A Little Teaser of Something

Here is a little something I am sort of working on spontaneously in my spare time. It might lead to something, or it might not. There is a working title, but it may change. Enjoy.


A Shade of Midnight:
Tales of East River


David Conlin McLeod
Copyright (c) 2009




Campout in Crows Rest Park

August 4th, 2003, Crows Rest Park, East River, Connecticut

Amy settled into her sleeping bag and curled by the campfire her step-sister Robyne was poking at with a stick. She still wasn’t sure why Robyne wanted to spend the night in such a scary and forbidding place as Crows Rest Park. Even though she was sure the Living Darkness was long gone and nowhere in sight anymore, the old park still had an eerie, spooky feel to it. There were crows, ravens, and blackbirds everywhere up in the trees chattering and squawking. The trees rustled restlessly and Amy was sure that something in the rustling meant the trees were getting ready to lean in on them and grab them. There was something alive inside this park that wasn’t just some mosquito or blackbird.
Robyne didn’t seem bothered by the eerie atmosphere. She was shrugging off the breezes and chattering noises and staring into the flames of the campfire. Her mind was somewhere else entirely and all Amy could do was sit and watch her friend poke the fire absently. The expression on Robyne’s face—what Amy could see of it in the glow of firelight—seemed sad, frustrated, and maybe a bit frightened or haunted.
All Amy knew about this surprise campout was that if she didn’t bundle up some clothes and her sleeping bag and follow along, she’d be left behind and never know what was troubling her sister. Whatever made Robyne want to wander off or run away, it was important or some really big deal to Robyne. There was something troubling Robyne enough to make her want to leave her comfortable bed and their cozy new house and all the things that were so awesome about it.
They were supposed to be safe now and nothing was supposed to bother them anymore. Yet, they were out here in the middle of Crows Rest Park and Robyne was clearly bothered by something that a cool new house and comfy bed couldn’t cure.
“They say ‘time heals all wounds’,” Robyne muttered under her breath, breaking the long silence. “I don’t buy it.”
Was Robyne referring to her scars and old wounds and marks, Amy wondered, or was Robyne talking about something else? Amy wanted to ask, but held her silence and simply watched Robyne as she continued to violently stab and poke her stick into the fire.
“It’s not all perfect. I can still hear her sometimes in my head. I can still feel her—like she’s holding me down and grabbing my shoulders,” Robyne added.
“Who?” Amy asked, leaning in.
Robyne sniffed and glanced up at the night sky. “Somehow she’s still pulling my hair as she’s combing it and doing it up for my big meet. She’s still telling me gymnastics is for sluts. All eyes and teeth, boobs and legs, I am just some flirt flaunting my body in some skanky, skimpy leotard, she thinks.”
Amy listened and clutched her sleeping bag protectively. Robyne continued, her voice finding strength.
“It doesn’t matter that she’s rotting in jail. I still have these ugly scars all over my body and she’s still in my head telling me what to do and how to do it. I thought she’d go away. I thought I could just leave her behind… but… well obviously she has her way of finding me.”
Robyne fell silent and tossed her stick into the fire. While it might be true that the Living Darkness was long gone and nowhere to be seen or felt, other ghosts and demons remained. One of them was hovering over Robyne’s shoulder like a nasty, vicious dragon with claws dug deep into her flesh. Her mother might be in jail, but her mother’s presence was like a ghost or lingering spirit hanging over her like a shroud. Just as things had really started to look so much better and brighter, a storm cloud of memories, chilling feelings, and old voices swept in.
When did Robyne notice these haunting sensations? Maybe the presence of her mother had always been here following her. Maybe the good things like her dad marrying Amy’s mother, the new house, and all those changes for the better were just temporary distractions? Maybe her mother’s spirit or presence had only been in hiding, just waiting for the right moment to return and strike even harder than before? If that was true… if it were possible for a person to have such a power….
“What if my mom is the Living Darkness?” Robyne pondered with a whisper.
“I’m sure the Living Darkness is gone. We found the light and it pointed us home,” Amy replied firmly. “We have a big family now and we can do whatever we want now.”
“Maybe some of the Living Darkness is still inside my mom, and she’s sending it out to find me,” Robyne replied. “Our light might not have reached as far as my mom.”
“Well she’s not your mom anymore. My mom is your mom now and she makes sure we live happily ever after now,” Amy replied.
“Our mom is awesome, but I can’t help thinking that somehow my old mom is out there with the Living Darkness thinking up ways of getting back at me.”
“Is that why we’re in scary Crows Rest Park? Are we hiding from your old mom?”
Robyne offered no reply and unrolled her sleeping bag.
“Well?” Amy persisted. “Are we hiding from your old mom?”
Robyne glanced at Amy briefly before she slid into her sleeping bag and curled inside it. She couldn’t bring herself to answer Amy. Amy sighed as Robyne rolled onto her side and gradually fell asleep. Now Amy only had the flickering flames and the chattering and cawing of ravens to keep her company.
* * *
Amy woke to a strong, stiff wind gusting through the clearing. Smoke from the dying campfire was blowing into her face as she struggled to sit up and rub the aches in her back and legs. With a cough and wipe of her face with the sleeves of her shirt, Amy found Robyne already wide awake, rolling up her sleeping bag and putting together her bundle.
“What’s going on?” Amy asked, trying to avoid the smoke from the doused fire.
“I put the fire out. I want to go for a walk,” Robyne replied. The tone of her voice deep and abrupt. “I left you some granola bars and a juice box. I want to be alone. I’ll come back for you in a little while.”
“You’re leaving me alone?” Amy asked, aghast.
“You can handle being alone for a while. Nothing is out here that can hurt you. I won’t be gone that long,” Robyne replied; rising and wiping dirt and debris off the seat of her khaki shorts. “You’re smart enough to take care of yourself sometimes.”
“But why can’t I come with you?” Amy pleaded, struggling to free herself from her sleeping bag.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Robyne sighed heavily. “There are some things only I can understand.”
“Like what?” Amy asked curiously.
“You just wouldn’t understand, okay?” Robyne nearly shouted.
Amy flinched at the anger in Robyne’s tone and backed away with her sleeping bag. Robyne turned her back on Amy and walked off across the clearing and briskly quickened her pace to a jog down a winding hiking path. Amy watched as Robyne, then her shadow, disappeared from sight.
It wasn’t until well after all the granola bars were gone and the juice box was finished off before Amy saw the sun high overhead among the gathering crows and ravens looking for their perches. Hours had passed, that much Amy was certain of, and still there was no sign of Robyne anywhere. She just jogged off and disappeared, leaving her all alone in an empty clearing in the middle of the scariest park in town.
Even with so much sunshine and warm breezes, the park had a scary vibe to it that Amy was picking up on. She had felt these eerie feelings before with her Grammy at her side not so long ago. These feelings were familiar from nightmares and “clumsy days” and from times spent with her old father who used to yell and scare her too. The spooky way the wind blew and sent chills up her spine reminded her of last fall, just after school started, when a mean, bad monster-man took her away from Grammy and sent her away in a far, far place. That was when she learned what a real monster was.
As Amy stuffed the empty granola bar wrappers and other bits of garbage in a plastic bag, she worried that maybe Robyne was out in the woods looking for where the bad feelings came from. Maybe Robyne was right. Maybe the Living Darkness had been with Robyne’s old mom and maybe now it was coming out again to look for Robyne? Maybe their light couldn’t reach far enough to get Robyne’s old mom?

The Face Behind the Books

February 11th, 2009 - Willimantic, CT.

February 12th, 2009 - Willimantic, CT.

February 10th, 2009 - Willimantic, CT

So now you see the many faces of one David Conlin McLeod. Maybe you see in the eyes and face the emotions poured into the books I tend to write and publish. In any event, at least you know there is a face behind the stories and it is a human face and not some machine or staff of editors and fat cat publisher types who roll in money and smoke cigars. What you see is what you get-- no surprises and no masks. If it ain't written on my face, chances are it's not written in my books.

New Website

Hello everyone. Now announcing a new and "official" website for all my books!

www.gatekeeper.9f.com

Here there is an author bio, cover art, book teasers, book reviews, and hopefully more pages with articles and interviews, book excerpts, and all kinds of stuff relating to my work.

Naturally, there will be links to this blog and my live journal on there in the near future as well. The website is still in its infancy and very much a work-in-progess. I encourage anyone interested to have a look and tell me what you think by commenting on this blog or perhaps my live journal.

I am also thinking about featuring reviews and articles from aspiring authors and poets and people hoping to get their work exposed to a bigger audience. This should be cool.

Check it out! www.gatekeeper.9f.com

Running from the Sun - Book Review

Running From the SunBy David Conlin McLeod Wordclay, Bloomington, IN USA Print ISBN 13: X-00000031741Copyright: APRIL 2008$27.95 Trade paperback, softcover, 616 pagesTeen Fiction – Historical – World War II – Japanese-American

Reviewed by Kristin Johnson for Poet Warrior Project

Yukiko “Yuki” Yashida is a lively, intelligent first-generation Japanese-American girl who straddles the world of Coca-Cola and sticky rice balls, rock and roll and shamisen, hanging out with her friends and working in strawberry fields in 1940s pre-WWII Bainbridge Island, Washington State. The past both terrifies her and intrigues her as she sets about learning who she is. Her hard-working sympathetic parents (her father is quiet and philosophical, her mother a secret spitfire who rages about the “morons” who are waging war between the Allies and Axis powers) struggle to create a good life in a country where they feel both alienated and welcomed. It’s a delicate balance, especially for second-generation Japanese American children such as Yukiko and her friends.

Then Pearl Harbor upsets the delicate balance and turns the world topsy-turvy. Just as Yukiko becomes aware in dreamy pre-WWII days of prejudice from people who call her “Jap girl” and “yellow-eyes,” the ferocity of war and the American outrage following the Pearl Harbor bombing create one of the worst chapters in American history, namely the large-scale resettlement and internment of Japanese in America. Yukiko and her family must adjust to life in the Manzanar War Relocation Center in Lone Pine, California as well as, later, in the Minidoka War Relocation Center near (ironically) Eden, Idaho.

Asian Studies/History/Social Sciences major David Conlin Mcleod pens the tale of Yukiko, her family and friends with painstaking research and detail, capturing a world that only exists in pictures and in reminders such as the Manzanar and Minidoka National Historical Sites. McLeod normally spins tales of vampires and girls who love dancing (ballet and Japanese dance play a role in RUNNING FROM THE SUN). Yet those horror stories pale in comparison to the real-life privations and alienation and sacrifice suffered by the thousands of Japanese Americans on whom RUNNING FROM THE SUN is based. McLeod has a talent for creating child heroines who show extraordinary resilience in the face of extreme hardships and challenges. Yukiko comes of age, falls in love, and tries to outrun history like a flight from the sun, as the title echoes. She seeks a place of safety, of belonging and of love.

The characters are realistic and sympathetic. They thoroughly debate the justice of their situation but try to carry on and be brave despite it. I was particularly struck by McLeod’s exploration of the debates and tensions between different groups of Japanese Americans, such as the sons who have been educated in Japan, their parents from Japan, and the younger generation of Japanese Americans, some of whom :”go along to get along” and don’t make trouble. Then there are those who, like Yuki and her friends Makato Sato (Yuki’s first love) and the Tanaka siblings, resent the internment but debate amongst themselves whether to oppose the injustices they see, such as soldiers shooting at orphan Kumiko, who tries to retrieve her ball at the perimeter of the camp at Manzanar. Also, McLeod sends Makato and the other Japanese American teenagers in the internment camp off to war in the “Go for Broke” Battalion.

I was also pleased to notice the treatment of white Americans, including the soldiers in the camp. McLeod includes prejudiced shopkeepers, teenagers and some hardened soldiers as well as an unpleasant customer at the Yashidas’ produce stand who, pre-Manzanar, calls Yuki “Jap girl”. However, a principled newspaper publisher, several Bainbridge neighbors, kind sergeants and sympathetic soldiers balance out the climate of fear and prejudice and hostility. McLeod treats his characters as people rather than as caricatures, which is the best way to portray history, especially for a teenage audience.

I recommend this book as an introduction to the best and worst that America was in a turbulent time, as a view into another culture through the eyes of a young person, and as a family drama that reaffirms the power of faith, hope, love and courage.

David’s Blog, Interview With a Vampire Writer: http://vampiegram.blogspot.com
Order the Book: http://www.wordclay.com/BookStore/BookStoreBookDetails.aspx?bookid=24719

Free Excerpt from "Midnight Rhapsody" From "Cedric the Damned" Part One

Prelude of Meditations

Time is of no importance to me. I have all the time in the world. I have no control over this. In the year of my re-birth, the facts surrounding my newfound immortality all became clear to me in an instant. Immortality as one of the Damned is a bittersweet blessing. You never grow old; you never grow sick, or fall to disease. You are immune to death in almost every form imaginable; but the price you pay is the Hunger. The Hunger for mortal blood is what controls you and maintains the bittersweet blessing and horrible curse.

Without blood, a vampire merely starves into a state of sleep or torpor. It is a restless sleep though, full of nightmares and insane visions and hallucinations. The Hunger inside you grows and feeds on every shred of remaining humanity and conscience. Your will gets etched away by bloodlust and desires unspeakable. Your sense of morality is challenged. Your knowledge of what is right and wrong gets questioned and second guessed. Nothing seems to matter to you except to quiet the Hunger inside you, forever trying to get you to kill, or drink the life of mortals.

Feeding the Hunger allows you to live forever as an immortal of almost god-like proportion. You quickly find yourself doing things you only dreamed or feared of as a mortal child reading horror comics or watching old movies. You realize quite quickly that you have powers beyond belief. The power corrupts you though. It eats away at you and makes you feel invincible. You think you are untouchable until you do something stupid like challenging the sunlight or dancing over open flames. You learn quickly vampires, as powerful as they are or can be, have weaknesses as well. Very little can kill or destroy us, but that which can renders us as fragile as the thinnest glass.

You may say immortality is a fine gift. To live forever and have such power over all that is around you. To see the world around you evolve and change before your eyes. To have the power to make change and to right wrongs. It is a fine gift to be immortal, but every gift you receive requires a sacrifice that must be given.
I have learned this in a relatively short time since my re-birth. For all I can do for this world, I live forever as a witness to the wrongs I alone cannot right. Even as a vampire, I am but one soul. The world is full of too many that suffer. Some suffer because of what I do, and others suffer for what I cannot or couldn’t do. I witness wars I could not end; I watch deaths I cannot prevent. I see children become orphans. I see entire nations that are starving for food I alone cannot provide.
I have the power to manipulate minds and sway crowds, but I cannot reveal myself to the eyes of mortals. They would not understand me and mine. They fear us. They hunt us, and perhaps in many cases, rightfully so. I could change the weather and shift the tides. But nature is a chaotic thing to “play” with. I can bring pleasure or pain to anyone I choose, but the more powers and abilities I use, the more of myself I must sacrifice.

In order to use my abilities, I must draw upon the powers and strengths of the blood inside me. It is the supernatural properties of my vampiric lineage that allows me to work miracles and wonders. It is also this vampiric lineage coursing through my veins that holds me in bondage to a life of eternal remembrance.
Having the ability to remember the past doesn’t seem like a curse to some, but consider; life has its downs as well as its ups. Sometimes there are those rare individuals that have lived in total darkness. There are those who have lived all their mortal lives alone and in shame for all the many mistakes they have made. Most people get only one chance to live as best they can, and some of them never seem to get anything right. I was one such person.

I stand before a mirror in a one bedroom apartment in a city that needs no description or name. This city is as dark and dreary as any other city on a cold stormy night in late October. The city doesn’t matter to me and I matter nothing to this city for at least tonight. I stand before this wall mirror and see the remnants of a mortal man who made too many mistakes in life and lived out half his lifespan alone.

Everything about me seems sunken or faded. My brown eyes do not shine. The eyes tell the story of a man who saw all that he could ever want crumble or flutter by either by his own doing, or from the fear of ever wanting. I see the pale, small and narrow face of a young man who thought he knew enough to get by only to find that fate and destiny had outsmarted him. I see the face of a man who finally realizes that all along life was just a cruel joke on him. People like me can never find love, or be respected. People like me will never have the chance to keep what little they get. People like me are never given a break.

I see the face and reflection of a young man who appears vulnerable and weak. I see the face of a young man who has been taken to the cleaners and been beaten and broken. I see a hopeless man who had his hopes shattered before his eyes every day of his mortal life. I see a man who has been backstabbed by the love of his life. I see a man who thought right, but acted wrongly. I see a man who tried to repent, but continues to pay his dues. I see a sullen reflection of a wrongly accused soul condemned to die an eternal death.

This is who I was, and the memories that cling inside me for all eternity. I am cursed to recall missed chances, past mistakes, the many rejections of a man in love, the harsh lessons of a man just trying to live on a day-to-day basis.
Very little comforts me. My memory is my prison and the day’s sleep is only a brief reprieve. All vampires must awaken by the light of the moon or the passing of sunset, or they risk the wrath of the Hungers inside us and go mad. I must resort to becoming like a monster if only to prevent becoming an even greater monster. I feed if only to keep from feeding too much. The more I feed to satisfy my growing Hungers, the harder it is to keep from feeding too much. A vampire’s existence is a circular puzzle swinging on the end of a pendulum of insanity and paradox. We are damned if we do, and damned if we do not. We are damned as we do, and damned as we refrain from doing.

We may not intend to cause evil or harm, yet by our acting out of survival and necessity, we become evil in action. Some of our kind were born devout and full of faith, only to become agents of twisted evil who have suffered decades of moral torment. Their needs to fend off their final death have made them angry or insane. They became changed. The years of immortal existence offered them realities that their beliefs had no answers for. They witnessed too much pain, suffering, and death to fully rely upon their faith in their religions. They felt forsaken by God who offered them no mercy. Their God could not provide them with answers. Many of them felt that it was they who betrayed God and their faith and that their status as vampires was their punishment for some wrong against God.

It is common for many of my kind to blame themselves for what they have become. It is common for us to believe that we have been chosen for this curse as some sort of punishment for some crime committed against the Divine.