Author: lazloferran

12 April Updates -Another Sneak Preview

Sneak Preview
Here is this week’s sneak preview. Well, it’s not really a sneak preview, but a free excerpt from the newly reworked and published The Jesus Monster. It has a lot more tension now and a better twist at the end.

A hand grabbed my wrist. It was horrible tight. I looked, and it was the stranger.
‘Oh no! Not again’, I thought.
“You must leave! Just go … Any place!”
I pulled my arm free. “But I can’t! I have a sister!”
“It doesn’t matter. She probably has it already,” the stranger said, seeing my fear.
“It’s the bug, isn’t it? But what can we do?” I asked, desperate. “We don’t want to just die! And if we do, there will be nobody left!”
He looked me straight in the eye. “Kill me! You must. I don’t want to live anyway. As a priest, committing murder is the worst thing I could do.”
I shook my head and turned to leave.
“Wait!” he shouted. “You must do this. One of you might survive, and there will be others. Eventually two people who cannot bare to kill each other might survive! Or the virus might die, or leave!”
“No!” Continue reading “12 April Updates -Another Sneak Preview” →

Fighting a Dip in sales – 6 April Updates

Here is this week’s sneak preview – a short story provionally entitled Vampire: Beneficence, to be published as the first story in the new Short Stories Volume III along with The Jesus Monster. The punctuation may seem a little strange without the paragraphs before this excerpt but it is correct.

Vampire: Beneficence

Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran
All Rights Reserved

On a warm evening at the end of the 2010 summer, I was stalking the Vicar of St James Church in Clerkenwell. I am what is commonly called a vampire, d’you see …?
“Let me get one thing straight, though. We have been around forever. Homo Sapiens wouldn’t be Home Sapiens without us. We are the more evolved manifestation of the species. I know all this because I was once a writer, and have spent many lifetimes researching the subject. I have even visited the far-past … but that is another story … Continue reading “Fighting a Dip in sales – 6 April Updates” →

Weekly Updates – Sneak Preview of Iron III

Each week I am going to be posting updates on my current projects. I am also going to try to post a sneak preview of one of the projects here. Copyright and IPR these days is complex so I will only be posting very short sections and I may have to delete them when the work is published. I make no mistake for any errors or typos: these are going to be first drafts. Below you will find the first sneak preview – from Iron III, provisionally entitled Worlds Like Dust.

Don’t forget the Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate puzzle competition in the post below.

Sneak Preview of Iron III: Worlds Like Dust

If you have read Iron II: Unknown Place, Unknown Universe, you will know the character of A-schian’bakî as the Captain of the Ischian space-battleship Lu-kshîa.

Worlds Like Dust
Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran
All Rights Reserved.

Commander of the Fleet and Commander of Earth, A-schian’bakî was not in a good mood. She left the bridge and as she stepped out of the lift onto the 53rd deck, she kicked a lowly corporal in the hind-legs, sending him sprawling across the biomium floor. This was one of the privileges of rank that she had rarely exercised, but now she found the sadistic pleasure somewhat made up for the loss in battle of her favourite sexual toy. Continue reading “Weekly Updates – Sneak Preview of Iron III” →

Competition – Solve Codes to Win £15!

I hope you like the new look of the blog. I have also added a permanent link to the Lazlo Ferran Merchandise on the right in the Lazlo on the Web section of links, so you will always be able to find it. The Merchandise is part of the prize in the competition.

Competition
In line with the release of my WWII thriller Attack Hitler’s Bunker! – at the end of June, I am having a competition. Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate: Second Edition had secret codes at the beginning of each chapter, which I hoped, added some depth to the book, once they were solved. Attack Hitler’s Bunker! will also have codes – to be broken, at the beginning of each chapter. So it seemed appopriate to base the competition on breaking one of the codes in Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate: Second Edition.

The coded cryptic puzzle in question is at the beginning of the Epilogue. These codes are used by the Ordo Lupus to conceal their secret teachings. If you feel you have what it takes to join the Illuminati, Knights Templar (if they still existed), or the legendary Priory of Sion you will have no trouble solving this coded message. Please email me with your answer at the email address at the top of this blog. Continue reading “Competition – Solve Codes to Win £15!” →

Changes to my blog – Editor for Hire

You will see a new link to the right – Writer for hire. With the decision to write full-time for this year at least, if possible, comes the challenge of making enough money to live on. I estimate I need to sell about 12000 titles per month or 450 per day. This translates to a need to increase sales by 45/day per month until the end of the year. I don’t want to compromise too much what I am actually doing in the writing sphere so I am going to suppliment my income by hiring out my writing skills. You will find details and rates on the Writer for hire page if you click the link to the right.

New Features on Blog – RSS and Emails

Dear subscribers, you will now notice that you can subcribe for email delivery of notifications for this blog as well as RSS feeds, and you can recommend me more easily too. You can also translate this page into many languages, follow me on Google+ and follow my twitter feed (although I cannot work out why you can’t see my latest 5 tweets here, which is what this service is supposed to do. If anybody knows why, please let me know). Finally, if you already follow this blog, you will probably like to add yourself to my Google+ circle or use one of the above methods to make sure you get the blogs. Until now I have only been able to notify you by commenting on my own blog which sends an email to a custom list I created. I am not going to do this for much longer.

Latest project updates – Iron Book III

So What Have I Been Doing?

You are probably wondering what the lazy Lazlo geeza has been doin’. I haven’t posted for a while. There is the excuse that I have been writing furiously. As you will see below, it has been a very creative period. However, now that I am writing full-time, I will endeavor to post at least once per week. On this blog you will find information about the latest project developments, and even some sneak-previews of what is to come.

Current project updates:

Ordo Lupus Series – there are currently no plans for a Part 3

Iron Series: Part 3, now (still provionally) titled ‘Worlds Like Dust’:

I am about 1/3 through the first draft. As I will probably post here about in the near future, the focus of the plot is evolving as I evolve as a writer. I have left off it for a while while I settle on a plot line that will satisfy me, and hopefully the reader. Continue reading “Latest project updates – Iron Book III” →

Just a short update – Aviation Novel WIP

Just a short update as I haven’t posted for a while.

My WWII drama/adventure is going well. Inspired by 633 Squadron it aims to make stars out of Short Stirlings and Hurricanes – quite a tall order. I am approaching the climax and so will have a draft manuscript in the early new year.

I have an erotic psycho-drama which I work on at odd moments and that is really only about a quarter completed as a first draft.

The sci-fi sequel to Iron II: Unknown Place, Unknown Universe is on hold at the moment so that I can complete the WWII story. I only wrote about one chapter early this year. Not sure when I will return to it.

Lastly there is a book on Busking which I am attempting. It’s autobiographical but not meant to be about me really. Its more of a documentary about busking in London in the late 80s and early 90s. I have finished a draft of Chapter One and have rewritten it a number of times. I think I am getting close to the sort of feel I want.

Review of George Lucas’ Red Tails

What a wasted opportunity for George Lucas. Here we have the story of the first black (is that the correct term now?) fighter pilots in WWII and their struggle to be allowed to fight for their country, up against entrenched and endemic Racism. Not only did they succeed, but they won a combined award for their outstanding bravery and performance. Their job was to protect American Bombers raiding Germay, and they were the only Squadron who managed to lose not one single Bomber during their missions. So you have: politics, heroism, great action, technology in abundance, lots of potential personal stories and history all in one story. You also have the guy who made Star Wars at the helm. It should have been great; it was barely better than pap.

In fact I resigned myself to watching it purely for how bad it was – before the title credits. It opens with a really dire CGI bit of action with American P-40 Kittyhawks(?) fighting Me109s. The German pilots are portayed as ice-cold manifestations of the devil who speak like Cybermen. Somebody has been reading too many Eagle comics. The stereotypes were just way too much to take. The dialogue was pretty bad too. Continue reading “Review of George Lucas’ Red Tails” →