Uncorrected Proof by Louisiana Alba

The story: His espionage novel stolen by a celebrity ‘sweeper’ author, Archie Lees embarks on a helter-skelter odyssey seeking justice inside the dark worlds of Anglo-American publishing, the tale swinging from London to Barcelona, New York, Aigues-Mortes and back again over twelve months, November 2003 to October 2004.

The style: Louisiana Alba ransacks categories, voices and genres excavating plagiarism and influence, reanimating modernism, realism, magic realism, poetry, pop, drama, screenwriting and the postmodernist novel, defrocking the methods and madness of major and minor literary techniques and reputations in a century of writerly solitude.

Review by LiteraryMinded:

Can something be playfully and overtly postmodern and still be readable – driving you through a compelling plot? Louisiana Alba proves it can be done. Uncorrected Proof is a postmodern novel that entertainingly riffs on form, style, character, tense, person – but with an overall thriller/quest type plot appropriation, it folds you into its delicious bizarro metascapes and humorous oft-satirical, oft-homagical visions.

Somehow Alba (if that’s who she really is… death of the author etc.) incorporates stylistic elements of hard-boiled fiction, screenplays, cookbooks, metafiction, the spy novel, cyberpunk, the literary novel, A Clockwork Orange, Gaelic, intertextuality, memoir and so much more in a book that self-consciously satirises the entire book and publishing industry – authors, editors, publishers – literary celebrity, literary delusions, literary snobbery, literary stupidity and so on. 

So what’s it ‘about’? Archie’s novel manuscript has been pilfered and plagiarized by Martyn Varginas, prolific mystery writer. Archie and his friend Cal plot a convoluted revenge through Archie getting work as an editor, and employing a re-plagiarisation of the book by a young hired-gun (or pen, as it were). What follows are kidnappings, political intrigues, sex, jaunts to New York and Paris (from London), Stake-outs, party crashings, a couple of book launches, boardroom drunkenness, author cameo appearances, mean streets, cop/spy banter, and a few disturbing murders.

I was completely absorbed in this book – somehow Alba makes it so easy to read, despite the switcheroos in style, and shifts in narrative drive and character motivation. The book’s title Uncorrected Proof displays irony – those not in bookselling or publishing may be unfamiliar with a ‘proof copy’ or ‘uncorrected proof’ – books that become available before release, oft-unedited versions of the final with spacing, grammatical and typing errors. This ‘published’ book, has a few (tongue-in-cheek) placed throughout.

Alba has worked in publishing, and is actually avoiding traditional distribution methods for the book, keeping in the uber-hip underground spirit of the novel – with a well-handled guerilla internet and out-of-hand distribution system. I came across the author through Facebook.

This book proves to me that extraordinary talent can be represented through shunning traditional publishing methods. This book is inventive, imaginative, and inspiring. It is a unique publication. If you enjoy Italo Calvino or John Fowles, or if you also work or have worked in the book industry, even on the fringes, you would get a great kick out of this novel.  –LiteraryMinded

from http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Uncorrected_proof http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Uncorrected_proof

Uncorrected Proof is the title novelist Louisiana Alba uses for his 2008 released novel, exploring themes of plagiarism and influence. The story is set in the publishing industry and following the conflicts and writing life of a writer whose novel is stolen by a celebrity author.

The uncorrected proof is the penultimate version of a literary work or book before final publication [1] [2]. An uncorrected proof is sometimes called a galley proof or an advance reading copy (ARC), and is used for book reviews, sent out by publishers to dedicated journals, newspaper and magazines. Many reviewers prefer, even insist on, seeing the uncorrected proof, not the final printed book.

Alba cites James Joyce’s parodic and myth-based technique in Ulysses by following Homer’s Iliad. But rather than follow the narrative poem itself as Joyce did with Homer’s Odyssey, Alba traces the prequel conditions in Greece before Helen’s flight with Paris to Troy parodying over one hundred modernist and postmodernist writers. Alba’s stated aim is to enface a portrait of the artist as a postmodern, reversing Joyce’s attempt at self-effacement from the text of Ulysses.

The wider relevance Alba intended in his use of uncorrected proof in the title of his novel is rooted in his belief that a literary work is not ‘bound in’ by a cover. In Alba’s view a novel never begins or ends with an individual work, the boundaries of influence and interdependence always crossed, with sources shared consciously and subconsciously between literary works and writers’ imaginations.

PUBLISH OR DIE! by Paul Duran
Pacific Rim Review of Books Fall/Winter 2009 Issue 12 – pg. 33
Review of Uncorrected Proof by Louisiana Alba – ElephantEars Press 

Who is Louisiana Alba and what does she (or he) have against the publishing industry? It’s a rhetorical question since most authors inevitably have some gripe against the media giants they are forced to rely upon to shepherd their creative works to the masses. Yet usually, besides the odd drunken cocktail party diatribe or expletive-laden rant to one’s spouse, authors won’t, or can’t afford to, bite the hand that feeds them. Alba on the other hand has decided to go straight for their throats, going public with the writer’s eternal screech – the bastards have    (add your own word here – ruined, stolen, fucked up, etc.) my book! – then framed it within a literary conceit so audacious and capricious, that to stumble just a little bit is to fall off the mountain completely. 

It’s a high wire act that literally co-opts the style of dozens of literary untouchables and pop culture icons from James Joyce to Jimi Hendrix, Anthony Burgess to Andy Warhol, Ernest Hemingway to Quentin Tarantino (there are over a hundred authors and artists listed in the book’s acknowledgements starting with ABBA!). Alba (an obvious nom de plume) uses each successive voice in her vast arsenal to tell the story of Archie Lee, the plagiarized author who schemes to get his novel back from the people who stole it – the celebrity novelist Martyrn Varginas, his greedy publisher Menny Lowes, and his man-eater of an editor, Ellen Spartan. 

Using The Iliad as a starting reference point (in a deliberate cracked mirror image to Joyce’s use of The Odyssey in Ulysses), the novel playfully winks at Homer not so much for his epic poem’s style as for its archetypal tale of love, abduction and revenge. The characters all are sly doppelgangers for their Greek counterparts; Archie Lee for Achilles; Ellen Spartan for Helen; Menny Lowes for Menelaus and so on. But the book does not rely solely on post-modern mimicry or clever homage to keep our interest. It more than holds it’s own as a thoroughly enjoyable pulp story about stolen manuscripts and deferred vengeance in the volatile, cutthroat world of publishing. Making publishing a life and death enterprise involving kidnapping, murder and the CIA is a nice conceit that no doubt will give even the crustiest of publishing execs a knowing chuckle. 

The novel starts with Archie out to expose his literary theft at the Crocker Prize banquet (read Booker Prize). He gets cold feet when he comes face to face with his nemesis Varginas and Varginas’ attractive editor Ellen. She unexpectedly offers Archie a position at her new imprint when he stammers out that he’s “expert with espionage thrillers.” From there the story follows Archie’s desperate scheme to wreak revenge from inside the publishing mecca using his newfound influence to try to get his original novel into print under the name of an opportunistic young hustler he has hired for the part. Nothing goes according to plan as the novel ricochets from London to Barcelona to the South of France to New York and back; from pulp crime to spy thriller, memoir to meta-fiction, screenplay to redacted text. 

It may sound like a daunting task for the narrative to constantly shape-shift from one disparate source to another but the effect is breathtakingly kaleidoscopic and in most cases wholly appropriate (even the few typos in the book seem correct given the title). In truth it would probably take a tenured literature professor with a vast music and DVD collection to decode all the stylistic shifts in Uncorrected Proof but that’s not really the point. Given all the literary byplay and conceptual ambition, the story is still amazingly accessible, so when you are able to pick up on a particular author or style, it just adds to its kicky pleasure. 

In the end Uncorrected Proof is also a cautionary tale about ego and ambition run amok in a world where ego and ambition are the only character traits that seem to really matter. With no clear winners or losers it could almost be read as a twisted metaphor for our own troubled times, with the publishing industry standing in for Wall Street and the banks, where the “best and brightest” have had their way for too long and have grown fat on the bones of those crushed under their Gucci loafers and stiletto heels. Perhaps I’m reading too much into Alba’s remarkably varied prose, but the seeds of a revolution are there, if not on the economic front, then maybe just in the publishing house.  —Paul Duran’s films include Flesh Suitcase and The Dogwalker.  

See also: Pat Bertram Introduces Archie Lees, hero of Uncorrected Proof by Louisiana Alba

Will You Love Me Tomorrow by Danny Gillan

Some aspiring musicians wait a lifetime for that elusive record deal. Bryan Rivers waited a lifetime plus three days.  

As if dealing with the suicide of her clinically depressed husband wasn’t difficult enough, to Claire Rivers’ amazement one of the biggest record companies in the country suddenly wants to offer him a contract. When his ‘status’ is viewed as only a minor inconvenience, she begins to wonder if someone, somewhere, is playing a very distasteful joke on her. 

Will You Love Me Tomorrow by Danny Gillan is a comedy about death, depression, grief, loss, friendship, family, haircuts and the music business.

Find out more about the book on: Danny Gillan’s Blog

Buy from: Amazon.uk

Review by Magdalena Ball, The Compulsive Reader, June 2009

Will You Love Me Tomorrow
by Danny Gillan
Discovered Authors
ISBN-13: 978-1905108633, Dec 2008, Paperback

How could you not love a book that opens in the midst of a first person narrated suicide and still manages to be funny? Bryan Rivers is a musician who is in the late stage of a suicide when we join him. It’s a hard opening to manage, but Gillan does it with ease, setting the black edged humour of the book perfectly. Though it would have been easy to turn the tortured, depressed musician into a cliché, the reader instead is treated to Bryan’s fumbling attempts to find a pen and piece of paper to write his wife, Claire, a farewell note. By this point in the story, Bryan is in the midst of overdose induced stomach cramps, and it isn’t an easy matter. But he wants to apologise to Claire. As he mentally recounts how he got to this point, it’s almost possible to follow him. In other words, though his almost accidental slide into suicide is a tragic waste, the reader immediately begins to like him and mourn his passing along with his wife Claire.

When, three days after his suicide, record producer Jason Clements offers him the contract he’s waited his whole life for, it’s beyond ironic. But despite Bryan’s death, life, and good music, go on. Danny Gillan’s Will You Love Me Tomorrow is about as black as humour gets, and yet it never becomes farcical or loses the poignant edge. Certainly there is humour and a cast of characters that are real enough to remind you of your favourite boss or in-law. Bryan’s overly pragmatic and usually angry brother Thomas plays a strong part, as does the greedy Fortuna executive Phillip Doland, who is the one caricature in this novel. Claire, Adam, Bryan’s best friend, and Jason are all quirky and deep enough – grappling as they are between guilt and self-actualisation – to believe in and provide a good balance to Doland’s antics.

The humour is sometimes strong enough to get you laughing outloud – from Adam’s crazy haircuts, Jason’s goofy attempts at impressing Claire,or even in the midst of Bryan’s suicide:

He couldn’t believe it. Please let it be a piss-take, please. But it wasn’t. He managed to keep listening as the rest of the travesty played out. His favourite song by his all-time favourite band had been raped! Desecrated! Mollocated! Violated! Buggered up! Ruined! No, not ruined obviously, there was still the original, but he knew he would never be able to listen to London Calling again without this tragic mockery springing immediately to mind.

But underneath the humour, there is transformation. Claire, Adam, and Jason all grow throughout the course of the novel, and Bryan’s very believable depression is handled with sensitivity, providing a thoughtful foil to the light heartedness of the interactions. The balance between the shallow and financially driven world of the recording industry, and the serious emotional toll of this loss on Bryan’s family is handled deftly, never giving in to sentimentality.

Each chapter begins with a quotation from one of Bryan’s songs, and although the poetry itself isn’t strong, it does help to keep Bryan at the centre of the reader’s focus. Though the book is never sad as such, the reader’s privy perspective from the novel’s start creates a poignancy that underlies the zany. Will You Love Me Tomorrow is an easy, fast paced read, full of funny twists and pithy insights. There’s a musical spring to Gillan’s style that belies the seriousness of his topics, covering a broad range of topics including the impact of depression and death on friendship, love, how we move on past tragedy, the music industry, art versus public relations, and family jealousy.

About the reviewer: Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of Sleep Before Evening, The Art of Assessment, Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse and She Wore Emerald Then. She runs a monthly radio program podcast The Compulsive Reader Talks.

What Do You Do When You Have Too Much Background Information?

Researching a novel can become addictive. Like with money, you feel as if you never have enough background information. You tell yourself you need one more piece before you can sit down and begin creating your opus, but as the days, weeks, months go by, the pieces pile up. Eventually, however, even the most exhaustive research ends, and you begin writing. Now what do you do with all that background information? You use, it of course. You earned it, right?

If you’re smart, or lucky, or have a good writing coach, you discover that all those facts sink the story, and you jettison most of them during the rewrites. You hoard those facts, though, and later add them to your blog.

Among my jetsam is this piece about Jacob Simon Herzig, (AKA George Graham Rice) one of the most successful bucket shop operators in history.

A bucket shop was an ostensibly legal brokerage firm. Some of the firms operated within the law, but most did not. They cheated their customers, stole from them, misused their money. In New York State, in one five-year period early in the twentieth century, bucket shops went into bankruptcy owing their customers more that two hundred twelve million dollars, the equivalent of several billion in today’s dollars.

Originally, bucket shops were markets where flour and grain were sold by the bucket to poor people. The wealthy, of course, did not patronize those places since they could afford to buy in larger amounts. The modern equivalent of a bucket shop began soon after the Civil War when railroad stocks were placed on the market and sold in small lots to investors who didn’t normally buy stocks. Financiers like Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk were all early bucketeers; in fact, they set the standard. They created artificial markets, issued false proclamations concerning the value of the stock, kept printing fresh stock as long as there was a demand. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the early bucket shops had grown into rich, powerful brokerage houses, they attacked the bucketeers. It took three decades, but these so-called legitimate brokerage houses, the New York Stock Exchange, and the big bankers managed to put the bucketeers out of business, though there was a reincarnation of them in the penny-stocks of the l980s.

George Graham Rice sold a great deal of stock, milking each scheme as long as he could then moving on to a new venture. He began to print a financial newspaper called The Iconoclast. The Iconoclast lambasted the financial powers of the country, blaming Wall Street for all the ills that affected the people. It claimed that the multi-millionaires and insiders were using the Stock Exchange to cheat hundreds of thousands of innocent people out of millions of dollars, which they were. He promised his subscribers that he’d help even the score by disclosing his own private information. His daily circulation grew to over 300,000 subscribers nationwide, giving him the biggest sucker list in America. He sold parts of his list to other bucket shops, but only after he’d squeezed some money out of the people on that partial list. One of his scams was the Columbia Emerald Company. According to The Iconoclast, the mine was operating and producing emeralds valued in the millions, and he bilked people out of half a million dollars before anyone discovered there were no emeralds. As long as there was actually a mine in South America, however (which Rice had purchased for eight hundred dollars) Rice was not liable to prosecution.

Rice also owned almost a million and a half shares of Idaho Copper Mine, for which he paid ten thousand dollars total, almost eight cents a share. Though the mine had not been worked in twenty years, was in fact completely flooded, it had two big assets: it actually existed and it was listed on the Boston Curb Exchange. The Iconoclast touted the stock, and it went up to $6.25 a share as thousands of suckers rushed to get in on the ground floor. The whole thing eventually fell through, but Rice walked away with millions.

My con man Teach told this story — he was trying to explain to Mary why he needed a played-out gold mine — but you won’t find it in Daughter Am I. It was one of the bits I cut out to make room for the most  important aspect of the story — the characters.

Daughter Am I is Bertram’s third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

Interview with Pierre Dominique Roustan

As part of my weeklong book launch party, Pierre Dominique Roustan and I are interviewing each other. (You can find me at http://writingandreading.today.com) Pierre is the author of the soon-to-be-released novel The Cain Letters.

Bertram: How and when did you know you were a writer?

Pierre: That’s a difficult question to answer, because it was most definitely a process over time. I was always interested in writing but never knew I had a gift (desire) for it. It was when I hit my freshman year in college did I realize that there was something to this whole writing ‘thing’. I had a professor at the community college, one of my first classes there, English 101, I believe, tell me flat out that I “had a gift”. Now it wasn’t what he said that convinced me of that, though. It was what I wrote for him in class. Either he went easy on me, or he saw something in my writing that had been developing for so long ever since I was little. I would most definitely say that that final subtle pivotal point in the journey of discovery was at the age of 18 when I became so enamored with writing essays for my classes. I can safely say, at that point, I became a writer.

Bertram: What are some of your favorite authors to read?

Pierre: I had such a variety of authors I loved as a kid and as an adult, and I can safely say that it contributed to me being a writer: I liked all sorts of books growing up. I was into Isaac Asimov, J.R.R. Tolkien (of course!), even those classics by Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway. Leading to more contemporary ‘today’ authors, I’m a BIG fan of Terry Goodkind. I’ve read Terry Brooks as well. J.K. Rowling, of course! I was just getting into some other favorites of mine like Jordan Dane and Robert Liparulo. On a literary level, I was enthralled with such works by Sandra Cisneros, Tim O’Brien and Joseph Conrad. Those were some of the best in literary fiction I had ever read. Oh, and Toni Morrison! She was a remarkably intense writer.

Bertram: Which do you prefer: e-books or print?

Pierre: That’s quite the relevant question in today’s publishing market, now isn’t it? And you’re asking me that question at a very interesting time. Maybe two years ago, if you had asked me that, I would easily, hands down, say print. There’s nothing better than the smell of paper on a good book and being able to flip those pages really fast and hearing that buzzing sound when you do. Plus the cover art’s always cool.

HOWEVER…I’ve noticed quite easily how difficult it is to read on the computer. The reason I bring that up is that I do have a lot of friends/colleagues who write as well and always love to have me as a beta reader. They send me their work via e-mail and I read it right on my computer while my rump goes to sleep. It’s not fun. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I had an eReader or a Kindle. It would make reading other people’s work so much easier. That, and the concept of buying any book on one of those electronic devices does have a certain appeal to me. For those authors I have a particular affection for, I’d definitely still always prefer print. But other authors that I would just like to read, just to expand my literary field, owning a Kindle or eReader seems priceless (even though it’ll always feel like I’m shelling out an arm and a leg for such a thing).

Bertram: What’s your favorite food?

Pierre: I love it when people ask me that question! It always feels like I’m on a date. I have the perfect answer. My favorite food is…. YES. Meaning, put in front of me monkey brains, and if it simply looks good, I’ll eat it. Simple as that. I’m a human trash can.

But I can go specific (I’ll limit it to a top ten, no particular order): pizza, shrimp scampi, chicken salad, chilli, soups, breakfast food, ice cream cake, Chinese food, sub sandwiches, Mexican food.

Bertram: If you could choose any wild animal, what would it be?

Pierre: That’s definitely an easy one. I love wild animals, and I’ve always had a thing for wolves. They’re so beautiful. Majestic. And I identify with them so well, in that they always seem shy, even timid when it comes to ‘man’. I’m much the same way to a certain degree; I can be guarded. But you see, the thing is-people, to me, particularly my friends and loved ones, are the other wolves in my pack. And I’m generally a nice wolf. So when I see other wolves from other packs, I don’t usually get defensive or violent or unusual. I’m generally very friendly. I’m an easy person to get to know.

Bertram: If you were going to die in the next three days and you could do the next ten things without worrying about cost, what would you do?

Pierre: I would go bungee jumping (never done it), get a tattoo (don’t have one), visit Europe (never been there), visit all the States except for Nevada, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Florida and Rhode Island (been to all those States already), donate $1 million to one of those Children’s Funds, get married (again. Yes, I was married before. And let’s just say it didn’t ‘pan out’), anonymously donate money to an engaged couple looking to get married, buy a Playstation 3 and all the Final Fantasy’s and play all of them all night until I’ve beaten them all (except for Final Fantasy 7 and 8, already beat those), visit the grave of my grandfather in Nicaragua (his name was Pierre Dominique Roustan, too, so it holds a lot of meaning for me), SLEEP and do NOTHING for one whole day.

Bertram: What advice would you give other aspiring writers out there?

Pierre: It’s simple. Just enjoy your craft for yourself. Let it delight you. In the end, you’re the only audience. That’s how it originally starts. The bonus, the gift, comes around when others get to witness what you’ve created and how much you delight in it. There’s no better high than that, having someone else read your stuff and watch them be fascinated by the fact that you actually wrote something. Forget about the stress of whether or not you’ll land an agent or publishing contract or start that dream career as an author. What truly gives you joy should be that you wrote something that represents the deepest part of you and that you have a friend or family member you can share it with. It keeps you writing. It also keeps you believing in the goal itself. Because don’t get me wrong-goals are good. Having the goal of publication is good. But don’t let it consume you. Your writing comes first. Your desire comes first. Your love for words defines the spirit in you, and don’t ever forget that.

Also see: The Cain Letters
                Blog Exhange with Pierre Dominique Roustan

The Cain Letters by Pierre Dominique Roustan

As part of my week-long book launch party, Pierre Dominique Roustan and I are exchanging blogs. (You can find me at http://writingandreading.today.com) Pierre writes:

Those who’ve followed my blog might know a bit here and there about THE CAIN LETTERS and the characters, but let me paint a picture for you real quick:

Enter: Alexandra Glade.

An auburn-haired, gray-eyed beauty of a woman, black trench coat, turtleneck and tight pants, armed to the teeth with all kinds of weaponry. Think “The Matrix”, “Underworld”, “Blade” with a little bit of sex appeal, and there’s Alexandra for you. There are days I regret a little bit creating her in my head, because I worry that she might beat the living hell out of me. Because she can. She’s essentially a trained killer.

Only she kills vampires. For a living.

With her team, an organization known as the Berith Lochem, Hebrew for ‘Divine Covenant’, she hunted rogue vampires and other abominations for the sake of God alongside her comrade Kyan Tanaka, a Japanese man bred into the world of a mercenary until he found God. With remarkable resources, the Berith Lochem served the Vatican and other clients looking for a cleansing of some kind. They were like bounty hunters.

It was easy, you know? Hunting vampires. The life was so linear. And simple. Until a strange book surfaced that seemed to be of some interest to many of the damned-most notably two master vampires of cunning strength and power, two of the strongest in the world, actually-a Russian known as Nikolas Stahl and a savage Los Angeles native named Mason Richter. The book had ancient knowledge regarding something that had been locked away, secret, since the beginning of time-

The origin of the vampire. How it all began.

No longer was Alexandra’s life so linear. Her journey suddenly came upon forks of all kinds. And obstacles.

The book, dating way back to the times of the Exodus, revealed the origin. And it was a shocking one. One that would shake the pillars of the world, of faith-

The world’s first vampire was the world’s first murderer. Fitting. And terrifying.

Cain, brother of Abel, son to Adam and Eve, had struck a deal with Satan to cleanse himself of the guilt, the shame, the despair of a dying world and the mark of banishment on him. The cleansing took away his humanity, took away his soul even-and made him into what was commonly known as…vampire.

Driven by blood, as a reminder of Abel’s blood on his hands, Cain walked the earth. Immortal.

What Alexandra realized was that Nikolas and Mason planned on finding Cain. The secret book revealed his hidden location for so many centuries. What Alexandra feared was what they intended to do once they found him-

It didn’t take her long to realize that they were planning on killing him. These two master vampires, countless ages apart from a man of the book of Genesis, were going to silence the father of the damned.

Now on any other day, Alexandra Glade, Berith Lochem vampire hunter of vengeance, she wouldn’t have a problem with the idea of the father of the damned dying. But she knew Scripture. And what she knew terrified her even more than Cain….

She couldn’t allow Nikolas and Mason to kill Cain…. For the sake of the world hung on the balance that Cain had to live. All her training, all her scars, everything, anything that made her who she was, a hunter, she had to forsake and leave, protecting the very first vampire from death. All to save mankind.

Could she make such a decision? With her duty, her need to hunt and kill vampires, her fierce vengeance…. Could she reject all of that…. And save a fierce killer like Cain?

I’ll let that simmer in you a little bit. I can’t give all of it away, people. Come on! You’ll have to read the book when it debuts.

THE CAIN LETTERS is, indeed, a beginning of what is most definitely a series for me. Having landed a contract, you’ll see a few more continuations, following the adventures of Alexandra Glade and the Berith Lochem. But until then, face the fear that is THE CAIN LETTERS. And believe. Believe in evil.

See also: Interview with Pierre Dominique Roustan
                 Blog Exchange with Pierre Dominique Roustan