Hello, it’s me! I’ve thought about (this) for a long, long time! For those of you who are old enough to remember Todd Rundgren’s very popular song from 1972, (the lyrics of which I’ve almost but not quite quoted) I’ve passed along my earworm. Either you’re welcome, or I’m sorry. 🙂 But of course it is me, Lou Sylvre, thanking Love Bytes once again for a spot on the blog. And this month, I am posting about something I’ve been thinking about for at least a good long while, if not a long, long time. I’ll get to that right after the preliminaries.

Preliminaries
Last month’s contest answers tickled my fancy. Chosen randomly, of course, the winner is… envelope please? Patricia Nelson! Congratulations big-time, Patricia. I’ll be in touch to get your prize choice and send it on the way. Everyone that responded should have a prize but hey, starving author here. 🙂 Thank you all lots!

Intro to stuff I’ve been thinking about
Did you know that in addition to HEA romance I have also written a little bit of stuff with demons, Nephilim, and even shifters? Mostly not of the gore kind, but kind of um…. well… scary nonetheless. Some are more humor than horror, I’ll admit. Short stories all, some published, one not yet finished but they all have that touch of romance. Twisted maybe, perhaps more hinted at than depicted, but it’s there. That’s pretty much it for intro—I’m going to show rather than tell. Bwa-ha-ha. Three very short excerpts, each from a different presently unidentified, story:

ONE

I began to pace, troubled – or perhaps intrigued. His sea-green eyes tracked my movements, and I watched him in return, keeping his tense figure in the corner of my eye as I traced and retraced the same four steps. He wore his crosses and beads like armor. The leather purse at his belt surely held testament and water, oil and salt. Yet, for all his talismans, I could see – I knew beyond doubt – that his God remained distant, scarcely more than a concept. He failed even to perceive the nearness of the Demon Tamuel, who at that very moment hovered behind his chair.

Tamuel laughed. I could feel his excitement, and I knew the cause. The Demon saw in our guest the same dissonance that vibrated in my senses. The young priest had ventured into battle unsure of his steel. His sword of faith might bend.

Offered a pretty evil, Father Michael could be subverted.

TWO

They walked me across the torch-lit, circular expanse, the igneous wall surrounding us blazing with row on row of Angelic script. In the center, imprisoned in a structure of white light, was a being so horrific I still can’t describe it. It had once been as beautiful as it now was ugly—how did I know that, at seven years old? Worse, I understood in an instant that the horror of it: the raw scars streaking its face, the red of its eye, and the rot-lined hole that should have been its mouth—these marks came not of evil but of pain.

And THREE

As we cleared the thicket and stepped into the open, cold crawled my spine despite the heat. The fierce light of sunset’s end caught the bog grass like tinder, climbed my lover’s shadowed skin, and lined his black silken tresses with hot sheen, as red as spilling blood.

So there they are…
Now, would you like to know what the contest is. It’s simple easy, especially since some of you may have indeed read one of these stories. I’m going to give you five titles. Two are fakes. The other three attach to those excerpts above. Guess which belongs to which, and whether you guess right or not you’re entered! You might win either (your choice) a signed paperback copy of the anthology containing one of those stories (publ’d under yet another name), or an e-book of any book in my list or Lou Hoffmann’s.

Here are the titles:

• “Charlie Chrysalis, Angel or Not”
• “In the Fens”
• “Galean Romance”
• “A More Beautiful Monster”
• “Nephilim’s Choice”

That’s my bit for November on Love Bytes. Thanks to Dani and the people of the blog, and to everyone who read this post!

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