As God created Man in His own image, so too did Lucifer create the Ujahwek to prey upon the fleshed manifestations of his enemy.
For years Randall Montgomery swung a sledgehammer in a coal mine, as if pitting himself against a mountain would replenish a soul depleted by the Civil and Indian Wars. With the onset of black lung and middle age, he journeys west to visit an old army buddy before starting life anew. Instead of a friendly reunion, he finds a burgeoning terror last encountered in North America by early humans. A threat bent on claiming all who draw breath in the Wyoming Territories.
For ages the dark spirits of the once-feared Ujahweks have waited, ravenous and expectant ... until a banished female shaman of the Blackfoot tribe is drawn to Skull Cliff in the Owl Creek Mountains. The shaman embraces the spirit of Xotaena, Ujahwek high-priestess, and unleashes the means to resurrect the unholy species. Immediately they hunt their prey: humans. The Ujahwek high-priestess selects Randall Montgomery for possession with the soul of her mate. To survive he must battle in both the physical and mental realms, or get dragged into the depths of humanity lost.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Still life with meadow flowers and roses, 1886, Kröller-Müller MuseumIts authenticity had been in doubt ever since it was added to the collection in 1974, due to the unusual size of the canvas and the anomalous signature among other things. The work was dismissed in 2003 and has been listed as ‘artist: anonymous’ ever since. Now, nine years later, a team of researchers from the TU Delft, the University of Antwerp, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) Hamburg, the Van Gogh Museum and the Kröller-Müller Museum has succeeded in confirming its authenticity....
Old Masters, New Voices: Looking into the dark past, Enter At Your Own Risk resurrects the Gothic masters and for the first time, they meet their modern counterparts. Poe, de Maupassant, Bierce, Lovecraft, Yeats, Stoker and more walk the haunted literary halls with B.E. Scully, Carole Gill, Joshua Skye, Mari Adkins, Edward Medina, John A. Karr, E.P. Berglund, A.A. Garrison, Robbie Anderson, David Thomas, Alex McDermott, Nicky Peacock, Drew Keaton, and Benjamin Sperduto. Enter... at your own risk...
It was quite by chance that Irwing Stone (1903 - 89) — then a young, prolific, but struggling playwright — visited the Rosenberg Galleries in Paris and ‘discovered’ the blazing canvases of Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890).
The visit, he confessed, turned out to be ‘the single most compelling emotional experience’ of his life. He also at once felt compelled to find out more about the Dutch impressionist. “Even though I was far too young and felt I did not have sufficient technique to write a book about Vincent van Gogh, I knew I had to try. If I didn’t, I would never write anything else.”
His elaborate and intense research — based primarily on van Gogh’s prolific and eloquent letters to his brother Theo — spanned six long months, followed by another six months of writing. By early 1931, the manuscript of Lust for Life was ready. Then began the frustrating ordeal of finding a publisher. Over the next three years — one after another — more than 15 publishers rejected Stone’s manuscript.
When he took it to Alfred Knopf, ‘they never opened it — the package with the manuscript got home before I did.’ When he approached Doubleday, they seemed impressed, but the sales department put its foot down and said there was ‘no way to sell a book about an unknown Dutch painter.’
Finally, in 1934, the manuscript was accepted and published by Longmans, Green & Company. Stone received a $250 advance which, according to the author, was “a tremendous amount of money”, especially during the Depression.
Lust for Life became an immediate bestseller. The book (which was dedicated to the author’s mother) sold in millions of copies. It also set in motion Stone’s brilliant writing career. He was hailed as a pioneer of biographical novel in its contemporary form and indisputably the most successful master of the genre.
Stone described the biographical novel as “a true and documented story of one human being’s journey across the face of the years, transmuted from the raw material of life into the delight and purity of an authentic art form.”
