The Shasta Caper begins today here.

Beginning a new novel in my Samuel Light series today to mark the celebration of the upcoming publication of the first three novels in the series:

The Hammer of the Gods
The Light of Atlantis
The Rise of the Fallen.

I'll be posting covers for the above novels once they are finished.

But today I'm posting a new novel about Samuel and his good buddy Jimbo, a burly, rascally Texan who doesn't believe in anything like ghosts, yet hangs out with one of the world's most famous detectives for dealing with ghosts and psychic phenomena.

The Shasta Caper

Samuel watched the orb in Jimbo's hands turn round and round and round, as if impelled by some kind of invisible force. A bottomless well of eternal energy. A perpetual energy machine. "What does it do?" Samuel finally asked, knowing full well his friend would make sure that whatever he said would throw Samuel into some kind of fit. It seemed, sometimes, as if Jimbo, his best friend's, sole mission in life was to make Samuel repent that he ever had any kind of paranormal powers and settle down into an eight to five, beer fest of a life, much as his friend professed to enjoy.

"Makes buttercups and peanut butter cups." Jimbo said without cracking a smile.

Samuel started to laugh. Jimbo had really blown a stinker this time.

"No, really."

Jimbo pressed the orb and it shot from his hand across the table separating him and Samuel and a path of buttercups and peanut butter cups sprouted from the table top.

Samuel almost jumped out of his chair. "How the hell..."

Jimbo retrieved the orb and it settled down between his palms, then lost its glow until it appeared to be a normal baseball again.

Samuel reached over and touched a buttercup. It was a beautiful, spritely yellow with stings of gold and orange down its throat. The stem merged from the wood of the old Texan cactus wood, appearing to be a branch of the table top until it became delicate and tiny at its tip, where the large buttercup throat dwelled.

"This is truly remarkable." Samuel purred, loving the feel of the flower. It felt like love warmed over. His hand tingled with an energy he hadn't felt in years.

"Where's it from?"

Jimbo frowned a moment, as if afraid to speak up, then his frown gave way to his Texas drawl and his Texas smile, big as the wide open country, making his huge mustache dance happily on his upper lip. "Where do you think?"

"Texas?"

"Again."

"You've got me. Never seen anything like this before."

Jimbo leaned closer, a slick look edging his lips and a smile heaving to his nose, giving him a smirky car salesman look. "It's like this, when you visit certain places that most people would rather pass around and ignore, you find things."

"Where?" Samuel demanded again.

"Covina, California. In an old book store on Citrus street. It's gone now."

"The magic?"

"No, the book store. But the magic's still there. Deep underground."

"How'd you learn about it?"

"Well." Jimbo looked around the Denny's they were eating in. It was Vegas and there were lots of tourists, wearing sun blazers, sun glasses, Mai Tais, cigars and shorts. Typical crowd from the Orient and California. "I had a wee bit of...help."

A tall woman, elegantly built, like a sleek Mercedes Benz, stood up from a nearby booth, straightened her blouse, a clean pearl white with long strings of pearls about her throat, and shook her long black hair behind her head, then headed towards them. As she walked Samuel could have sworn that every male and female eye in the restaurant became glued to her.

"Hot! Right?" Jimbo whispered.

"Beyond. So beyond." Samuel whispered back, then rose as the tall woman stopped before their booth and reached out a hand. "I was told I might meet you here..."

Samuel reached his hand out and clasped hers. "I'm...."

WHAM

Samuel was blasted out of his body into that of a tiny child standing on a porch in the Himalayas. The porch was made of carved stone with reliefs cut into it of Ganesha, Indra, Lord Krishna, Shiva, the eight armed goddess Kali and a huge Tiger that had the world mounted on the tip of its nose.

"Come inside Chindra." A woman's voice pleaded. "It's getting cold."

Chindra turned his tiny face to look at the woman standing behind him. She wore a huge garment made of pure gold saffron, woven from gold and silver threads in intricate patterns that delineated her birth and her dreams, her fantasies and her hopes and desires.

Chindra was no ordinary child. He was the Chosen. Soon he would be selected to be the next leader of Tibet. He was being chosen because he could remember a thousand past lives, and in every one of them he became perfect and became reborn to help those still enslaved to the illusion of Maya as she dressed herself on Earth with all its pleasures and sensations.

"I am not cold. I am the cold." Chindra told her teasingly, his tiny pearl shaped lips curling in a delicate smile. 

"Nevertheless, you are still a child." She told him, her eyes crinkling with mirth over the small play of words they inevitably went through.

"I have not been a child for a thousand lifetimes. God does not allow that. I do not want it. If I were to become a child again, who would cook the marvelous chapatis I serve you and your fellow monks each evening. Who would mix the spices for the dals and the chai for your drink?"

She laughed.

He laughed too.

She lifted him up into her arms and he snuggled there. He was not a child, but he did appreciate sincere love and warmth and affection when it was offered.

"Just look at the Himalayas." She told him, turning slightly to offer a view of their golden majesty. Some of the mountains were so tall that they were snow peaked, others drifted in hazes of clouds and growing fog cast from the cold of the Ganges colliding with the warmth of the grounds about it.

"Yes, my Sati." He told her. "It is all that and more."

Then a great rumbling sounded. She looked up, but he did not.

He put a hand to her cheek. "Will it be okay with you if I do not become the Dalai Lama in this life and that you and I meet again in a more charming place?"

She looked into his eyes and her love was so great that he knew that not even death could shake it off. She had achieved the Divine.

"I would love anywhere you chose to be with me again."

Then an avalanche of rock crashed into the space they stood.

WHAM!