down by untold generations, were true. This was it and his father had found it, stealing the hopes of all mankind.

A feeling came over Anson that he was about to vomit.

A sorrow washed over him with the force of a wave and when the shock receded, an undercurrent ripped him back to long ago.

My father left me as a child to chase after this glory. A man-made heaven.

Seek first the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said.

But my father had sought it on earth. Dig into your father’s ideas too deeply and you risk undermining your own foundations, his mother had said. Am I doomed to follow his trajectory? There seemed to be an inevitability about finding this, astounding as it was, a pattern that had to be made, like the changing of the seasons and the wheeling of the stars through the sky.

Fortune had turned like a grinding stone and now it was the son who stood in front of the terror of this golden realm.

When his Egyptologist father had left him as a child, Anson had tried to keep a piece of him by interiorizing him, creating a kind of inner shrine for him where he imagined his father sat alone in darkness like a god carved in stone. But his father was not a god and, if there were no heaven, was there even a god at all?

- From The Smiting Texts trilogy

Tutankhamun’s Golden Age in Melbourne running out of time… but the Egypt Experience continues in Efiction

2011-11-27T14:27:00.000-08:00

Tutankhamun Exhibition - and The Egypt Experience

The Tutankhamun Exhibition winds up in Melbourne soon and the queues are still forming. I caught up with the show today (on a rainy Melbourne Wednesday) and it's a well-staged exhibition.

Are you one of the millions who has seen this exhibition around the world, or perhaps have been fortunate enough to see these artefacts in their home setting of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo?

In spite of the impressions given by the organisers, this exhibition is only a fraction of what you see of the Tutankhamun cache in Cairo. A little Tutankhamun goes a long way, however and I'm glad I went.

Continue the Egypt Experience… in an enigmatic adventure thriller series (available on Kindle and paperback)

The Egypt Experience continues here

An Egyptologist's murder... a heaven-and-earth-shattering discovery that threatens today’s great religions…

2011-11-27T02:24:00.000-08:00

"Out of the magic of its gold, heaven was born."

“Then what did my father want to tell the world that was so radical? What exactly was his revelation?” Anson Hunter said.

Now Abuna, the Coptic monk, dropped his bombshell.

“He claimed to have made what he termed his ‘heaven-and-earth-shattering’ discovery - sensational proof in Egypt that would turn our ideas of heaven upside down, evidence that heaven was not a spiritual realm, but a real, three-dimensional hypogeum and that this was the genesis of the concept of a heaven. He had found the Duat, or Egyptian hereafter. ‘Out of the magic of its gold,’ he said, ‘heaven was born’.

“Equally important, he claimed that he had found evidence of the so-called Neteru, or beings of the First Time, buried in this place. My good friend, Professor Hunter, believed that there has been a conspiracy through the ages about the reality of the afterlife and that it still continues to this day. Your father was about to announce that he had found a material afterworld - heaven if you like. But not a spiritual nirvana, a real place and the genesis of all beliefs about the afterworld. It was a belief that may account for his untimely death in Egypt.”

(From 'The Smiting Texts', first in a mystery adventure trilogy)


Who killed an Egyptologist with a heaven-and-earth shattering secret, in 'The Smiting Texts'?

Discover the secret here

Glyphs Along The Highway - with a credit to Ian Fleming

2011-11-24T00:26:00.000-08:00

Do hieroglyphs hold any more potency than highway symbols?

Hump... or the Egyptian hieroglyph for 'foreign land'?

'Foreign land'...'hill country'

Author Ian Fleming wrote amusingly about the “exotic pungency” of USA road signs in his James Bond thriller ‘Live and Let Die’ – ‘SOFT SHOULDERS – SHARP CURVES – SQUEEZE AHEAD – SLIPPERY WHEN WET.’

As I take my ancient Egypt thriller fiction writing on the road, I can’t help wondering about the glyphs we see at the roadside here in Australia.

How do these enigmatic signs compare with the ancient Egyptian glyphs that mark the underworld journeys of my renegade British archaeological hero Anson Hunter?

Like the menagerie of animals that appear in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs – Australian roadside glyphs possess a zoomorphic vocabulary, including kangaroos, koalas, wombats, ducklings, cattle, emus, crocodiles and sharks.

A zoomorphic roadside vocabulary

Some signage glyphs are as menacing as curses uttered by Egypt’s priests in execration rituals – “A microsleep can kill.” “You’re a bloody idiot!”

Roadsidce curse

Others are tenderly human when found along the harsh and merciless march of the bitumen - small children defensively holding hands.

Another has a caption that makes the peril of road-crossing sound like a cosy adventure story – ‘Refuge Island’.

What would the Egyptians make of these signs?

One of the first recorded workers' strikes in history happened in Egypt in the reign of Rameses lll when the royal tomb workers lay down their tools when their pay and rations were not forthcoming.

To other eyes, some of our signs might look like protest banners. End Roadwork! End School Zone! End Freeway!

Is it superstition to believe that the sacred writing of hieroglyphs held any more potency than road signs, even though they were invested with the power of heka, Egyptian magic?

My Egyptologist hero Anson Hunter has a respect for unseen dangers from the ancient past, execration texts, forbidden artefacts and the like. He is something of a phenomenologist, one who believes in granting value to the sacred, unlike conventional Egyptologists with their ‘agnostic reflex’ that prevents them from taking the esoteric seriously.

Perhaps the fact that there are others today with an agenda that takes its inspiration from the mystery religions of Egypt, who believe very seriously in the potency of Egypt’s past that warn us to be wary of unseen dangers breaking into the 21^st century.

The journey continues here

Video: "These novels untangle new mysteries of ancient Egypt"

2011-11-22T16:18:00.000-08:00


Readers comments...

Visit

These novels "untangle new mysteries about ancient Egypt..."

2011-11-22T13:51:00.000-08:00

Screen grab: iPad (Amazon Kindle edition)

“(The hero, archaeologist) Anson Hunter untangles new mysteries about the ancient Egyptian civilization affirmation of survival after death by the power of symbolism and magic over matter, a virtual afterlife built by a collective unconscious, sustained by religion and tangible in the form of pyramids, temples and tombs. His elucidations are esoteric bombs that undermine the foundations of today’s world major religions.”

Egypt Then and Now

“Reads from the start like a P.I. or spy novel.”

“I didn’t think fiction about ancient Egypt’s archaeology like this could be written today.” Readers' comments.

The smiting power of ancient Egypt breaks into the 21st Century

2011-11-14T22:17:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from 'The Smiting Texts' - first in a series about dangers from the ancient past

Start reading the trilogy here

Ancient Egypt Fiction Collection - thrillers, adventure, fantasy...

2011-11-13T13:26:00.000-08:00

Do you prefer your Egypt fiction in paperback or in Kindle format?

Here is my Egypt fiction collection available at Amazon.

From The Smiting Texts adventure thriller trilogy to Dynasty Zero and The Delta Dilemma - as well as an ancient Egypt collection for young adults and children.

LOOK INSIDE the collection here

"A fast paced Egypt adventure trilogy - won't let go even after the last page"

2011-11-07T00:16:00.000-08:00

Imagine if you could choose - your love who lived in ancient Egypt or your love today

2011-11-05T17:37:00.000-07:00

Choose: "Your loved one in ancient Egypt - or your love of today?"

This shows elements of my pre-storyboarded concept that I put together before writing "The Delta Dilemma" - adventure fantasy about a time-torn archaeologist who is given a terrible choice through the agency of the ancient Egyptian goddess of Truth, Maat. Will he choose his love of the past - or today?

Available on Kindle

Why hieroglyphs in Egypt's Stone Book of Thoth carry such potency - "The Ibis Apocalypse"

2011-11-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

Glyphs were divine words

“And these glyphs in the Stela, what makes them so potent?” she said.

“Glyphs were never just a writing system," Anson Hunter said. "They were divine words. It’s for this reason that the scribes were fearful that certain words could have a malignant power and become uncontrollable forces in the tomb and so they would cut off the head of a lion in a glyph, or truncate a serpent or show spears stuck in the back of a crocodile in order to render it harmless. The hieroglyphs in the Stela of Thoth were the most potent of all. When spoken they were not just sounds, but glyphs graven on the air, real things and entities, image-meanings that took shape and activated a world of unseen forces and alternate reality. Heka, or Egyptian magic."

“So you believe Egyptian magic has power to influence the real world?”

“Can a certain sequence of words and actions, such as imitation, the replication of a name, image or mythical event produce an event in the real world? I believe there is an unseen connectedness between things and by tuning in to this network of likenesses you can attract like outcomes. The trick is to find that invisible skein and draw on it, hence the Egyptians’ use of puns, analogy, mimesis, acrostics, dualities and the like. These links are things beyond logic, like the dream realm where parallel sounds, symbols and stories, while seeming bizarre, hold an inner, often unseen connection with our lives.”

From 'The Ibis Apocalypse' #3 in the Egypt adventure trilogy

See Kindle

An Egyptologist, a female Mossad agent and a night on a Lake Nasser cruise

2011-10-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

Archaeologist Anson Hunter had gone to bed with Intelligence agencies before, but never quite like this

“Good night,” she said.

“I can’t sleep. Know any good Gentile jokes?”

“No.”

“There’s something I have to ask you, Zara Margolin. Do you feel any love for Mother Nile? I know this is a lake we’re on, but navigators follow the old basin of the Nile for safety, so I feel we’re still cruising the past.”

“Of course I love Egypt. I was born in Alexandria.”

“Yes, but beyond the accident of your birthplace. Think of the story of Israel in the Torah. The land of the Nile gave succour to your people throughout history, feeding you in periods of famine. Think of the sons of Jacob sent to Egypt for food, of Joseph sold into slavery and favoured by pharaoh. And then there is Moses, drawn out of the Nile by pharaoh’s daughter. You could say that Mother Nile gave birth to Israel, complete with labour pains courtesy of Rameses.”

“Your point?”

“You’re spiritually linked with Egypt. Like me.”

“I’m happy to say I am not like you, spiritually or in any other way.” She sat up and fluffed up her pillow, finally punching the ends together vigorously. “I’m more focused than you and I don’t sit on the fence,” she said. “You claim to be one who takes ancient beliefs seriously. But then you pursue this quest, regardless, and you look down on academics and call them dispassionate people who don’t engage experientially with such matters.”

She turned away, dark hair cascading on the pillow.

He was spending the night in a cabin with an unfathomable daughter of Israel who was as remote and somehow familiar as any ancient Egyptian beauty who’d ever looked at him sideways from a painted wall of a tomb. What had happened to the girl who’d brightened his day in a London bookshop?

Zara, Zara, Zara.

From The Ibis Apocalypse, 3rd in the Egypt adventure fiction trilogy - (Amazon Kindle)

My archaeology hero conflicted - engages with sacred of Egypt and wrestles with christian faith

2011-10-26T21:03:00.000-07:00


Christian cross in Egypt's Temple of Isis, Philae

The archaeologist hero of my trilogy of Egypt adventures, Anson Hunter, is not only a renegade, but conflicted.

He not only engages with the sacred of ancient Egypt, but at the same time wrestles with a Christian faith.

As a villain points out to him:

Kraft ran his fingertips over the wall. The fingers were splayed and swollen like roots. Anson followed the moving fingers. They ran exploringly over carved texts to reach the form of a goddess.

“Here she is, rippling in ravishing curves of stone. The goddess of your fantasies. Want to touch her, Mr Hunter? No one is looking.”

It was Isis and she was shown in raised relief, in profile, high waisted, long-legged, her body tapering like a vase in a form-revealing sheath dress. She wore a vulture headdress and held an ankh in one hand.

“It’s not a good idea to touch the local ladies,” Anson said, “of today, or yesterday, especially ones on temple walls. The antiquities people disapprove.”

Undeterred, Kraft reached down and touched the foot of the goddess. He ran his fingertips from the ankles up the skirt.

“Isn’t this the form you dream about? You are here, at her feet and always have been, am I right? Don’t look surprised. I know more about you than you think. A man with Christian ideas who is also a captive to pagan sensuality...”

Egypt Adventure Trilogy - available on Kindle

Sealed inside the heart of Egypt’s lost labyrinth… scene from ‘The Smiting Texts’

2011-10-25T17:42:00.000-07:00

Lost beneath the sands... a maze with 1500 underground chambers - a structure once said to be more impressive than the pyramids

When the underground stopped shaking, they shone their flashlights around the heart-shaped chamber. They were trapped inside a sealed vault, with no way back or forward.

Our hearts have failed the test. We have been found sinful, the thought hit Anson Hunter. We’re stuck in the heart of the tomb.

"I think we've just had a coronary shut down," he informed them. He looked at Kalila, Daniel and his nephews. “Any ideas?”

"There must be some mechanism that opens it again," the Coptic monk Daniel said. "We must find it! Start looking, I suggest.”

They all joined in a search of the walls and floors, as they hunted for hidden levers or mechanisms that might open the doors, pressing individual blocks of stone, running fingers between cracks.

Sound above their heads put a stop to their efforts. Something was happening in the ceiling. Anson listened. Hissing sounds. Small apertures had opened in the roof. Red streams ran softly into the chamber.

"Blood!"

"Not blood, after three thousand years." Daniel bent and scooped up a handful. He sniffed it. "Red clay dust," he muttered.

It wasn't blood, but it could kill them just as surely as any liquid.

"It's symbolic blood, dry red clay from Elephantine,” Anson said. “The red is haematite, iron oxide. In ancient legends red clay often took the place of blood when mixed with wine or water. I think this dust represents the blood of Osiris."

"If we don't get out of here soon, it will choke us," Kalila said, giving voice to their fears.

They redoubled their efforts to find a lever. They ran their hands like nervous spiders over the walls.

The powder-blood flowing into the heart gathered in piles around their feet. The streams were running faster.

Kalila coughed. Fine dust filled the air. It would suffocate them long before it covered their heads…

#1 in Egypt adventure trilogy - Here

Touch the mystery of ancient Egypt on your iPad... E-gypt for e-readers on Kindle

2011-10-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

Touch enthralling Egypt in a range of fiction titles

"The ancients, royalty, used to adorn their bodies with gold before they took their pleasure,” she said.

2011-10-23T14:32:00.000-07:00

Bodies adorned with gold

He wondered what she would look like wearing the jewels.

“I believe the ancients, royalty, used to adorn their bodies with gold before they took their pleasure,” she said.

She was a mind reader. There was definitely something of the gypsy about this girl.

“You’d like me to model the pieces for you,” she said. Her eyes sparkled with daring. “Go into the bedroom. Wait in there and I may surprise you.”

Surprise him? What was the worst that she could do? Disappear? Take the jewels and run? Why? Maybe she planned to open the apartment door and call in an accomplice - a sociopathic Greek-Egyptian boyfriend who would knife him now that he’d served his usefulness.

Too much speculation. It was an occupational risk. He got up, went through to the bedroom and sat on the bed. He’d always prided himself on his flexibility.

It felt as if thousands of years elapsed before she arrived and appeared like a vision in the bedroom doorway.

From 'The Hathor Holocaust', 2nd in the Egypt archaeology adventure trilogy, available in Kindle format.

"Which side of the bed will be mine?" he said to her. (The Ibis Apocalypse)

2011-10-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

An archaeologist and theorist just can't help speculating

Afterwards, they climbed aboard an antique elevator to ride up to their room on the second floor. He closed the wooden and glass doors and then clanged a metal concertina gate shut. She pressed the button for their floor.

The lift cage gave a judder and started creeping up, the machinery humming busily, like his mind at that moment. This was going to be their first night together.

She caught him staring and wondering.

“What?” she said.

“Speculating is my business. Just speculating."

“I’ll bet you are.”

“I’m wondering which side of the bed will be mine.”

“The side of caution, I’d advise.”

“Really?”

“Unless you want to re-enact Death on the Nile.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“Good.”

“This was not in the brochure, Zara. False advertising.

“False something.”

Hopes? Oh well, he thought, shrugging. Best to establish the ground rules so there’d be no misunderstandings. It was early days. And nights. They were going to be cabin mates for a whole Lake Nasser cruise.

Was Zara Margolin going to be all business, all of the time?

He’d acted as a consultant for Intelligence before, but he’d never exactly jumped into bed with them. What was the best way to go about this?

She’d been in the Israeli military before and so she was probably inured to the situation of living with men at close quarters.

From The Ibis Apocalypse - 3rd in the Egypt archaeological adventure trilogy, available in Kindle format

"Do you find the art of ancient Egypt erotic?"

2011-10-23T04:06:00.000-07:00

Grasped possessively by a dark-eyed goddess

THEY WALKED back through the valley in dazzling light.

“Could anything my father found rival these underworlds? They make a deep impression.”

“There’s no civilization so seductive,” Kalila said.

“Seductive is the word. I find the graphics of ancient Egypt pretty ravishing, I must admit,” he said.

She smiled.

“You find them erotic?”

“Hell yes. I can easily imagine myself being grasped possessively by one of those dark-eyed goddesses in the frescoes and reliefs. The art of ancient Egypt ensnares you with its atmosphere of pervasive mystery.”

“Yet there is rarely any lewdness portrayed in Egyptian art,” she commented. “Except for a few scurrilous doodles on ostraca. The Egyptians achieved a sense of sexual tension in far more subtle ways, in the ladies with their diaphanous gowns, painted eyes and gala wigs that sent an erotic signal. Then there were the other coded symbols, the scented delta of a lotus blossom held under a nose, the ducks and geese, or a monkey playing under a chair, the possessive arm slung around the waist of a husband, the intent, very-interested eyes of a goddess taking the pharaoh by the hand. It’s all there, but in the oblique Nilotic way. There is a love poem where the girl bathes in the stream with her beloved and says: ‘I'll go into the water at your bidding and come up with a red fish who will quiver with happiness in my fingers.’”

“I don’t get it,” he said, putting an expression of puzzlement on his face. “I hope you’re going to explain it to me.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort...”

('The Smiting Texts' - first in an ancient Egypt adventure trilogy, available on Kindle)

VIDEO: 3rd in my trilogy of Egypt adventure novels

2011-10-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

Mythology-haunted Egypt adventure thriller fiction

2011-10-10T21:38:00.000-07:00

At Amazon on Kindle...

Indiana Jones meets House? Stargate meets Wilbur Smith? Rider Haggard meets X-Files?

2011-10-08T17:33:00.000-07:00

How do you compare?

The brutal Hollywood synthesis of a story is so-and-so meets so-and so.
How would I apply the formula to my Egypt adventure trilogy?
How would I sell my Egypt adventure thriller trilogy as a Hollywood ‘high concept’ pitch?

Indiana Jones meets House?

Stargate meets Wilbur Smith?

Rider Haggard meets X-Files?

I have heard all of these descriptions and find it hard to reconcile them all.

Wilbur Smith? I must admit I'm not a fan of large, roaring, two-fisted heroes.

Dr House? My archaeologist character Anson Hunter is a renegade and although sardonic at times is apparently immensely likeable to readers.

Indiana Jones? Anson Hunter is more cerebral and he has far more human flaws. (His ex-wife described him as having the burning eyes of a fanatic).

Stargate? There are elements of fantasy in my novels, but I am not a fan of the Egypt and aliens combination. I am an amateur Egyptologist, so I like to ground my stories in substantive fact.

Rider Haggard? I love the lost race idea (think 'She'), but I don't have to invent lost races. The Egyptians will do for me.

X-Files? I love to leave the question of the supranormal hanging and have a certain belief in unseen realities , but I also like a real world plot.

VIDEO - TRILOGY OF EGYPT THRILLERS ABOUT DANGERS FROM ANCIENT PAST

2011-10-06T06:27:00.000-07:00

'The Smiting Texts'... No #1 of a trilogy about dangers from the ancient past

The book that started it all

Begin the trilogy here on Amazon Kindle

My Egyptology fiction hero grants value to the sacred and to unseen realities

2011-10-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

Feeling the ancient Egypt experience

Archaeologist Anson Hunter believes in experiencing the sacred in my trilogy of adventure novels about dangers from the ancient past - and modern conspiracies.

Share the ancient Egypt experience here on Amazon Kindle

If ancient Egypt were a character in an adventure thriller novel...

2011-10-05T03:11:00.000-07:00


"Ancient Egypt is one of the characters" in this trilogy of Egypt adventure thrillers.

If ancient Egypt were a character in an adventure thriller novel... which part of Egypt would be the most fascinating for you?

Cairo, the pyramids, the Sphinx, the tombs of Sakkara, Amarna, The Valley of the Kings, the temples of Abydos, Karnak, Dendera, Edfu, The Lost Labyinth of Egypt's Fayoum, Abu Simbel... the momentous River Nile itself, the ancient superhighway of a civilization? (For me, ancient Egypt was the first civilisation connected by a superhighway, a network of networks linking sites of temples, palaces, government, markets, industry, construction and education. It was a physical Internet and engine of economic, religious and technical growth, and of continuity.)

The Smiting Texts trilogy of adventure novels - and other novels in my Egypt series, cover the entire length and breadth and time span of Egypt, back to Dynasty Zero - and to the far reaches of its empire in Nubia.

Find the mysterious character of ancient Egypt here

'Enthralling Egypt' Ancient Egypt Fiction Collection at AMAZON Kindle and paperback

2011-09-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

YouTube

Browse the collection here

THE END. How many novels do you actually finish on your iPad?

2011-09-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

"Lives with you long after you turn
the last page..."

(Reviewer - "The Smiting Texts" - #1 in my Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers.)

It's so easy to buy a novel to read on your iPad, and it's also so easy and enjoyable to read.

But...

I sometimes wonder - is it also easy to forget to read on to the end, with all the other distractions on your iPad?

It's not as if you have a bulky paperback sitting there accusingly on your bedside table with a bookmark pulling a tongue at you.
Out of sight, out of mind?

I think we need a new iPad app.

Every now and then it flashes up an image of your partly read novel and a bookmark jutting out to show how far you've come.

Either that or make sure the books you read drag you inexorably to the last page... and beyond.

LOOK INSIDE! Browse 3 opening scenes of my Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers

2011-09-27T21:50:00.000-07:00

Look inside all 3 novels in the Egypt trilogy

Browse 3 opening scenes of my Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers ... right here.

(Opening - The Smiting Texts)

Chapter 1

THEY INTERCEPTED him as he came out of Baltimore-Washington Airport, two men wearing suits and an air of officialdom like a brisk cologne.

“Mr Anson Hunter, the British Egyptologist?”

Egyptologist? That sounded good. Very establishment. Anson stood a bit taller, which placed his beanstalk elevation a few inches above theirs. The man could have said independent, renegade Egyptologist and phenomenologist, lecturer at out-of-town halls and auditoriums, writer, blogger and alternative theorist as well as leader of occasional, fringe tour groups to Egypt. But instead the man had said ‘Egyptologist’.

“Who wants to know?”

“You are invited to Johns Hopkins University. They want to hear you speak.”

Anson goggled just a little. Johns Hopkins and Anson Hunter? His moment of elation quickly faded. They didn’t belong in the same sentence.

“A nice thought, gentlemen, but venerable institutions like Johns Hopkins don’t want people like me to speak. They would prefer us not to breathe.”

Anson had arrived to give a lecture on ancient Egyptian ritual smiting power and execration texts at a hired Masonic hall that evening.

He tried to move past, but the men blocked his way, smiling with steely politeness.

“Please come with us, Sir.”

“There must be some mistake.”

The spokesman frowned and reached inside his coat. Hell, Anson thought, what is this? Has mainstream Egyptology finally sent a hit squad? The hand came out of the coat. Anson resumed the business of breathing. The man flipped open a wallet, by way of introduction. Anson glimpsed a crest – an eagle inside a circle and the words: US Homeland Security.

(Opening - The Hathor Holocaust)

Chapter 1

AN EMAIL arrived at his hotel, giving him an address in South Kensington and a caution:

‘Come alone. Take care you are not followed. Change trains or taxis.’

It was a message from a mysterious young woman who had ambushed him on a train to London.

Satisfied with the evasive manoeuvres he had taken, he arrived at mid morning at a block of apartments and went up a chequered path to a black door with flaking paint.

Was it a trap?

He found the right number on a rusted panel and pressed a buzzer. While he heard no sound beyond, he felt an answering buzz and tingle run through his body as if he had touched a naked wire.

She had offered herself to him like a baited hook, using the lure of an Egyptian antiquity. The circumstances were suspicious, but there had been nothing suspect about the antiquity on her arm. For Anson Hunter, alternative Egyptologist, theorist and expert on the esoteric beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, there was an invisible ‘maker’s mark’ on the real thing that he could not mistake.

The door clicked open.

Should he go through with this? He shrugged. He liked to be flexible. He went inside and climbed a flight of carpeted stairs to be met at a door by the Egyptian-born Greek, Alexia, dressed in black, but wearing a smile that was bright and daring.

He went past her, caught a whiff of perfume.

She locked and chained the door. He saw that she was still wearing the Egyptian bracelet. Gold, turquoise and carnelian in an archaic design winked on her wrist.

“We can do this two ways,” she said. “Agreeably - or we can do it in a cold, business- like manner. I say agreeably. A good coffee, first. There’s an espresso machine here.”

“You say that as if this is not your permanent address. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

She smiled.

“Don’t let’s get all suspicious, Anson. May I call you that?” She took his coat and hung it behind the door.

It had the look of a furnished apartment. He noticed a forced assimilation rather than a blend of furnishings, a modern couch and dingy chairs in the sitting room. A bizarre piece of ornamentation caught his eye. It was an unpainted white porcelain cobra. A snake, here? It was sitting - or rearing - on the top of a television set as if to remind him that he had walked into danger.

“Where is it?”

“Sit, relax. What difference will a few more minutes make after thousands of years?”

Anson stretched out his long-boned frame in a chair and waited while she went to work in the adjoining kitchen area. He could view her from here.

A thousand years elapsed while she made coffee at a stainless steel espresso machine. The aroma of ground coffee wafted out and surrounded him, snugly enveloping, cosying up to his nerves. Maybe he could enjoy this.

She brought out his coffee and put one on a table for herself.

Then she vanished into a bedroom. What now?

He heard a squeaking sound. She came out again dragging a black leather suitcase on wheels.

“You’re walking out on us already?” he said.

She gave a small grunt as she swung the case onto a rectangular coffee table in front of him, unzipped its lid and swung it open. She lifted a towel from the top.

He bent over it and looked down into the heart of a golden cache of jewels floating in white clouds of cotton wool.

It was a hoard of relics dedicated to the goddess Sekhmet-Hathor, jewellery in the form of necklaces, menat collars, bracelets, golden and jewelled anklets, and small lioness statues and pendants of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise and amethyst.

(Opening – The Ibis Apocalypse)

Prologue

Ibis catacomb, el-Ashmunein, Egypt

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

The voice of the woman funnelled 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 rockslide 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?

Start the Egypt trilogy here

Pre-video - #3 in my Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers

2011-09-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

The stone Book of Thoth... the destiny stela... did it affect the destiny of nations and could it unleash its malefic forces on the world once again?

This is the opening scene, my visualization or pre-video storyboard that I prepared before I sat down to write The Ibis Apocalypse. An odd way to plan novels, but it seems to be working, according to readers and reviewers who have hooked into The Smiting Texts trilogy, all available on Kindle.

"An amazing read." "Stays with you long after you turn the last page"

See the trilogy here

Faster-than-light #neutrino time travel to ancient Egypt?

2011-09-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

Could you live in the ancient past? My Egyptologist hero speculates...

"The first thing that strikes me, perversely, is a sense of profound deprivation, of being robbed of something that I’d always thought would be mine. My own life and times. I don’t really want to be stuck in history. At least not permanently. Not in an age before antibiotics, anaesthesia, modern dentistry and the Internet. Your own age is the oxygen you breathe, it suddenly hits me, and without it I am left gasping as I walk out of the building with my servant and into the daylight of an earlier age.

It’s so dammed quiet. No tourist buses on the roads, no aircraft flying overhead. Here, even the air is different. It feels younger and headier.

Maybe it’s the lack of pollution.

I know very surely in that moment that Egypt isn’t just a place for me. Egypt is first of all a concept. It’s the Egypt of the mind I love, self-contained and endlessly satisfying. I love to hanker after it, not live in it and die in it. So what do I do now? What would you do if you were an archaeologist stuck in 2,000 BC, knowing what you did about the greatest secrets of history?

Go out and hunt down Tutankhamun’s tomb before Howard Carter does? Tempting, but no, you wouldn’t.

How about cracking the tomb of great pharaohs like Seti or of Thutmosis? They’d be more rewarding than the boy king’s hole-in-the-wall..."

Excerpt from The Hathor Holocaust (my renegade Egyptologist hero is also an avid blogger with a fondness for speculation)

Come on a journey across time to the dangers of the ancient past in my trilogy of Egypt adventure thrillers - click here

Trilogy - 'The Girl with the Coptic Tattoo' appears in #1 mystery adventure thriller

2011-09-22T19:57:00.000-07:00

Crime, mystery and a global conspiracy plus a girl with a Coptic cross tattoo

In the first book in my Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers, renegade archaeologist Anson Hunter works beside an intriguing young Egyptian Egyptologist, Kalila Nawal...

KALILA HAD BOOKED them into the Cairo Marriott, a palatial hotel set in gardens on the island of Zamalek, overlooking the Nile. It had been built by the Khedive Ismail at the time of the opening of the Suez Canal - a palace that formed the central building of the hotel, its antique-filled surroundings still recalling past glory.

Darkness and a smoggy haze now hung like mystery over the six acres of formal gardens of the hotel and it made Anson feel as if he were trying to peer into the past through a powerful lens.

They had arrived back tired after a long day and since it was rather late to eat in one of the restaurants, they decided to order through room service. Kalila drew Anson aside in the lobby and the two went for a coffee in the coffee lounge.

As she sipped a macchiato in a small glass, a dark and strong coffee with just a stain of cream, he noticed a tiny stylised tattoo on the skin of her wrist. On such a young woman it might have appeared like punk ornamentation, but a cross on the wrist was a sign worn by many Coptic Christians.

“Abuna made it clear that we must tell nobody of his approach, or of our meeting tonight, so we’re going to have to be careful when we slip out later,” she said. Her eyes shone with intrigue. “I’m eager to hear what he has to tell us.”

“You knew this monk?”

“I was with your father when he drove to see him once. We met him at the Baramus monastery.”

“You know a great deal more about my father than I do.”

“Your father was very kind to young students and we enjoyed an odd relationship… intellectually speaking,” she added quickly. “I was a postgraduate student and I suppose I was one of his protégés, but no, that sounds too favoured. I was more of a Devil’s Advocate, except he liked to play the role of the devil himself. I was his East, you see, and I don’t mean the Middle East. I was his opposite, the East to his West, the fervent believer versus his secular man of science. He said he liked me for balance, but I think he needed me for the provocation he fed on.”

“He was certainly no believer.”

“Are you a man of beliefs?” she said.

“Tragically so. I believe in far too many things for most people’s comfort, mostly things that others don’t believe in. But if you’re talking about God, I like to keep an open mind.”

This answer did not seem to impress her as being a philosophy with particular virtue. (Excerpt from The Smiting Texts).

Start the trilogy here

"A museum is a dangerous place..."

2011-09-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

British Museum scene from the Egypt adventure thriller 'The Hathor Holocaust' (2nd in the trilogy)

‘A MUSEUM is a dangerous place.’

Sir Flinders Petrie, pioneer British Egyptologist, first said those words, but today Anson was thinking them.

A man had followed him to the British Museum.

Who was he?

Petrie had been thinking about another kind of danger when he’d made his famous remark about the dangers of museums. The founder of modern scientific Egyptology had been alluding to the manner in which the early Cairo museum had dealt with a royal mummy fragment found at Abydos, a single, bandaged arm, covered in jewels, the only remains of First Dynasty king Zer.

The curators took the jewels and tossed the arm way, the earliest royal mummy remains ever to come to light. It was a mummy horror story to eclipse any devised by the most febrile imagination, Anson had always thought, but right at that moment his mind was on the other worry.

Anson went up the steps and between the Ionic-style columns into the building. He passed through a crowded reception hall to arrive in the Great Court beyond.

Above the court, a tessellated glass and steel roof spread out overhead like a vast, glowing net, catching clouds, blue sky and a spirit of illumination, while the round, central building swelled like an ivory tower of learning. He crossed the clean bright space before heading left to the door of the Egyptian section.

Inside the dimmer light of the hall, a group of school children crowded around the Rosetta Stone in its glass display case. Two little black girls peered inside, their heads close together as they examined the stone, their hair braided in cornrows. An African look, he thought. It linked his thoughts to Africa’s greatest river, the Nile, and to Egypt’s irrigated fields that bounded it and made Egypt the breadbasket of the ancient world.

Excerpt from 'The Hathor Holocaust.'

See trilogy here

My ancient Egypt fiction collection - Kindle and paperback

2011-09-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

Adventure, action, mystery thrillers - through to young adult fantasy

I invite you to lose yourself in the enthralling mystery of ancient Egypt.

- The adventure thriller trilogy (so far) of The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse.

- The mythological fantasy of Dynasty Zero Egypt and the romantic adventure of The Delta Dilemma.

- Then for younger readers The Princess Who Lost Her Scroll of the Dead, Egypt Breakout... and more.

See the Egypt collection here - Kindle and paperback

Break out from an Egyptian Museum!

2011-09-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

Fantasy Egypt adventure for young readers

Sekhmet-Hathor, a she-devil and the Lady of Terror, features in my novel The Hathor Hoocaust

2011-09-17T15:32:00.000-07:00


Malefic Sekhmet-Hathor, 'The Great Destroyer'	, Nubia

'It is no accident that the early Coptic Christians recognised Hathor as the enemy. It was for this reason that her image came in for such ferocious defacement from the faithful who dwelt among the tombs and temples. The goddess Isis, by comparison, came in for much gentler treatment, appearing as she so often did in a Madonna-like pose, holding the baby Horus. Zealots identified Isis with the Virgin Mary and thus she escaped their anger. Not so, Hathor who also appears as the lioness Sekhmet, The Destroyer of Humankind. A very ominous symbol for the early Christians. As Scripture says: ‘Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour... Much like Sekhmet, a she-devil and the Lady of Terror. To this day they call the terrible dust storms that bedevil Egypt the ‘breath of the lioness.’

- The Hathor Holocaust, second in the Egyptian trilogy of adventure thrillers

See the trilogy here

Archaeologist hero of my ancient Egypt trilogy respects unseen dangers from the ancient past

2011-09-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

Hidden dangers among the hidden secrets of ancient Egypt?

In my ancient Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers, the renegade archaeologist hero Anson Hunter is something of a phenomenologist, one who believes you have to experience and give value to the sacred in order to deal with it.

As a mainstream Egyptologist, Dr Melinda Skilling, says to him in The Smiting Texts:

“You’re special, not only because of your grasp of arcane Egyptian knowledge and practice, but because of your standpoint. I must confess that mainstream academics, restrained by what has been termed the ‘agnostic reflex’, are somewhat in the position of outsiders looking in, careful to keep an objective distance from Egyptian religion, mystical texts and esoteric practices. You, on the other hand, are a phenomenologist, one who believes that you must grant value and credibility to the sacred and engage with it experientially in order to appreciate it fully. I have a certain sympathy for that position.”

A certain sympathy. Was she trying to be nice? Perhaps. She’d certainly earned points from him for her candour.

But the blunt instrument in the big blue suit didn’t try for points. His words came down on Anson like a mallet.

“Frankly, to many people you’re just a wild theorist. And that gives you a lot more freedom to operate in. Nobody listens to you - and nobody watches you. We can hide behind you.”

The Smiting Texts is followed by The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse (Kindle and paperback). See them here

A dizzying abyss of time.. a countdown to Egypt Dynasty Zero and beyond

2011-09-07T04:21:00.000-07:00

"It's hard to grasp a sense of the dizzying abyss of time we must span in order to reach the age of Menes and beyond…

A countdown to the legendary age of Dynasty Zero... and beyond

Try picturing a line-up of Egypt’s rulers stretching into the distance.

Imagine we are moving past this assembly on a river of time, like a water ride in a theme park, journeying back to the first historical dynasties and earlier.

We’ll ignore more recent history - a string of one hundred and forty seven Ottoman rulers, fifty seven assorted Mamelukes, over one hundred Fatimid, Abbasid and non-Abbasid rulers, scores of Byzantine Period Christian rulers and a line of forty three Roman Emperors.

We’ll start with Cleopatra, for, although Greek, she actually went native, spoke the language and adopted the religion.

Ready? We’re off.

We build up momentum and Cleopatra glides by in her Love Boat, arm in arm with Marc Anthony, her sails making the wind drunk with their perfume, but wait, there’s a cavalcade of six earlier Cleopatras and a fleet of fourteen Ptolemies stretching into the distance before we pass the monolith of Alexander the Great and the Macedonian kings.

Now the Persian hordes engulf us in the Second Persian period before we reach the last Egyptian born pharaoh, the magician-king Nectanebo II, working his magic on model wax ships floating in a bowl of water.

We’ve still got around two thousand, two hundred and seventy years to go before we get back to the pyramid age.

We travel through ten more dynasties and over fifty kings, including a detour of a hundred years as we see a line of Nubian, or Kushite, pharaohs mount the Horus throne, before we tumble into the darkness and chaos of the Third Intermediate Period.

Then we enter the New Kingdom and a new golden age in a line of three dynasties and thirty-three kings.

We rush by eleven Rameses kings alone, including Rameses the Great and his colossal seated statues at the Temple of Abu Simbel.

We see the boy king Tutankhamun posing for his golden mask. It’s still almost two thousand years before the pyramid age.

Now we pass the sun-drunk Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti in their brand new city of Akhetaten mushrooming magically in the desert wilderness of Amarna, then a parade of other pharaohs, including multiple Amenhoteps.

And then it’s on to the Thutmosids and Pharaoh Thutmosis the Third in his chariot and blue war crown, leading his armies out of Thebes to conquer the Levant.

Moving back in time before Thutmosis, we find the female pharaoh Hatshepsut applying her strap-on symbol of kingship, a false beard.

Dynasties seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen and a parade of over ninety kings passes by - compare this with the mere sixty six monarchs of Britain.

We find ourselves in darkness and turmoil as we hit the Second Intermediate Period and the Hyksos conquest of Egypt. Foreign rulers take over for two centuries.

We rise on to meet classical times, an austerely refined age called the Middle Kingdom. Eleven pharaohs slide past in all their gravitas, including Amenemhat III, builder of the Great Labyrinth.

Astoundingly, there’s still around eight hundred years to go before we get back to the Old Kingdom pyramid age.

Then a veritable chaos of kings tumble by, not quite ‘seventy kings in seventy days’ as in the first intermediate Period, but something very like it. We plummet into an age of chaos called the First Intermediate Period and we hear screams. It’s a horror section of three hundred years, where emaciated figures of death and famine leap out to terrify us like ghoulish animatrons.

As we regain speed, we come upon a line of thirty-six more kings. Dynasties six, five, four, three, two, one, flash past like numbers in a rapidly descending lift.

We have finally arrived at the age of the pyramid builders and the Early Dynastic period.

Worker hordes pitch stone pyramids like immense limestone tents on the plateau of Saqqara, including the Great Pyramid of Khufu and the Step Pyramid of Zoser.

We’re over five thousand years from our present day. But have we hit ground zero yet?

Not quite. Other shadowy kings, as many as thirteen, with names like ‘Crocodile’, ‘Catfish’ and ‘Scorpion’, are beginning to emerge from the darkness of prehistory. There seems to be an unknown number of basements beneath.

We have just reached the borders of myth and history… “

(Part of an address to a US audience given by Anson Hunter, renegade Egyptologist and theorist in my novel ‘The Ibis Apocalypse’… out in Kindle and in paperback, Amazon, mid September, along with forerunner 'The Hathor Holocaust')

See my Egyptian Trilogy and other adventure novels here

The many and varied races subjugated by Egypt under Rameses

2011-09-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

Subjugated peoples under Rameses ll

At the base of the statues of Rameses the Great at Abu Simbel Temple we see the many and varied peoples/racial types subjugated by Egypt during its imperial age.

Excerpt from The Smiting Texts, first in a trilogy of adventure thrillers featuring rogue British Egyptologist Anson Hunter:

THIS WAS GOING to be a tough room.

Yet the theatrette at Johns Hopkins University was a much more smoothly operating venue than he was accustomed to.

For a start, his PowerPoint presentation was working. A title slide, thrown up in huge scale on the screen, showed an image of an ancient Egyptian wall relief from the temple of Abu Simbel. It was an archetypal smiting scene. A pharaoh, at full stretch, grasped the hair of a clutch of foreigners in one hand, while in the other he held an upraised mace. Poised in the ultimate iconography of menace, he was about to smash in the unfortunates’ heads. A caption said:

SMITING AND EXECRATION TEXTS

Ancient Egypt’s WMD - Weapons of Mass Destruction.

He’d spelt out WMD. Although his typical audience loved baffling mystery and the wildest theory, they didn’t care for him to be cryptic.

But this was not a typical audience today.

He found himself looking out across a corporate, academic, scientific and industrial powerhouse of America. Anson faced the consortium in the cool blue light of a stage area and tried to make out individuals’ faces in the theatrette-style auditorium...

See the Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers here

Ancient Egyptian threat formula - an esoteric threat or real world conspiracy against the US and West?

2011-08-29T00:17:00.000-07:00

Discover the secret of The Smiting Texts and get into an enthralling Egypt adventure thriller trilogy - HERE

A voice from the audience cut in.

“You really believe someone could put a remote hex on another country? On America?"

A heckler already. Anson peered. A man in the front row with military bearing and bulking up a blue suit, turned to throw a glare at the heckler.

In spite of the academic venue, this may not be a polite audience, Anson thought.

Anson hadn’t mentioned putting hexes on America and America wasn’t even on his mind. But it was on theirs, the heckler’s in particular.

“Do we have a few good Protestant Americans, Catholics and Jews in attendance today?” he asked the audience. “Then let me remind you about smiting in the Bible and Torah. The God of Moses hurled down some doozy execrations himself, with devastating effects: “… I shall make the land of Egypt desolate, and the country shall be destitute of that whereof it was full … I shall smite all them that dwell therein ... then shall they know that I am the LORD.”

He decided to bring ancient history up to the present. He flipped past a slide showing a shattered ancient Egyptian execration or cursing bowl, a clay vessel that contained a list of enemies and beside it one ritually shattered in order to bring foreign powers to their knees. He stopped to show a passage of text in Arabic on the screen.

“You think remote killing is no longer attempted today? It is, and it’s being used by dissidents in the Middle East. Smiting and execration might seem unthinkable in our desacralized Western society, so let’s move forward to the twenty-first century. Take a look. It’s a Palestinian text, discovered in the Dead Sea in 2002, by an Israeli Professor and it directed virulent thoughts against the leaders of Israel. Here’s a translation…

“Oh God almighty, I beg you God to destroy Ariel Sharon, son of Devorah, son of Eve… Destroy all his supporters, loyal aides and confidants, and all those who love him and whom he loves among the human beings and among devils and demons.”

“It came in a small, cloth-wrapped bundle, surrounded with lead, an interesting choice of metal since the ancient Egyptians also used lead for hostile symbolic and magical purposes, because of its heaviness and malleability. A modern day execration? Did this long-distance attack strike Sharon down? His doctors probably had a more prosaic explanation, like a stroke with massive bleeding in the brain, but it shows you what many still believe. And if you think that’s all a bit vague and low-tech, here’s something for the technocrats:

"Oh God, destroy all their security and policing apparatus, the computers, the electronic and listening equipment…”

There must have been a few technocrats in the room. It got a visible stir.

“The ancient Egyptians, who could engineer stone pyramids to optical precision, millennia before the real flowering of their empire, were not perversely stupid in one department of their lives, nor were they peculiarly occult. They were an intensely practical society. You don’t keep doing something for four thousand years if it doesn’t work. They believed that ritual execration and smiting – creative visualisation with potent maledictions thrown in – worked, and it protected their nation for thousands of years. A better investment perhaps than any Star Wars anti-missile system?” Anson suddenly switched off the PowerPoint...

(Excerpt from The Smiting Texts. Renegade British Egyptologist Anson Hunter is intercepted at a US airport and co-opted to address a Homeland Security Centre, the Centre for the Study of High Consequence Event Preparedness and Response, a consortium studying how the nation can best prepare for and respond to a range of unexpected large-scale incidents or disasters.)

Taking my ancient Egypt fiction writing on the road

2011-08-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

I can write happily on the dark side of the moon. Hope to add more books beyond my ancient Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers

The advent of e Books, Kindle and iPad means readers can enjoy e reading almost anywhere and now I am taking that spirit into my writing.

We have changed from living in a five bedroom house into this new Mercedes-Benz Diversion motorhome to travel around the country.

I call it iPad living, small, compact, writer friendly.

The Silvery Nomad

My wife has taken to nomadic living amazingly easily too. She is doing a blog called Journeys of The Silvery Nomad

Writers must always be allowed their subject. Mine is ancient Egyptian archaeological thrillers. Why???

2011-08-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

There's no picking how authors pick their heartland subject

A writer must always be allowed his subject, it’s said.

With me it’s ancient Egyptian archaeological thrillers. Why?

How do authors pick their heartland writing subjects?

There seems to be no way to pick it.

When I look at fellow authors who Tweet, I find one is a qualified veterinarian. A veritable zoo of famous animal books spring to mind. White Fang, Black Beauty, National Velvet, Jock of the Bushveld, maybe even Jaws or Moby Dick, but no, this famous author writes science-based techno thrillers.

Another is an authority on building structures and what makes them collapse. Great, I think, I can see the ultimate deconstruction thriller where an iconic Capitol building falls down trapping the president/congress. Who did it? Can they mount a rescue?

Forget it.

I suggested as much to him, but he let it go to the keeper, in cricket terminology. This author has his imaginative head firmly into Sword & Sorcery sagas. Why not?

And me?

I grew up in Zimbabwe at the edge of a game reserve and have been a Creative Director (Mad Man) for international advertising agencies in Sydney Australia.

So naturally I write Egyptian thrillers about a witty and renegade British archaeologist named Anson Hunter and about dangers to the world from the ancient past. I am an amateur Egyptologist and I have been devouring the subject since I was about twelve years of age. I and my wife have also made numerous study trips to Egypt.

Go figure.

I suppose we each find our metaphor, our prism through which we focus the human condition.

I see archaeology as a metaphor. It even applies to characters.

People are like archaeological sites, stratigraphical layers of history, their secrets waiting to be unearthed, layer by layer.

Then there is the lure of buried and often forbidden treasures.

Much like life.

We are all in search of for some ‘divine radiance’ that will illuminate our lives.

So while I travel around Australia in my mobile office and stimulate my mind with new ideas, I may branch out into new writing paths in the future… but I wouldn’t really bet on it.

Discover my heartland subject of ancient Egypt in the following adventure thrillers. Click here.

VIDEO: 2nd in my Egypt Trilogy of adventure thrillers - The Hathor Holocaust

2011-08-20T23:54:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: 30/12/11. I have just finished the second draft of a new Anson Hunter archaeological mystery adventure to be released in early 2012. It follows The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse. The trilogy is about to become a series...

Now you can begin the series with The Smiting Texts for just $2.99 on Kindle.

See the Egypt Trilogy and other Egypt adventure novels here

The gods and goddesses of Egypt, assailants in masks, take over a Nile cruise boat filled with the world's top Egyptologists

UPDATE: 9th January, 2012. NEW. 'The Anubis Intervention', the latest Anson Hunter archaeological mystery adventure novel, is now out, available through Amazon Kindle. It follows The Smiting Texts, The Hathor Holocaust and The Ibis Apocalypse. The trilogy is now a series...

An apocalyptic danger arises from Egypt's ancient past to threaten the world...

2011-08-17T04:16:00.000-07:00


"The HATHOR HOLOCAUST" is the second in my ‘Anson Hunter’ trilogy of Ancient Egyptian adventure novels (poster).

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 Hathor-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.

Discover the secret of The Hathor Holocaust here

My 2 ANCIENT-EGYPT BASED FANTASY ADVENTURES with a mythological basis

2011-08-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

Adventure, fantasy, archaeology and a pyramid-sized love triangle

Action adventure in a primordial age of legend

This is something new for me, two shorter length books than myEgypt adventure trilogy, blending ancient Egypt, adventure,suspense and elements of the supernatural.

I think the e-book format is well suited to a shorter length and I recall thatsome of my favorite pieces of fiction of all time were shorter in length(Ernest Hemingway's 'The Snows of Kilamanjaro' etc.). In fact, my very firstpublished story was a short-short 'Give a Man Rope', published in the ElleryQueen Mystery Magazine back in the seventies.Will we see a return to tighter, more honed stories?Printed novels seem to have become bulkier and bulkier, perhaps driven by thenecessity to wrestle for shelf space, but the value-bulk equation vanishes withmore economical e-books. The Delta Dilemma is a suspenseful, fantasy romanceadventure novelette with supernatural elements and takes place amid the turmoilof post-revolutionary Egypt. THE DELTA DILEMMA. Jed is a time-torn archaeologist enamoured with both hisyoung archaeologist wife and with an image of the Lady Tetisheri in an Egyptiantomb.Then chaos strikes across time and Jed is launched on a dangerous mission tostop the return of primeval chaos. He must penetrate a nightmarish sanctuary ofThe Ogdoad, Egypt’s eight gods of chaos and creation, where he will also facethe terrible, ultimate dilemma - save his passionate wife in ancient Egypt… orhis glamorous, yet independent wife of today… DYNASTY ZERO: EGYPT. This book set in a predynastic realm that Egyptologists nowrefer to mysteriously as 'Dynasty Zero' - an age of gods and demondemigods. The Egyptians called it 'theFirst Time' - or Zep Tepi.The 'Dynasty Zero' cycle first appeared as inset mythological fantasies withinmy ancient Egyptian thriller novels 'The Smiting Texts' and 'The IbisApocalypse' - and are separately presented here for fantasy adventure lovers. There are two stories in this fantasy cycle: "The Hunter and TheLioness Goddess of Destruction" and "Stela Wars". See these 2 novels and others here

8 ANCIENT EGYPT MOVIES THAT FAIL - why is a civilization lost in translation?

2011-08-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

Ancient Egypt invariably fails on film. Why?

Why does ancient Egypt fail on film? They may have decoded hieroglyphs, but there seems to be no filmic Rosetta Stone to translate the wonders of this civilization into great film.

Who do we blame most - the art department, the costume, make-up, writing, acting or directorial departments?

Most film reviews are the digestions of jaded palates, but this is not one of them. I love ancient Egypt-based films, yet I have to admit that almost none of them really deserves my affection.

Here are eight:

Cleopatra, The Awakening, The Egyptian, Sphinx, The Mummy (Original), Land of the Pharaohs, The Mummy (Brendan Fraser), Stargate

Ancient Egypt tends to produce bad films and Egypt is generally more palatable when used in a pastiche sense, such as in the Indiana Jones or Brendan Fraser's Mummy series.

Some suggestions:

The Egyptian costumes inevitably look campy and somehow pantomime.

The accents grate, whether clinically British or amusingly American, as in: "O might Fearo, I come from Rorme. May the guards be with you!"

The dialogue as stiff as old Imhotep in his wrappings.

The make-up is operatic.

The sets seem like monumental excess today. Too Hollywood for Hollywood.

Every movie seems like a series of stagy set-pieces

So what is the answer: maybe you'll find greater satisfaction reading more ancient Egypt fiction instead.

There the sets, costumes, art, make-up, accents, acting and direction are just to your taste.

In the end, only the 'Egypt of the Mind' - your mind - really translates this lost civilization to today.

Ancient Egypt adventure thrillers that work today

Enjoy the Egypt of the Mind here

'Each page begs the next, leaves the reader wanting more.' And here is more in my Egypt adventure thriller series of novels

2011-08-11T00:52:00.000-07:00

See the Egypt series here

Ancient Egypt's most famous death scene?

2011-08-09T18:18:00.000-07:00


Funeral procession, Tomb of Ramose - iconic death scene from ancient Egypt

Another ancient death scene - also the setting of a modern murder in 'The Smiting Texts' (Vizier Mereruka's tomb, Sakkara).

Anson Hunter threw a glance to the columns bearing reliefs of Mereruka.

The striding figure in profile seemed beyond time and decay. The Hittite, Greek, Persian, Roman and British empires had all come and gone while the Vizier had continued to move steadfastly through eternity.

It was a reminder that the Egyptians really believed, he thought. People were wrong to imagine that cynical priests pretended to believe and merely went through the motions when they presented offerings and prayers and burnt incense in front of this door. They believed unshakably in an afterlife. They lived in an age where humankind and gods, the living and the dead, and the forces of good and evil, existed side by side in two parts that held the universe together. In today’s age that denied god and laughed at the devil, people could not see both sides. But they needed to believe in the light and the shadow and to hold both in their minds, not least the shadow. The shadow gave things shape and form. Without it there was just blinding, unrelieved glare like the sunlit desert outside.

Was Mereruka’s afterworld a physical place? Or just a different reality, a sort of virtual world created by a civilization’s collective unconscious and sustained by its religion? Mereruka did not question its existence.

‘Do I believe in survival after death?’ Anson asked himself. ‘Perhaps not, when I think about it. But what about when I don’t think about it, but merely feel it, at a deeper level?’

Everyone knew that the Egyptians were preoccupied with the afterlife, but they took it even more seriously than many imagined. Humans, they said, were 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. This doorway and statue, 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.

The unconscious psyche believes in life after death Carl Jung asserted…

(Excerpt from 'The Smiting Texts')

Was ancient Egypt one of the most draconian civilisations the world has known?

2011-08-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

Was ancient Egypt a more frightening time and place than we imagine?

Of course many take a less radiant view of Egypt. I had an email from an historian with a religious bent who took issue with my view of Egypt:

‘Dynastic Ancient Egypt was not a land of allure, as you like to imagine; it was the most draconian civilization the world has ever known,’ he wrote. ‘Why can you not see it? The truth is there in the museum cases of the world, captured in the Egyptian paintings and carvings in wood or stone or on plaster of ordinary folk, the servant girl, the baker, the boatman, the seated scribe. The expression in their eyes, wide in their whites, is fear. They lived and died in terror. But if God punished this civilization as it was told in the Book of Exodus, why do you think you would have loved it?

‘Look at the carved Egyptian eye of Isis on the wall of a temple. Look at this eye of this goddess. You think it is a symbol of mystery, the single, feminine Egyptian eye in profile. Quintessential. But this black orb is not a symbol of allure; it is more like a dead planet in a pitiless universe. The oasis civilization of pharaonic Egypt was a hell where the sun beat down like a swordsmith’s hammer and reeds conspired in whispers at the edge of a river of tears. The land was hemmed in by deserts like the sides of a coffin and by a police, judicial, fiscal, priestly and bureaucratic system that arrested freedom like an image in diorite, the hardest of stone, which the carvers in the workshops shaped not with ease, as it seemed from their sublime achievements, but with the sacrifice of lifetimes. There is a reason why a people still celebrates their hasty exodus from this place with unleavened bread and bitter herbs 2000 years on. The Nazis of the twentieth century killed the Jews; the Ancient Egyptians ground their souls to stone dust…’

- Excerpt from an Anson Hunter blog in 'The Smiting Texts'.

Start reading the Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers here

How might the boy King Tutankhamun have looked as a man?

2011-08-04T04:35:00.000-07:00

Tut, the boy, grown to a man. A little imagining on my part, using photoshop

Our last image of the gold mask, taken a few years ago in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo

I enjoy researching in Egypt for my adventure thrillers.

I just wish they would relax some of the recent embargoes on photography, especially inside the Egyptian Museum.

If they want to get tourists back, they might revisit this ruling.

I suspect Zahi Hawass tried to quarantine the imagery of Egypt for his own publication purposes and I think this 'no-photography' rule is a legacy of his heavy-handed days. Yes, I do agree their should be restrictions on flash etc, but I can take pictures in the BM, the Louvre etc...why not in Cairo?

Enter here - into a realm of ancient Egyptian mystery and global conspiracy

2011-08-03T15:37:00.000-07:00


Enter an Egyptian realm of global conspiracy, mystery, archaeology, religion and unseen forces

"The thriller takes off with a murder of an Egyptologist, dragging in his son and the US Department of Homeland Security.The renegade archaeologist son, Anson Hunter, is then joined by a Coptic Egyptian girl and the US intelligence team on a roller coaster ride through Egypt followed by radical elements and local authorities.

Hints of a secret which should shake the foundations of major world religions makes it a hard to put down book and draws on the author’s vast knowledge..." (L. Machado, Australian Press)

See my ancient Egypt Trilogy of adventure thrillers here

Video slideshow: "Egypt's drowned empire". Lake Nasser voyage from Aswan to Abu Simbel

2011-07-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

See what Egypt, and the world, so nearly lost under the rising waters of Lake Nasser. Research on this and other trips went into my ancient Egypt trilogy of adventure thrillers.

There are two underworlds of ancient Egypt in my novels

2011-07-30T17:18:00.000-07:00