A press conference was held yesterday at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany to announce my latest project, HELLstalkers.  This new series is being written in conjunction with my friend and fellow writer, Jon Merz, and what makes it so new and interesting to us is the fact that it is being written for the mobile phone market.

Yes, that’s right, I said the mobile phone market.

Reading novels on a mobile phone has been exceedingly popular in Asia for several years now and they are slowly making their way into the European and American markets.  Jon and I have teamed up with Blackbetty GlobalMedia GmbH, a Vienna based multimedia small screen publisher and Vodafone, a telecommunications giant, to bring this new series to life.

HELLstalkers revolves around an accident at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, a mysterious organization known as Project Cerberus, and a group of military operatives formed into a team known as HELLstalker One.  The team is led by Captain Memphis Stone, US Army, who soon finds out that there are some things that military training just doesn’t prepare you for…

Sample chapters will soon by available for download directly to your smartphone both at the official HELLstalker website and at the company website (Mobilebooks.com).  We’re also going to be making use of QR Codes, mobile tagging, and social networking to provide behind-the-scenes information, sneak peeks, and other multi-media activities to make it an experience unlike reading your average print novel.

In fact, here’s the first piece of the puzzle for those of you who have been following along:

(If you don’t know what the symbol above actually is or what to do with it, you might want to drop by this post.  There will be more of them in the future, each one with a little something different for the story.)

Jon and I are very excited about the series and hope that you’ll spend some time with us as it unfolds over the next few months.  If you like, you can join our Facebook page or get on the mailing list so you don’t miss out on any exciting announcements!

Welcome to Storytellers Unplugged. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

While at Comic-Con a few years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Sean O’Reilly, the CEO and founder of Arcana Comics. Arcana is not only the largest comics publisher in Canada, but also works in other mediums, including video games, short-form animation and live action shorts, toys, merchandise and the like. At the time I was shopping the rights to turn my Templar Chronicles trilogy into a comic series and while that project just didn’t seem right for Arcana, it gave Sean and I the chance to get a feel for each other’s work and to form a basis for doing some work together in the future. Several months later, when he needed a writer for a new comic series he was envisioning, he gave me a call.

Candice Crow, a five issue comic mini-series about a young woman who discovers she has some rather unusual powers (and limitations) was born.

Sean already had a basic idea, as well as an artist attached to the project. He needed someone to flesh it out and write the scripts for the five issues. After talking it over a bit, I signed on and worked on the series as time permitted in between novel projects. It took a while, but eventually all five scripts were written and were passed on to the artist. At that point, there was nothing more for me to do but sit back and wait.

Recently, I was able to see the fruits of my labors. Completed copies of each issue – drawn, inked, colored, and lettered – were sent to me for review before they went off to the printer. The series won’t be officially released until the Fall, but I was excited with what the team as a whole had come up with. For the first time I’d been involved in a project that I couldn’t just sit down and handle all on my own and I found the experience artistically satisfying, to say the least.

So with this year’s Comic-con just around the corner, I thought I’d share the first few pages of Candice Crow Issue One with you all. (Concept by Sean O’Reilly, Script by Joe Nassise, Artwork by Angel Angelov)

In this continuation of my post from last month, I’m going to cover reasons six through ten of the top ten reasons to work with a literary agent.  So let’s get to it…

Reason #6: Gives you an experienced third party view of your work

We’ve all been there – thought that our most recent effort is the best thing since the invention of sliced bread.  Trouble is, we’re more often wrong on that score than right.  A literary agent you trust can be a terrific third party filter for your ego.  If the work isn’t up to par, they’ll tell you and often offer advice on how to fix the problem.  And even better, if it is better than usual, they’ll be the first to tell you that too.

Reason #7: A literary agent can help guide you in your career

With their in-depth understanding of the market, both past and present, a good literary agent can often help guide you in building your career.  They can offer advice on everything from writing in more than one genre to the advantages or disadvantages to working with specific editors or publishing houses.

Reason #8: Most literary agents have a network of foreign or sub-rights agents

Diversification can often be the savior of a mid-listers career and one way of doing this is branching out in other mediums (comics, audio, etc) or to other territories.  Foreign rights often mean free money in a writer’s pocket (after all, the hard work of writing the book is already done) and so the more territories a work sells in the better off the author will be.  Having a network of foreign agents to help market your work in other territories is well worth the commission you’ll pay to both agents.

Reason #9: Having a literary agent allows you to concentrate on the writing

Let’s face it – submitting a manuscript can be tedious work.  You have to send the queries, prepare the manuscript according to each specific publisher’s requirements, send it out, follow up on it when you get a response, follow up on it when you don’t get a response, and so on.  Allowing your literary agent to handle this for you let’s you concentrate on doing what you do best – write.

Reason #10: A good agent can earn you more money

Remember reason #4 – a good agent is an experienced negotiator?  I’ve found that when an experienced negotiator who understands the market is working on my behalf, I usually end up getting more for my work than I would have been likely to get working on my own behalf.   That’s why I don’t mind paying an agent his usual 10-15% commission because I know that the agent will often bring in at least that much more than I could have managed myself.

So there you have it – my top ten reasons for working with an agent.  Tell me – what are your reasons for working with an agent?  If you don’t have one, why do you want one?

Tax day and deadline week all at the same time, means I’m quite literally swamped, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have something for our readers today.  As I was adding up the fees paid to my literary agent for his work this year, I thought it might be interesting to talk about just why I’m willing to give up this money and what I think an agent does for my career.

This will be a two part essay, so today we’ll look at the first five reasons to use an agent.   While having a literary agent is not a necessity, my personal experience has shown it to be a very beneficial relationship and I would recommend it wherever possible.

Reason #1 – An agent knows the marketplace better than you do

Given that it is an agent’s job to be aware of who is buying what from whom for how much, the vast majority of literary agents know the inner workings of the market better than most authors and it is their job to use that knowledge to your benefit.

Reason #2 – An agent has a personal relationship with multiple editors

An agent is, to some extent, a professional networker and has built up personal relationships with many editors over time. They know what certain editors like and don’t like when it comes to literary properties and they know what those editors have recently purchased, so they can help target your proposal to the individuals most likely to receive it in a positive manner.

Reason #3 – An agent understands contracts

The typical publishing contract is fifteen to twenty legal size pages of the most convoluted legalese I’ve ever seen and it is ripe with clauses that benefit the publisher rather than the writer. It is an agent’s job to understand what these clauses mean and to fight to remove or alter those that do not help your career. While you could educate yourself on the basics, an agent sees several of these a day and you would be hard pressed to meet their level of knowledge on your own without considerable time and effort.

Reason #4 – An agent is an experience negotiator

In the end it the agent’s job to get you’re the best offer and contract terms possible. This is what they do, day after day for client after client. They know just how much they can push a particular editor or publishing house, they know what is an acceptable counter offer and what is not, and they can advise you on what tact to take when the publisher offers terms that just aren’t acceptable.

Reason #5 – An agent protects your relationship with the editor

For one reason or another there often comes a time when the publisher had done something that you are unhappy with and that you would like to work to change. At the same time, you don’t want to alienate your editor or allow your anger/frustration over the issue to strain your working relationship. In times like these you agent can step in and play the “bad cop” for you, allowing you to work toward the result you want without damage to your editorial partnership.

Next time around we’ll cover the final five reasons to use a literary agent and I’ll answer any questions that might have come up out of part one.

A few months ago, I ran into some difficulty while neck deep in a particular writing project. My deadline was looming and I was going nowhere fast. Day after day I would sit down at the computer and beat my head against the wall, trying but repeatedly failing to drag forth the requisite pages that needed to be written that day.

It wasn’t due to a lack of organization. I had a detailed outline in front of me. The action and emotional impact in each chapter was scripted out and I even knew from which character’s viewpoint the scene would be written. I was excited about what was to come; the scenes were well constructed and drove the story forward at a decent pace, the characters were interesting and unusual. I was perhaps better prepared to write that book than any other I had written previously.

And I had long since passed the point where I could write only when “inspired” to do so. My muse had long ago been hunted down, captured, and chained to the demands of a professional writer’s schedule – you write when you need to write, not when you “feel” like writing. Writing when inspired was for sissies. I was a professional, damn it!

But it was not to be. Day after day I struggled, producing, on a GOOD day, about one fifth of my usual output and that only after hours of painful effort. The bad days weren’t even worth talking about.

As the time passed and the lines through the days on the calendar made it increasingly obvious to me that I either needed to do something drastic or shoot myself, I made a decision.

It was time for a change.

For years I have written in the quiet confines of my office, my trusty desktop with its 20 inch monitor my only companion. Music was a big no-no; too often I would find myself typing the lyrics to the songs I was listening to rather than the words of my tale and even purely instrumental numbers were a problem as I could get lost in the notes as easily as the lyrics.

To shake things up, I purposely changed everything I could think to change. Rather than work at my desktop, I would use the laptop. Rather than sit in my comfortable leather chair, I would use one made of hardwood without a seat cushion. Rather than work in the privacy of my office, I would go to the library or the deli or the local Starbucks. immerse myself in noise and people. Rather than create in silence, I would graft headphones to my ears and submerge myself in pulse-pounding and bass-cranking music if necessary.

Imagine my surprise when it worked.

The words that I had struggled so hard to find poured effortlessly from my fingertips in the midst of that Starbucks, an iced vente mocha frappuccino at my side. The action sequences that had seemed so scripted and flat previously now jumped to life while the words and music of Nickelback pounded in my ears. My output shot up to my usual levels and then kept going, until I discovered that I could write faster and with better results than I ever had before – all because I took a chance and changed the usual way I did things.

Is something in your life stuck? Are you getting frustrated by your inability to make a change?

Then step outside the problem. Come at it from a totally different direction. Take your usual process and turn it 180 degrees in the other direction.

Change your perspective – you might be surprised at the results.

I know I was.

Well, as you can see, Storytellersunplugged has a new look and feel. This is our fourth calendar year in existence (hard to imagine we started back in June of 2005, isn’t it?) and we’re still going strong with a marvelous cast of contributors and terrific content. We’ve grown exponentially each year and I hope we continue to do the same in 2009.

You may have noticed we have some advertising space available now. If you have a website or product that you think our readership would be interested in, check out the new Advertising page to see what we’ve made available. Our readers comes from more than 80 countries across the globe and are a widely-read and highly intelligent crowd.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post, actually.

We want to hear from you, our readers.

We want to know what you’d like us to talk about in 2009. What topics would you like to see covered? What questions do you have to ask? What other types of posts would you like to see? Maybe book reviews? Author interviews? Product write-ups? Publishing house reviews? Guest bloggers? Come on, don’t be shy! Use the comment section and let us know what you’d like to read about this year and we’ll do our level best to bring it to you.

Finally, we want to say thank you. Thank you to each and every one of you who come back here day after day, week after week. You’ve helped make this place what it is and I know every single one of our contributors appreciates your patronage.

Here’s to another great year at SU!

– Joe Nassise and Dave Wilson

The first time it happened, Memphis Stone was standing over the rapidly cooling body of a young girl.

It was just after 9:00 pm, mid-summer, the streets of Boston still reflecting the heat they had soaked up during the day under the combination of the 90 degree temperature and the even higher percentage humidity. It had been a long, grueling month with heat-frayed tempers and the corresponding hike in violent crime that always accompanied such a stretch.

Stone had been fostering a mild headache for most of the afternoon. The pain made him tense, irritable, and the fact that he was still standing there two hours after he was supposed to have gone off shift did nothing to assuage that. Just the opposite, in fact, as it sent his headache rocketing up several levels higher on the pain scale.

He stared down at the body, wondering. Who was she? Why did she have to come along right when she did? Couldn’t she have taken a different way home?

She was the fourth victim this month. All of them young, all of them seemingly innocent, at least to this world-weary detective. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought so, for the press had taken to calling it the work of the Saintkiller.

He rubbed at his forehead, his hand over his eyes as he tried to ease the rapidly tightening band of tension churning there. When he took his hand away, the scene before him wavered and then changed…

The alley was all but empty. The detectives, the crime scene technicians, the mob of curious onlookers that had gathered like leeches just beyond the tape-line, were all gone.

Memphis could see that the girl remained, still looking as lost and forlorn as she had when he’d first arrived on the scene.

The girl remained, though now her body was still warm to the touch as the last remnants of her life fled her young frame.

The girl remained, but she was no longer alone.

It stood about five feet tall and was wrapped in a long cowled robe that was several sizes too big, a robe which hung in dirty folds about its frame as it stood hunched over the girl. Its hood hid its face from his view.

Memphis was suddenly struck with the bizarre notion that if he had been able to see it he would have see only a flat, barren surface devoid of feature or function, a face that wasn’t really a face at all.

Kneeling down beside the body, the thing reached out and grasped the girl’s leg. Its hands had only four fingers, overly long appendages with thick misshapen knuckles and nails several inches in length that rasped together as they closed around the girl’s calf. It leaned forward and out of the depths of its hood came a long, molted tongue of sickly hue. It quivered in the air, inches from an exposed section of the girl’s tender flesh, as if anticipating the taste to come.

Suddenly it stopped. Its head came up slightly and Memphis could hear it sniffing, like a dog searching for a scent. Once, twice, and then it stiffened. Its head swiveled in Stone’s direction. Two points of greenish flame flared within the darkness inside that hood where the creature’s eyes should have been.

Memphis gasped…

…and with a start came back to himself. His partner, Jefferson Brooks, was holding his arm tightly, an odd look, part concern, part horror, on his face as he pulled him away from the crime scene.

“I said, get a hold of yourself, Stone.”

Memphis shook the man’s arm away. “I’m fine. What are you doing?”

Nash snorted. “Fine my ass. You were down on your hands and knees sniffing the body, for heaven’s sake. Get a grip, man.”

Memphis stared at him in disbelief. Sniffing the body? Then the memory of what he had seen in his vision came rushing back and he almost fell over in his haste to get away from the corpse before him.
Sudden pain flared in the detective’s hands, enough to tear his gaze away from the tableau before him. Looking down, he found blood pouring out of a hole the size of a quarter in the center of each palm, wide enough that he could see the street beneath through the ragged opening in his flesh. The dark arterial blood seemed to spurt free in time with each beat of his heart.

* * *

It happened again three days later.

Memphis was up most of the night trying to piece together the few leads he had into something he hoped might actually move the investigation forward a step or two, but to no avail. The lingering unease he felt from the odd event in the alley was not helping. Frustrated and angry, he returned to his apartment only to spend several hours in a fit of uneasy sleep, chased by dreams full of dark and terrifying creatures that stalked him through lonely streets and empty buildings. He gave up trying to rest around six, went out for his morning jog, showered, shaved, and then gulped down a sparse breakfast.

Now he stood by the counter pouring himself another cup of coffee. In the adjoining room the television was tuned to a local newscast. He was reaching for the sugar when he heard the anchorman break in with a Special Report.

As he turned to listen, blood splashed across the countertop.

Memphis lost his grip on the newly-filled cup, the ceramic shattering as it smashed on the floor tiles, but he barely noticed as he stared in amazement at the holes that had suddenly erupted in the center of each palm again.

Blood flowed like a fountain from the wounds, scarlet against the white of the kitchen counters.

The room around him wavered and then changed…

…A warehouse.

The smell of machine oil, sweat, and pain. Darkness pooling in the corners and overhead. The steady rhythmic sound of a pump working in the background.

A scream erupted from somewhere off to his right; harsh, discordant, full of anguish and fear.

He moved in that direction, his footsteps sounding hollow and unwelcome in the silence that immediately followed that cry, past shroud-covered hulks of machinery, down a short corridor, and into another opened room.

Memphis stood in the doorway, staring in dazed bewilderment.

The room was enormous. Far bigger than should have been possible. All but the closest wall was lost somewhere in the distance. The room itself was filled with row upon row of mobile autopsy tables, like those used in morgues, each one holding the naked form of an unconscious teenager strapped to its surface with thick leather belts. A maze of tubes and wires ran from a monitoring device beside each table to the body atop it, though their individual purposes were not easily discernible. A sense of despair and decay filled the room with a thick and cloying presence, accentuated with the occasional scream from one of the patients/prisoners as they encountered some idle terror in their dreams.

Between the tables, tending their occupants, were dozens of creatures like the one he had encountered in the alley.

As one, they turned to look at him.

Terrified, Memphis took a step backward, away from those burning green eyes, and…

…returned to his kitchen, where his blood continued to paint the floor tiles crimson.

He stared at his hands, astonished and more than a little afraid now. Behind him, in the other room, the announcer’s voice suddenly seemed overly loud.

“Tonight, the Saintkiller has claimed another victim…”

* * *

“I am not going crazy. I’m not.”

But it certainly felt like he was. The visions, dreams, whatever the hell they were, had intensified over the last week, becoming more frequent and more vivid until he could no longer tell reality from imagination.
He tried working himself to exhaustion, but the dreams still came. He tried drinking himself into unconsciousness, hoping that the sweet oblivion of alcohol could hold the visions at bay, but the dreams still came. He even gulped down a handful of tranquilizers the night before last, but even that had failed.

He didn’t go into work for over a week. No doubt the investigation had stalled, but he couldn’t care less. At first the office tried to track him down, calling at all hours, leaving messages, demanding his presence. When he grew tired of listening, he ripped the phone out of the wall and threw it out the window into the backyard. He even stopped answering his door, afraid of whom or what he might find waiting outside each time the buzzer rang.

Memphis was not a religious individual. Truth be told, he hadn’t set foot inside a church in years and so the whole stigmata thing was confusing the hell out of him. He sat there with his hands wrapped in cotton gauze, having discovered that it proved rather effective in soaking up the blood when the stigmata appeared for the third time late last night. He didn’t have a clue what was causing it all. Well, that’s not quite true, he admitted to himself. He hadn’t needed the morning paper to know that the Saintkiller had claimed another victim. Somehow he and the murderer were connected and that knowledge was both simultaneously fascinating and revolting.

What if this guy doesn’t stop? he thought. What then? Will I have to live with this the rest of my life? He snorted derisively at the idea. What life? I can’t even make it a week. No way could I make it a month, never mind longer. I’d be better off putting a bullet in my head now and saving myself a lot of trouble.

Not that he hadn’t considered it. That’s how bad it was getting.

He sat at the kitchen table playing idly with the blood-caked bandage on his left hand, considering some of the things he’d seen over the last few days. Deep caverns where phantoms lie resting quietly…dark rites performed in shadowy tenements over the bodies of sacrificial lambs, both human and otherwise…unearthly battlefields where bodies lay piled in the sun, their pale-feathered wings ruffling in the breeze.

And blood.

Seemingly endless streams of blood.

Memphis cringed at the memories.

His fear made him uncomfortable. He got up from the table and moved into the living room, where he noticed that the day had fled and darkness now covered the land. Where had the day gone? Leaving the lights off, he took a seat near the window and stared out into the darkness, wondering where the killer was at that moment, wondering if his own hands would soon be signaling the death of another victim.

As he looked out the window, his view was abruptly cut-off by the sudden flaring of a brilliant light reflecting in the glass from the corner behind him.

Turning to look, he discovered that he was no longer alone.

“Do not be afraid,” his visitor said. “I am Ashariel and I have come bearing a message.”

The stranger’s voice was strong, commanding, even a little overwhelming. It seemed to have hidden depths, echoes upon echoes, and Memphis found himself trying to catch each separate layer, as if there was another message beneath the obvious one that he desperately needed to understand.

Memphis might have spent the last week or two hounded by visions and half-convinced he was going out of his mind, but that didn’t make him any less a cop. He had his service revolver out and pointed at the other before his visitor had even finished speaking.

It was only then that he noticed the other man’s wings.

“What the hell…?”

The newcomer chuckled. “Not quite,” he said, “but close.”

“Who? What…?” The gun was forgotten in his overwhelming amazement. He might not be religious, but he could certainly recognize an angel – particularly when it was standing in his living room.

“You are not going crazy, Memphis Stone. I have a message for you, one of great importance, and the visions were necessary to prepare your mortal mind so that you might receive it properly. You have been chosen and there is much you will need to do.”

“Chosen? For what? And why me? I’m not even a believer.”

“There is no need for you to believe, Memphis. Others believe in you.”

And with that the angel reached out a hand. The room around Memphis tipped, swayed, and then spun downward out of control. The last thing Memphis saw before the darkness closed in was the solid black of his visitor’s eyes.

* * *

The warehouse was just where the vision had shown it would be, nestled in an all-but-forgotten lot just south of Jessup on Decatur. Memphis stood across the street, lost in the concealing shadows of a neighboring doorway, and watched the place closely for over an hour.

The usual street traffic was out in abundance, from hookers to gangbangers and derelicts. The building was not only ignored, but universally shunned. The detective had seen it before – the street folk knew trouble when they saw it and avoided it instinctively.

He waited a several moments longer, until the few stragglers were no longer in sight, then crossed the street and slipped through a hole in the chain-link fence surrounding the property. He crossed the ground quickly, not wanting to be caught in the open. When he reached the building itself he headed around to the back where his vision had shown he would find a broken window. He used that to gain entrance.

Memphis then made his way quietly through the interior of the warehouse, moving from room to room, following the course the archangel had laid out in the vision he experienced back in his living room.

Then, with an eerie sense of déjà vu he found himself standing just outside the entrance of the room he sought.

He knew now that the creatures he had seen in the alley and in his vision were real. Ashariel had explained their true nature to him, had imparted their need to harness the life force of the innocent to maintain their infernal forms, their complete hatred for the joy that freedom can bring and their innate desire to force humans into a life of servitude. He didn’t recall having made the decision to go along with Ashariel’s plan, yet he found himself standing in the darkened hallway just beyond the entrance, a semi-automatic pistol held firmly in a shooter’s grip.

He took several deep breaths, preparing himself for what he knew he was about to see and then stepped into view in the doorway of the room, the pistol raised and ready.

There were six of them scattered throughout the room, tending to their charges. As one they looked up at Memphis’ appearance.

Without hesitation, the detective-turned-avenger opened fire.

The gunfire echoed in the enclosed space, Memphis’ first three shots were perfectly on target, striking the nearest creature in the chest and face. He shifted his aim as it went down, only to find the other five were already rushing across the room toward him, their arms raised high, their claw-like fingernails ready to be used as weapons.

Lord they’re fast! he thought, as he put three more bullets into the next closest one.

Still the others came on. By now they had crossed half the distance toward him.

Two down, four to go. This was going to be close. His gun barked again and again, his aim near perfect.

Four left, the closest twenty feet away.

Three left, fifteen feet.

Two left, less than ten.

The final creature made it within striking distance. Memphis was forced to duck as the thing swung those vicious claws in his direction. This close, he could smell the fetid stink of the creature and could see the ragged, raw flesh that served as its face.

He came back up shooting, putting two bullets dead center into the thing’s hood.

It was tossed over backward with the force of the shots to lie unmoving on the floor in front of the doorway in which Memphis still stood.

The detective bent down, placed the muzzle of his weapon against the back of the thing’s head and used his final bullet, just for good measure.

With that, the battle was over.

Memphis stepped over the corpse and approached the nearest table.

Once beautiful, the girl before him was now frightfully thin. Her skin, thin and yellowed like old parchment, was stretched tightly across bones that jutted forth far more than they should. She was all harsh angles and shadowed hollows. Strange tubes of some kind of flexible crystal-like substance pierced her body in a vertical line running down the center of her form, the first attached to the center of her forehead, the last just above her groin, seven in all. Other smaller tubes were twined about her limbs and attached at the elbows, knees, and wrists. Blood and other unidentifiable fluids were being pumped in and out of her form through these connections.

As the detective leaned closer to get a better look, the girl’s eyes snapped open.

Memphis recoiled in horror.

She turned her head to follow him, a desperate, pleading look in her eyes. Her lips parted and she appeared to say something, but Memphis was unable to understand what she said over the thump and hiss of the machinery around her.

Overcoming his revulsion, he returned to her side. He bent down, placing his ear near to her lips.

“Please…” she said.

Memphis understood. He’d known it would come to this; he’d seen it in the vision the angel had put before him. He’d just hadn’t realized that the girl, and all of her companions, might actually be conscious and aware.

Gritting his teeth, he reached for the tube that went into her throat.

It moved beneath his touch as it if were itself aware, squirming away from his grasp in an attempt to prevent him from carrying out his designs. Using both hands, he grasped it firmly, preventing it from getting away.

The girl watched him with eyes opened wide.

When he was ready, his hand gripping the tube tightly, he met her gaze.

She smiled.

He did the same.

Then he pulled.

The tube came out of her throat with a small sucking sound and without another sound the girl was dead.

Blood gushed from Memphis’ hands and splashed across the girl’s corpse beneath him, the stigmata appearing again at the sudden death of another innocent, this time at his own hands.

Tears in his eyes, the detective turned to the next table and the form strapped helplessly to it.

It took him three hours.

By the time he was finished, he was sick at heart and weak from loss of blood.

But the children had been set free.

He carefully made his way back across the room, his eyes on the ground, avoiding the stares of those he had sent on to a better life. After what seemed like forever, he left the self-created graveyard behind and traversed the maze of corridors that had led him there, until he could once more see the moonlight coming in through the window he had used to gain entrance.

He stumbled once, as he prepared to leave the building, and barely caught himself with a quick grab for the nearest wall. Once the wave of dizziness had passed, he slipped back out through the opening and disappeared into the night.

* * *

“They were awake. Aware. They knew what I was there for.”

Ashariel nodded, but did not comment further.

“They’re free now. That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Of course. You did well. The Lord is pleased.”

Memphis stared down at the slowly closing wounds in his hands. “But if I was doing the Lord’s work, why did His wounds appear?” That part of it just wasn’t making any sense to him. The stigmata appeared when the Saintkiller murdered an innocent victim. Why then did it appear when he released the prisoners from their pain?

Ashariel’s answer proved to be no help at all.

“We all have our crosses to bear.”

When Memphis turned to respond, he found his visitor had vanished as abruptly as he had appeared on that first night.

* * *

Across town, in an abandoned warehouse located south of Jessup on Decatur, a set of tracks were visible on the floor of an empty, oversized room. The tracks moved in a haphazard pattern through years of accumulated dust, from a broken window in the rear corner, around the center of the room, and back to the window again.

Aside from the tracks, the only evidence that anyone had been in the room in years was a handprint on the wall near the window.

A handprint made in blood, with a curious hole in the middle of the palm.

In this month’s installment to my continuing series, A Writer’s Toolbox, I want to talk about what I use to backup, sync, and share my files across multiple computers. (Post #1 in the series – A Writer’s Toolbox: Evernote – can be found here.)

When I am working on a project, I tend to write on multiple machines. If I’m working in my office at home, I write on my desktop. If I’m working at the library or local coffee shop, I use my personal laptop. If I’m on the road in my role as consultant for my day job, I’m usually carrying my company laptop. Not wanting to keep personal files on a company computer, I usually store everything on a flash drive and then mix and match files when I get home.

As you can imagine, trying to keep all of my files organized and up-to-date can be a real pain in the neck as a result. Enter Dropbox – a free online service that lets me handle all of this and more. I’ve been using Dropbox for several month as part of their invite-only beta launch and just this past week they opened up to the public, so the time is write to share with you what I’ve learned.

Dropbox

Dropbox is an online service that lets you store, synch and share information from one computer to another. It will also serve as an automatic backup service for your files, should something go wrong on your end. Once you install it, Dropbox creates a folder on your hard drive. Any file you put inside that folder will automatically be synched and monitored for changes. Each time the file is saved anew, it backs up and syncs the file again. Even better, it keeps a running list of revisions, so you can always go back to an earlier version should you need to do so. You can even undelete any file that you might accidentally have trashed.

Any file you sync with Dropbox is available on any computer you sync it to or through the Dropbox web interface. Each time you sync, Dropbox only syncs the parts of the file that have changed, which saves bandwidth and storage space. The service comes with 2 gigs of storage, which is more than enough for any of the several projects I’m working on at any one time, but additional storage is also available for a small fee. And by the way, your data is safe too, for it is sent using SSL and encrypted with AES-256 before storage.

Dropb - online sync, storage and backup of files

One aspect of Dropbox I haven’t used yet is its ability to share files with other people, be they fellow Dropbox users or not. I can see this being extremely useful for group projects, collaborations, and the like.

And before you ask – yes, the product is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so no matter what major operating system you are using, you should be able to give it a try for yourself.

So there you have it – one solution out of many that are available for synching and backing up your data across multiple computers. I’d love to hear other unique ways people are using Dropbox or what other applications you might use instead, so feel free to leave a comment and let’s talk!

For the past couple of years, Michael Stelzner has done a “Top 10 Blogs For Writers” post, and it has been amazingly successful.

To participate, all you need to do is leave a comment at his post explaining why you think a given blog is worthy of making the Top 10.

In the past, great blogs like Men With Pens, Freelance Writing Jobs, and Copyblogger have all made the cut.

This year I’d love to see Storytellersunplugged make the list in the top ten. To show your appreciation for all the fine writers who create content here, do me a favor and go visit Michael’s blog, and let him know how much you appreciate Storytellersunplugged.com.

Thanks,
Your friendly neighborhood admin – Joe Nassise