I am constantly asked about genre, as though it’s a mark of quality, and I find myself wondering about how important such a thing is. Is genre just a title, a category to help us group stories into classes of pre-determined judgment, or is it something more?

Stephen King’s books are widely regarded as horror, but this is also the man who penned such greats as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Neither of those stories would ever be thought of as horror, unless you’re an idiot. He also wrote The Running Man and the somewhat cult-classic Dark Tower series, both possibly classed as science fiction, and yet somewhat not. I mean, if you really delve into any of his novels, there’s a hell of a lot more there than mere horror, and yet everyone seems to think of him as a horror writer.

My first publisher classed The Dark Path as a horror novel, a genre I would have never imagined when I wrote it, and yet it’s gone on to great success from both people who profess to love and those who detest horror. Since taking things into my own hands, I’ve decided to change its categories to action/adventure and thriller, both of which it slots perfectly into, and yet these do not define it. The same goes for my Prometheus Wars series; both books could be classed as anything from mythology to paranormal, but the heart of the books is adventure, and as such that’s how they’re categorized, much to my chagrin. Tiny boxes make for even smaller windows, and when trying to get readers to notice you, you want the biggest damn Plexiglas window in the world.

Genre is a useful tool, but it’s also a double-edged sword. For instance, I know there are hundreds (possibly thousands) of phenomenal books out there I will probably never read simply because they’re classed as romance novels. No matter how gripping a synopsis reads I doubt I’ll dip my toe into a romance on the off chance it slides into a stereotypical estrogen-fuelled sappy-saga.

No offense to romance fans, but I’d rather put my face in a blender than read about heaving bosoms and engorged loins. And yet I know chances are many of those stories classed as romances are brilliant, and in no way limited to what I perceive a stereotypical romance to be. This is my loss, and all because of my prejudging of the genre, much like another reader might see a book classed as horror and expect to be terrified by ghosts and scary clowns.

So is genre good?

Much like pigeonholing people, typecasting books so blindly is ignorant. And yet we need it. There’s no swifter way to identify subject matter other than genre categorization. It draws the reader in to read more about a book they will hopefully like, and until each author reaches the same heights of popularity as the King, we will continue to class our writing in such a way.

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Hell has been unleashed into the world of men, we just don’t know it yet.

The Fallen wander unbound, unfettered by the chains imposed by God after their defeat in the wars for control over Heaven. One man, Albert Pointreid, unlocked the doors which separated Earth from Hell, and now humanity will pay the ultimate price.

Unless Jacob Hope can stop them.

The scars of the past rarely fade, but Jake has managed to heal many of his, knowing that to continue on his crusade he must enter the final battle as more than just a man, he needs to be a leader, a figurehead for all mankind.

Having managed a surprise victory over the immortal Abaddon, Jake sets forth to thwart the plans of the Fallen. His search leads him through exotic locations in a hunt for vital information to aid him in the final battle.

And yet information might be his greatest enemy.

Dragged into Hell, Jake is confronted by Satan, who reveals a secret which devastates all Jake holds to be true.

As Jake begins to lose control of the ever-darkening power contained within him, his confidence frays and his search for answers becomes more desperate.

The Lord of Hell has claimed him as his son:

The Antichrist.

Click here to check out CORPUS CHRISTI on Amazon

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Terror slices through my mind. I know that he is coming.

My enemy.

My greatest friend.

Infinite blackness descends, a swathing, bloated thing that clings to my will, suckling my resolve like a cloak of leeches. A part of me knows the outcome of this encounter; a part I ignore, a part I detest for its honesty. I panic, but my feet remain rooted, knowing there is no escape.

But part of me does escape, it flees, stricken.

He draws it back effortlessly, like a fisherman reeling in a minnow.

I beat and gnash and snarl. He laughs, the soundless sound hollow and voiceless. My fighting only feeds him. It is his bread, his wine.

My eyes flicker, expecting to see my dark tormentor, knowing they will see nothing. He is never seen, just as he is never heard.

He is my brother, my father, my tormentor, my protector.  

He holds me close, his hollow chuckle a thing of terror, of comfort. Rooted in place my arms feel weak. I yearn to battle more but have no strength. He is my strength.

But there is no choice, no escape for one such as I. There is more chance of severing my shadow than of escaping my dark tormentor, and he knows it, relishes it, bathes in my anguish at the fact we will forever be together. Without him I am nothing, without me he cannot exist.

My tears sate his hunger, and I know he’ll soon break loose. Tread warily in his shade, flee for safety, lock your doors. The walls containing his wrath are crumbling, the mortar flaking like dead skin. 

Release me from this torment. Torture me no more. My bane. My closest comrade.

My hands start to tremble, my heart begins to quake. The terror flees, too terrified to remain. A wicked grin curls my lips and he knows that he has won. How I detest thee, and yet your soul gives mine peace. For without you I would quiver, the world’s walls towering above and around, encasing me like a cage. With you I am a free beast, a predator amid sheep. In your wake I know regret will come, as surely as scavengers follow lions, but for now I do not care.

My weakness gone, my dark tormentor runs free. My breath is his breath, my pulse his pulse.

My dark tormentor is me.

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Book 2 of The Legacy Chronicles

Remember to check out Corpus Christi, book 1 in this gripping series about a reluctant messiah battling against Armageddon.

Click here for an excerpt.

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The one thing I did know, the awareness that never left me, was that someone watched over me. Not necessarily my parents, though they did their best, but an elusive someone always knew what was going on.

Adults. They were everywhere. They ran things. They knew what the world was all about.

And one day I would join them. Like an ever-promoted soldier, I would rise through the ranks until all answers were revealed to me.

So I waited, secure in the knowledge there was nothing to fear in the future.

Teen years arrived and I broke loose. I didn’t need to worry; the world lay secure in the hands of adults. I could party all I wanted, didn’t need to study – all I had to do was wait for adulthood. I yearned for it with every fiber of my being, searching for any opportunity to test if I had arrived at the golden doors of development, yet perpetually rejected. Much angst was caused during these years as my body became that of a man, and yet I remained ignorant to the answers I knew waited beyond the threshold of maturity.

Finally the day of the great event arrived… and I passed it by without realization. Years elapsed and yet the answers I had sought my entire life never arrived. If anything, more and more questions arrived, bundles and barrowfuls, most of which seemed to contain absolutely no answers.

I trundled on through life, certain I had missed something along the way. Still young enough to ignorantly think perhaps adulthood still beckoned. Maybe it waited until I married.

Yes! Of course, that had to be it.

Marriage came and went, and yet the numbing ignorance remained. Had I missed something again? I looked to my peers, all of whom seemed secure in their lives, and I sought to emulate their confidence lest I be ridiculed for my lack of understanding.

And then I spoke to them. Beyond the bluff and false confidence, it seemed, nobody had a clue. Life was a conundrum, seemingly without answer, and I remained condemned to walk my days stumbling among adults as ignorant as I. So I guess I need to shut up and get over it.

Maybe when I’m middle-aged…..

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Click here for an excerpt.

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It’s Finally HERE!

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“…she really stepped up her craft skills if that were even possible. [Roland] is really, really just a terrific talented writer.” Joni Rodgers, NY Times bestselling author

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“Giacomo Giammatteo may be the Mario Puzo of our time.” eNovel Reviews

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My life has often taken me to strange places – not just literally, often merely figuratively. Dark, despoiled locales haunted by miscreants and lost souls alike, where hatred is your only brother, a blanket to keep you warm against the chill of a torturous world.

I never intended to write books involving God. My main aim in penning my first tome was to exorcize some of my inner demons, but without intending to, I somehow stumbled onto a deity I had long forgotten.

Is He real?

Ha! Good luck answering that one. I’m not going to fall into that trap, nor am I likely to be found preaching the word of the gospel – far from it. I find the thought of quoting from a two-millennia-old textbook ridiculous. It has some good stories, sure. They’re meant to teach the reader lessons about life, not be used as condemnations against those you hate.

And then I find myself preaching….

THE DARK PATH touched on certain religious aspects, and it got me thinking. Images trickled through my late-night ponderings – usually as I lay in bed trying to sleep – and I found myself wondering what might happen were Christ actually reborn. Would he shoot from the womb spouting philosophy? Or would he be birthed a man, a mere hominid, one with a task of colossal importance awaiting him, and he had to decipher all answers on his own?

I took this concept and played with it – tearing at the edges as I do in order to dirty things up a little.

What if this man was raised in the wrong environment? What if those supposed to nourish and support him instead tortured and bullied him, screaming script from the Bible at him as they whipped his fragile mortal frame? Would he still turn out the epitome of God, or would he morph into something a bit darker?

And that’s how CORPUS CHRISTI began….

Get Ready For Armageddon!

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PROLOGUE

“HE IS COMING!!!”

The words echoed around the room. A small Indian boy’s eyes flared open and he sat bolt-upright in his bed, his throat raw from the scream. Wrenching aside sweat-drenched sheets, he tried to slow down his thundering heart, which seemed to be sitting at the base of his throat. The intense vision had fled, but the memory lingered, its claws retracting but not fully retreating, and the darkness of the night slithered around young Aadesh like a shroud, escalating his fear.

The dream had begun normally; Aadesh had been playing with friends in the marketplace within his home town of Bhinmal. He’d been sprinting between the timber and canvas fruit stalls, focusing on not tripping on the uneven cobbles or crashing into the multitudes of people, when a tall, azure-eyed stranger had stepped in front of him, halting him with his gaze. The man had kneeled down and talked to him seriously, in the way adults spoke to each other. The scene around them had melted away as the stranger spoke, his rich voice drowning out all other noise, becoming the crux of the young boy’s focus. Aadesh couldn’t remember the features of the man, nor could he recall the words he’d spoken, and as such it was a particularly frustrating dream. But he knew something of vast importance had been imparted to him, and he would need to remember it eventually. For the time being, though, the information was gone, lost in the haze of his memory.

Aadesh’s door burst open and he blinked against the light streaming in, barely making out the features of his father.

“What is wrong, Aadesh?” his father demanded in Hindi. “You were yelling in your sleep.”

“I had a bad dream, Papa.”

His father entered the small room and sat on the edge of the bed, holding Aadesh’s hand comfortingly. “Tell me of it.”

Aadesh shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“Then it can’t have been too bad, can it?”

“I think it was important. I was told to remember something, but I can’t.”

“If you are meant to know, it will come back in time,” replied his father, smoothing his hair as Aadesh lay back down. “But for now you must get some sleep.”

“Thank you, Papa.”

“It seems your studies are going well, at least,” said his father, rising to leave.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when you called out, your English was perfect.” His father paused. “But I thought you weren’t to start learning that until next year.”

“We haven’t started, Papa.”

His father stared down at Aadesh quizzically. “That is strange, I could have sworn you yelled out ‘He is coming’ in English before I came in. I must have been mistaken, or perhaps it is just all those American movies you watch. Maybe they’re already corrupting your mind.” He smiled gently.

“I don’t know. I just remember the man in my dreams talking to me, he said it was very important that I remember what he was saying, but I can’t now. Will I be in trouble?” His chest tightened at the prospect.

Aadesh’s father chuckled in the semi-darkness. “It will come back to you when the time is right, my son. If it is truly important, the words are merely waiting within you for the time when they must emerge once more. But for now you need to get some sleep, because tomorrow is another day of school.”

Rolling over, Aadesh groaned, “Yes, Papa.”

His father left the room and Aadesh pulled his blanket up to his chin once more, staring hard into the darkness, attempting to free his mind from worrying about the message. The man had been so persuasive, adamant about the need for Aadesh to remember what he’d been saying, but all the boy could think of were his eyes. They had been like ice, burning coldly within the sockets of the man’s face. But unlike ice they had not seemed devoid of emotion. On the contrary, they had seemed charged, especially when he’d spoken the name.

  Name?

What was the name? It was a strange name, a western one like out of the movies his father chastised Aadesh for watching so often, the unfamiliar language generally ignored as the action blasted across their small television.

What had the name been?

It was on the tip of his tongue. So foreign, and yet something that felt comfortable within his mind, as though it bypassed language barriers, becoming much more than merely a moniker.

  Chris? No.

  Christine? That wasn’t it either.

And then it came to him and Aadesh smiled, knowing he could finally get back to sleep. He rolled over on his side and closed his eyes, breathing deeply and evenly.

The name was Christ.

Corpus Christi is scheduled for release in early 2013. Stay tuned to @LukeRomyn on Twitter for updates.

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I have been working far too much doing jobs I don’t truly enjoy – including nightclub security – in order to survive until my ordeal with the IRS was over.

But you probably don’t know about that… and you almost certainly don’t care, so I won’t bore you with the details… except to say that I now know why everyone in America rants about how awful it is to deal with the Internal Revenue Service… whom I love utterly and hope never get pissed off with me.

My tale is simple in that I found myself in need of an ITIN in order to avoid paying ridiculous amounts of tax to the government of a country I don’t live in. By the way, ITIN stands for Idiot Thumbscrew Idiot Number, or something like that, and yes, I know I said idiot twice.

But I love the IRS. Truly.

Long story short, my ITIN came in and has almost nothing to do with this blog post.

So I find myself back in the saddle of blog writing, brushing off the cobwebs of my brain, and realize I have done almost nothing of note in the months since I last posted. You know, except for dealing with bikers, drug-dealers, drunken psychopaths, and metrosexual shufflers on ecstasy.

Oh, that’s right, I’m about to release my fourth novel.

Editing of SLAVES OF VALHALLA went extremely well, and either I’m getting better at this writing thing or my editor’s getting less finicky with what he picks on me about. Whatever the case, very little had to be cut from my manuscript word count and SLAVES OF VALHALLA will be hitting Kindle and paperback at around 120000 words. That’s a whopping 20000 more words than BEYOND HADES! And trust me when I say there’s no fluffy filler in there, it’s absolute non-stop action for all you adrenaline junkies. You can read more about it here. All I’m waiting for is the proofreaders and then after one last run-through it’ll be ready to format and publish. Pricing was initially going to be around $US4.99 for the Kindle version due to its increased length, but on reconsideration I’m going to match the price of BEYOND HADES at $US3.99. Paperback version prices will unfortunately have to increase, but this is out of my hands due to printing costs. I’m hoping it will be around $US14.99.

Another huge announcement is my signing on with Polzer Publishing in Germany to translate my first four novels into German. This is fantastic news and I’m hoping to hear from more international publishers in the hopes of getting my stories out to more and more people.

Editing on my next series of books has already started. I can’t go into too much detail, but I can say that these will be a follow-on from my highly popular novel: THE DARK PATH. While I say it is a follow-on, Vain will not be the main character in these four books, though he will be making appearances from time to time as his search for Sebastian often coincides with incidents involving the main character. This series will take on the biggest concept I have so far attempted, hence taking up four books, and so far, with two books already written, I feel it may include my greatest writing to date.

Anyway, I apologize again for my blog laxness of late, and hopefully will be able to find a little bit more free time in the near future in order to get on here a bit more often.

Bye for now.

Luke.

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