Guest Author Roland Yeomans Talks Horror, Aliens, Vampires, Steampunk & US History
While I take a break to watch Mets Spring Training and continue my self-studies on ancient American archaeology, specifically the mound builders of North America, I’m handing this blog n’ chain over to author, Roland Yeomans. And talk about small worlds. His designer is Heather McCorkle, who is one of my favorite people in the Twitterverse! We are all 6 degrees of maple bacon. Roland’s latest book is a mix of horror and steampunk and history and everything in between. I can’t wait to read it.
OK Hellions, time for me to hit the textbooks. Roland, take the wheel…
“True horror is when men are free to become the monsters they have always wanted to be.”
– Samuel McCord
Roland Yeomans here on my “Don’t You Hate Book Tours?” Book Tour.
One of the worst war criminals was a home-grown one: General William Tecumseh Sherman of “Let’s Toast Marshmallows All Through Georgia” Fame.
It was his idea, by the way.
As he was drawing wagon-loads of civilian down roads suspected of containing mines, cannoning Atlanta homes sheltering crying women and children, and writing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that there was a whole class of people, men, women, and children, that needed to be killed in the South.
The lure of alternate history is to take the past and give it a twist. Steampunk filters the story through a Victorian H. G. Wells lens. Horror allows me to serve back terror to those who most deserve it.
Have you ever thought what might have been the fate of the White Man had Native American magic been real, had the White’s boogey-men been waiting for the carnage of the Civil War to give them an engraved invitation?
Imagine a world where aliens walk unsuspected among us, where global vampire kingdoms wage war against one another in secret, and one man with death in his veins tries to even the scales for those who cannot fight back.
Horror is more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains upstairs.
An atmosphere of unexplainable dread, of lurking unknown forces must be present. There must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain:a malign suspension of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the demons of unsuspected reality.
In The Not-So-Innocents Abroad, Samuel McCord, a man cursed with the blood of the Angel of Death, marries the woman of most people’s nightmares: the Empress of the Alien Race that has toyed with Man since he crawled from out of his caves.
But love seldom has good sense, much less good luck.
Now, McCord must struggle to see if there is an honorable way to be married to a monster.
He may not live long enough to find there is no such road.
The vampiric Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Empress Theodora of the Unholy Roman Empire are among the passengers of the honeymoon vessel of the no-longer human and the alien empress.
The insane Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, a crippled General Sherman, 11 year old Nikola Tesla, and the mysterious Greek physician Lucanus join many others on the honeymoon voyage of the first Air-Steamship, Xanadu.
The keening which General Sherman heard as the Angel of Death convened at the corrupt peace treaty at Ft. Laramie when the skies became blood, the stars reversed their course, and the dead rose:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArEaOWqzYo
Cost of Passage? Only $9.99. Come aboard for the adventure of a lifetime.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530302722/
Hunter Shea 
Thank you for having me, Hunter. I had a great time. 🙂
It’s a pleasure. Best of luck with the book!
Cross your fingers for me … not your eyes — that would give you a headache! 🙂
Hi Roland and Hunter – looks like Samuel and his friends have fallen into the right blog here … deep into imagination land … and oh how it would be wonderful if we could people to realise the errors of their ways – at the time – cheers Hilary
Thank you for stopping by the watering hole, Hilary!
Samuel is at home almost anywhere that people aren’t shooting at him! 🙂 People are so caught up in the moment usually that they cannot see the larger picture. Thanks so much for visiting and commenting!
I’ve definitely considered what things would have been like if things had gone differently when the settlers came. Some day I’ll write about it. 😉
I’ll be anxious to read it!
Like Hunter, I am anxious to read what tale you would make of it. 🙂
I know some of my friends said they left comments. Are you feeling well?
Feeling great! Sometimes, the day job, which is enormous, keeps me away from the old blog and chain for a day or two.
Mine, too! Being a rare blood courier is such a demanding job that I have a hard time finding any free time at all!
There are a lot of options we could choose with a secret society like vampires or aliens and have a lot of fun writing it!
So true.
I had fun writing of such a world — it is my Steampunk Game of Thrones … without the torture (at least on page torture!)
It’s definitely one of the most original ideas for a book I’ve ever heard of…can’t wait to read it!
I love the statement that a US General was a war criminal. We rarely point that finger at ourselves, even when the truth is in the bloodshed.
I’m so glad you two connected!
It sounds crazy, but in a good way, right?
Thanks for thinking so. 🙂 I’m glad you introduced me to Hunter, too. Yes, Sherman was a criminal, convicted by his own words ,.. sadly, he was viewed as a hero. 😦