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A political marriage to stop a war…a king whose golden mask hides his face from his people…a princess who loves her husband though she never sees his face…and a curse placed on a royal family by God…

Okay, so once again, I’m doing my version of a legend.  This time, it’s Beauty and the Beast and though it’s been done to death, I don’t think anyone’s come up with this particular twist so far.

Senset is a princess of AEgys, only a minor child, and the daughter of a lesser wife of King Aseti-Ra, but a royal princess nevertheless.  Her people are descended from a group of exiles banished from, a beautiful land on the banks of a river whose waters flow northward where pyramids house their sovereigns’ bodies and palm trees shade oases.

For generations, the AEgysians have been fighting the Beast Men, wild creatures who ride out of the hills on horseback, then retreat again.  More times than not, the Beasts are victorious and gain a little more of AEgysian land and another of their cities appears.  Then, Crown Prince Horem captures a Beast and plans to sacrifice him to Ra-horakhty in exchange for peace.  This bothers Senset who thinks her brother should try to communicate with his prisoner but Horem sees no point.  It’s an animal, after all.  So Senset steals into the dungeon, and discovers an intelligent, articulate man instead of a dumb creature.  They talk, they become friends, she helps him escape, much to her brother’s anger.  

 Michael is king of the Habiru, the Beast Men, and when his brother returns home with tales of the beautiful woman who helped him escape, he sees it as an opportunity for peace between the two warring peoples.  He sends Aram back to AEgys with an offer Aseti-Ra can’t refuse;  peace and an alliance between the Beasts and the AEgysians and a marriage with Senset to seal the deal.

 

So Senset leaves her home and travels to Habir’s capitol city of Bethgurion and marries Michael, a beguiling man in spite of the fact that his face is covered by a golden mask.  The two fall very much in love, Senset accepts Michael’s faith of the belief in one God, and peace reigns.  It isn’t long, however, before she learns that Michael has an ulterior motive for marrying her.  The king has been cursed by God and every full moon he must remove his mask and transform into a Beast, and anyone seeing his face is changed also. Only one who has selfless love will free the king from becoming a Beast, and Michael believes his bride’s love for him can break the curse.  Senset herself has doubts.  Is she as unselfish as her husband thinks…?

This was an enjoyable story to write, not only for the tale of love between Michael and Senset, but for the information I learned during my research.  I’ve always liked studying about the ancient Egyptians anyway, so gathering facts about them was a treat.  There was so much to delve into concerning the ancient Egyptians (from whom the AEgysians are supposed to be descended) and the ancient Hebrews (from whom Michael and his people trace their ancestry).  I learned that though the Egyptians had chariots, they never rode horseback.  The idea repulsed them and that’s one reason they consider the Habiru beasts… because they rode horses.  In my story, the Habiru win their bttles because they ride instead of fighting in chariots and one of the gifts Michael makes to Aseti-Ra as a wedding present is a slave to teach the AEgyians how to ride horses.

Writing Bride of the Beast was an enlightening experience, and I hope it will be both that and an entertainment for its readers also. 

EXCERPT:

(Senset meets Michael for the first time, on their wedding day.)

Ahead of them loomed the Temple, larger and more simple in its lines and design than the palace, but more imposing and even a little frightening because it was where the Nameless God was worshipped. Again, someone waited on the steps, a figure in rich robes and headdress, but again face unmasked and bearded.

Not Michael. With her features now hidden as they were, Senset hoped no one could see her disappointment.

They stopped in front of him. Adonijah released her hand though Aram still kept his under hers. He bowed to the man who raised his own in benediction. I see. This is the priest, the one who’ll perform the marriage ritual. She should’ve realized it. Though he looked much different from Ra-Harakhty’s priest who, like all AEgysians was bald-shaven, jewel-bedecked, and wore a white linen shendyt, there was that same sanctified air about this man indicating he was one communing with his God.

“He comes!” The shout made Senset spin around, jerking her hand from Aram’s. “The bridegroom comes!”

Someone else was walking toward them, but from a side street running parallel to the Temple itself. He was striding confidently, surrounded by a group of children, boys and girls running around him laughing and tossing flowers and green leaves into the air. The crowd was cheering and some were also throwing petals. And he was laughing and holding out his hands.

The sun gleamed off his golden mask.

Michael. Senset felt her knees weaken. At last.

As he neared where Senset and Aram stood, the children flung the last of their flowers. Their laughter stopped as they ran into the crowd, to waiting parents holding out their arms to hug them tightly.

“My brother…” Aram stepped forward, offering Senset’s hand. “I bring your bride to you.”

Michael held out his hand and Aram placed Senset’s in it. Then, he stepped back, placing himself in the background, so no one would be distracted from the young couple standing before the priest. Helene took his place by Senset’s side.

Senset could feel herself trembling. Michael’s hand was warm and firm against hers but he didn’t speak, just stood there, green eyes behind the mask staring at her. He was as tall as Aram, his hair beneath his jeweled crown just as dark and even curlier, actually twisting into tight spirals touching his shoulders. The mask was really only a half-shell, covering the upper part of his face, leaving his jaw and chin bare. It was clean-shaven and she thought it resembled Aram’s also. She remembered what he’d said. Michael’s his twin. See Aram’s face and I see my husband’s. She envisioned the General looking down at her with green eyes instead of hazel ones and smiled behind her own obscuring veil.

“Come , my bride.” His first words to me…his voice was deeper than Aram’s, holding a breathless quality…but it might easily have been the General speaking.

Bride of the Beast is being released by Class Act Books on September 15, 2012.

As the title suggests, gypsies play an important part in “Gypsy Charm.” In fact, if not for the old gypsy woman, Mrs. Lee, there’d be no story at all. It’s she who engineers and choreographs the entire event, though she only appears at the beginning and the end.

So who are these people we always associate tambourines, golden earrings, and crystal balls…violins and exuberant dancing…and “Cross my palm with silver”? Where did they originate? And where do they now live?

Originally, they were thought to come from Egypt (Egyptians…Gypsies…get it?) and were supposedly exiled for giving refuge to the infant Jesus when He was brought to Egypt to escape King Herod’s wrath. Now, they’re believed to have come from India, perhaps the province of Rajasthan, migrating to northwest India around 250 BC, before beginning a westward trek in 500 AD. In 1322, they’re mentioned in writings as Atsinganoi (Untouchable) living in Crete; in 1360, a fiefdom in Corfu is mentioned as having only Romany serfs. By the 14^th century, they were in the Balkans, where they were enslaved until around 1856; by the 16^th century, they’d reached Scotland and Ireland, and by the 1860s, large-scale immigrations to the United States had occurred. Correctly, Gypsies are called Romany, from the word “Rom” meaning “Man.” Someone who isn’t gypsy but associates with them and speaks their language is called a Romany Rye (Ri).

In Europe, the Romany were subjected to ethnic cleansings and herded into concentration camps. In a process called the Porajmos, they were killed on sight or sentenced to forced labor. An estimated 1,500,000 Romany died during World War II. Though they were treated more fairly in Tsarist Russia, during the Communist Regine, they once again were labeled a “socially degraded stratum.”

Traditional Romanies place a high value on family life and the strict regulation of social behavior as ordered by the Marhime or Hindu purity laws. There is a rom baro (tribal leader), who rules over each extended family. Most Eastern Romany are Catholic or Orthodox Christian or Muslin, while Western Romany are Catholic or Protestant. They speak Romani, an Indo-Aryan language but because the people are so widespread now, many are forgetting the language and speak a mixture called Calo or Angolormani. There are attempts now to standardize the language.

Even today, there is extreme prejudice and discrimination against Romanies, in Central and Western Europe, where they are considered the “nomad emergency” and responsible for high crime rates. Even as late as 2004, they are actually considered a high security risk in some places and gypsy women in some countries could be legally sterilized without their consent.

Gypsy names are divides into two groups: Trade and common. There are only two trade names –Cooper and Smith—which have been translated from the Rom language. Common names for gypsies are Lee, Grey, Boswell, Herne, Lovell, Marshall, Stanley. A name may have been adopted because it was similar to a Romani one, it resembled a town from which they originally came, or it was the name of the noble under whose protection they lives.

Mrs. Lee is the gypsy matriarch in Gypsy Charm; her grandsons David, Isaac, and Tomas are all Grays. Unlike their real-life counterparts, the Romany of Gypsy Charm lead a fairly uneventful and safe life, though Grandma Lee appears to keep things lively enough.

Gypsy Charm is available from Class Act Books, http://www.classactbooks.com/Gypsy-Charm-by-Icy-Snow-Blackstone-EPub_p_281.html.

The novel was to be a stand-alone and nothing more.

Bargain with Lucifer was the story of Lucifer Deveraux, handsome, spoiled, and willing to marry a stranger to inherit a multi-million dollar Trust only to have his scheme ironically backfire when he falls in love with his pretend wife. When he takes Julie too his Louisiana home, San Souci, all Hell breaks loose as his ex-girlfriend, Clarice, now married to his brother Michel, once again begins a campaign to win him back. The story ends with Clarice attempting to kill Luc and ending up accidentally killing herself, sending Luc back to Dallas and into psychoanalysis to determine how much of the tragedy was his fault and how much just plain bad luck.

After completing the story, I showed Bargain with Lucifer to my cousin, also a writer. She read it, and said, “I only have one question: "What happens to Michel?" Of course, I had to write a sequel to answer her question. So…Brother Devil emerged…

Brother Devil explores Michel’s psyche and his violent relationship with Luc. All his life, Michel Deveraux has been bested by his older brother Lucifer, especially where women are concerned. Frustrated and jealous, and terribly naive, he was easy prey for a vengeful ex-girlfriend who married him to punish Luc for jilting her.

When Michel finds himself a widower at the age of twenty-eight, the shock of his newly-found freedom sends him into sexual overdrive and excesses his brother would have envied, if Luc--now recognizing his own weaknesses--wasn't seeing them repeated in his younger sibling.

The women of Orleans parish may have called Luc a devil and Michel an angel but now the angel is falling fast...

...and he’s enjoying his downward spiral to the limit!







Icy Snow Blackstone's Brother Devil will be released by Class Act Books (www.classactbooks.com) on August 15, 2010. Bargain with Lucifer was released in January, 2010. http:://www.classactbooks.com

It’s a well-worn scenario. Brendan Fraser and Dudley Moore did it as a comic romp in Bedazzled, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made it their romantic fling into the classics. Movies and soap operas have utilized it to the fullest in 86 film versions: A poverty-stricken young man is offered fame and wealth beyond his wildest dreams. He accepts. Now, he has everything he wants…except peace of mind. Thus begins his downward spiral into the degradation which only immense power can cause. He’s doomed. Forever. Or not. Just when everything appears lost, he wins the love of a pure woman. Will she be able to save him?

Thus is told the story of Faust, and also of Serpent’s Tooth, but Travis Brandt is no medieval scholar bargaining his soul to the devil for knowledge alone. He’s a naïve young Nebraskan, marrying early and orphaned earlier, talented and intelligent but having nothing to look forward to but a poorly-paid teaching position in an incorporated town on the Great Plains. And then his Big Break comes and he’s whisked away to Hollywood and its contingent dangers...swept into the maelstrom of sex, drugs, rock and roll…and demon worship. Too late seeing the danger, realizing the only escape is to die or disappear, he runs away and spends the next quarter century in oblivion…until he meets a former fan, Melissa Powers, a woman who loves him not for the man he was, but for the man he has become. In her he sees his salvation, but his past rears its deadly head…

In the midst of her happiness, Melissa feels Travis isn’t telling her the whole truth about why he left Hollywood, and after seeing how attentive he is to his neighbor’s son and daughter, his assertion he doesn’t want children also rings false. So what is he hiding and why is he lying?

Only too soon, she finds out.

What should have been a happy ending, with two people starting a new life together, is only the beginning, as the horror Travis left behind when he fled Hollywood is now awakened to once more reach out and threaten the former movie star and his new bride as a demon comes to claim what he’s owed.

It’s a horror story, but it’s also a love story. It’s a different type of story for me and the first written in a contemporary setting.

Serpent’s Tooth is available as ebook and in print from Class Act Books.

http://www.classactbooks.com/Serpents-Tooth-by-Toni-V-Sweeney_p_154.html

WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE, WHEN FIRST WE PRACTICE TO DECEIVE...

Like his namesake, the Prince of Lies, Lucifer Deveraux is a Deceiver par excellence. Learning he has to be a settled, married man by his thirtieth birthday or lose a five million dollar Trust, he invents a wife and family; for five years he's deceived his grandfather into believing this. He's fooled every woman he's ever met into thinking he doesn't care for anyone but himself. Even his brother Michel is convinced that Luc seduced and abandoned the woman Michel now calls his wife. The truth is Luc is an insecure man-child who's afraid to love anyone, because all the people he's ever cared for have suffered tragic, violent deaths, and that fact has twisted him from a gentle, loving boy into a selfish, hell-bent womanizer.

Now, he's back at his grandfather's Louisiana plantation--with a woman who married him simply so he can get his inheritance. He'll divorce her as soon as the money's in the bank, giving her a tidy little settlement. The only trouble is...he's falling in love with his pseudo-wife, so much so that they're going to have a baby...and he wants both of them, as well as Julie's little daughter, to stay in his life.

There are several obstacles to Luc's happiness, some so dangerous the shaky sham marriage, desperately trying to transform itself into a real one, may not survive. One is Luc's inability to say those simple words, I love you, Julie. His brother has formed a strong emotional attachment to Julie and her daughter. The third is much more of a threat. Luc's former girlfriend Clarice is now Michel's wife, a fact both brothers have long since come to regret. Clarice never forgave Luc for jilting her, and now that he's back at San Souci Plantation, she's determined to win back the one man who dared to walk out on her. No one, including a pregnant wife, had better get in her way, because Clarice will stop at nothing--not even murder--to get what she wants.

Bargain with Lucifer is Icy Snow Blackstone's sixth novel. It was released today by Class Act Books. It is a contemporary romance, set in the bayous of Creole Louisiana. The sequel, Brother Devil, continuing the story and focusing on brother Michel, is scheduled for a May, 2010, publication.