justdustwords

 Excerpt from my novel FATE. Holy Water and the Jinx of Retribution   Her father, being the exemplary Christian man he was, who had ambitions in his youth of becoming a friar, blessed the house several times on any given day of the week with holy water from one of the several Saint Patrick’s Wells in Ireland, thinking that the Jinx could be warded off through divine intervention and the workings of holy water in the same manner that Patrick had driven the snakes out of Ireland. These wells, steeped in the legend and tradition of having been blessed by the saint himself, were believed to possess miraculous properties.        Fiadh’s father thought these healing qualities in the holy water could influence the Jinx to move out of the Whaling Station, telling his daughter that it was just a matter of having faith in Patrick ... and that the Jinx should be no problem for a man who could...

 Excerpt from my novel FATE ......                                                                     The Rains                   Where is all this rain coming from? It rained nonstop for the last couple of weeks. The rain was not your normal clap‑a‑de‑clap type of rain, but continuous rain pouring down with biting cold winds blowing squalls in from the northwest, with the subdued effect of lace curtains concealing a sun shining somewhere else, but not there. That very same sun also rises and sets there too. It's what it has been doing since Day One. It will never go away because it has nowhere to go and will be there long after the rain has gone.  ''Isn't it lovely to think so. Where is all this rain coming from?''  F...

 Excerpt from my novel FATE.   Who's that Comes to Play...                                            The farmhouse stood eerily still on the paddie hillside, shrouded in a thick, swirling mist that hung to the ground like some living entity, its bamboo door half open. The widow could sense Yurei dancing with defiance within the sulfurous-smelling mist, flickering in and out of existence as if the very core of their domain was trying to break through to the Now.        As she stepped forward, she called out the family name, but only the whispering wind answered. The ground beneath her feet felt saturated and slimy, as if she were walking between two realms. She knew that texture, the liminal zone between life and death where she had often gone before to seek guidance from the spirits.        The fenced-in compound was...

      Excerpt from my novel FATE         It Was What She Knew    Tropical s cents   mingled with the pungent smell   of dried  and freshly  caught fish   coming from the busy waterfront, where Chinese junks and Malay payangs were offloading their catches of the day , and where the vibrant fish market bustled with the activity of men doing business and women doing the lifting .  As the sun dipped below the horizon, the  urgency  complete  their  work  intensified,   knowing that the sun would rise again to signal the start of another day  in  the relentless pursuit of earning a living by their sweat, which   highlighted  the   relation ship  between the rhythms of nature and the human...