In moments linger I
with young abandon,
the reeking of shadows
stoking pyres of my remorse
for want of misdirection
and singular satisfaction,
scoffing as desperate souls
weigh me down with anchors,
lost in the Utopian fantasy
where for lack of ideas
the ether might coalesce and
somehow become…
a human being.

For you, my love, I try
with aches for paint and
fingerboards for canvas
slicing melodies from pain
and soft memories from rain
and purpose from my lethargy,
laughing as these trembling hands
claw at my memories
and the horror of mis-spent existence
where at times it almost seemed
the ether would coalesce and
somehow become…
a human being.

October 21, 2010
Saint Petersburg, Florida

The novel has now been given its own section, using its own theme and header. This not only allows me to create a theme that is particular to M.E. Caldwell, but switch up to a theme that makes for better reading. I’ve received a few complaints that stories posted to the standard theme that you see here has been a little hard on the eyes.

Hopefully this new look, which I’ll be using for all novels, each with its own unique header, will make reading the stories online more comfortable. I’ll also be posting PDF versions of some of these works so that you can download them to your iPhone or E-Reader.

Anyway, if you want to re-visit old Caldwell again, you can now find her complete story online.

Links

• Introduction
• Chapters
• About M.E. Caldwell

Visili Kruvoi is a perfect example. He lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida and enjoys frequent visits to the many local beaches and parks. He has friends, both human and non-human, and leads a comfortable, largely uneventful life, supported by his many real estate holdings. Sure, he has needs. But they don’t involved blood, fangs, black capes, or period clothing. If you passed him on the street, you would never know that he was Upir. If he fancied the taste of your energy, he wouldn’t rip out your throat and leave you for dead. Most likely he might simply sip some of your energy as he passed, leaving you feeling a little tired and in sudden need of a latte. If you’ve ever wondered why you’ve suddenly become sleepy while out in public, you might have encountered an Upir.

This is the founding premise of my novel, Blood & Chartreuse. Vampires are real, but they’re nothing like the romantic ghouls and fanged demons you see in the movies. Visili Kruvoi, known locally as “Crewe”, is centuries old and has lived quietly in Saint Petersburg, Florida since its incorporation in 1892. He has the normal problems as other people, and is mostly embroiled in personality conflicts with the leadership of an Upir organization that he helped found. Other than that, though, his life is largely uneventful.

That is… until everything changes.

When the book starts, Crewe is only peripherally aware that an area Senator, who was Upir, has been murdered. It’s significant because the senator was Upir, but otherwise is not noteworthy. But the murder sets into motion a chain of events that sweeps up Crewe, and all of his kind, in an outright fight for survival. Crewe’s hard-won right to live a banal, uneventful existence is swept away in the opening salvos of a war that will eventually engulf the entire world.

Blood & Chartreuse is the first in a series of 12-14 novels that will each feature a unique character and viewpoint. Each book will tell a part of the larger story of a global war through the personal story of an extraordinary individual who was in the pivotal place and time where and when history was made. The series may start with people who can loosely be considered vampires, but they’re only the first of many compelling creatures.

Links

• Introduction
• Chapters
• About Crewe

Excerpts;

According to accounts released Saturday, April 24, 2010, by the coordinator of an e-mail news and information service, officials of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) and other U.S. government agencies have been involved in security activities involving human-appearing extraterrestrial beings in the U.S.

According to Martinez, his contact stated, “In reference to your repeated requests to present some new information never before disclosed to the public … I went outside of our agency to close intelligence contacts of mine and secured the following … I just received information on a highly sensitive operation code-named ‘Operation TANGO-SIERRA’ that occurred in early 1980. It involved U.S. intelligence capturing an alien being living among us.”

“The entire operation lasted five months and involved approximately 60 intelligence officers. Every intelligence gathering capability was utilized at the time: Ground, aerial surveillance, telephone wiretaps,photographic evidence and other undisclosed clandestine operations were all conducted and some simultaneously in concert with one another.”

The source also stated, “The non-human entity was quickly identified, carefully watched, photographed and eventually captured near a shopping mall (southeast of Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland) after it walked up an embankment. It was quickly determined that this male alien had no special powers nor abilities.”

“The male non-human voluntarily complied with the U.S. intelligence AFOSI special agents and went quietly and without incident. The male non-human was then remanded to custody and placed in captivity at Ft. Belvoir Army Post, Virginia.”

Links

• Read Full Article >>

Excerpt;

Every eye turns in my direction. I smile at some of the patrons. Acknowledge others. Some smile, warm and friendly. Some glower at me, still smarting from recent slights. Half of them are stuck here because of me, passing their days as the background chatter in other people’s lives, hoping to someday settle their tab and be allowed to move along and get on with their lives. No one will say anything. No one will approach me. They all know why I’m here. They all sit at their tables and booths, playing their roles and sipping free beer to drink away the ghosts, careful to give the new stranger a wide berth. They all know he’s the reason I’m here. And whether he knows it or not, I’m the reason he’s here, too.

I glance over the faces of the patrons, looking for Jessica. I finally find her in the back corner. She’s squirreled herself away in the shadows, as far away as she can get from what I’m about to do. She doesn’t look at me, but she has to know I’m here. I could use a smile. Or a wave. But I understand. I know how I feel when she’s working a client.

Links

• Read the full story >>

How I resent these stiff, tortured bones,
the aching, sweaty weight of flesh.

I would be free, formless and weightless;
a whisper on soft summer winds.

I would be strong, but incorporeal;
rolling thunder and falling rain…

Become music, and danced abandon;
slip these mortal bonds for the skies.

Kings Mountain, NC
February 23, 2004

Links

• Poem Page

Neither divine providence
Nor positive energy
Not tears of the mothers
Nor intercession by preachers
Have brought me to this moment
Where I breathe and consider
The simple state of being.

I am here because I’m here.
No soft, lilting song
Can surmise my longevity
Nor raise inspiring cadence
To describe this very moment
Where I breath and consider
The simple intent of being.

I am here because I’m here
And today that’s enough,
To breathe and consider
That I breathe and consider
As I lift my face to Heaven
And, with a smile, declare
I am here because I am here
And I am damned hard to kill.

~ April 17, 2010

The Malleus Maleficarum (“The Witch Hammer”), first published in 1486, is arguably one of the most infamous books ever written, due primarily to its position and regard during the Middle Ages. It served as a guidebook for Inquisitors during the Inquisition, and was designed to aid them in the identification, prosecution, and dispatching of Witches. It set forth, as well, many of the modern misconceptions and fears concerning witches and the influence of witchcraft. The questions, definitions, and accusations it set forth in regard to witches, which were reinforced by its use during the Inquisition, came to be widely regarded as irrefutable truth. Those beliefs are held even today by a majority of Christians in regard to practitioners of the modern “revived” religion of Witchcraft, or Wicca. And while the Malleus itself is largely unknown in modern times, its effects have proved long lasting.

At the time of the writing of The Malleus Maleficarum, there were many voices within the Christian community (scholars and theologians) who doubted the existence of witches and largely regarded such belief as mere superstition. The authors of the Malleus addressed those voices in no uncertain terms, stating: “Whether the Belief that there are such Beings as Witches is so Essential a Part of the Catholic Faith that Obstinacy to maintain the Opposite Opinion manifestly savours of Heresy.” The immediate, and lasting, popularity of the Malleus essentially silenced those voices. It made very real the threat of one being branded a heretic, simply by virtue of one’s questioning of the existence of witches and, thus, the validity of the Inquisition. It set into the general Christian consciousness, for all time, a belief in the existence of witches as a real and valid threat to the Christian world. It is a belief which is held to this day.

• Read Complete Article >>

Since Gilmour was touring the world with his merry band of studio musicians, pretending there was still a Pink Floyd (and making millions of dollars doing it), while Roger Waters largely remained out of the limelight, this misinformation held a lot of weight for some people. After all, they were only hearing one side of the story, Roger Waters was noodling around with music that sounded only peripherally like the work he did with Pink Floyd (to little commercial notice), and everywhere you went there was a Pink Floyd spectacle coming to town or another live album being released that re-visited the buffet of Roger Waters’ earlier work. The people were getting what they wanted from the Pink Floyd brand, and no one seemed to care which one was Pink.

I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness. Sure, there were other people like me who had grown up with Pink Floyd and knew who did what, but the masses thought of Roger Waters mostly as Pink Floyd’s ex-bassist. Most people thought of him as something of a backing musician. After all, David Gilmour, who was largely the voice people associated with Pink Floyd, was still out there running around with the Floyd banner, and Nick Mason and Richard Wright were chugging right along with him, happily playing the roll of band members while being paid salaried wages. It was under that climate that I wrote the essay – The Theft Of Pink Floyd.

A lot has changed since then. Roger Waters’ successful tours, starting in 2000, brought to the forefront just who was Pink in the end. Roger Waters and a bunch of studio musicians sounded more like Pink Floyd than Gilmour, Mason and Wright.  And Waters played to enough people all over the world throughout the first decade of the 21st Century that it became increasingly harder to peddle the lies about Roger Waters’ contributions. Add to that the fact that David Gilmour largely decided to put his dog and pony show in storage, and the issue was largely settled. You’ll still meet the occasional pocket of ignorance. But they’re becoming fewer and farther between.

The sad truth is that Roger Waters and David Gilmour were better together than either of them have been separately. But I’ll take Waters’ Amused to Death over Gilmour’s Momentary Lapse of Reason or The Division Bell any day. But I eagerly admit that I like Gilmour’s solo music much better now that he’s not trying to pawn it off as Pink Floyd (On An Island sounds like the work of an artist, not the calculation of a businessman). Now if Roger Waters would just release that damned solo album he’s been working on since the mid 1990′s, we could all put this question to rest once and for all.

Links

• Essay: The Theft Of Pink Floyd