Gnillii: “What is a vatar?”

Berthold: “Vatar? Where did you hear that?”

Gnillii: “Someone said I should watch a vatar, they said it was really good. But I don’t know what a vatar is to watch one do its good things.”

Berthold: “Not a vatar, it is one word, avatar.”

Gnillii: “Ahhh…..avatar.”

Berthold: “Exactly, avatar. And there are several televisy things with that name.”

Fillii: “Okay then smarty pants, what’s an avatar?”

Boffin: “Isn’t that one of those Araby dancers with all the veils and stuff?”

Gnillii: “I don’t even know how to dance, let alone dance with vases in my hands.”

Boffin: “Not vases, veils, you know those floaty scarf things the Araby dancers flitter about when they’re busy sashaying and clicking their finger bells together,” pulls up his shirt and tucks it into his collar, baring his round hairy belly, “like this.”

Boffin shaped sounds of sashaying and fingertips slapping together as if holding tiny cymbals.

Berthold: “Boffin? What are you doing wiggling your bottom and flapping your fingers like that?”

Boffin: “I’m sashaying like a lovely Araby Avatar dancer with veils and bells.”

Gnillii: “And vases, don’t forget the vases.”

Berthold: “An avatar is not a kind of Araby dancer. An avatar is just a thing, like an animal or symbol used to refer to a specific person or resource. It’s just an image that makes you think of something else.”

Fillii: “Watching our brother wag his tushy about is definitely making me think about something else, and it certainly ain’t no Araby dancers.”

Berthold: “Yeah, like how my tummy is getting kinda queasy, like I wanna un-swallow my lunch.”

Gnillii: “Here’s a vase you can fergle in.”

…sigh…yup, impromptu belly dancing leprechauns…these appear to be my avatar

Thanks for reading Basil Sands - Author/Narrator!

They should’ve let him go. They should’ve let him retire in peace. They should’ve left his woman out of it.

Kharzai Ghiassi has served the US Government his entire adult life. The best infiltration agent they’ve ever had. Death is not just his business, death is his life. He’s gone off the CIA’s radar and all they know is that someone is in danger.

When a former soccer star turned Islamic terrorist shows up in Anchorage, Alaska, retired Marine Corps Special Operator Marcus ‘Mojo’ Johnson and his State Trooper wife, Lonnie, team up with the FBI’s Mike and Hilde Farris to put a stop to the threat that hangs over the city like a hammer about to fall. No one is safe. No one can hide in the Land of The Midnight Sun.

Originally self-published in print and audiobook in 2012. The story was later picked up by Permuted Press, re-edited and republished in ebook and paperback in 2019.

Midnight Sun is the final episode of sorts in a very loosely connected ‘series’ of independent stories where the primary character of one will be a secondary character in another, or the secondary character becomes a primary, and so on. In Midnight sun Marcus & Lonnie Johnson (lead characters from 65 Below) join with Mike & Hilde Farris (Faithful Warrior) to stop a huge internationally impacting terrorist attack apparently led by Kharzai (permanent secondary character in all of my books except for 65 Below) in my beautiful home city of Anchorage Alaska.

While this free first chapter takes place in a Taliban controlled village in Pakistan, the rest of Midnight Sun runs wild through the urban wilderness of Anchorage Alaska, the city I have lived in for nearly a quarter of a century now.

Potentially Interesting Side Notes:

-Midnight Sun ends and the characters disperse, but only a year later my ICE HAMMER trilogy begins in the same universe just a few miles from where Midnight Sun ends.

-Midnight Sun was the last story I wrote involving Kharzai in which I still did not know his real identity. Read his other stories here on Substack at www.basilsands.com to learn what I am referring to.

Basil Sands - Author/Narrator is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This audio novella is one of the first in the Argan the Warrior series. Originally written in 2021 for an anthology titled Legends of the Werewolf Hunter it was republished here on substack in text format in 2023 with the audio added for subscribers the following year. Now the audio version comes to you via this podcast, the first few minutes are available to all comers, but the whole story is only for subscribers.

Follow Argan as he serves the mighty Nimrod, the first emperor in recorded history, more well known as Sargon the Great. Argan knows what it is to be an emperor, for long before the historical records discovered in this second age of men, he ruled the entire world, even if only for a season.

Condemned to hunt down and destroy the Nephilim he created in the days before the Flood that wiped his civilisation from the earth. He created those soulless beasts to be the perfect warriors to advance his kingdom, demi-gods under his personal control. But their creators soon realized their error, at the same time the superhuman monsters realised their own power. Edged on by dark forces beyond Argan’s authority, the Nephilim began to see humanity as little more than cattle, food even.

Argan’s wickedness and greed for power only increased, murder, lying, rape, torture…nothing was too much for him. And then his evil boiled over the limits set by the Creator and the curse was placed on Argan. To die and be resurrected over and over until all of the Nephilim were destroyed. He was killed not long after, only to rise back up and walk back into the palace, his wounds healed, and his body again strong. He laughed at the Archangel that delivered the curse to him, mocked the Creator.

“What kind of a curse is it that gives the accursed immortality!”

And that was what he thought it was, at first.

With a final victory that eradicated the last mortal forces loyal to the Creator, Argan cinched his rule on earth, anticipating to maintain a human empire into which the Creator could no longer reach, for there were none to pray to call him down. Argan had created a world where science ruled and the gods stood beside men. A place where mankind not only chose his own path, but defined his own immortality.

And then the world exploded, literally. Unable to withstand the strain of constant abuse forced through its veins, the ground ruptured spewing massive columns of mud and water and steam and magma miles into the sky. The sky shield cracked and the great protective dome of water vapor lost its cohesion, loosing torrents of rain sufficient to refill oceans in a constant deluge. Between the water from below and the water from above every tall mountain vanished beneath the salty seas. And everything that had the Breath of Life within died.

Argan died again, but this time he awoke to his curse. Alone on earth so it seemed, except for the Nephilim monsters who had survived the flood. For unlike mortal humans, Nephilim are not imbued with the Breath of Life. Once his “children” realized his curse brought him back to the mortal world for them to kill again, they stalked him without mercy.

In time Argan learned that he was not truly alone on earth. After more than a century of hunting, killing, and being killed he discovered that one family, eight humans, and a minimal collection of all the assorted beasts and birds, were safeguarded in a nightmare of shattering earth, tossing waves and water from both the sky above and caverns below. By the time he encountered them, their numbers had grown to thousands, and by the time Noah’s great-grandchildren were running the show the population had exponentially grown to hundreds of thousands and soon to millions.

It was among those early generations, their elders still having vivid memories of sitting at Noah’s knees and the knees of his sons, to learn of the world before, mist-shrouded memories of old men’s tales that became the legends and mythologies of the world to come.

In this broken world of new things, where nothing worked as it did before, where men were relegated to only a tenth of the average lifespan of men of the first age, Argan had no power but that which was given to fulfill the end of the curse: to locate (or be located by) the Nephilim monsters and to kill them, no matter how many deaths he had to die.

In this story Argan, a warrior skilled beyond the imaginations of modern men, awoke to this new life several years before the tale of the Shadow of the B*****d King opens. He became a warrior in Sargon the B*****d’s personal guard, soon being elevated to Captain of the Shadows, commanding the elite of the elite in Mesopotamia.

Follow Argan the Warrior as hell ascends to consume the Shadow of the B*****d King.

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Basil has asked that I, Kharzai Djinn, write out this last blog post. As if I were not already busy enough translating Argan’s hand written scrolls, codexes, and journals as it is, he wants me to say something about endings, so here goes.

This, faithful listener, is the final chapter in the saga of KAZ, the definite end of the adventure. This is the part where from here the reader/listener will have the rest of the story play out in their own imaginations. What happens to the characters that survive? How do they live on? Does life go on as usual for them or do they just fade into the background and cease to be?

I can tell you that after this adventure I certainly continue on (both in your imagination and in my own!). At the end of every story I move on to my next mission, which may be in this world, or may be in another. That said most Djinn, in the even you meet one other than myself, don’t really share their goings on with mere mortals unless they want you to write their story. Plus sometimes it is illegal for us to tell you what is going on in the other realm, humans do tend to get panicky about things they don’t really understand.

Speaking of stories, Argan most certainly does continue right on to the next, which I am intently translating from Goryeomal, the language of ancient Goryeo, was spoken and written long before the advent of the Hangul alphabet used in Korea today. Although called “Middle Korean” it was written in old-Chinese. Plus translating some of the idioms and colloquialisms of 13th century Asian countries, especially when interracting between Goryeo, Chinese and Mongol speakers, gets a little tricky. Working on it though, working on it.

In the case of the order of the Argan stories you will read/listen to on this substack site you will notice they are not in any particular time frame order. The ones I’ve translated so far go from 2nd Century BC Sumeria, to NAZI controlled Lithuania, to the Pacific Northwest in 1805, and next to medieval Korea, Goryeo, in 1240 as the Mongols assert their rule.

Hopefully by the time you’ve finished processing what you just read/listened to in KAZ, the next story will be starting up right here in this same channel.

In the meantime run over to Amazon or Audible or where ever you buy books and audiobooks and get a copy of Basil’s full length novels. He has a bunch of them, and I am in most of them. He left me out of a couple mainly because I was actually not there for that story, he just could not wait to start an adventure without me there to give him guidance (IE harass him and make silly faces).

Basil’s Books and Audiobooks on Amazon

Basil’s Audiobooks on Audible (written by other authors as well as his own)

Well…this is the end of this story.

See you in the next.

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How does one face your own death?

It is not something most people ever think about. Even after having gone to the funeral of a loved one, or seeing a fatal accident on the evening news people seldom consider their own guaranteed ending, living their day to day existence as if tomorrow is a certainty. Folks tend to live as if they always expect there to be a next day, at least, until they get some dire illness that gives them advance warning of their impending demise.

Most of us will be cruising along in our lives thinking about work, family, food, sports, books, etc, etc, and then “all of a sudden” we drop dead. No thoughts about it, no time to prepare or warn others. Be it a traumatic ending, painful but fast, or a sudden stopping of the heart, we all have the final breath awaiting us at the appointed time. There is no running from death for we are all born into mortal fleshly bodies that have a defined beginning and a definite ending.

No one cheats death.

Some people believe that via training or skill or plain old luck they have cheated death. They just don’t realize that those frightening times of destruction simply were not their appointed day to die. It was not their fate, for they still had days and weeks and months and maybe even years to live toward their purpose.

My son recently brought up a theory he read that states that we have a finite number of heartbeats, that every mammalian creature (and possibly all creatures with a cardiovascular system) have the same number of heartbeats that define the limits of our lives. A mouse, a dog, a human, a sea turtle, all have the same number of ventricular thumps per their species that will ‘lub-dub lub-dub’ until the count is run out. Most animals have about 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) beats during their lifetime. For humans lets call it 2,575,440,000 (2.575 Billion) beats* for your entire life, as long as you make it to old age and are not run over by a cement truck or eaten by a giant squid or something traumatic like that.

A mouse, a mut, a moose or a man all have the specific number of beats assigned to their species, limiting the length of their natural lives with a hard stop at some point. Since a mouse’s heart beats at 700 beats per minute they only live to be about 4 years old in a good environment. A dog with a heart rate of 140bpm 15-20 years. A moose can be similar to a dog. A human gets to live, on average, to between 70-80 years.

Once we hit the full number of beats, the clock stops ticking, the spring is unwound, the heart stops beating and the creature’s body ceases to live. They are then physically dead, any spirit they had is gone from the clothing of flesh, and there is no way to get it back inside.

Not trying to be morbid here, but this is one of the immutable facts of existence. Nothing is eternal in the manner in which we perceive it. Too many people focus on living their lives with no consideration of the ending, no concept that they have this limited number of heart beats, and all of the things they did as healthy young people that raised their heart rates to higher and higher limits through their lives has, while potentially being quite fun, used up a portion of those beats that could have lengthened their stay at L’Hôtel de la Vie Mortelle by a few more days.

Of course, even with that set number of heartbeats, that only accounts for living life sensibly and fortuitously not being splattered by a falling meteor or slipping into a shelf at the grocery store and being killed by a #10 can of pinto beans to the skull. In those cases, limitations to the length of life having nothing to do with the set heart rate of your species. It has to do with the set time written in the Book of Judgment, the inescapable day of your end, your fated destiny.

Death comes to us all.

It may not come for you for a long time yet, but there is an equal chance it is just around the corner after you read this, maybe even at the hands of a monstrous giant from deep within the earth…but probably something more common.

Therefore be prepared, for every day, every minute could be your last in this mortal skein.

Live your life with the other side of the river in mind.

Death need not be feared, but it must be acknowledged.

How will you make yourself ready for your own death?

*That is not the actual number of beats we are alloted. I just extrapolated from a human average of 70 beats per minute for 70 years…its just a guess, your mileage may vary

Chapter 21

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In a similar vein to the discussion of OOPART from the previous post in this chapter we run into a collection of ancient weapons that still function as designed. The Song Arrows and the Shining Swords are based in part by memories of the Frank Herbert Dune novels, where even though space travel had been mastered and they had incredible technologies, warfare boiled down to blades and shields face to face.

From KAZ chapter 18:

A pair of swords hung on the rack, the leather of their scabbards encrusted in a thin layer of stone. They appeared to be petrified, preserved in the high mineral content of the subterranean air. But when he picked one up it sagged against its weight, the crust crumbling off it in large flakes that shattered on the bedrock floor, making a tinkling sound like fine pottery. The ancient method of treating leather was said to be permanent when these were made, it would appear to have been more than just a bit of marketing spiel. Of course, the continued strong presence of the power source had a huge contribution to their longevity as well.

He tugged at the handle of one of the swords, not surprised when it slid free. The mirror like blade glistened with reflected light from around the room. An alloy of ancient recipe, the metal from which these swords were made could never be replicated with the technology available in this age. If the alloy was discovered by future explorers, it would likely be classified as a newly found element, for men were ever unable to understand that the past could have been so much more advanced than this future he found himself in.

These days we dig deep into the earth to pull up rare earth elements to run our electronic obsessions. Mobile phones to satellites to electric cars and stealth bombers are all greatly enhanced by these powerful, and dangerous, minerals that are so deep or so difficult to extract that nations threaten war over their mining. And yet those minerals are never more than a mile or two deep into a crust that is hundreds of miles thick. We today are only scratching the surface of potentials, those potentials that are and the understanding of those potentials that were and are no more or are significantly diminished. Imagine if the ancient civilisations had the ability to dig deeper, to delve far into the crust to extract elements we have no knowledge of for we cannot go that deep.

In that world, the world of Argan before the flood, they would even have designed breeds of Nephilim that could tunnel farther than any man could, withstand the heat and pressure that would kill a man, or the subterranean darkess that would drive him mad.

The were able to build with those elements structures and objects of great beauty, and weapons of merciless destruction.

Chapter 20

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Who/What Is Argan?

A few chapters ago I brought up the real substance of Kharzai, as I have gotten to know him over more than twenty years of writing him into my stories.

Today I bring to you Argan.

Full name: Argan manu Urdom’ni manu Ur’ni manu Ha’Atem’ni do Ha’Eba’ni.

Translation: Argan seventh son of Urdom who was the seventh son of Ur, who was the seventh son of Adam and Eve the father and mother of all mankind.

Argan took up residence in my imagination several years ago, growing in my mind since at least 2019. What you are witnessing on these substack pages in the stories I write about him is actually my own process of creating the backstory and building the world in which Argan becomes the ultimate ruler prior to the flood. Argan himself, as I am discovering, is a very complex character to be sure.

Born a few decades before the death of the first human, Ha’Atem the Father of All Men, Argan was from a small city on the eastern slopes of what are now called the Zagros mountains near the ancient lands of Elam in western Persia, or in modern terms, Iran. At the time he was born the earth was very different from our experience today. All of the various technologies I have mentioned in previous posts have at least been discovered and are being harnessed in their most rudimentary forms for benign purposes. But Argan saw potential for much more.

Argan, when he was young, was singularly focused on what he saw as right and wrong, a very black and white thinker with no subtlety. The hunger for revenge for perceived injustices always poised on a razor edge.

After the death of H’Atem, the tribes of men attempted a reconciliation with the break away rebellious tribes of Kayin the brother-slayer, father of murderers. Their father was yet alive, living in exile for the bloodguilt but the leaders of the tribes invited the children of Kayin to the funeral of H’Atem in hopes of peaceful reunion. That peaceful reunion was ready to blossom and usher in even greater achievements for mankind.

Argan though was incensed. He felt it a betrayal of humanity to invite the murderer of Avel. But he could do nothing about it for he was yet a young man. In time his position changed. Twenty years later, Kayin too died. Due to the stigma still upon him, for the mark of his crime was visible in his flesh, he was not buried with his father and mother and other siblings, including the murdered Avel, but his name was officially honoured by the priesthood and elders of the tribes and a remembrance ceremony held for him as well. This was more than Argan could stand, and he began to organize resistance against the reunification of the tribes. He had encouragement too, from both men and from a sect of The Watchers who had taken an interest in human affairs beyond their scope of authority. Those Watchers were among the fallen, who stepped down from their position of watching and into the position of guiding, for they desired to spoil the peace of mankind out of spite for the Creator.

A hundred years after the passing of H’Atem Argan put his plans into motion, at time of the centennial memorial at the tomb of the Father and Mother. As the children of Kayin rode in their caravans across the plain to return to their lands in the east, Argan struck and made a great slaughter. He killed many and ignited a struggle for power in the first kingdoms of the first age of men. As time went on Argan’s power grew. Over the centuries he went from bandit, to warlord, to king, to conqueror, to ruler of a vast empire, to Great Emperor of the entire planet, and almost, or so he thought, to god.

Men of the first age lived for lengths of time incredible to us today. Eight or nine hundred years is a long time to perfect one’s craft, to build one’s powerbase, and to condense power. And when a man rules over others for those lengths of time his mind becomes changed. Warped. Twisted. Moreso when malevolent creatures posing as wisdom and light are guiding that king. Such was Argan’s journey, and in the going he did very much evil.

After more than four hundred years upon thrones, in the second half of his reign of over eight centuries, Argan joined the nefarious works of dark minded Watchers to create a new thing. A hybrid of man and god: The Nephilim. The first were, in appearance, men. Demi-gods of power and strength who performed mighty deeds and even helped mankind in many ways. It did not take long, a very short time, for their creators to change the design of their creations until what they produced were not like men at all, but mere killing machines made for the destruction of one’s enemies. Regardless of what kind or how human they appeared, all such creatures lacked the one thing that actually made them men, made them alive. They were not imbued with the true “Breath of Life”, for that can only be given by the eternal Father, the Creator of all.

Argan’s evil, his bloodthirsty grasp to power and his murderous rebellion against the Creator brought an age of war and terror unlike anything ever seen in this world, before or since. When his wickedness reached the limit set by the Creator the Archangel himself was sent to curse him. This was his curse:

Argan, son of Ur, son of Urdom, son of Ha’Atem. Argan Blood Drinker, who laid waste peoples, who destroyed nations, who slew your brothers. In violence you ruled, so violence shall rule you.

You showed mercy to none, so shall you never find mercy. As you put the sons of Khobaraes and Pharoan to the flame, as you tasted their flesh between your teeth, so shall your sons be put to the flame, their flesh torn in the teeth of your enemies before your eyes.

You Argan, son of Ur will not see the end of death until the Eternal One declares it. Though you die, your soul will not cross the sacred river to your fathers. Your eyes will yet open that you may endure the tribulations of men. One hundred generations will see the judgements against you. As you laid waste your enemies in the first age of man, so through the ages of the sons of men will you be laid waste. Age to age you will run. Age to age you will find no refuge, until you repent of your pride Argan son of Ur.

In seeking ultimate human power he harnessed the earth itself and pushed everything to its limits. He laughed in the face of God.

And then everything shattered.

Chapter 18

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Stone Singing.

This is an idea that formed whilst watching countless documentaries about prehistoric megalithic structures around the world. Particularly polygonal megalithic blocks weighing scores or even hundreds of tons stacked together to make walls and structures like those found at Sacsayhuamán and Ollantaytambo in Peru, Cyclopean masonry as in Mycenae, Giza and the Oseirion in Egypt, Edo Castle in Japan, and in untold similar places on every continent spanning the globe. Walls and pyramids made of massive stones often very different in shape and size, all with five or more sides creating intricate, oddly shaped corners, stacked without mortar and perfectly fitted such that no razor can slip between the joints even after thousands of years in open air and weather, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

As I studied these structures and realized that even in our “space-age” and “internet-age” cultures no engineer in recorded history (that I can find at least) has ever been able to replicate these structures. Not us, not the Romans, not the Chinese, not the Inca, nor ANYBODY!

How can this be?? How can we fly men in a tin can to the moon, and even soon to Mars, and yet we cannot figure out how these supposedly primitive peoples of millenia ago built what was apparently a simple wall to them?

My theory?

The planet was different back then. Actual laws of physics were not the same as they are today. Different natural forces were in play that no longer exist in our world. The working theory I have modeled for these stories requires subterranean energies that prior to the breaking of the earth during the Great Flood had coursed through regular channels and patterns globally, easily accessible to those who had the knowledge and skill to employ them. Those energies include natural magnetism that allowed for levitating massive stones without need of wheels and pulleys, and ability to manipulate sonic waves with precision using only their own voices.

Perhaps the stones of these massive walls were never shaped by human hands at all, but by human voices. What if they merely stacked these giant stones in the proper order and the best location and then sang the right notes at the right volume to join the vibration of their inherent earth energy and in so doing “shook” them into the shapes we see today, shivering them down to sizes and shapes that are actually just a settling of the empty spaces between molecules in the stones until they settled to the desired earthquake proof form and shape still standing in its original places today.

Visible, and irreplicable. They are irreplicable because the underlying earth energies such as required to utilize the ability to ‘sing’ to stones were destroyed, or severely diminished, during the Flood. Those who attended Sunday School as children will recall Noah’s cute little round “Ark” with the elephants hanging their trunks over the side and the giraffes sticking their heads through holes in the roof. In those sanitised, and in my opinion very silly, depictions we are often only told that “it rained forty days and forty nights” and that is what flooded the whole earth. But alas that is not what the Bible actually says.

10 And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, that same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. Genesis 7:10-12

When the “fountains of the great deep” were shattered, the powerful forces that energized the ley lines, the sonic resonance, and many other energies such as the capacity for universal communications that allowed so many similar structures to be communicated about and then built everywhere, vanished. When the planet’s internal energies that flowed through natural caves and tunnels deep beneath the crust cracked open and the conductive water that filled them exploded onto the surface their circuit integrity was destroyed. Along with unimaginable loss of life across the globe was also forever gone the ability to harness the power of the earth itself for mankind’s prideful building projects.

Imagine Noah’s family’s surprise and dismay when after the flood his sons warmed up their voices and took out their flat stone ‘flying carpets’ to scout the land (see the post for KAZ - the audiobook Chapter 12) only to discover their once nimble levitating vehicles had been reduced to nothing more than useless cloth covered sheets of heavy rock, and they would forever be walking until someone conceptualized the wheel.

Oh for the early days of the Stone Singers, those glorious days before the whole place went dark.

Thanks for coming. Please subscribe and share this post with everyone you know…Kharzai would appreciate it.

Chapter 16

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Writing battle scenes is an interesting venture for me.

Some writers manage to convey the overall big picture of the battle field they are writing, troop movements, tactics, general’s eye view of the conflict. Me though? Every time I start to write a scene of battle, no matter how large the battle, my vision narrows down to only the eyes of a single warrior, feet on the ground, weapons in hand, enemy before them. Rather than seeing the fight from the outside looking in my mind’s eye puts me inside the fighter, and even though I seldom write first person perspective, when in the moment I see it in the character’s viewpoint as opposed to being a third party storyteller.

Like most men my age, older side Gen-X’r here, I had plenty fights as a kid and as a teenager. Fist fights, ground fights, smashing at each other with sticks and rocks. But those were always with the explicit childish knowledge that it was never final, it was never deadly, and you always went home and put ice on the bruises, maybe cried to mommy and everything got better, and usually the next day the two pugilists were back to playing games and goofing off with each other as if nothing ever happened.

But also, like most men my age, I have never been in mortal combat. Due to a blown tendon during Marine boot camp I never even completed basic training. Because of that I have often wondered as I write such scenes whether I myself would be able to survive such an encounter, be it fighting against terrorists, gang bangers, professional soldiers, or in the case of this story ancient Nephilim Giants.

God willing, I will never know the answer to those things. Sometimes though, God wills otherwise. At any time, particularly it seems in this increasingly volatile world in which we find ourselves, that the perception of peace and safety can morph into a terror of violence in the space between heartbeats. As simple as turning a corner to find yourself in a place you oughtn’t have been, standing in line at the convenience store when some knucklehead decides to rob the place, or going for a walk in a place only to unwittingly discover you’ve walked into a protest march that is seconds away from exploding into a war between parties you know nothing about, we can find ourselves very quickly in a situation from which there is no walking away for both parties.

Situations where only the one who is mentally and emotionally prepared to fight to the bitter end will see their family members ever again, and even that may not be enough to win, or even survive.

When the hammer of war shows up, am I ready to wield it until the threat is gone? Will I be able to push the attack to the razor edge between victory and death?

Chapter 15

Kharzai did not begin his journey through my story worlds in the form you see him here in KAZ or most of the other stories he appears in on this site. Originally born in my mind sometime in 2005 he was just supposed to be a goofy sidekick with a violent streak. At the time I was working as an IT Guy for a government agency that took more than a year to provide me clearance to do my job. I was literally sitting at my desk staring out the window at the helicopter training school of the local muncipal airport watching the bright red two seater with the strangely long rotor shaft rise fifty feet, hover, rotate 360°, then descend and do it all again, all day long. The choice was simple, lose my mind staring at all of the computers not break, ever, or write a novel.

As my imagination wandered in the swirling eddies of air current being thrust outward by the helicopter blades like invisible carnation flowers Kharzai literally erupted whole cloth in to the world, jumping out of a sedan in the Iranian desert like Thing One with a gun. I had no idea who or what he was until he introduced himself to the titular character of Karl’s Last Flight in chapter 4 of that book:

“First off,” Karl said, “who are you guys and what are you doing here?”

“Well,” Kharzai said, “we are, as you asked earlier, smugglers, mercenaries, and spies...sort of. I am an officer of the American CIA, born and raised in the lovely yet unendingly tedious cornfields of Indiana to Iranian expatriates who had worked for the Shah until the seventies. I’ve been in-country here for nearly three years trying to help avoid the current situation, which it seems, much to my chagrin, I have failed to do.”

And there he was. Simple character, a CIA Hitman of sorts with a comic edge. I finished that book, published it and started right into a next novel, 65 Below. Kharzai was not in that book, but boy was he jibber jabbering in my head the whole time I wrote it. Faithful Warrior and Midnight Sun see him return in a much more developed version of the same character but with a whole different way of thinking after devastating personal losses. Then in the ICE HAMMER series Kharzai takes on the role of second lead for large parts of the trilogy as he joins a team of guerilla leaders fighting back against invaders in Alaska.

As Ice Hammer was wrapping up in the opening months of 2020 I was asked to write an entry for an anthology titled Legends of the Werewolf Hunter. It had to be related to a theme and refer to character(s) from the story world of Brian Easton’s Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter series (great books, highly recommend getting a copy…the audiobook narrator is pretty amazing too!).

I had an idea for a character that had been simmering in my brain pot for months: Argan the Warrior.

Elevator pitch: Argan, former Emperor from before the Flood who is cursed to live and love and be horribly killed by some ancient monster he created in his days of power, meets an ancient werewolf progenitor whose line is from just as ancient a root and they fight each other to the death in Ancient Akkadia in the Palace of Sargon the Great.

The idea took off and all of a sudden, Argan comes strolling through the halls of the bronze age palace of the first emperor of this second age of men with guess who at his shoulder? Kharzai, all dressed up in the fancy Sumerian uniform of the royal guard, the Shadows of the B*****d King.

HOW THE HECK DID HE GET IN HERE? I shouted in my own head. This must be a relative from way back when or something.

But then Kharzai sat me down and explained a few things that, after fourteen years working together, he felt it was time I should know. He confided in me that the reason he always survives virtually unscathed through the often brutal violence of my previous novels is due to the simple fact that he is not actually human. He just looks like one. A strange one indeed, and fully anatomically correct, but still just a facsimile of sorts.

Kharzai revealed that he is not from Iran, or even from ancient Elam as stated in KAZ, that is just where he was placed when initially set to his task. He is, in truth, an inter-dimensional being sent by the Creator to aid and assist mankind. He is not one of a kind in the general sense, as there are many like him, millions probably. But not all of his fellows remained faithful to their Lord, and since the Rebellion of the Fallen Ones there has been war between their kinds, usually via human proxy. Kharzai chose the side of the Creator because, in his words at the time, “Well, duh.”

Kharzai and his kind are referred to by many names in many cultures, but for the sake of simple continuity in my stories they are most often compared to Djinn, the often malevolent spirits that manifest themselves in physical form to aid or curse humans. A third or more of the Djinn that exist on earth are among the ranks of the rebels and cannot be trusted for anything good. That said, Kharzai is also adamant, whether they are good or bad Djinn, they are not in any circumstance to be imagined as goofy blue “Genie” bufoons from the cartoons. They are mighty spiritual beings who are in some religions considered gods in their own rights. He has never lived in a bottle or a lamp, and he does NOT sing and dance … usually … except for special occasions maybe.

Encounters between good Djinn are fairly rare, as they are typically quite busy and not all are assigned to earth. There are after all very many other worlds out there.

Basil Sands - Author/Narrator is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get the entire audiobook of KAZ plus all of my other posts and stories. All for as little as $5 a month…that like half a latte in my town!

Chapter 14

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In the Argan the Warrior series I often mention the ancient past, a time before the Flood of Noah, a previous civilisation that became advanced to a point even further than our own but with a different kind of technology than that we enjoy today. Theirs was, in my creative world, a technology based not on electricity as ours is, but on harnessing the geothermal, geoelectric, and geomagnetic powers that naturally flow within the earth.

Theirs was a very different world. As I translate the various concepts passed through history, descriptions of the world by ancient oracles, I see it as a world where an outer shell of liquid water high in the atmosphere protected against the harmful rays of the sun that so quickly age, degrade, and even kill us today.

It was a world where Ley Lines just beneath the surface provided highways for information transfer via something like our cellular networks as well as physical travel via levitation of certain types of stone by the use of natural magnetic repulsion coupled with human generated sound waves. Large flat sheets of stone would be used as vehicles, a triple wide surfboard made of slate, guided over invisible waves by expert drivers. These stones would be covered in woven rugs for passenger comfort, and soon earned the name “Flying Carpets”, although they had nothing to do with Genie magic like the cartoon versions of Aladdin. The drivers of these vehicles were expert Stone Singers, harnessing the earth’s power by tones that could manipulate the vibration of the excited energies between the Ley Line highways and the levitated stone providing high speed, frictionless travel over land.

A different kind of Stone Singer, one with different tonal qualities and a specific song, could mold and shape huge limestone and even granite edifices with little more than their voices working alongside the powerful geoelectric flows that swirled in the air awaiting capture and direction by a Master Stone Singer. It was by these methods that the unbelievably massive polygonal stone walls of Sacsayhuaman, the Cyclopean Mycenean citadels, and examples in Malta, India, Egypt, and across every continent, were built. Most lay buried for millenia beneath the flood sediment, concealed from memory for eons.

At least that is how it was long long ago, in the days of legend, when gods were more than idols, and men strove for immortality.

Chapter 13

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Previously I mentioned the need to be aware of your surroundings, because you never know how dangerous things can suddenly get. But I only told you one of the two promised stories of how that lesson was burned into my mind. 1997, about ten years after the close proximity encounter with a bull moose that wisely chose* not to stomp me into blood sausage, I was living on my grandparents homestead about forty miles outside of Fairbanks. My wife and oldest son (#2 was baking in the oven at the time) were at home and I had decided to go out and see if I could get a couple hares for dinner. I took up my trusty old .22 rifle, and strapped on a sidearm, a new (to me) little snub nose .38 I had recently bought, maybe do some test firing of it. I was about two miles from our house walking up the “Well Road” toward an offshoot trail that always had lots of Bugs Bunny’s buddies hanging out like a street gang looking for trouble. If no hares were about, there would usually be a grouse or two along the trail. I’d not go home empty handed…probably.

Mighty hunter that I am (never bagged anything larger than a marmot) I carried my rifle at port arms and scanned side to side looking through the trees for my prey. It was a quiet, windless autumn morning, about ten-ish, the sun shone flat through a thin veil of low grey clouds that might burn off by noon, or might not. On the left is a forest of birch and spruce choked by thick tangles of willow and alder that act like a solid wall against anything more substantial than a medium sized dog, on the right a boggy marsh of clusters of labrador tea, and small tart blueberries and lingonberries, dotted by round green tussocks like rose from the soggy ground like giant mossy puffballs. Clusters of spindly black spruce jutted at odd angles through waist high grasses like the swamp was having a bad hair day.

Soon my mind began to wander and instead of scanning for prey, or just as importantly scanning for other predators, my ears got sucked into the rhythm of my footfalls and gradually drew my eyes downward until I was staring at the hard dirt as my feet crunched on packed in gravel step after step. At one point I felt that familiar pressure on my bladder and figured I should stop for a quick relief break. Slinging my rifle over my shoulder I took a step off the edge of the trail and directed the stream into the flora, splattering noisily on some dried leaves on the side of the road as I proceeded to return the half gallon of coffee I’d drunk that morning to the soil from whence it came.**

Suddenly I notice motion out of the corner of my eye. Ten feet in front of me a wildly jutting cluster of black spruce, a kind of tree that looks as if it were developed in Sauron’s Greenhouse Laboratory at Mordor, stood where it had risen from the swamp, sparse limbs grasping wildly at the sky as if desperate to be pulled out of their cold and wet misery. Several dozen trees stood very still, as trees are wont to do. But one tree did not obey this traditional tree behaviour, its few gnarly branches rattling against one another as the whole tree quivered then violently swayed side to side with the kind of force typically applied by large living things. Usually very large living things, much larger that a marmot or a hare or, especially, a Basil. I immediately redirected my evacuatory operation away from the dry leaves onto which it landed with a splattery crackle that seemed unnaturally loud and directed it into a tuft of grass, silencing the now raging torrent.

I scanned for bear cubs. The ears heard no little ones, my eyes saw nothing but the wavering tree. The bear, for that is what it was, was probably a male. Grizzly or Black Bear I did not know and it did not matter, because both editions larger, stronger, and faster than me and both had considerably more razor sharp claws and head popping teeth than I do. The subsonic ammunition in my .22 rifle, preferred round of small game hunters and contract assassins world wide, was no match for any of the Ursa-kind. And the snub nose .38, while almost twice as powerful as the .22 was barely accurate at more than arm’s length and still would only irritate the bruin.

The tree stopped shaking. A ground reverberated with the thump of the massive beast dropping back onto its front paws, then a low rumbling grunt followed by an extended wet splattering sound. With a satisfied huff the bruin rose back to the task of scratching its back against the rough bark and broken spiky branches.

The still wind had saved me from olfactory detection, the bear was so wrapped up in his scratching that he did not hear me turn around and walk away, now slowly stalking backwards, keeping that swaying tree in my sight. A hundred yards or so down the road a slight breeze reminded me I had failed to “close the barn door”, so I reached down and carefully slid the zipper of my jeans back up and got out of there. No bunny brunch today it would seem, not even a grouse.

So there you have it, two of the times I strolled directly into potential doom, barely escaping by sheer chance, and the luck of disinterested monster beasts. Now you may think to yourself, “those were definitely not near death experiences, you’re exaggerating. Lots of people get even closer to danger than that.”

To which I reply, “True, but lots of people also get stomped, chomped, shredded and/or eaten, particularly those who get a little closer than that.”

The moral of the story is, avoid becoming fertilizer by paying attention to your surroundings, lest ye become a forest feast.

*Wisely chose on its part, because had he stomped me to death how could I have written him into substack fame?

**I know coffee does not grow in Alaska, but Alaska is part of North America and is connected to South America which contains Brazil from which my coffee comes, therefore, it is one soil, and my contribution to its return journey is legit…so there

Chapter 12

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Don’t awaken sleeping giants.

AKA - Pay attention to your surroundings.

This is something I learned many years ago, but continue learning daily. Two instances in particular come to mind.

I have been in many cities across the US, and when in them in enjoy taking long walks, miles long, entire days of just tromping around looking at my surroundings and the different environs I find myself in, the world of those people who live there. For a man who has spent most of his life in rural places, particularly Alaska where you can hike for days without seeing another human being, hiking in a city is extremely interesting, seeing the different surroundings, the different people and their local cultures and dialects. I particularly enjoy listening to the ambient sounds of the place I am at. But when I am doing a walk about a city like Atlanta, or Chicago, San Diego, or New York City I am always alert, on edge even, as I know the places I tend to prefer walking through often do not have high grades for security and safety. Only a few times did I find myself at the edge of a violent encounter that I did not anticipate, and always managed to extract myself before things got out of hand. The fact that I have never been mugged I would say is primarily due to situational awareness and the fact that I do not want to get into a place where I will need to spend time in a police station. And so, even when there were near misses, I always came back in one piece with no bruises or extra holes.

But back home twice death was near upon me unawares. But in those cases it was a death of claws and hooves rather than junkies and hoodlums. Both times it was because I was relaxed in my home environs, traipsing blithely down a trail listening to the sound of my footsteps and letting my mind wander far.

The first time was way back in 1987, I know that was a very long time ago. Walking to work as a prep-cook at the local Sizzler Restaurant in Fairbanks Alaska, down the suburban* street where I lived with my father, I was listening to the crunch of my feet on the snow, looking down to watch the steam from my breath crystalize in the -30f air, when a sudden puff of steam erupted from the side of a large spruce tree inches from my face. The moisture froze on my skin in the frigid air and odour of animal breath embedded in my nostrils. My eyes popped to the right and instantly locked onto the eyes of a large bull moose on the opposite side of the tree. As he became aware that a human was less than four feet away his hackles rose and his ears lay back tight against his head. He immediately knew he did not like me, that he did not want to be my friend. I immediately knew I had a very good chance of being stomped to death. My heart stopped beating. The breath froze in my chest. My pace increased all on its own. The moose gave a threatening grunt and a huff. Another puff of steamy breath and I took off like one of those funny looking walk racers, not wanting to actually sprint away as that might inspire him to chas. Lucky for both of us there was a short wooden fence, while it was only four or five feet high it was definitely not too high for him to jump, and the spruce needles he was eating were a very good vintage. He gave a half hearted feint at me, then as I continued hoofing it he returned to his standing salad.

Now that may not sound so dangerous right? I mean there was a wall of sorts between us, and the moose knew it had a delicious feast in front of it, plus I could, and did, keep walking without looking back again. But what most folks miss is the fact such interractions, when they turn violent do so in crazy beast time. Which is to say no human can really be ready when a two thousand pound monster with five foot wide antlers covered in pointy tines of bone that can shred flesh, and hooves that can stomp a person into something resembling chunky salsa in handful of heartbeats decides it needs to take the path of agression. Yeah, that moose did not charge me, he did not jump over the fence and chase me down like others of his kind had done to other mindless pedestrians before me, but if he had done those things, you’d not be reading this story, because I would be high protein salsa on the snowy streets of Fairbanks.

Lesson learned: Keep you head up and you eyes open.

I did say there were two of these instances, but will describe the next one in the next post.

*In Alaska suburban usually just means wilderness with houses, the wildlife mostly still consider themselves the primary occupants and us humans merely easy food sources

Off to Chapter 11

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A lot of the concepts and imagery in KAZ is pulled directly from archaeological discoveries and research related to megalithic structures found across the world that academia is unable or unwilling to classify. Things like the massive stone structures of Sacsayhuaman, Balbek, Yonaguni, and Sage Walls of Montana. The pre-historic civilizations that built…

Ancient lost civilizations have been a constant theme throughout humanity’s myths. No matter the continent or culture nearly everywhere there are stories of a people greater, wiser, and more powerful than anything today who somehow vanished, leaving behind only barely decipherable traces of their lives and technological prowess.

Tales of Atlantis seem like fable until one sees the ancient stones of the Bimini Road beneath the Atlantic waters of the Bahamas. Or learn of the constant archeological finds dredged up in fish nets in the North Sea region known as Doggerland between the UK, Netherlands and Scandinavia. Or of the massive underwater platforms and structures of Yonaguni between Japan and Taiwan. Or the complete underwater city off the west coast of India in the Gulf of Khambhat .

Add to that massive megalithic constructions of pyramids and other structures made of stones weighing hundreds or thousands of tons found around the globe. At some point in the earth’s recent past a cataclysm occurred that wiped out untold populations and erased all but the barest memories of their existence.

The facts lay before us, as does the evidence. The trick is in how we interpret what our eyes and our hands touch.

Go to Chapter 09

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So, what exactly are the Nephilim?

There are many ideas and theories, and of course most ‘serious’ academics relegate them to the realm of myth and fantasy. Myth and fantasy though have foundations in realities that someone at some point experienced in life.

They are introduced in this passage from the first book of the Bible.

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1–4)

The term “Nephilim” is derived from the Hebrew root נָפַל, n-p-l, meaning “to fall”. It is often translated as “giants” or “fallen ones”. Some view the “sons of God” as divine beings or angels, while others interpret them as human leaders.

The Book of Enoch is an ancient text that is not included in the Hebrew scripture but is referenced in both Hebrew and Christian texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nephilim were the result of rebellious angels known as the Watchers who descended to Earth and mated with human women, producing a race of destructive giants that corrupted the world and prompted God to send the flood.

My take in the world of Argan is that these Nephilim were indeed creatures made by the mating and humans and fallen angels, the latter perhaps what we think of today as aliens or some kind of transdimensional beings. What ever they are, they are not human therefore any mating was likely not completed in the traditional human way but would have been accomplished perhaps by scientific means in a lab similar to modern day gene splicing and cloning, creating a hybrid species. The creatures designed by this pairing were the foundations of the myths of the demigods of future pantheons. For example the archetypal warrior hero, son of a god and a human female with immense physical strength and intelligence who outsmarts gods and monsters alike. The archetype is seen in Heracles of the Greeks, Gilgamesh of Mesopotamia, Cu Chullainn of Ireland, Karna of India, Sigurd of Scandinavia, or Sun Wukong of China. All very similar in general attributes, all super human offspring of non-human fathers, but with serious flaws.

What if those mythical heroes of old were based upon one real being, perhaps one who was considered a great hero who may even have done some good in their early life, but who, being the creation of fallen angels, perhaps mixed and modified in a laboratory even, lacked the one thing that actually makes them human: the Breath of Life, that is…a Soul.

They are immortal if left alone, but can be killed, although it is very difficult. As their lives grew longer and longer and they experienced success and glory their hearts grew more and more wicked. While typically sterile, the few offspring they had were increasingly warped and twisted, evil creatures that soon devolved to little more than lustful appetites. In time humanity was in absolute fear of them, and they were only barely controlled by their parents, either human or angelic.  

5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.(Genesis 6:5-8)

22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. (Genesis 7:22-23)

What if, when mankind was wiped away, reduced to eight individuals to rebuild the human population, the Nephilim that survived the flood were still there. And those are who Argan now hunts.

Go to Chapter 08

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The initial concept for story of KAZ came from tales of ancient giants throughout history combined. Two stories in particular directly influenced me here. First was the Lovelock Giants of New Mexico that terrorized and cannibalized local Paiute tribes until the native inhabitants chased them into a cave and burned them alive. In 1911 guano miners digging out Lovelock Cave discovered what were reported the bones of giants, and subsequent archeological studies of the cave found evidence of very hot fires that scorched the place in the past. The other came from accounts of the Spanish Explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition in 1520. In what is now southern Chile and Patagonia, a region that borders modern-day Chile and Argentina they encountered the Tehuelche people. According to Magellan’s chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, they encountered a man dancing naked on the shore who was so tall that the tallest Spaniard only reached his waist. Magellan attempted to bring two of the giants from these people back to Spain, but they died en route.

What if some of these giants were not human at all, but were descendents of the Nephilim from the ancient past. Monsters that survived the flood and dwell mostly beneath the earth, deep in dark caverns, and resurface from time to time when they discover easy food sources.

Go to Chapter 07

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In this chapter we are introduced to a type of poetry called “Blood Poetry”. The idea is that the poetry is synched to the heartbeat of the poet, and to be able to receive and understand the words and their underlying meaning the listener must synch their own heartbeat to that of the poet. In olden times, before the flood, such speech included vibrations from the earth itself, and even physical sensations caused by different forces invoked in the words.

Speaking of words, here is a little bit about how I got here, writing and reading aloud these stories to you.

My first audiobook narration experience was in 2006. I had written a novel titled Karl’s Last Flight and could not seem to land a reputable agent for it. This was in the days just prior to the Kindle self publishing era. I learned about Podiobooks.com and decided that would be the way to go. So I got the gear I needed to make a recording on my old Compaq laptop and made the best 20 episode podcast I could. I wrote two more novels right after Karl and did the same thing, as well as a couple short story anthologies. By 2010 my setup and production leaped out of dude in closet making a podcast and rose to professional quality level, and I was hired by Audible. A year later all of those podcast novels ended up being published on Amazon and turned into “real” audiobooks on the open market.

Here is a list of the published books I both wrote and narrated.

And this is a list of other people’s books I have narrated for various publishers.

The first few chapters of this story are free, to listen to the entire 20 chapter audiobook consider becoming a paid subscriber for as little as $5.

The idea for Argan the Warrior came to me while planning a major novel project about the days before the flood of Noah as told in the Bible. Whether you believe it was Noah as in the Bible, Utnapishtim as in the Epic of Gilgamesh, or tales of Atlantis, or any of the other hundreds of tales about a prehistoric flood that wiped out a previous civilization, the facts are obvious for any willing to look at the evidence that a world wide cataclysm happened. Massive cities vanished under the sea, cultures and societies swallowed whole in a single day leaving nothing but megalithic remnants, indecipherable writings carved in stone, and even the very oil our current civilizations thrives upon. Far away in the past, in the days before human recollection, there was a civilization we cannot fathom for its immensity, power, strength, and eventually its wickedness. In that world, the version of it that swirls in my mind now, Argan is the King of All the World, Emperor.

To keep listening to this short story, an outgrowth of the world of Argan, please click and join as a paid subscriber. Your support is highly appreciated.

The first few chapters of this story are free, to listen to the entire 20 chapter audiobook consider becoming a paid subscriber for as little as $5.

Click for Chapter 05

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Warrior - noun(war·​rior ˈwȯr-yər, ˈwȯr-ē-ər ˈwär-ē- also ˈwär-yər)definition: a person engaged or experienced in warfarebroadly : a person engaged in some struggle or conflict

Warrior is a word that to many elicits images of bare chested men with tomahawks or of kilt-clad men with armoured breastplates brandishing spears in an ancient phalanx. Most people, I think, imagine fighters, soldiers, from long ago when they hear the word ‘warrior’.

In real life a warrior is not an image, it is not a kind of person from a period of history. A real life warrior is more than a person who makes war, although that is a part of it. A real life warrior is one whose thoughts, actions, purposes, and deeds are focused on not only winning battles, but upon making oneself fully prepared at all times for whatever may come your way to the best of your ability.

The world is full of fighters and thugs, but few indeed are the true warriors.

Click for Chapter 04

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In 2010 I narrated a short story series for a group of writers over at a blog called The Kill Zone, they liked it. One them, best selling writer John Gilstrap, asked his publisher to request me for his novels. They did, and next thing I knew I was working for Audible, then several other publishers and I have not looked back since. I have narrated scores of titles from fast action thrillers like John’s, to motivational works and non-fiction, to heavy duty science, history, and religious texts. I truly enjoy it all.

Producing audiobooks is a lot of fun if you are into spending hours trying to make things right. A lot folks think they want to become an audiobook narrator, or even a podcaster, but few realize just how much work is involved in each step of the way.

A general guideline is that for every 1 hour of audiobook enjoyment you receive, it took as much as 10 hours of actual labor to create the finished product between narrating, proofing, editing, mastering, posting, and publishing. So that twelve hour audiobook you knocked out in three days on the commute listening at 2x speed took up to 120 hours of human labor to create, that is three forty hour work weeks for just one relatively short audiobook. That 32 hour long sci-fi/fantasy epic, the one with a dozen volumes all the same length? It can take years worth of working hours, even a decade or more to get the whole seri

The first few chapters of this story are free, to listen to the entire 20 chapter audiobook consider becoming a paid subscriber for as little as $5.

Click for Chapter 03

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The majority of my fiction has a basis in real life, and Kaz’s real life back story is in many ways a modern telling of the fictional character’s adventures.

Click here for Chapter 2

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The first few chapters of this story are free, to listen to the entire 20 chapter audiobook consider becoming a paid subscriber for as little as $5.

About the story: 1805, in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest the people of the Eagle clan were a prosperous nation, sharing their bountiful life with the renegade mountain man Kaz and his family. Then not one but two ancient terrors entered their world. Terror from below in the form of man-eating giants that rose from deep caverns beneath the earth, and terror from above in the form of dragons that swoop down and steal away the people of the tribe.On their heels arrives a third terror.The Naked Ghost, Argan the Warrior, the Dead Emperor from before the breaking of the world. He who created the Nephilim monsters for his own wicked ends. He who is cursed to rise and fight and be killed only to rise again until he has destroyed the last one of his inhuman creations.

Click the below link to move through to the next chapter, or go to the Podcast page and see all of the available episodes in order. The first few chapters of this audiobook are available free to all takers. It is available in its entirety to paid subscribers.

I’ve been narrating audiobooks for most of two decades now, and love it when I get to narrate my own books, because I actually know the characters. I hope you enjoy listening to this story as much as I enjoyed writing and acting it.

The first few chapters of this story are free, to listen to the entire 20 chapter audiobook consider becoming a paid subscriber for as little as $5.

Click here to go to chapter 01

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Originally published in the anthology Legends of the Werewolf Hunter 2, The Preacher is based on the true story of an actual werewolf infestation in the city of Griefswald in Pomerania, in what is now north-eastern Germany. You should look it up.

Free subscribers can enjoy the first 30 minutes, to hear the rest you can use your one time free thing from substack, or even better subscribe for the price of a $5 cup of coffee and listen to all of my audio versions, plus all of the stories in the archive, plus whatever else I eventually add in here.

The audio is narrated by me, the author who also happens to be a professional audiobook narrator. It was performed and produced at Sandman Studios of Alaska…aka the studio in my house.