I apologize for the hiccup that occurred last night. After consulting with my webhost, I learned that it was caused by a mod_security malfunction. That has since been fixed. The bad news is that I had to manually upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, which means that the backup of all the articles and book excerpts is useless. Fortunately, I can read the text file from the backup. Reposting everything will take some time. So, if you have submitted a book excerpt and no longer find it listed, don’t panic. I’ll get it reposted soon.

Kind regards,
Deborah Woehr, Editor
The Writers Buzz

Imagine God is a vegetable in a wheelchair, Jesus is the fascist CEO of a corporate Church, and a Cold War is ongoing between Heaven and Hell while America is led by a complete and utter moron whose every decision takes the world closer and closer to the brink of World War III. This is the setting for one of the most controversial novels of modern times.

For the past two millennia, there has been a Cold War between Heaven and Hell. In that time, Earth has served as the neutral zone between the two powers with humanity the pawns in a conflict whose origins remain shrouded in legend. Tonight, that all changes, as one mortal disturbs that fragile balance.

Matthew Ford is a common man, struggling through college while attempting to discover his destiny. Antisocial, passive aggressive, and immature beyond belief, this flawed person sets into motion that final prophecy that leads to the End of Days.

He travels to Heaven, is tempted by Hell, gets into a feud with Jesus, meets the moronic leader of the free world, creates a self-help movement that tears the world apart, and leads the final zombie charge on Mount Megiddo in that last conflict of all time, Armageddon.

Written by Matthew Moses, Anti-Christ: A Satirical End of Days takes a new look at religion and Man’s place in it. Gone are the old archetypes of biblical lore, replaced by a cast of irreverent, flawed characters. Controversial doesn’t even begin to describe the subjects this novel tackles. Self-help movements, world affairs, politics, ethnic rivalries, war, religion, and even obesity are all fair game in this epic tale of comedic world annihilation. It’s not a question of whether the world is coming to an end but how!

Bio

Matthew Moses has a Bachelors Degree in Political Science from Indiana University with a minor in History. He is a former cinematographer and Army Officer. He has lived on three continents as well as both coasts of the United States. He is currently hiding out in a small town in Indiana. With life experiences which have carried him through countless “adventures” across the globe, Matthew has dug a deep well from which to draw tales far stranger than fiction.

Official Site

www.anti-christ.biz

Novel Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH9PlIj4QT8

Aboard the African Star

After working on the book for more than a decade, Haley was stuck — and desperate

I just love to get out in the ocean. You are really out there, thinking in ways you haven’t thought before. The best writing I ever possibly could do was after The Digest helped me go to Africa and Europe, and I was not known and I could just take my time and nobody was pressing me. God, I don’t know how long it took me. I was working slowly, slowly. When I had done all the research, nine years, working in between doing articles for other magazines, I was ready to write. I didn’t know where to go, didn’t know what to do. I knew I had a monumental task. And I got on a cargo ship. I went from Long Beach, California, completely around South America and back to Long Beach. It was 91 days.

There’s something about a ship. Usually I go out on freight ships, cargo ships. (I wouldn’t get caught on a liner. How can you write with 800 people dancing?) But the freight ships carry a maximum of 12 people, and they tend to be very quiet people.

I work my principal hours from about 10:30 at night until daybreak. The world is yours at that point. Most all the passengers are asleep.

I had written from the birth of Kunta Kinte through his capture. And I had got into the habit of talking to the character. I knew Kunta. I knew everything about Kunta. I knew what he was going to do. What he had done. Everything. And so I would talk to him. And I had become so attached to him that I knew now I had to put him in the slave ship and bring him across the ocean. That was the next part of the book. And I just really couldn’t quite bring myself to write that.

I was in San Francisco. I wrote about 40 pages and chunked it out. When you write well, it isn’t a question so much of what you want to say, it’s a question of feel. Does it feel like you want it to feel? The feel starts coming in somewhere around about the fourth rewrite.

I wrote, twice more, about 40 pages and threw it out. And I realized what my bother was: I couldn’t bring myself to feel I was up to writing about Kunta Kinte in that slave ship and me in a high-rise apartment. I had to get closer to Kunta. I had run out of my money at The Digest, lying so many times about when I’d finish so I couldn’t ask for any more. I don’t know where I got the money from. I went to Africa. Put out the word I wanted to get a ship coming from Africa to Florida. I just wanted to simulate the crossing.

I went down to Liberia, and I got on a freight ship called appropriately enough the African Star. She was carrying a partial cargo of raw rubber in bales. And I got on as a passenger. I couldn’t tell the captain or the mate what I wanted to do because they couldn’t allow me to do it.

But I found one hold that was just about a third full of cargo and there was an entryway into it with a metal ladder down to the bottom of the hold. Down in there they had a long, wide, thick piece of rough sawed timber. They called it dunnage. It’s used between cargo to keep it from shifting in rough seas.

After dinner the first night, I made my way down to this hold. I had a little pocket light. I took off my clothing to my underwear and lay down on my back on this piece of dunnage. I imagined I’m Kunta Kinte. I lay there and I got cold and colder. Nothing seemed to come except how ridiculous it was that I was doing this. By morning I had a terrible cold. I went back up. And the next night I’m there doing the same thing.

Well, the third night when I left the dinner table, I couldn’t make myself go back down in that hold. I just felt so miserable. I don’t think I ever felt quite so bad. And instead of going down in the hold, I went to the stern of the ship. And I’m standing up there with my hands on the rail and looking down where the propellers are beating up this white froth. And in the froth are little luminous green phosphorescences. At sea you see that a lot. And I’m standing there looking at it, and all of a sudden it looked like all my troubles just came on me. I owed everybody I knew. Everybody was on my case. Why don’t you finish this foolish thing? You ought not be doing it in the first place, writing about black genealogy. That’s crazy.

I was just utterly miserable. Didn’t feel like I had a friend in the world. And then a thought came to me that was startling. It wasn’t frightening. It was just startling. I thought to myself, Hey, there’s a cure for all this. You don’t have to go through all this mess. All I had to do was step through the rail and drop in the sea.

Once having thought it, I began to feel quite good about it. I guess I was half a second before dropping in the sea. Fine, that would take care of it. You won’t owe anybody anything. To hell with the publishers and the editors.

And I began to hear voices. They were not strident. They were just conversational. And I somehow knew every one of them. And they were saying things like, No, don’t do that. No, you’re doing the best you can. You just keep going.

And I knew exactly who they were. They were Grandma, Chicken George, Kunta Kinte. They were my cousin, Georgia, who lived in Kansas City and had passed away. They were all these people whom I had been writing about. They were talking to me. It was like in a dream.

I remember fighting myself loose from that rail, turning around, and I went scuttling like a crab up over the hatch. And finally I made my way back to my little stateroom and pitched down, head first, face first, belly first on the bunk, and I cried dry. I cried more I guess than I’ve cried since I was four years old.

And it was about midnight when I kind of got myself together. Then I got up, and the feeling was you have been assessed and have been tried and you’ve been approved by all them who went before. So go ahead. And then I went back down in the hold. I had a terrible head cold, flu-ish like. I had with me a long yellow tablet and some pencils. This time I did not take my clothing off like I’d been doing. I kept them on because I was having such a bad cold. I lay down on the piece of timber.

Now Kunta Kinte was lying in this position on a shelf in the ship, the Lord Ligonier. She had left the Gambia River, July 5, 1767. She sailed two months, three weeks, two days. Destination Annapolis, Maryland. And he was lying there. And others were in there with him whom he knew. And what would he think?

What would be some of the things they would say? And when they would come to me in the dark, I would write. And that was how I did every night, only ten nights. >From there to Florida. I remember rushing through the big, big Miami Airport. Flew back to San Francisco. Got with a doctor, and he kind of patched me up.

I sat down with those long yellow tablets and transcribed. And I began to write the chapter in Roots where Kunta Kinte crossed the ocean in a slave ship. That was probably the most emotional experience I had in the whole thing.

Come around about 1:30 in the morning, you’ve been working since 10:30 and decide you’re going to take a little break. So you get up and you walk up on the deck. And you put your hand on the top rail, your foot on the bottom rail, and you look up. The first most striking thing is, man, you look up and there are heavenly objects as you never saw them before. You find yourself looking at planets at sea. And what you start to realize, you never saw clear air before. In some latitudes, down off West Africa, South America, on the night of a full moon, there are times you get into an illusion — if you could just stretch a little further you feel like you could touch it. And you are out there amidst all Gods firmament and then you stand and you feel through the soul of your shoe a fine vibration and you realize that’s man at work. That’s a huge diesel turbine, 35 feet down under the water driving this ship like a small island through the water. Still standing there, now you start hearing a slight hissing sound. You realize that’s of the ship cutting through the resistance of the ocean. With all that going on, feeling these man things and seeing the God things, that’s about as close to holy as you are going to ever get.

Edited from a talk at Reader’s Digest, October 10, 1991, four months before Alex Haley’s death

Excerpted from the book Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America’s Roots by Alex Haley. Copyright © 2007 The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. Published by The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.; April 2007; $17.95US; 978-0-7621-0885-5.

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley (1921-1992) was an African American writer who was best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Roots. A writer of distinction and a contributing editor for Reader’s Digest, Haley’s first major work was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965.

Growing up, Haley had heard stories about his African ancestor, Kunta Kinte, and became interested in tracing his family to its deepest roots. It was Lila Acheson Wallace, cofounder of The Digest, who commissioned Haley to do the research that would create a groundbreaking article in the magazine. When Reader’s Digest published the first excerpts from Roots in our May and June 1974 issues, we said it was an epic work, “destined to become a classic of American literature.” That has proved to be an understatement.

In just five months after the book hit stores in 1976, more than one million hardcover copies were purchased. Since then, Roots has taken its place among the greatest bestsellers of all time as the number of copies has grown to over six million worldwide. Its impact on television was also historic: Some 130 million Americans watched at least part of the 12-hour drama, making it the highest-rated miniseries ever.

Roots changed the way we think about race in this country and profoundly affected the lives of many people, especially African Americans.

For more information, please visit www.rd.com/returnToRoots.do.

Due to some upgrade problems, this site is under construction. Thank you for your patience.

Chapter One

It has been years since anyone has asked Clara if she’s Ruth Dunne’s daughter—you know, the girl in those pictures. But it has also been years—fourteen, precisely—since Clara has set foot in New York. The Upper West Side is a foreign country. The butcher, the shoe repair guy, even the Korean grocer have been replaced by multilevel gyms with juice bars, restaurants with one-syllable French names. Aix, Ouest. The deli where Clara and Robin used to stop on Saturday mornings—that deli is now some sort of boutique. The mannequin in the window is wearing blue jeans and a top no bigger than a cocktail napkin.

This is not the neighborhood of her childhood, though she can still see bits and pieces if she looks hard enough. There’s the door to what was once Shakespeare & Co. She spent hours in that bookstore, hiding in the philosophy section, until one summer they gave her a job as a cashier. She lasted three days. Every other person, whether they were buying Wittgenstein or Updike, seemed to stare at her, as if trying to figure out why she looked familiar. So she quit.

Shakespeare & Co. is now an Essentials Plus. The window displays shampoos, conditioners, a dozen varieties of magnifying mirrors. A small child bundled up in winter gear is riding a mechanical dinosaur next to the entrance, slowly moving up and down to a tinny version of the Flintstones theme song.

Since the taxi dropped her off at the corner of Broadway and 79th Street, she has counted five wireless cellular stores, three manicure parlors, four real estate brokers. So this is now the Upper West Side: a place where people in cute outfits, their bellies full of steak-frites, talk on brand-new cell phones while getting their nails done on their way to look at new apartments.

It is as if a brightly colored transparency has been placed over the neighborhood of Clara’s memory, which had been the color of a sparrow: tan, brown, gray as smudged newsprint. Now, everything seems large and neon. Even the little old Jewish men who used to sit on the benches in the center islands in the middle of Broadway, traffic whizzing around them in both directions—even they seem to be a thing of the past.

She crosses Broadway quickly, the DON’T WALK sign already flashing. Outside the old Shakespeare & Co., a man has set up a tray table piled with books. A large cardboard sign announces PHILIP ROTH—SIGNED COPIES!!! Above the sign, a poster-sized photograph of Roth himself peers disapprovingly over the shoppers, the mothers pushing strollers, the teenagers checking their reflections in the windows of Essentials Plus.

She has brought nothing with her. No change of clothes, no clean underwear, not even a toothbrush. She’s not staying, no way in hell. That’s what she told herself the whole flight down from Bangor. Ridiculous, of course. She’s going to have to stay at least overnight. Broadway is already cast in a wintry shadow, the sun low in the sky, setting across the Hudson River. Her body—the same body that spent her whole childhood in this place—knows the time by the way the light falls over the avenue. She doesn’t need to look at her watch. It’s four o’clock. That much—the way the sun rises and sets—has not changed.

She’s been circling for an hour. Killing time. Down Columbus, across brownstone-lined side streets, over to West End Avenue with its stately gray buildings, heavy brass doors, uniformed doormen just inside.

A man in an overcoat hurries by her. He glances at her as he passes, holding her gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Why does he bother? She looks like a hundred other women on the Upper West Side: pale, dark-haired, lanky. A thirtyish blur. She could be pretty if she tried, but she has long since stopped trying. Clara stares back at the man. Stop looking at me. This, too, she has forgotten about the city: the brazen way that people size each other up, constantly weighing, judging, comparing. So very different from the Yankee containment of Maine, where everybody just minds their own business.

The phone call came at about eleven o’clock, a few nights ago. No one ever called that late; it was as if the ring itself had a slightly shriller tone to it. (Of course, this could be what her memory is supplying to the moment now—now that she is here.) Everybody was asleep. Jonathan, Sam, Zorba, the puppy, in his crate downstairs in the kitchen.

Jonathan groped for the phone.

“Hello?”

A long pause—too long—and then he reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. It was freezing in their bedroom, the bed piled with four blankets. One of the windowsills was rotting, but to fix it meant ripping the whole thing out, which meant real construction, which cost money, which they didn’t have.

Jonathan handed her the phone.

“Who is it?” she mouthed, hand over the receiver.

He shook his head.

“Hello?” She cleared her throat, hoarse from sleep. “Hello?”

“Clara?”

With a single word—her own name—her head tightened. Robin almost never called her, and certainly not at this hour. They talked exactly once a year, on the anniversary of their father’s death. Clara sank deeper beneath the pile of blankets, the way an animal might try to camouflage itself, sensing danger. Her mind raced through the possibilities. Something had happened, something terrible. Robin would not be calling with good news. And there was only one person, really, whom they shared.

“What’s wrong?” Clara’s voice was a squeak. A pathetic little mouse.

“I’m going to tell you something—and I want you to promise me you won’t hang up.”

Clara was silent. The mirror over the dresser facing the bed was hanging askew, and she could see herself and Jonathan, their rumpled late-night selves. Through the receiver, on Robin’s end, she heard office sounds. The muted ring of corporate telephones, even at this hour.

“Don’t hang up. Promise?”

How like Robin to want to seal the deal, to control the situation, before Clara even knows what the situation is.

“Okay.”

“Say ‘promise.’ ”

Clara squeezed her hands into fists.

“Christ! I promise.”

“Ruth is . . . she’s sick. She’s—oh, shit, Clara. It’s bad. She’s very sick.”

“What do you mean?” Clara responded. The words didn’t make sense. She was stupid with shock.

“Listen. I’m just calling to say that you need to come home,” Robin said.

There it was. Fourteen years—and there it was. Home. She was home, goddammit.

“I’ve made myself insane, going around and around in circles.” Robin paused. “My therapist finally said it wasn’t up to me—that you had a right to know.”

“How long has this been going on?” Clara managed to ask.

“Awhile,” Robin said. She sounded tired. Three kids, partner in a midtown law firm; of course she was tired. Clara couldn’t imagine her sister’s life.

Clara climbed out of bed and walked over to the window. She was suddenly suffocatingly hot in the freezing room. The lights from the harbor beckoned in the distance.

“Look, the truth is—I can’t deal with this by myself,” Robin said. Never, in Clara’s memory, had Robin ever admitted such a thing. She was the queen of competence.

“I have to think about it,” Clara said. Her sister was silent on the other end of the phone. Clara tried to picture her, but the image wasn’t clear: round brown eyes, a tense mouth. “Okay, Robin? This is— I never thought I would ever even consider—”

“I know,” said Robin. “But please.”

After she hung up the phone, Clara climbed back into bed and twined her legs around Jonathan’s, her hands on his belly. She closed her eyes tight and burrowed her face into the crease of his neck. He was asking her something—What are you going to do?—but his voice sounded muffled, as if suddenly there were something, something thick and cottony, separating her from her real life. She breathed Jonathan in, fighting the avalanche of thoughts.

Dani Shapiro’s most recent book’s include Black & White (Knopf, 2007), Family History (Knopf, 2003) and the best-selling memoir Slow Motion. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta,Tin House, Elle, Bookforum, Oprah, Ploughshares, among others, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio. Her books have been translated into seven languages.

She is a visiting writer at Wesleyan University and a contributing editor at Travel & Leisure.She lives with her husband and young son in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Visit her website at http://www.danishapiro.com/

Author, Jeremy Robinson has proven that you can be successful at using print-on-demand to launch your book publishing career. In his book POD People, he covers the stigmas of print-on-demand publishing and gives you some tips on how to avoid or rise above them. The number one mistake that would-be successful authors make is publishing their books before they are ready. Robinson stresses the importance of quality throughout his book. In order to succeed with print-on-demand publishing, your book needs to be indistinguishable from a trade paperback. Hire an editor to help you polish your story before it is published. Hire a designer for your cover if you don’t have design background. He provides links to free photo editing software for those who simply can’t afford to hire a designer.

In the marketing section of POD People, he talks about how he garnered author blurbs for The Didymus Contingency and suggests that you hold off publishing your book until you can get these blurbs. He suggests the same thing for reviews. The more reviews and blurbs you can get for your book, the higher your credibility will rise. This is solid advice that I plan to use for my upcoming novel. The section on how to use Amazon and Barnes&Noble to market and sell your book is very useful, as is his book signing tips. These techniques not only earned him more sales, but helped him land an agent for his other books, Raising the Past and Antarktos Rising. His conversational, get-to-the-point style makes this book an enjoyable and fast read. I started reading this book yesterday afternoon and finished it this morning. Don’t even think about self-publishing until you read this book. Once you finish reading this, read other books on self-publishing and book marketing.

Judas Coyne is a retired heavy metal rock star, living a meaningless life until his assistant tells him about a listing for a “ghost for sale” on Ebay. A collector of macabre artifacts, he jumps at the chance to win a haunted suit and places a bid. The suit arrives in a heart-shaped box a short time later. Sure enough, it is haunted by a ghost and he wants vengeance.

Jude contacts the seller of the suit and learns that she is the sister of his ex-girlfriend, whom he’d nicknamed Florida. The ghost is Craddock McDermott, step-father of the girls. Both he and the surviving sister blame Judas for Florida’’s suicide. They want Jude to die and anyone else who tries to interfere in what they feel is justice. Heart-Shaped Box is a superb tale of love and redemption. I opened this book expecting to hate Judas Coyne on many levels. He wasn’t a nice person, especially in the beginning. By the middle of the book, I found out why. And by the end, I rooted for him and his girlfriend, Marybeth (a.k.a. Georgia). Hill did a great job crafting his flawed characters. There was a little bit of gore and plenty of hair-raising scenes. This has become one of my favorite books for 2007.

The following is an excerpt from the book The Screaming Room, by Thomas O’Callaghan
Published by Pinnacle; May 2007;$6.99US/$9.99CAN; 978-0-7860-1812-3 Copyright © 2007 Thomas O’Callaghan

Prologue

The rain had stopped. The afternoon sun had resumed its assault on rotting corn shocks, casting distorted shadows across the abandoned farm. A pair of cicadas sounded, silencing the chirping of the nearby sparrows, sending them into flight. In the middle of the field, a sturdy youth stood silently, eyes fixed on a mound of fresh clay. A rush of cool air stirred wisps of his ripened wheat-colored hair. Bending down, he used a finger to inscribe the name Gus in the collected soil. A second youth, a female, approached. “Can we go now?” she asked, wearily.
“This is our tenth field and there’’s nothing left of him to bury.”
“In a minute.”
The girl looked around. “Someone could be watching, you know.
“Just need a minute.”
“Well, you”d better make it a quick one.”
The youth’’s eyes lingered on the newly formed grave. With a nod of satisfaction, he uprighted himself. As a smile lit his face, he used the heel of his boot to eradicate their victim’’s name. “Lovee,” he said, “may the bastard rest in peace.”
“You mean in pieces. Let’’s go.”

Chapter 1

Cassie turned her head on the pillow as a sudden flash of light woke her.
“What the hell are ya doing?” she hollered. “It’s two o”clock in the morning!”
Her brother, Angus, who was sitting up in bed next to her, grinned, his attention riveted to the gleam coming off the three-quarter-inch ball bearing he was holding between his thumb and index finger. The narrow beam of a pencil-thin flashlight had reflected off the ball’’s chromelike finish and shone directly onto her eyelid.
“I liked you better when you got off pulling wings off flies,” she said, hiding her head under the pillow.
Angus, flashlight still directed at the ball bearing, brought his face to within inches of the tiny sphere, watching the reflection of his pupil get bigger and bigger, the closer he got. Hopelessly bored, and somewhat blind, he turned off the flashlight, slid his hand under the covers, and fondled his sister’’s rump.
“Not tonight, we ain’t,” she said through clenched teeth. “We got lots to do tomorrow. Get some sleep!”
Angus slid out of bed, slipped into a pair of boxers, and ambled toward the door, opening it. A blast of warm air caressed his body. The sensation aroused him. He glanced over his shoulder. His sister was snoring. He pushed open the screen door, sat on the top step, and glanced upward. It was a cloudless night. The moon, just shy of full, cast shadows on the weeds and tall grass that surrounded home sweet home; a fitting salute, perhaps to what would begin at dawn. The thought of finally executing what they had planned brought on a surge of adrenaline. He wouldn”t sleep. Unlike his sister, he”d stay up and wait out the darkness.\r\n\r\nA slug, slithering toward him on the surface of the step, caught his attention.
“I can kill ya, little fella. But I won’t.”
He had the urge to pet the small mollusk but decided instead to dabble his finger in the slime that trailed behind it. He brought it to his lips, applying it as a woman would lipstick. Women. They fascinated Angus. Every curve. Every smell. Every everything. In his next life, he planned on returning as one. He could feel what they feel. Think as they think. God! Even screw as they screw! He heard a rustling. It was not the willow tree, which was as limp as he was. No, something was pushing through the grass. A deer perhaps. He hoped so. He liked the sound they made just before dying, after he stalked them and twisted their neck, snapping their cervical vertebrae. There it was again! The rustling. Following the example of the snail, he slithered down the rickety steps and began his pursuit, certain his sister wouldn”t start their big day without him. From THE SCREAMING ROOM by Thomas O’Callaghan, Copyright © 2007 Thomas O’Callaghan. Published by arrangement with Pinnacle Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. www.kensingtonbooks.com.

Author Thomas O’Callaghan is a native of New York City and a graduate of CUNY. He lives with his wife, Eileen, a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean in beautiful Belle Harbor, New York. The author of the acclaimed thriller Bone Thief, he is working on his next book featuring NYPD homicide lieutenant John Driscoll. Please visit his website, www.thomasocallaghan.com.

What happens when an FBI manhunt, an experimental rafting expedition, a deranged killer and primordial blood-sucking creatures collide in the Southern Appalachian wilderness? Author Scott Nicholson set his tale in a fictionalized version of the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area in the North Carolina mountains, where he often camps and hikes. The Linville River contains some of the most treacherous whitewater in the eastern United States, and Nicholson wondered what would happen if a group was testing out an experimental raft and ran into some interesting problems. “Hiking in the gorge, I started picturing these primitive vampire creatures swooping down from the cliffs,” Nicholson said. “I don’t get scared very easily, but the idea made me walk a little faster.” Nicholson also drew on elements of the hunt for Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph. In “They Hunger,” a pair of FBI agents close in on Ace Goodall, an abortion clinic bomber who has been hiding out for weeks and suffers from religious delusions. A trip wire at the bomber’s camp sets off an explosion that opens crevices in the ancient mountains, exposing the lair of bloodthirsty creatures that have been dormant for centuries. “All these different characters meet in the worst possible conditions, and not everybody is interested in mutual survival,” the author said. “The river is the only escape from the vampires. But when a freak storm erupts, the natural and supernatural worlds collide and humans seem awfully fragile.” Nicholson has written five other novels based in the North Carolina mountains. His first, “The Red Church,” was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award and an alternate selection of the Mystery Guild. His other novels are “The Farm,” “The Home,” “The Manor,” and “The Harvest.” Nicholson is a journalist in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he raises goats and tends an organic garden when he’’s not writing. He studied creative writing at the University of North Carolina and Appalachian State University. His website at www.hauntedcomputer.com contains fiction, writing advice, and an online journal. You can read an excerpt of the first chapter here.

Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I thought I might offer you my services.

How did I know you were American? No, not by the color of your skin; we have a range of complexions in this country, and yours occurs often among the people of our northwest frontier. Nor was it your dress that gave you away; a European tourist could as easily have purchased in Des Moines your suit, with its single vent, and your button-down shirt. True, your hair, short-cropped, and your expansive chest — the chest, I would say, of a man who bench-presses regularly, and maxes out well above two-twenty-five — are typical of a certain type of American; but then again, sportsmen and soldiers of all nationalities tend to look alike.

Instead, it was your bearing that allowed me to identify you, and I do not mean that as an insult, for I see your face has hardened, but merely as an observation.Come, tell me, what were you looking for? Surely, at this time of day, only one thing could have brought you to the district of Old Anarkali — named, as you may be aware, after a courtesan immured for loving a prince — and that is the quest for the perfect cup of tea. Have I guessed correctly? Then allow me, sir, to suggest my favorite among these many establishments. Yes, this is the one.

Its metal chairs are no better upholstered, its wooden tables are equally rough, and it is, like the others, open to the sky. But the quality of its tea, I assure you, is unparalleled.You prefer that seat, with your back so close to the wall? Very well, although you will benefit less from the intermittent breeze, which, when it does blow, makes these warm afternoons more pleasant. And will you not remove your jacket? So formal! Now that is not typical of Americans, at least not in my experience. And my experience is substantial: I spent four and a half years in your country. Where? I worked in New York, and before that attended college in New Jersey. Yes, you are right: it was Princeton! Quite a guess, I must say.

What did I think of Princeton? Well, the answer to that question requires a story. When I first arrived, I looked around me at the Gothic buildings — younger, I later learned, than many of the mosques of this city, but made through acid treatment and ingenious stonemasonry to look older — and thought, This is a dream come true. Princeton inspired in me the feeling that my life was a film in which I was the star and everything was possible. I have access to this beautiful campus, I thought, to professors who are titans in their fields and fellow students who are philosopher-kings in the making.

I was, I must admit, overly generous in my initial assumptions about the standard of the student body. They were almost all intelligent, and many were brilliant, but whereas I was one of only two Pakistanis in my entering class — two from a population of over a hundred million souls, mind you — the Americans faced much less daunting odds in the selection process. A thousand of your compatriots were enrolled, five hundred times as many, even though your country’’s population was only twice that of mine. As a result, the non-Americans among us tended on average to do better than the Americans, and in my case I reached my senior year without having received a single B. Looking back now, I see the power of that system, pragmatic and effective, like so much else in America. We international students were sourced from around the globe, sifted not only by well-honed standardized tests but by painstakingly customized evaluations — interviews, essays, recommendations — until the best and the brightest of us had been identified.

I myself had among the top exam results in Pakistan and was besides a soccer player good enough to compete on the varsity team, which I did until I damaged my knee in my sophomore year. Students like me were given visas and scholarships, complete financial aid, mind you, and invited into the ranks of the meritocracy. In return, we were expected to contribute our talents to your society, the society we were joining. And for the most part, we were happy to do so. I certainly was, at least at first. Every fall, Princeton raised her skirt for the corporate recruiters who came onto campus and — as you say in America — showed them some skin. The skin Princeton showed was good skin, of course — young, eloquent, and clever as can be — but even among all that skin, I knew in my senior year that I was something special. I was a perfect breast, if you will — tan, succulent, seemingly defiant of gravity — and I was confident of getting any job I wanted.

Except one: Underwood Samson & Company. You have not heard of them? They were a valuation firm. They told their clients how much businesses were worth, and they did so, it was said, with a precision that was uncanny. They were small — a boutique, really, employing a bare minimum of people — and they paid well, offering the fresh graduate a base salary of over eighty thousand dollars. But more importantly, they gave one a robust set of skills and an exalted brand name, so exalted, in fact, that after two or three years there as an analyst, one was virtually guaranteed admission to Harvard Business School. Because of this, over a hundred members of the Princeton Class of 2001 sent their grades and r√ɬ©sum√ɬ©s to Underwood Samson. Eight were selected — not for jobs, I should make clear, but for interviews — and one of them was me.

You seem worried. Do not be; this burly fellow is merely our waiter, and there is no need to reach under your jacket, I assume to grasp your wallet, as we will pay him later, when we are done. Would you prefer regular tea, with milk and sugar, or green tea, or perhaps their more fragrant specialty, Kashmiri tea? Excellent choice. I will have the same, and perhaps a plate of jalebis as well. There. He has gone. I must admit, he is a rather intimidating chap. But irreproachably polite: you would have been surprised by the sweetness of his speech, if only you understood Urdu.

Where were we? Ah yes, Underwood Samson. On the day of my interview, I was uncharacteristically nervous. They had sent a single interviewer, and he received us in a room at the Nassau Inn, an ordinary room, mind you, not a suite; they knew we were sufficiently impressed already. When my turn came, I entered and found a man physically not unlike yourself; he, too, had the look of a seasoned army officer. “Changez?” he said, and I nodded, for that is indeed my name. “Come on in and take a seat.”

Copyright © 2007 Mohsin Hamid from the book The Reluctant Fundamentalist Published by Harcourt Inc.; April 2007;$22.00US; 978-0-15-101304-3 Mohsin Hamid is the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Moth Smoke. His writing has also appeared in Time, the New York Times, and other publications. He lives in London. Visit www.mohsinhamid.com and www.reluctantfundamentalist.com