posted July 18, 2006 11:23 PM         

My husband is a leo w/ virgo merc ascendant and is a published author. you almost need the leo fire inspiration to kick virgo's precise,detailed mercurial talents into gear and leo gives virgo merc the confidence to move forward.

or not. :-`

edited to add:

posted July 19, 2006 11:57 AM         

A TALE OF FOUR CITIES…
(790 words)
BY LOUISE BEECH

I had been expecting the postcard. The only surprise was its origin. Rome. Scarlett certainly got around. She had always wanted to travel. She loved the allure of far off lands.
“I’ll keep you updated on my adventures,” she had smiled as she kissed me at the airport. She kept her promise.
There had been tasteful cards from New York, Paris and London in the last six months. I filed them in a scrap book - read them frequently when I missed her. It didn’t fill the void.
Preceding these picturesque arrivals by exactly one week were reports of a murder in each of the three cities. A mysterious death in a Manhattan apartment, a body on a Parisian terrace, the same at a London hotel. A murder so grisly it almost ruined the pleasure of a card from my favourite lady. But not quite.
Scarlett’s handwriting, looped and flowing, enhanced many a bowl of cereal in my lonely flat. The reports of escapade in each city were only ruined by her absence. Still, the job was almost done. And soon she would be home.
Each murder victim had been an elderly man, carefully observed and selected many months before his fate. The criteria? Looks and charm were not necessary. Two million in the bank and two months to live were essentials. Oh, and no family to inherit his juicy fortune.
They were calling her the Champagne Killer. It was a title that belittled her skills – made her sound frivolous. She was anything but. She was elusive. She was beautiful. She was clever.
She was able to make each victim fall so in love with her in so short a time that he left her all his worldly goods before his untimely – and unusual – death. Champagne. The fatal drink. On moonlit evenings she shared an expensive bottle with each victim. His glass contained the special ingredient. Poison. Hers was delicious.
Then she disappeared. Into the night. Into thin air. Until she reappeared one month later, new disguise, new man, same recipe.
The papers couldn’t get enough of the story. She made the front page every time, though the only picture accompanying the words was in the reader’s imagination. Each article described her more excessively until she was the embodiment of a Goddess – with a fatal flaw. She liked to kill.
How I missed Scarlett. She had been gone so long. She worked so hard. Only she could attempt to pull off a job requiring such skill. I knew she would secretly find it gruesome but would do what was necessary for our future together.
I picked the postcard from Rome off the mat. I could smell her perfume. On the front a picture of a busy street, remains of a roman building, blue sky…and a lady in a big hat drinking champagne at a street cafe. She always managed to do it. Find a card that symbolised the job so well.
Though I anticipated the card I had not yet read of a murder in Rome. A fourth murder in a fourth city. I followed the worldwide reports every day. I was always one step ahead. Yet nothing. How many more cities would there be?
I turned the card over. I touched the familiar handwriting with a smile and began to read.
‘Dear John,
My darling, I am on my way home. It is all over. I am exhausted but victorious. See you soon.
Scarlett.’
I laughed. At last. The day I had waited for for six months.
A knock on the door. Who at this time in the morning? The newspaper? A gift sent from Rome perhaps? I opened the front door.
“Scarlett!”
“Yes.” She fell into my arms.
“You’re really here,” I whispered. “What happened?”
“Success,” she smiled. “Success in Rome.”
“We must celebrate,” I said.
“The money will help,” she grinned. I grinned too. She kissed me.
“This time I anticipated her next move,” said Scarlett. “Rome – my lucky city. I was able to step in and stop another murder. She made the mistake of buying champagne from the hotel I was staying in. She’ll never get out of prison. She was certainly beautiful, even in rage when we took her away.”
“Not as beautiful as you,” I said.
“And she was clever.”
“You caught her Scarlett,” I smiled. “You were the clever one. Did I ever tell you you’re my favourite private detective?”
“And now the most highly paid. I have a gift for you,” she said.
From her bag she plucked a bottle of champagne. From my pocket I plucked the ring I had purchased the day before she left.
‘Marry me,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. And we did. In Rome. Our lucky city.

posted July 21, 2006 10:47 AM         

"Scarlett’s handwriting, looped and flowing, enhanced many a bowl of cereal in my lonely flat.... I touched the familiar handwriting with a smile and began to read."

Just one suggestion, if I may.
"His glass contained the special ingredient. Poison."
The poison is a given,
already anticipated by the words "fatal drink",
and its always good to be specific.
Why not: Cyanide.
Or something like that?

posted July 21, 2006 10:52 AM         

Leo Sun in the 10th
Scorpio Moon in the 2nd Square Neptune
Libra Rising

On a personal note:

posted August 04, 2006 02:36 AM         

I LOVE your story....I really do....

I'll bet you get it in one of those magazines....

posted March 06, 2008 07:19 AM         

What do you guys think? Tell it like it is. I need some constructive criticism because I am not physically surrounded by readers, or people who can critique properly.

Here it is... I am Virgo Sun and Venus. I know it's about Leos but being the attention hogger, I saw an opportunity.

There shrilled a bitter scream, a woman’s scream with an echo of a tortured soul. She wailed as if hell’s fires were burning hot metal rods through her weary soul. The villagers were gathered outside her mud hut, apprehensive about what was befalling their peaceful village. It was a birth, but a birth different, and more profound, from all the births they have ever witnessed, for as ancient legends spoke, a woman was giving birth to two children at the same time, an abominable and blasphemous occurrence indeed as far as their memory served them. It was never heard of apart from whispered myths and children stories around campfires.

As the first infant forced itself out of her convulsing loins, the skies changed their pleasant mood and became dark with anger; announcing their bitter distaste with a sharp, piercing light that tore the heavens in two, as if God threw a bolt of lightning from the heavens, frightening the already tense onlookers and rendering cold shivers through all, as the unbelievers started to believe the reality of their nightmares, that an inevitable evil was truly being born.

In the red and orange dusk’s horizon, another howling cry pierced through the tension-thickened air. It was the cry of Del‘heshaar, The Old Eye, the villagers called her, the oldest and wisest witchdoctor alive, who had been waiting diligently for this cursed day from the day she was born, for more than two hundred years ago. Her strong, muscular hands and arms were raised to the darkening heavens as if pleading with the gods for mercy, tears making little streams down her youthful yet wise face with bitter relief, and fear clearly visible in her weary and wise eyes.

Del’heshaar’s eyes showed only their bright whites and her mouth frothed with a little foam around the edges, as they hinted an empty smile as she shouted, “Kudala ngilindile. Ngilande Nkulunkulu.” It’s been a long time that I have been waiting. Fetch me, Oh Creator Almighty. “Angifuni ukuphila kulezinsuku ezilandelayo”, I don’t want to live during the coming days, begging the sky to relieve her.

As if she was seeing something in front of her, she froze like a lifeless rock, and before she could speak any further, she heaved a huge and deep breath of shock, falling to the rocky and rough ground with a soft thud and then, as if a heavy blanket was thrown over her, all became dark to her.

**************

The first baby was crying longingly as the second one entered the world, as if crying to be united with its sibling. After a few minutes, both were screaming in deafening cries, in unison like a choir of lost souls, at opposite ends of the small stuffy room while the mother slumbered lifelessly with exhaustion, trembling slightly as if cold; and subdued as if drugged by the fading climax of the pain.

The baby’s were still wailing in a high-pitched cry, tortured as if their little bodies were being pierced with a thousand hot needles, their cries not hinting any sign of decreasing. The tired midwives, with all their efforts of rocking the infants to silence, hushing them and singing lullabies to them, could not silence them in any way. As soon as the mother came to from her brief rest, they rushed her sons to her to escape any possible curse before it rubbed off on them, leaving the room to tell the tale of the superstition to the curious villagers who had been waiting for hours, since her labour pains begun, to hear if the rumours of the twin-soul birth were going to turn out to be a fact.

The mother, Bhadelihle, took her bundles of fear in her arms and as soon as she touched them, they stopped their beastly wailing and reached for each other, one child taking the hand of the other, playing and touching each other in surreal recognition of each other’s tiny faces. During the long birth, the midwives had coldly announced that the infants were both boys and her heart, yet afraid, was glad because all was as Del’heshaar had predicted. Bhadelihle had only one formidable thing to do before her time of departure came, acknowledging to herself all that had to unfold.

She looked at her two baby boys and began to speak quietly, “You, on my left, I shall call Busuku, after the dark, cold night, for you will be the weaver of the deadliest silence, the deepest slumber amongst a world filled with noise, cooling the heat like the night breeze; and you on my right I shall call Khanya, after a bright sunny day, because you will bring much heat to those who bring the cold to comforting, warm bodies of the earth, for you will light up the world like a raging fire and melt the ice away.”

She then paused to look at her twin boys once more. “And like day and night,” she continued, “one will be nothing without the other, opposites yet complements of one whole.”

The room started to heat up, the mother's body started to feel as if it was on fire. Her midwives came to take the babies somewhere where she had no strength to go. Her eyelids were shutting slowly from slumbers sweet seduction and before her eyes closed she said to an empty room in a hoarse voice, “My children. I wish I could say I loved you to sweeten my last words before I leave, but I do not love you for you are an ugly curse upon the earth. Those who desire you shall raise you, not I,” she swallowed hard, and then continued to speak for the last time. “We will meet again, but before that, good ridden. I have to die because I would not have been able to be the mother to such grotesque power.”

As she sank deeper and deeper into the abyss of the afterworld, she heard a familiar voice. “The one handed to you on your left, you will name after the night, and the one on your right hand, you will name after the day, to seal the two into the ancient covenant. We have slaved for thousands of years for this to unfold, therefore do everything as I command.” The voice continued, now a little softer, “Do not be afraid, my daughter for we will not let you endure your children’s short lives, but be comforted that you shall see them again in a time when they will need a mother’s guidance the most.” With that, her eyes closed and Bhadelihle died silently.

********************

Del’heshaar’s blood shot eyes opened slowly but faster than they would have opened had she not been impatient to see the world around her; curious to see how the spirit world looked when in it, compared to how she usually saw it in her living days, from a hazy trance state of mind, from a translucent film of distortion. To her disappointment, and maybe to her little relief, it looked similar, if not the same, as the dimension of the living, clear, hot and humid. She had hoped that she would wake up in the company of her ancient ancestors and elders, but it looked to her that she was in the same place where she had died, on a little hill above the town center.

Pain was also another element that she thought would not exist on the other side because her head was pounding, and her ears were ringing. As she lay on the ground she realized that the light indicated that it was still dusk, but the sound of morning birds told her that it was dawn after all. She didn’t move for what seemed to be an hour, trying to make sense of why she was where she had fallen and not in the company of her dead relatives, hoping that soon, her great grand parents and masters would pick her up and give her a place next to them, on their thrones, as one of the great Shamans of her time, but to her dismay, no one came for her.

She decided to get up and get a better view of her surroundings, and as she sat up, she saw a dying fire where Bhadelihle’s hut used to stand. There was a lot of activity for that time of day as she could hear voices coming from below, some crying softly, some talking in murmurs and some even laughing in jubilation.

Then quite close to her, a boy started shouting for its mother, she was startled by the noise, jerking her head to the direction of the boy’s screams, looking at the boy in amazement, wondering when the boy died because he had been alive the day before her death.

“Nigm’tholile uDel’heshaar!” the boy screamed. I have found Del’heshaar!

With that, the villagers gathered and started running up the little hill towards Del’heshaar. More people began to shout, “We have found her! We have found her!” and Del’heshaar was afraid and plagued with confusion. In her confusion, she wondered what catastrophe had hit her former village to kill everyone as all the villagers were on the other side with her. She did not even consider the possibility that she might still be alive.

When the villagers got to Del’heshaar, they gathered around her, with venomous looks on their faces, looking down at her, without speaking a word. She could not speak back either, only being able to look back at their furious faces. Then, like a veil, the mob of villagers separated in two, making a passage in the middle of the horde. Through this passage, a woman walked towards Del’heshaar, carrying something in a large basket. She couldn’t see what the basket carried, but neither did she try to see it; she was too exhausted to think at that moment. When the woman was standing in front of her, Del’heshaar couldn’t see anything but the woman’s dirty knees under a short attire worn by virgin women, as the woman held the basket above her head, in a sacrificial stance.

Without a word, the woman spat on Del’heshaar’s head, mumbling curses and foul things, and with a thud, the woman threw the basket at Del’heshaar’s feet, turned around and walked away without looking back. As the woman walked away, the rest of the villagers joined her down the hill. None looked back, none spoke, and a few minutes later, Del’heshaar was sitting by herself as she found herself, but now, with a basket in front of her.

Before she became curious enough to see what the basket held, the basket started crying, prompting her to open it, to find a pair of identical babies, staring at her, crying for her and reaching for her. As tears rolled down the little faces, her own tears fell also, as all the pieces of the puzzle came together. She realized that she was alive and in front of her, in the cursed basket, were the two abominations, Busuku and Khanya

There must be grammatical errors, but I won't use any excuses. Please critique me guys, as honestly as possible without reservation.

posted March 06, 2008 07:36 AM         

You're probably very well educated and have read a lot. You use lots of commas. Maybe think on clipping down those sentences. The descriptions are good but it slows down the pace of the story.

posted March 06, 2008 08:21 AM         

You've got a story and a hook - what happens to the twins? There is something ominious and creepy about them, it suggests a meaty story is on its way with the possibility of some blood and violence to keep us entertained. If that's not our gig we will move along the shelf to the Mills and Boons section.

Are there many books like yours about? I don't think so, there seem to be Da Vinci clones cropping up everywhere, though.

I was never taught grammar, either. I read a lot, though. The rules sink in. My tip would be to read around the kind of books you would like to write. Maybe check out a grammar book from your library. The only thing leaps out at me is you make your sentences too long by throwing in a lot of commas. Maybe cut some of those sentences in two with a full stop. It's not hard, try it and see if you think it reads better.

One of my sons was born covered in blood, the other in thick white grease. Delivering an eight pound lump out of a small hole, even one that stretches, well, it comes a bit sharp. How to describe it within Lindaland rules, well, maybe combine the feeling of someone kicking you really hard in the crotch with a hobnailed boot, having a sharp stick shoved up somewhere unmentionable, and really bad constipation and the need to deliver a week's supply of bowel contents. Talking of which, if you push, some of that might come out too. Not sure that bit would make it through to the editor's cut, though.

posted March 06, 2008 09:05 AM         

yes, there is something weird about the twins. it's a story that happens through a few generations in a few different parts of the world, in different cultures. Same souls, different environment and different bodies every time, but something goes wrong somewhere. they cause war, they cause peace, they are just normal people at times.

It's an exploration of reincarnation I suppose. And I am going to ask about the birth thing. I hope I don't faint as I listen. I was already getting a bit weird reading your bit.

posted April 14, 2008 07:01 AM         

WOW!

There's some good stuff in here guys!