VIDEO EXAMPLE - PRE-STORYBOARDING MY KEY NOVEL SCENES

 

Opening scene from The Ibis Apocalypse

 

Video example of how I like to pre-storyboard key scenes in my fiction, using scrap art or Googled pics to create a scene before I begin writing. 

This is the opening scene from The Ibis Apocalypse (third in a trilogy of ancient Egyptian adventure thrillers).

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...

Available in Amazon  Kindle edition ($3,99) and in paperback - BUY them here

Egypt’s Abu Simbel and a Dangerous New Dawn for Humankind?

A real threat to humankind?

(Excerpt from ‘The Hathor Holocaust’, 2^nd in my Egypt Adventure Thriller Trilogy, Amazon Kindle $3.99), and in paperback.)

Sunrise splintered light over the rim of the earth and into the temple doorway.

Anson, Neith and her party of New Agers stood among a throng of visitors who waited in the pre-dawn chill of the Great Temple of Abu Simbel in Egyptian Nubia.

“Here it comes!” someone in the crowd whispered.

Light beams ran a gauntlet of sixty metres between a double line of eight Osiride pillars in the image of Rameses the Great bearing flails and crooks in their crossed arms, to penetrate the holy of holies, where a group of divinities sat enthroned in darkness.

There were gasps and sighs from the international assembly of visitors.

Gasp away, Anson thought. Not in awe at the mighty works of Rameses, nor in wonder at the achievement of temple axiality and the symmetry of sun and stone that for thousands of years had produced this phenomenon on just two days of the year. But rather, in dread at what the moment symbolised.

The excitement of temple-invading birds rose to fill the sacred spaces of Abu Simbel’s roof, echoing, high-pitched squeals and screeches. He imagined the sound came from the statues at the back of the sanctuary, waking from their sleep and moving stiffened joints - stone shrieking on stone.

Ptah. Amun. Rameses. Ra-Horakhty.

Over the minutes, as all watched, sunlight transmuted stone into gold - the flesh of the gods - bathing three of the images in turn, while the fourth, Ptah, a deity of darkness, remained in shadow.

Pharaoh Rameses, flanked by Amun and Ra-Horakhty, transformed in front of their eyes from stone into fire and glory. The brightness made Anson blink.

The solar drama, taking place in front of this audience, was meant to celebrate a glory beyond the earthly variety, greater even than the scenes of triumph carved on the walls of the temple that showed Rameses smiting a multitude of foes.

This was a physical enactment of divine illumination, the moment of man seizing godhood, and this event of sublime transfiguration lay at the heart of the peril that the world now faced.

The warning came back to prod him.

History will soon be made. A new dawn for humankind approaches. The beginning of the end for today’s world order is at hand as a force of hidden power will emerge and precipitate the fall. Hear this prophetic warning to all the nations. On this day, the roots of the old ideology will wither and die and a new order of the ages will commence. Rise to a new illumination.

Crank prophecy? Or a real threat to today’s world?