The Journal of Michael Merriam

He leaned into the young woman, gently caressing her cheek with the barest feather-light touch of his fingertips. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth slightly, her tongue darting out to moisten lips parted for his kiss.

"Dear Contessa Moretti," Arkady Bloom whispered, placing his other hand on her hip, the soft fabric of her dinner dress pliable under his embrace. Only the finest for the most favored niece of the Italian ambassador. He ran his hand up her side, stopping mere inches from her breast before stoking back down and over her hip, caressing the top of her outer thigh. "I have so been waiting for this moment."

She swept the top hat from Bloom's head with a pale hand, tossing it to the chaise lounge nearby. As it landed with a soft thud, she reached behind her head and pulled the long silver pin from her hair, allowing the dark brown locks to cascade down. "As have I, Mr. Bloom." She struck like an angry viper, stabbing at Bloom's neck with the sharp pin.

Bloom twisted away, moving with the speed and grace of his sídhe ancestors. He slapped the hand that held the pin, sending the sharp silver ornament flying across the room. It stuck in the back cushion of a chair. The fabric around the pin began to smoke.

"Really, Contessa, I had no idea you felt that way about me."

She backed away from him with an elaborate string of what Bloom thought were probably curses and spat at his feet. "As if I would lie down with a half-blood thing."

He smiled at her, picking up his hat and placing it on his head while keeping a close watch on her. He had taken what he really wanted from her. It was time to leave. "While I admit the idea of partaking of your charms held a certain temptation, it seems your temperament, my dear, renders us incompatible as companions."

Bloom stepped around her, keeping her in his line of sight. He backed toward the door, picking up his cane from where it rested against the frame. He tipped his hat to her. "Good-day to you, Contessa."

Bloom reached behind his back and turned the door knob, pulling it open. He planned to slip out while making sure she did not manage to stab a knife into his back. He came up against something hard as he backed through the doorway. Bloom looked over his shoulder at the thing that had stymied his retreat, his eyes widening in surprise.

It stood over six and half feet tall, a huge, blocky individual that was once a man but now…now it was a mindless man-creature, its eyes grey-white orbs, its skin ashen and bloodless. A ticking clockwork pump strapped to its back hummed as it pushed light blue fluid through a tube into the creature's neck. The man-creature was dressed in the leather apron of a butcher, its shirt and trousers underneath the apron and the boots on its feet all showing the telltale dried splatter of the trade. It raised its hands and took a slow, clumsy step into the room, forcing Bloom to retreat from its grasp.

"Oh my," Bloom muttered.

Contessa Fiorella Moretti laughed, harsh and shrill. "You did not think I would allow you to simply walk out alive once I lured you here, did you, Mr. Bloom?"
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The Curious Case of the Jeweled Alicorn is available in print from The Sam's Dot Publishing Bookstore and in ebook format from Amazon and Smashwords.>

Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.

That's the number of words hammered out over a weekend in Hershey, PA, holed up in a hotel room while Beloved Spouse was at a professional conference.

That's the number of words needed to finish the first draft of my new Arkady Bloom novella, A Study in Violet.

That's the number of words I wrote in three days. I hadn't written that many words in the month previous. The last time I wrote anywhere near that pace was when I was hiding in a hotel room in Atlanta while Beloved Spouse was at another professional conference.

I remember when I used to write at that pace without needing to hide away from the world in hotel rooms in strange cities. Granted, I was at the end of the story and the horse was pointed at the barn. I always write faster at the end of the piece, but still…

I need to remember how to do this on a regular basis. I need to figure out why my writing production has slowed so dramatically this year and correct that. I need to find a place or space where I can work for at least three or four hours a day with little or no distraction. I need to find a space (both physical and mental) where I'm comfortable as writer.

That said, A Study in Violet is complete in the first draft. I am intensely pleased by this. Where Horror at Cold Springs was Lovecraftian horror and The Curious Case of the Jeweled Alicorn was a Bondian spy-thriller, this one is (as you might guess from the title) a Holmesian murder-mystery.

Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.

I have finished outlining the contemporary non-HEA romance coming-of-age novella. Now I just need to finish writing it. And then turn it into a screenplay.

I also plan to write a story featuring the angry spirit of a derelict building, and then a couple of Arkady Bloom steampunk stories (one a riff on both Arthur Conan Doyal's "A Study in Scarlet" and Neil Gaimen's "A Study in Emerald" and the other a caper/robbery/mystery piece on a train). There is a planned story featuring U.S. Marshal William Blenchy and Lady Priscilla Talbot, characters who appeared in (and survived) The Horror at Cold Springs. (The Sam's Dot Publishing Bookstore Smashwords.)

I'm also thinking about working on the Spear of Destiny novel again. I think I might have grown enough as a writer to tackle that novel now. And I'd write the next Sharisha Zajicova (aka the Monster-Hunting Barista) novel if someone would buy the first one.