Of Gods and Madness: The Faithful
by Justin D. Herd
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BLURB:
The right hand of the dominant mob family, Raine Morgan is tasked with hunting down two miscreants messing with the bottom line. He finds them on the docks, but, in the confusion of the fight, accidentally kills their victim and lets them escape. Horrified at what he's done, Raine seeks redemption as well as revenge.
Things spiral out of control when a greedy middleman overthrows Raine's mob organization. It's only with the help of a friend inside the crumbling mob as well as a streetwise artist that Raine remains undetected as he searches for the men who started this all. Raine doesn’t realize, however, he has caught the attention of a disparate conclave of gods in the process.
As the pantheon returns to the city they'd abandoned, old conflicts re-emerge, causing divine civil war. Both sides try to pull Raine to their side, expecting to find a naive god for them to manipulate. Instead, they find a man stripped of everything, intent on playing both sides as they learn an awful reality - even gods can die.
Excerpt:
The figures disappeared around a jagged line of barrels. Cale kept the same speed, listening to their movements. Running his fingers along cold steel of the shipping container, he moved around to catch one of them, the largest one, venturing towards the labyrinth, retreating moments later. Quiet laughter followed as they teased and jostled each other.
Coming to a stop, he stared at the silhouettes, considered his action. The children crept forward, toying with the lines of shadows as they went. Cale balled his hand into a fist and rapped on the metal with the white bone shards that wrapped his fingers like a gauntlet. One, two, three times in a slow, measured beat. A breeze coalesced with the beat, twisting into something entirely inhuman.
The whispers stopped. So did the thump of the children’s footsteps. The three children froze, stared into the darkness. The sound of happy jostling was gone, replaced with the splashing of choppy waves.
Cale struck the crate once more.
Shrill shouts hit his ears as the silhouettes retreated, tripping over each other in their haste. Cale watched them, making sure they didn't stay. He rested a hand on his gun, wondering what he'd do if the Stalker actually showed up again. His heart thudded, anxiety creeping into his chest. As he watched the last leg disappear over the last step, he turned back to the docks. He had a long night ahead of him.
With the area empty once more, he felt a wave of relief wash over him.
Guest Blog:
Who, or what, is your greatest muse?
I’m honestly not sure what my greatest muse is, but I can definitely pull together a few factors that help me write and stay creative.
Most importantly is music. I rely heavily on music to break through my ADHD riddled brain. If I don’t have music or am listening to something like an audiobook, I cannot form words for the life of me. I mind will trip over itself as I fight to come up with the most basic of phrases. I listen to Rock and Metal, rarely soundtracks (though I do love me some Shadows of the Colossus), but it also has to be something I’ve at least listened to a few times. Otherwise, I get too lost in the new words or unfamiliar riffs. But, it’s been proven time and time again that music is my most important tool when I sit down to write anything.
The other thing that I find instrumental in helping me stay creative is images. I regularly troll DeviantArt.com while writing my novels, saving images that inspire me, even if it’s just the lighting or a particular feeling that I get from the art. I tend to save these, find the artist’s website, and give them proper attribution if I ever show them on the interwebs. My site has several images that helped inspired me, with proper links and I haven’t had any complaints. Generally, I’ll have a hundred or so for certain characters or scenes or just general inspiration and I tend to just fly through them all and then go and write.
Overall, I’m a big believer that ideas are a dime a dozen, but it’s in the execution how you pull them off. If you go to my website, you’d find base descriptions for several novels in the future, but I’m not worried about people ripping them off. No one could write Of Gods and Madness: The Faithful the way I have. There’s might be better, but it wasn’t something I could achieve with my history and that’s fine by me.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Justin D. Herd is a Fantasy Noir author, who has been writing novels for ten years. He absolutely loves dark, twisted stories that take readers into unexpected places. Horror movies are his passion and he often takes stories to task for not logically thinking out their concepts. His home has been invaded by three eccentric cats, one of which is obssesed with all things digital. He is married with two children.
Website: http://www.justindherd.net/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/realjustindherd
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/justindherd
Patreon: http://bit.ly/1cLVobm
You can buy his books at the following links:
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1z2xC51
Smashwords: http://bit.ly/1HJhacW
Nook: http://bit.ly/1dH2q1H
iTunes: http://apple.co/1K5I0tg
Google Play: http://bit.ly/1FJIeHf
Kobo: http://bit.ly/1zGWboy
Createspace: http://bit.ly/1cf04qv
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