A to Z: Cult of Santa Muerte

Cult of Santa Muerte: Lady Sebastian, Lady of the Shadows, Lady of the Night, Lady of the Seven Powers.These are some of the names attributed to a female folk saint from northern Mexico on which are based some of the ideological underpinnings of the gang in SAVIOR, Los Santos Muertos or LSM. 

The LSM have managed to infiltrate most governments in the Western Hemisphere through the influence of their vast riches, but they want more, they actually desire a breakdown of western civilization in order to further the power and aims of their cult. Some of their practices include cannibalism, sadism, ritual drug use and ritual sacrifice. and their leader, Samael Chagnon, desires to impose a new historical age in which the cult of Lady Death forms a central piece.

Actual Santa Muerte practitioners may have none of these conceptions. Instead we know their beliefs are an outgrowth of indigenous pre-Columbian reverence for death as a part of life. Symbols of death and similar folk beliefs can be seen in the Mexican traditions of the Day of the Dead. But the Santa Muerte cult takes these a step further. Followers of Santa Muerte build altars to the figure of Lady Death and ask her for favors in return for their ritual worship. US officials have warned that drug cartel members have recently taken up the Santa Muerte cult in significant numbers, and there is a feeling that the cult may promote greater criminality and levels of violence among warring cartels. It is believed that Santa Muerte followers number in the several million in the US, Mexico and Central America.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: A for Adult -- Al Lyons

Al Lyons is a guy in his mid forties, a typical Dad, except that life throws him a curveball when his wife of seventeen years dies suddenly. Al is left with the care of his semi-estranged, teenaged son, Ricky. Like a lot of Dads, myself included, Al dotes on his son. But he has some problems communicating. And a hard time dealing with his frustrations.

Al is a teacher at the local high school. He also coaches football. He has looked forward to coaching Ricky on the high school football team. But Ricky shows some independence and a rebellious spirit and decides football is not for him.

This family rift is in the background when the two undertake a trip to Guatemala in the wake of the death of Mary, Al's wife. There Al hopes he and Ricky can reconnect and commit to strengthening their relationship, but their quest for wholeness mysteriously opens them to a world-shattering confrontation with evil itself. Al is kidnapped by the Santos Muertos and held hostage in an underground facility beneath the Alberta oil tar sands. There he is water-boarded, and interrogated by Samael Chagnon, the leader of the Santos Muertos cartel, and held as the bait to trap Ricky, who holds the key -  a Mayan  codex known as the Chocomal -  to Chagnon's desire for world domination. Al depends on his memories of his family and grows spiritually while in confinement.

As Al discovers. being a father, being an adult, and being a man, is a life-long voyage of discovery. And sometimes the key is not what you might think.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

The Next Leg

As you set out for Ithaca,

Wish your journey to be long, 

Ithaki, Constantine Cavafy

Getting started on a new writing journey is always a little daunting. Actually, blogging about it helps, it's like talking to someone. Hello? Actually maybe it's not. Kind of scares away the demons, though and gives you the courage to carry on.
Now with Latitudes launched on the world, there is marketing to do, but there is also the sense that it has a life of its own now, no matter what happens. Time to turn attention and face the hardest part. You start with the thought: Where can I turn the light now? What is my burning need to say? I have written three novels so far.
One thing I've learned in the self-publishing adventure is to think in terms of market. It is amazing the lack of originality in the book world. You think of novels, and the word itself means something new, different, but there is in fact little new or different in books. If you have written a murder mystery featuring a drug addicted homeless millionaire, or a thriller featuring a teenage vampire in love with a basketball star, you are joining the parade of thousands, and you have a chance at best-seller status. With books as in food and other commodities, we like what we already are familiar with. Going against that is swimming against the stream. So...
Taking my character driven, plot resisting story telling instincts and twisting them a notch, I have decided to write a thriller. That's right, a young adult thriller with plot twists and contemporary action galore. Now the only way I'm going to do that is also to change my methodology a little. Therefore I have researched and found what I wanted. It is called the snowflake method of constructing stories, and seems reasonable and not simplistic. With the scaffolding of multiple pre-writing documents,  this will be a less mysterious way to go, but I think in the end, my characters will always retain the stamp of their creator. So I am not worried about their dimensionality. This should be fun. So far here is my elevator pitch. See if you like it:

While on vacation, a widowed high school teacher and his son find a Mayan calculating tablet that is the long sought key to the doomsday machine being built by the al Qaeda terrorist Ali Jajabr.

Right now it's tentative title is Cypher. I've written a synopsis and character sketches of the five main characters. Next I will build a scene list on a spreadsheet. Then I will write the first draft.  I'm not going to predict how long it will take, because that depends on so many things.

Next week, while in Costa Rica, I will take notes and do some research. So the next leg is already underway. Hooray for the craziness that is the writing life. Ithaca will loom on the horizon someday soon, perhaps.

Anthony Caplan is a writer, blogger, teacher and homesteader in New Hampshire. He is the author of the novels Birdman, French Pond Road, and the just released Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home. Find out more about him and his work at http://www.anthonycaplanwrites.com. 

  

Nothing is Easy

Sometimes all your hard work comes to nothing. And sometimes it doesn't.

I'm looking out at my neighbor's field this morning. They've spent the last several weeks ploughing and harrowing and planting the fifty or so acres of grass and brambles and ferns. For the second summer in a row they are trying to get a crop of pumpkins out of what was once cow pasture. She grew up on a farm in Vermont and had dreams of starting a farm of her own when they bought the property. Husband Numero Uno worked for the big national waste collection company. They built the McMansion above the old field by the road. The winter after they moved into the new house the old barn that had stood for a hundred years collapsed under a weight of snow. She cried as she walked down the road, getting over the shock of losing her dream. Now she spends all her time driving the mower in the front yard. Overweight and sunburnt and glowering at her neighbor whom she feuded with when she first moved in. They've forgotten the reason for the original disagreement but they still glower at each other. You know people like that, too?

Well, the pumpkins are being overtaken by the weeds once again. We've had so much rain, and those sod roots run deep...

I'm watching my cat out the window crouched in the grass by the stone wall, his muscles quivering under the tension of trying to keep still while he observes and waits to pounce on the unsuspecting chipmunk. Nine times out of ten he fails. And when he wins he leaves the evidence of his hoary triumph by the front door. See? he seems to want to say. Don't you ever doubt me again.

I spent all day, and I mean from sunup to sundown yesterday under the crawl space of the cottage trying to fix burst water pipes. Note to self: don't ever leave water standing in a house over the winter when the tenants move out unannounced in the middle of February again.  I emerged about five-thirty from the underbelly covered in mud and bobcat shit, (yes a bobcat has been defecating there in a pile under where the water main rises to the kitchen tap), and boom the terminal to the washing machine in the bathroom spit out a gusher as the water came on. Okay, one more trip to the hardware store before closing. I knew I had it under control. I love that moment when life's spanners in the works begin to fade into irrelevance as a solution comes into light. My point is persistence pays off. It took me three years to build a house in the west of Ireland. Two winters in a row the roof blew off in storm force gales before I could close it in.

Sometimes my wife asks me if a household project will be hard or easy, and my standard answer is nothing is easy. Nothing is easy. Put it on my headstone. The USA beat Anguila 3-1 in World Cup qualifying last week. Clint Dempsey said pretty much the same thing after the game. Anguila or Spain, nothing comes easy.

What I'm doing at the moment is marketing a book. It's my third attempt at novel-writing and this time I'm trying to use some of the virtual marketing tools that have sprung up in the last few years in order to build a reading audience. It's all an experiment. Nobody has a formula for success and nobody knows if the whole enterprise of independent books will stand or fall like a house of cards. Yet we push forward, knowing that this is a pioneering, brave enterprise, rewarding in the values and knowledge it teaches in and of itself, irregardless of sales figures at the end of the six month period. But believe me when I say I will feel like the cat if I do well.

How about you? Do you have a dream that failed and then succeeded?

FREE KINDLE Books I and II of Billy Kagan Series

FREE                                  FREE                                   FREE                               FREE

This weekend and until May 30 I'm running a special free Kindle offer on Birdman and French Pond Road, the first two books in the Billy Kagan road series.

In exchange for the free books, I want to get some reviews posted of the books on the Amazon site, so here's the deal:

1. Get free Kindle books while the offer lasts.
2. Post a review of either book on Amazon.
3. Email me -- tcaplan(at)mcttelecom.com and include a link to the review on Amazon.
4. You will receive a free Kindle of the forthcoming Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home.
5. Extra special offer -- post a review of both Birdman and French Pond Road and you will also receive a free copy of my short story collection Tumble.

So go now and load up with Birdman and French Pond Road, two quality reads guaranteed to entertain and entrance you this Memorial Day weekend and for years to come.

Here's what readers say about Birdman, the story of Billy Kagan's wild days in Ireland.

"Whimsical, even sublime..." Sandra Townsend -- Hippo Press
"Brilliantly evocative..."  James Woolridge -- Earthwatch Magazine

In French Pond Road, Billy Kagan is reunited with his son Mickey on the back roads of New Hampshire. An inspirational tale of love and redemption, this story is the sequel to Birdman.

Here's what readers have to say about French Pond Road:

"The characters are interesting and complex and the many strands of storyline kept my interest from beginning to end. In fact, I didn't want to put the book down!"    Carole Walker

"I loved the relationships in this book. It's about learning to live together."    Andrew Gammel

So for an unbeatable price you can support Indie writing. Be part of the Indie revolution. Get Birdman and French Pond Road, review one or both and get more free books. What are you waiting for?
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