It is late January, 2013 as I write this. The time is 4:55 A.M., darkness surrounds me and the voices of the dead linger in the tunnels of my mind. I have just come off a ten-month writing frenzy – knocking off my 110,000 word 400+ page murder/mystery debut novel, which I am hoping to publish in fall.

Those voices I wrote about, they are sinister at times, whispering from the echoing hallways of hell. In that world, where the utterances spring from, there are demons and fiends of every imaginable shape and type. But there are hero’s and romantics there as well, they trounce through my mind, whisper their demands and move through my fingers and onto the screen before me. Alive, breathing, grasping for the life they so desperately wish me to give into them.

And so, I gave one of them what they desired. A voice of eternity, I complied with the role I was assigned. I told his tale, I stoked the flames of indecency and let the killer spring forth upon the blank page. For those sins of creativity and entertainment, The Santa Claus Killer became real. His blood was as thick and red as that which flows through my own veins – gushing through the heart of wisdom as a force to be reckoned with.

Richard Blake tramped through the city which never sleeps, he took his gifts of life and left a wreck of bodies in his path. Bloody, retched trails… they littered the Manhattan alleyways he stalked, a bone yard of bodies were piled along the avenues of Brooklyn. And in the end, well, in the end… he found something of himself in Times Square.

Now: He lives forever in the pages of that massive tale, forever holding his place as the King of Christmas.

And so I wait: The silence is deafening…

But there is a whisper, a boy named Michael is mumbling, the corners of my mind can sense his pleading. There is a ship, The Valencia: caught on the Atlantic Ocean and a tsunami is headed its way. On board is the pope, the ashes of an erupting volcano have caused birds to take flight and fly into the engine of his helicopter, Shepard One….  Now, it is headed for a crash-landing on the biggest cruise ship in the world.

And now, they are doomed in the path of a killer wave.

Perhaps I will save them, maybe I will heed the call and rush in with verbs and nouns to save the day. But perhaps, possibly… I’ll need a bunch of help from characters who have yet to make themselves known.

And yet, as I sit here considering the possibilities… I feel their presences surrounding me, waiting for me to type these simple words on the page: CHAPTER ONE.

And so I must go... into that dark night of a terrorizing CATACLYSM, to give my all to save the voices. For without me, they are sure to perish on the ocean floor. Their hopes and dreams will not be vanquished to a whisper, because I will listen and tell their tale.

I WILL SAVE THEM.

RJ Smith – February 05, 2013. 6:00 A.M.