Category: WRITER

1 July Updates – Risky Business

No Excerpt this week
Instead, I am asking for feedback on the following four synopses. Please have a read and let me know how I can improve them. There will be a free e-book copy of each book for any synopsis that I accept. This can include any book I publish this year.

Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate
His teenage daughter is viciously murdered in Lyon by a long-forgotten biblical monster. A former WWII MI6 agent, our hero is suspected of her murder by the police and his divorcing wife.

With supernatural powers of foresight he goes on the run to clear his name. He has only one friend – a historian and member of the modern Knights Hospitaller but with his help he embarks on a white-knuckle ride to salvation. Continue reading “1 July Updates – Risky Business” →

25 May Updates – Attack Hitler’s Bunker!

This Week’s Excerpt
This week’s excerpt is from Attack Hitler’s Bunker! which is due to be published on 29 June.

Attack Hitler’s Bunker

(Unedited excerpt)

Hugo Knopfl and Klaas Zapruder stepped onto the pavement. They had to move briskly to let the convoy of Wehrmacht vehicles pass. Half-tracks carrying troops and pulling 88 mm guns rumbled, creaking, over the cobbled stones. One of the camouflaged SS troops waved at them. Above, a cloud passed in front of the sun, casting the town square into dusk instantly. Sonnerberg was one of those pretty German towns, nestled in the fold of verdant hills, populated by slate-roofed houses with walls painted many colours. Ironically it was the home both of toy-making and the Dutch Waffen SS.
Klaas waved back at the soldier leaving.
Hugo threw the butt of his cigarette on the ground. “Don’t do that,” he said in quiet Dutch. “Why pretend when we don’t have to anymore?”
“You’re right. We won’t be coming back.”
“That’s not what I meant. Come on.” Continue reading “25 May Updates – Attack Hitler’s Bunker!” →

18 May Updates – Preview of Lacunashka

This Week’s Excerpt
Instead of a preview this week I have something different for you. For a long time I have been a fan of Russian literature. As a tribute I wrote Lacunashka some time ago, but it has been languishing quietly on my computer. I think I may have published it briefly on Amazon or Books2Read but I withdrew it, probably because it is such a relentlessly dark tale. People who lived through the terror of Stalin’s reign must have experienced such darkness and a bleak existence, so as a tribute to them I have placed it inside Vampire: Beneficence (Short Stories Volume III). Here is an excerpt:

Lacunashka

Lacuna: a blank gap or missing part.
-shka: Russian diminutive ending for male names.

For Comrade Ilya it was like any other day in the Ministry. At 9.30, after already working for two hours, they broke for coffee or a shot of vodka. Volodya, as usual, was holding forth in his loud voice, leaning back against the edge of his desk.
“Ilya! Have a shot of vodka. Just once?”
“No, Misha,” he said placing his hand over the dirty porcelain cup. “I have to work anyway.” He walked the short distance, past dirty mullioned windows to his office and started to check through the list of mail for the day. Continue reading “18 May Updates – Preview of Lacunashka” →

11 May Updates – Preview of Lotus

Sneak Preview
This week’s is a unique (to date) look at a book I have been working on on and off for two years. It has no title as yet, but for the purpose of this I will call it Escher’s Staircase. It’s not easily categorized, so I think I will just give you the excerpt and let it speak for itself.

Escher’s Staircase (Later published as Lotus)
Copyright © 2012 by Lazlo Ferran
All Rights Reserved.

“I’m not fucking going down that! You gotta be crazy!”
I pulled away from the open hatch. “Don’t anybody think about pushing me either! Six hundred and eighty bloody feet! That’s … that’s like as high as a bloody sky-scraper!”
“Well, if you don’t do it, you will never get beyond Cadet Helmsman. Up to you matey!”quipped Shorty, lifting the glass bottle’s open neck to his scowling lips. Everything about Shorty was a tattoo – gaudy, colourful and in bad taste. Continue reading “11 May Updates – Preview of Lotus” →

4 May Updates – Preview of WWII Drama

Sneak Preview
This week’s sneak preview is from the soon-to-be-published Attack Hitler’s Bunker! and features the gorgeous Anna meeting Richard, one of the two heroes she is having affairs with.

Attack Hitler’s Bunker!
Copyright © 2013 by Lazlo Ferran
All Rights Reserved

Archibald led Richard out into the corridor and to the door of the next room. He fought off the pilot’s questions.” But Archie, how can I plan this if I don’t know …”
At that moment he saw Anna for the first time, and was silenced. She smelled of Pears soap.
“Richard, this is Anna Styles. Anna, this is Richard Earlgood.”
“Hello,” she said, smiling, and holding out a well-manicured hand. The man opposite clearly appreciated of her looks. Unimpressed by this, she looked beyond his stare. He had the lived-in good looks of a square-jawed film star, but there was something coy about his gaze. ‘He slouches!’ she also noted to herself, scoffing. However, his smile, which broke out as soon as she spoke to him, made her want to smile back. Continue reading “4 May Updates – Preview of WWII Drama” →

27 April Updates – Draft of WWII Drama

I am getting very close to a final draft of the WWII drama Attack Hitler’s Bunker! so hopefully there will be an excerpt from that here next week. For now, however, another excerpt from Worlds Like Dust, this time an amusing one.

Worlds Like Dust
Copyright © 2012 by Lazlo Ferran
All Rights Reserved

(Unedited excerpt)

The four Ischians made a comical sight, squeezing their huge bodies into the small Maintenance POD. With two minutes to go, Luxmi Davidos had just finished rigging the main Nitrogen and Oxygen tanks to explode when she heard a tapping sound beside her. She had just sent the last grunt back with some tools, and grabbed her laser to defend herself.
There was a small grubber tank – filled half way with liquid around a rocky island, next to her. “Oh God, I had forgotten about you. Why the hell did you have to emerge right now! Now I will have to take you too!”
She grabbed an old oily towel, hanging next to a disfunctional diesel engine, and lifted the lid of the tank. Scooping the cat sized, grub-like, wriggling creature, she wrapped it in the towel and stuffed it under her arm.
“Who knows? You may be the only life-form from Earth alive, besides us, when this is all over! Time to go!” Continue reading “27 April Updates – Draft of WWII Drama” →

20 April Updates – Preview of Iron 3

Here is this week’s sneak preview: it’s from the forthcoming sci-fi Iron: Volume III, provisionally entitled Worlds Like Dust. As usual I make no apologies for typos.

She heard heavy footsteps approaching. She took two grenades and pressed the sequence. Two red lights flashed at her. She waited until the counter said ‘1 second’, peered around the corner and threw them. The Ischians seemed surprised. Four of them stopped in their tracks, the rearmost already holding a wounded arm. They were all stooping to stop the top of their helmets scraping the ceiling. One of them dropped to his knees, as if praying. Then they were gone, in a mist of biomium spacesuit and fur-covered flesh.
Davidos had a momentary feeling of enuit. She shook her head, and ran past the body parts and bloody walls, towards the battle. She drew her laser and let the barrel lead her down the corridor. When she arrived, Dittmer and one other grunt were battling the last Ischian. It was kneeling in a pile of gore. Its normally grey suit was bright orange.
‘Sixteen grenades to a box – that’s twelve grenades. They can’t have used them all!’ Davidos thought. Dittmer and the grunt ignored her and pumped endless bursts of laser-fire into the suit of the alien, but the suit absorbed it all. They would be dead but for the alien having a blocked breach on his laser. ‘Probably overheated,’ Davidos thought. It heard her footsteps and heard her coming. It looked almost pitiable as she pressed the sequence and threw the last grenade. It raised its arms in surrender just before it disappeared into alien oblivion.
“What the fuck happened to the crate of grenades!” she said over the intercom.
“We were overwhelmed. There was at least twenty of them!” Dittmer retorted.
“Okay. Okay. Back to Dock 3.”
At the dock the two soldiers left guarding the hatch, were leaning against the wall. “They’re not coming out! Either they can’t. Or won’t!”
“Alright. What now Lieutenant Davidos?” asked Dittmer.

Other News
I have been very busy this week, editing a fantasy novel for another writer; The Journals of Raymond Brooks. It’s the first paid editing I have done. If anybody wants my editings skills on their own novel, my rates are on the page with a link to the right. I am making good progress on Iron III and work has also started on designing the cover for my forthcoming WWII action novel, called Attack Hitler’s Bunker!

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

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” →

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!” →