Need to Escape but Can’t Afford an Errant Knight?

1

Boundary Waters 1

The Spoiler 2

Errant Knight 3

Mystery of the Majestic

4

Silver Bows 6

Interview with Cytheria

6

Neomodern Nosferatu

7

Subscription Coupon

8

OK. So life ain’t as grand as we planned. Instead of marrying a tightly packed rock star with a long flowing mane you wound up hitched to a pudgy work-a-day sports junkie who is follicly challenged. Instead of exploring exotic locales for hidden treasure, you probe under your kids’ beds for stale pizza bagels and dust bunnies.

Or...

You battle metal sharks barreling down on you along the asphalt barrier reef on your mission to school, work, or the store.

Or...

You are held hostage by a cruel corporate ogre in order to pay your mortgage and kids’ health care. Doing your job everyday is like being held prisoner in a grim tower — tedious, dull, gray, never-ending. You need to escape but can’t afford an errant knight…

Or even a weekend cruise.

AFTAW is a sampler of fiction featuring women who agonizingly endure ordinariness, suffer the blight of the potato gene, and anguish from hormones-gone-haywire. When day-to-day life has worn them down with its dull tedium, the need for excitement and stimulation begs fulfilling. Unlike men, most women won’t react to their life crises by buying a cherry-red Corvette or running off with a twenty-something receptionist. Most will internalize their distress and languish in a perpetual state of depression deep inside a box of chocolates or a gallon tub of ice cream. Prozac might help put a vacuous smile on their faces but won’t fill the void. Perhaps, these rip-roaring tales of thrills, chills, and sexy spills won’t do better, but more often than not, a good read works wonders on a weary woman’s mind. AFTAW stories are painstakingly written, illustrated and assembled into handcrafted booklets because the

authors are women without much in the way of means but with a hell of a lot of creative drive. On a thread of hope, our stories weave words of empowerment in a colorful tapestry of imaginary adventure. AFTAW is a primarily a one-woman production with the aspirations of becoming a vehicle of expression for any average women with wild fantasies of her own that serve to dispel the evils of grim mediocrity. Walter Mitty, eat your milquetoast –loving heart out.

Cytheria Howell, Author/Editor and Incurable Romantic

A MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF SERIAL FICTION AND FACT-BASED ADVENTURE TALES PRINTED WITH EARTH-FRIENDLY RECYCLED MATERIALS

Inside this issue:

IDEAGEMS ®

Imagine being trapped in a blizzard with a devastatingly dashing fiend.

Colorado to I-80 eastbound. “Wait!” he barked. The Durango stopped with a violent pitch that nearly knocked the gun from his hand. He pressed the metal muzzle to her pale cheek. “Try that again and I’ll….” He didn’t finish. A cough erupted from under the blue bandana wrapped around his lower face. A straw ranchero hat covered his head down to his black eyebrows and over the tips of his ears. His dark eyes stared wolfishly down the quivering nose of the gun.

pushed her into the driver’s seat and grabbed her left wrist. With harsh ratcheting, he attached her to the steering wheel with a pair of handcuffs. He closed the door and made his way around to the passenger side. Raw fingers slipped the key into the slot. “Drive,” he said with a wave of the gun. Her wool-gloved hand turned the ignition key and shifted into gear. Albinoni’s Adagio sorrowed to the SUV’s slow roll down the ramp from the truck stop outside Ft. Sedgewick,

The pug nose of a pistol nuzzled the fur-lined hood covering her head while the searing cold of the Alberta clipper viciously slapped her face. The man pressing her against the door of the forest-green Durango had arisen as forceful and unseen as the wind. Now he was telling her to do as he commanded. “Open the door and hand me the keys.” The terrified woman opened the door to her vehicle. Her right boot stepped in the coffee spilled from the cup she had dropped. Her assailant

Boundary Waters, Part I

November 2005

Adventures for the Average Woman

Volume 1, Issue 1

Need to Escape but Can’t Afford an Errant Knight?

AFTAW wants your feedback and submissions! Email queries and comments to:

ideagems@aol.com

Would you like to know how our stories end? Then you’ll just have to subscribe. Send your check or money order for $15.00 for twelve issues and help unemployed women writers with no support from a significant other or federal funding realize their dreams.

Page 1

Price: $2.00

The Spoiler, Part I

What’s it like to for a writer to be abducted by her characters and forced to live in her novels so that she will finish them?

AdPage 2

“Please,” begged the woman. Tears raced toward the nub of the gun. “Just take my car and leave me here. I won’t tell anyone.” “Quiet,” he snarled. He snapped the seatbelt over her and latched it tight then proceeded to buckle up himself. “Drive at the speed limit, and don’t do anything to raise suspicion,” ordered the hijacker. Applying steady pressure to the pedal, she cast a worried glance at the gun in his unsteady hand. Her eye took in his thin denim jacket, black tee-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots – perhaps fashionable for a young man his age but highly impractical for mid-winter in the central plains. “You’re cold,” she said, “Let me turn up the heat.” She reached up to adjust the temperature and vent controls on the dash with the hope of brushing up against the in-vehicle safety service call button. Clutching her by the wrist made her jump. “I’ll do it. You drive,” he said. She turned half of her attention to the road. The other half worked away at conjuring up possible scenarios, many of which frightened her to the core. Escape tactics tumbled through her mind like numbered ping-pong balls in a lottery machine. Should she remain silent or make conversation? Should she swerve the car over the lanes ever so subtly? Should she drive off road into the snow-filled ditch? Her thoughts were interrupted by his complaint.

He pulled the cloth covering his face over his chin to reveal the most terrifying and beautiful man she had ever seen.

“Got any other music besides this stuff? It’s depressing.” His stiff fingers toyed with the stereo buttons. “How do you switch to radio? I want to listen to the news.” He fiddled with the controls but only managed to change CD tracks. Moonlight Sonata strained against the tension inside the car. “Look, lady. I asked you how to switch to radio.” He raised the gun at her head. “I don’t have a radio,” Claire said sotto voce. “What?” “I don’t have a radio,” she shrieked. “Take it easy,” he assuaged. “I just asked.” The man sat back and set the gun in his lap. She noted the time on the dashboard clock: 7:12 a.m. She had pulled out of Denver before sunup to reach the Nebraska border by early light. Sporadic snow showers slowed down traffic. The sky’s lead belly hung low overhead.

He rubbed his cold fingers in front of the heat vent. “How is it you don’t have a radio?” he asked. “All cars have radios.”

“Not this one.” “Why not?” He pulled the cloth covering his

face down over his chin to reveal the most terrifying and beautiful man she had ever seen.

Marsha squeezed her eyes shut for the anxiety clawing at her insides and out of the incredulity that the man standing before her didn’t and couldn’t exist. He had never existed. She maundered her disbelief.

“Is this not your likeness, madam?” her captor pressed. Another man’s hand showed her a picture on the flap of a dust jacket. The book’s cover was then turned to reveal the svelte curves of the Edwardian script that spelled out the title, “The Spoiler.” The author bore the singular name, Gwynyvere. “Is this not your literary craft that bears your name?”

Her eyes widened with frightening realization: Wolfe Lafferty, her ex-lover and literary pilferer, had found her and was determined to vicariously torture her through these paid posers.

“Madam, I prithee, answer my query. Is that not your likeness and name etched on the paper of that book?” her abductor badgered.

Marsha closed her eyes and nodded. The tall thin man holding the book withdrew it from view and stepped off into the shadows to her right.

“At last, we have truly found you then.” The group of people murmured their relief. The man calling himself Raeph Leicester held up his hand to still their babble and resumed, “Do you realize how long and hard a search it has been to track you down? How many leagues traveled, how many oceans crossed?”

Her eyes reopened along with her mouth. “What do you want from me?” squeezed past the cloth clenched between her teeth. She writhed in her bonds. Tears glossed over her hazel eyes.

Raeph’s large gloved hands took her by the shoulders and gently pressed her against the cushions. He shushed her again in the manner a parent would a child fussing over having to wear uncomfortable clothes. Marsha stopped struggling and resorted to sobbing. He pulled out his handkerchief and daubed the moisture on her cheeks. “Patience, madam. Fret not so. We bid of you to hear us out. Then we shall be more than happy to set you free. First, we’d like for you to listen and hear the plight of those who have been abandoned and lost their way. The Widow Ames, Nathaniel, please step forth.” In a scene reminiscent of Rembrandt, the dramatic contrast of amber and black played across the faces of the woman and adolescent who came before her. The woman wore the plain dress and simple bonnet of the Quakers. Her straight thin blond hair hung over her right shoulder in a long braid. She had her hands on the shoulders of the boy of thirteen. He wore the uniform and cap of an American revolutionary soldier and held a drum attached to a strap draped over his left shoulder. The woman spoke. “Forgive us, madam, for we are but humble folk who’ve come a long way in search of answers concerning our fate that only thou may knowest. I wonder, madam, what will become of my beloved son who has joined the regiments in spite of his pacifistic upbringing. Canst thou say?”

Boundary Waters (continued from page 1)

“Yes, indeed, Mistress Gwynyvere,” piped up the boy. “I have joined the ranks with General Wayne to requite the felonious redskins for their brutal murder of my father. My mother can’t understand the rage that drives me to fight. Please if thou wouldst, explain it to her.” “Madam, what shall become of him? I have already lost my husband in a divine measure of cruel privation. What of my son then? Shall he also perish and thus leave me to fend alone? Only thou canst stay the troubles that best me and mine.” Raeph tipped his head and the woman receded back into the shadows with her boy. “Parfrey Von Huys, Mistress Gwynyvere,” the dandy sniffed and wiped his nose. “This is my sister, Prucilla.” He motioned to the demoiselle in the brocade dress. “I would take your hand if it were possible to most humbly beseech you to help us descry...” Parfrey swallowed hard to clear his throat of the emotion, “the whereabouts of my betrothed, Abigail; for she has vanished at the hands of that villainous rogue.” He stood up and pointed accusingly, snot rag in hand, at Raeph. “I warn you, sir.” Raeph set his hand on the handle of his pistol. “Although I have spared your traitorous hide in the past out of respect for our long history together, I may not be so inclined in this present circumstance.” “You would shoot me unarmed. For shame, sir! To think I was once your boyhood friend and shipmate on the Lexington during the War for Independence. How many times was I at your back, sir? It is not my fault I served well and received my discharge honorably while you chose the life of a scalawag.” He cast a disapproving glance at Raeph then resumed. “Not only has this man cut my purse at gunpoint but also my heart by stealing away my betrothed, Abigail Fletcher, whom he carried off to his lair. Where is she then, you villain?” “That will be enough, sir.” Raeph cautioned with a click of his sea pistol’s hammer. Parfrey continued his diatribe. “See how he behaves in a most ill-mannered dishonorable fashion? I once sought restitution for such on the field of honor. To my disappointment, he never did appear the morning of our duel. Years later, he went so far as to allege he had been dragooned into serving aboard a privateer’s vessel that very morning. I tend to believe that he did indeed set aboard that mercenary craft but of his own free will and inherent cowardice.” He looked pleadingly at Marsha. “Madam, I beseech thee to admonish this poltroon to return my beloved betrothed then meet his fate at the end of my sword.” “Enough!” Raeph barked. “You’ve said your piece, sir. Now return to your station. Next. Step forth.” One by one different characters laid their plights at the bound feet of their alleged creator. Marsha swooned in the swirl of confusion, disbelief, fear, the drug in her system and dehydration. Her only hope was to wake up in her bed in her room or not wake up at all.

ventures for the Average Woman

Fed up with work and a lackluster life, Katie longs to escape. In a series of graphic stories, she descends into one grueling adventure after another. Katie, be careful what you wish for.

The Adventures of Katie Madigan: Katie and the Errant Knight

Volume 1, Issue 1 Page 3

THIS CONTEMPORARY GRAPHIC THRILLER CONTINUES IN OUR UPCOMING ISSUES. SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Adventures for the Average Woman Page 4

The Majestic had certainly known happier, fitter times. The marquee “COM G SOO JUSTINE” and on the line below, “A MUS C L,” grinned like an old geezer minus a few hapless teeth.

The old theater had been built in 1863 when gold gushed from the rocky veins of Montana. Arna’s paternal great-great-grandfather, Armand Yutter I had arrived from Denmark to follow the glitter trail but saw real treasure-making to be had in the world of theater. He built it for more than a song but less than a show tune and turned it into a burlesque house. When that fashion had transitioned to vaudeville, Armand gave up the bustles and lace pantaloons for pinstripe suits, flapper fringe, and long hooked canes. The fare might have been bawdy but the performances were always electric. Many of the area performers of the day who started out at the Majestic eventually found their way onto stages like those of Ziegfeld in New York or into the silent films of D.W. Griffith in Los Angeles. Once or twice a decade, a great star like Sarah Bernhardt would shoot across the prairie and make a fiery landing on the Majestic’s creaking hardwood stage. The theater had known several incarnations from live stage to motion-picture house as it passed from generation to generation of Yutters until it finally fell into the lap of the latest and most reluctant heir, thirty-year old Arna.

The area of town where the Majestic held center stage was a rundown slum rife with hidden meth labs and seedy bordellos. Once the beating heart of the mining community, it had suffered a serious coronary. What remained standing in the way of buildings consisted of old brownstones with broken windows and vacated strip malls. Arna could understand poverty and how people are often forced to live in squalor, but to add drug addiction to the mix was beyond her ken. She remembered how she and her mother had to stay at a battered women’s shelter in an effort to escape her violent alcoholic father. She thought about Ed, the one man in her life who had started out as a classmate in carpentry at the New Boston Vocational and Technical College and wound up less and less employed on a regular basis because of his drinking. Eventually, it killed him, their son, and nearly her. Yet Arna would never resort to hating him, only his vice. Ed was a loving, caring lover and father. That’s all that mattered.

She shut the door of the Wrangler on such thoughts and crossed the street. Long shadows stretched away from the setting sun. The gutter displayed a colorful collection of broken soft and hard drink bottles. She held on tightly to the leather strap of her purse in case some desperate rascal should venture to try and wrest it from her. A surly tress escaped its binding under her black Stetson and fluttered in the wind. The sandy strand teased the dainty turned-up tip of her nose. It was early April when the Arctic chill was just considering heading back north. An icy gust goosed Arna to give her a shudder. She drew up the collar on the fringed buckskin jacket she wore over her lime-green jersey. Hailing from solid Nordic peasant stock, she was naturally insulated for wintry climes

with her round hips, chubby cheeks and pot belly. “A little extra padding never hurt,” her mother would say in an effort to quash feelings of inferiority to the tall and slim.

Her right hand curled its short calloused fingers with the chewed-off nails about a ring of keys and a clump of papers whose edges batted about in the breeze. She looked down to confirm the address, but didn’t seem to focus on it. Instead she searched for what little was left of her inner strength, the kind she needed to face the unknown. She let out a pendulous sigh and muttered, “Here goes.” Her stocky legs carried her up the cracked cement stairs to a pair of withered mahogany doors. Each bore tattered rain-streaked placards that read:

JUSTINE THROUGH THE AGES: AN ILLUSIONARY MUSICAL OPENING MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND There were no depictions of Justine or any of her

illusions. Only a weathered wooden Indian in faded war paint stood to greet her at the door with a raised right hand.

“How, Chief.” She grabbed the big brass handles of each door and pulled. They were locked. “Dammit.” She cussed under her breath. None of the keys fit. She turned to the stolid Indian in the carved headdress. “How, Chief. How do you get in this place? Strong and silent type, I see. Okay.” She let go a sigh and looked around for another point of entry. A squeaking noise drew her attention. Hanging above her was an old wooden sign flapping in the wind. In gothic script it read, “Paine & Pleasure Shoppe”

“Yep. I was warned by that lawyer fella this place had been taken over by pree-verts,” she said to herself. She looked up at the vast cloudless sky. “Uncle Armand, what would your mama say? I hope she’s givin’ yer filthy soul a hefty washin’ out with borax as we speak.”

She backed down the steps toward the sidewalk to gain perspective on the building. On the left side was a narrow alley. It was sealed off by a cyclone fence whose gate was padlocked. Again, not one of the keys would turn the lock. “Hell’s bells, you are sure makin’ this difficult for me, dear uncle.” Her stockiness didn’t hinder her ability to climb as much as her gamey left leg. After several painful attempts, she managed to hoist her way over the top. The pain of landing caused her to grit her small pearly teeth. “Why do you put me through this, you ol’ dead coot? What did I ever do to you?” she appealed and rubbed her throbbing limb.

At the back of the building, she espied a set of steps leading down to a small weather-beaten door. Across the narrow alleyway sat two big rusty dumpsters. She looked warily around her in this forbidding environment. The clank of a bottle rolling on asphalt startled her. Propped up like a broken puppet against the chain-link fence that demarcated the property line was a passed-out man who probably hadn’t seen a wash since the spigot was invented. She figured he must have climbed over seeking some privacy with his bottle of ripple. She didn’t care to find out and lit down the steps.

One by one, she jammed the keys into the lock. The fourth of six did the trick.

The clear Montana sky receded from the murky hollow of the corridor. The old door moved like a decrepit old man in a walker to close behind her. Her eyes strained in the dimness. The pointed toes of her russet leather boots padded quietly upon threadbare carpet tessellated with faint fleur-de-l’ys patterns. The pale light radiating from the art-deco hall sconces camouflaged the true colors of the carpet and wallpaper.

The hall was deserted. Arna halfway expected a tumbleweed to roll by. The dark stillness rippled with eerie electronic sounds reverberating through the decaying plaster and wooden beams above her. She followed its trancelike beckoning to a partially opened door at the top of a set of stairs at the end of the hall. An unlit “exit” sign hung above. Arna drew herself up the narrow staircase.

The drifting tones picked up in volume. To Arna it sounded like maracas playing to jets passing overhead. Suddenly, a high-pitched shriek interrupted the electronic organa. She scrambled to the door at the top of the stairs. The toe of her left boot caught on an upturned corner of carpet at the threshold. She stumbled out and over coils of rope and lengths of chain that were lying about the floor; she tumbled belly-down head on into a stampede of dancing feet rocking a stage filled with horrors.

“Five, six, seven, eight,” called out a brassy tenor. The floorboards thundered beneath twenty pairs of clopping shoes.

Arna covered her head with her arms to keep from getting kicked in the face. From beneath the brim of her Stetson, she peeked with the corner of her eye. A forest of multicolored legs tripped over and around her. The music stopped. The chorus line broke into confused shouting. She looked up. High above her on a wooden scaffold reminiscent of Old West justice was a woman clad in a black leotard. She was struggling in a set of manacles about her wrists and ankles. Heavy chains wound around and weighted her body. She was standing on a trap door with a thick rope about her neck. A man dressed in black leather leggings, leather wrist bands, and a black hood stood with his hands poised on a lever.

Arna’s insulated small-town upbringing could not have prepared her for the sordid act being perpetrated before her eyes. She’d read about lynchings in tenth-grade social studies, but those people back then where ignorant intolerant brutes who picked on people just for having a different skin color. What sort of sick monsters were these in the here-and-now to string up a woman?

“Oh, my Lord! Don’t !” Arna yelled and scrambled to her knees.

The woman on the scaffold tilted back her head and yelled, “Vive la Revolution!” With that, the man jerked the lever. The trap door swung wide and dropped its charge.

Order your copy of AFTAW now!

Mystery of the Majestic, Part I

An impoverished truck-stop waitress inherits a rundown burlesque house in a dying Montana mining town. Can she beat the greedy land developers and bizarre illusionists performing there to find its hidden treasures?

Seeking your own adventure

but too bogged down to go out and live one? Let us write one for you using your name and specific details of your life. Just send a letter or email with the adventure tale you’ve chosen from our repertoire. Your personal “novelette” will be creatively printed and bound with your portrait on the cover. Illustrations are optional and cost extra. Prices start at $50 for basic name-insert in vanilla cover and vary depending on amount of personal detail you wish to include in the story. We also write memoirs (see book cover and illustration below] with digitally-enhanced family photos. For more information, please contact Fantom Scrivner at ideagems@aol.com or call (202) -746 - 5160.

Here’s a sample of a full-page ad you can place for your product, service, or

event.

More BOILERPLATE SPECIALS for your

personal novelette: Magic Quest - Wizards and dragons are not just for

children. You too can fly across leagues and conjure spells in order to solve the mystery of a lost child who harbors a powerful secret.

Cutlass Moon - you’ve won a fantasy cruise with the movie hunk of your dreams. The nightmare begins when you are shipwrecked in s storm on the jungle coast of a war-torn banana republic. Only you can save the day and lead the way to safety.

Willing Spirits - you live in a haunted house and seek the help of professional paranormal investigators. What will you do with all the ghosts and the sexy ghost hunter hired to chase them?

Let us know any special requests for stories — even “saucy” ones. We’re not shy! Contact Fantom Scrivner at ideagems@aol.com or: IDEAGEMS 1110 Bonifant Street, Suite 600 Silver Spring, MD 20910

IDEAGEMS ®

Volume 1, Issue 1

Page 5

Illustration from “Boundary Waters”

What does it take for a neglected housewife to get her husband to notice her on their Silver Anniversary? Silver Bows, Part I

On Saturday, she asked Harv to help her move

the trunk to their bedroom. When he asked why, she explained she wanted to put it in a boudoir setting to take digital pictures before posting it on an online auction. When he commented how no one in their right mind would buy a furnishing so godawfully, glaringly red, she gave him that face she knew would made him cringe and do as she asked. He grumbled about his back then called up Jake to come by and help carry the ghastly trunk up the stairs of the split-level tract house into their bedroom.

Jake Morgenstern was their tenant. To make a little extra on the side, Harv thought it would be a good idea to rent out the basement once the boys had moved out. The story of how Jake wound up being the likely candidate remained a jumble in Viv’s mind. She heard Harv had met him in a bar somewhere, that Jake explained how he was an unemployed veteran living on disability for a war injury, and that Jake could certainly be useful doing odd jobs to keep up the place. He’d been living downstairs for six months and proved to be a pleasant, respectful young man. Forty-five year old Viv thought she heard him say he was twenty-nine.

The trunk in place, Sunday began in the usual

Cytheria Howell, Author and Editor-in-chief answers questions about AFTAW. Interview with Cytheria

his plump wing as a lifestyle mentor. Viv wondered what the two men spent hours

talking about. Harv could hardly entertain a two-minute conversation with her at any given time. Miffed, she turned away from the scene to raid a bottle of Vodka from the liquor cabinet. Using a store-bought mix, she brewed up and sucked down three Bloody Maries. When the buzz was just right, she penned a note on a tablet atop the kitchen table. It read: “Your Silver Anniversary gift awaits you in the bedroom, my love. Tell Jake to go then come and enjoy the surprise I have in store.” She proceeded upstairs to the bedroom to set up the extravaganza.

The cherry red trunk stood before her. She took the longest and widest of the silver sashes and draped it from the top of the trunk and down over the lid. In the center she fastened a large bow and pinned on a cardboard tag printed in computer-generated Edwardian Script: “For my One and true Love on Our Anniversary. Don’t Wait to Open.” Dangling from the end of the bow was a small silver key.

To read the rest of this sexy story subscribe to AFTAW today!

fashion. Harv got up and went for his five-minute jog to try and maintain the fifty extra pounds he’d gained over the past two decades. He finished in time to snarf down Viv’s breakfast of French roast coffee and oatmeal bars. Then he worked out on the weight machine in the rec room until he barely broke a second sweat. By ten a. m., he was out in the driveway lovingly lathering turtle wax over the sleek airfoil frame of his red Corvette. Like suburban clockwork, Jake popped out of the basement to split up a six-pack, talk sports and ogle the ritual.

While doing the breakfast cleanup, Viv stared out the kitchen window and marveled at the two men sharing their common interests with enviable intimacy. Her bulging hubby with wisps of blonde thinly coating his pale pate had twenty-one years on Jake, their swinging single, gym-trim tenant with his chiseled features and full head of lavish chestnut hair. Despite his superior youth, strength and attractiveness, Jake admired Harv for achieving the Dream by owning a home, putting kids through college, having a devoted wife and a bright red Corvette – everything a God-fearing, sports-loving, hard-working American guy wanted in life. By his third beer, Harv had set a soapy arm about Jake’s pumped-up shoulders as though to take him under

Adventures for the Average Woman Page 6

What are your hopes and goals for AFTAW? I hope AFTAW becomes a magic chariot to carry women’s tales of adventure and imagination to readers in need of rescue from dull routines and grim current events. Our goal is to showcase the works of creative, imaginative women who can’t seem to get a fair shake from snooty literary publishers. We aren’t looking for emulators of Shakespeare here. We just want entertaining stories.Who is Cytheria Howell? I am a female Cyrano de Bergerac, a talented alter-ego to an author who doesn’t have enough confidence in her abilities to present herself to the public. I have an intriguing name and no qualms. Cytheria is such an unusual name. Is there a story behind it? Cytheria is another name for the ancient Greek and Roman goddess of love. It appears in the Homeric Hymns: “I will sing to Cyprian Cytheria, who gives kind gifts to mortals.” Do you think AFTAW is a kind gift? It’s not so much a gift as a source of fun for readers, but they will have to pay a subscription if they want to find out how our stories end.

Can you explain AFTAW’s format? AFTAW publishes serial stories and excerpts from novels and graphic novels. We hope to garner a readership devoted to following our stories. We also hope readers might even go so far as to order the books being showcased. Right now the publication seems pretty spare — only eight pages. Will future issues pad out? Gosh, I hope so. I’d love to see this brainchild fully incarnated as a sixty-page slick with stories, artwork, articles, personals, even a column to address fan mail. Given our budget of zilch at the moment, we have to make due. We’re only asking $2.00 an issue or $15.00 for twelve issues, which doesn’t even cover printing and mailing costs. We’re donating our time, talent, and what little money we have to make it happen because we think it’s a cool concept. Until we get enough subscribers, contributing writers and sponsors, however, I’m afraid our issues will remain fashionably thin — but alluring. What will be AFTAW’s recipe for success? Like brewing a cup of delicious spiced tea, we take women-centered adventure, steep it in roiling romance, add a dollop of nail-biting suspense with just a tiny dash of kinkiness.

What was your inspiration for AFTAW? My inspiration stems from frustration — frustration over being rejected by other publishers, frustration over doing unfulfilling jobs simply to pay bills, frustration about being a woman endowed with a vivid imagination and a modicum of talent but unable to do anything with it. “… romance is not dead. It just needs a little

mouth-to-mouth.”

Why have you chosen adventure stories as the focus of your literary review? First off, I resent the term “literary review.” AFTAW is not concerned with nose-in-the-air creative pretense. We just want to entertain. You know, help readers pass the time on the bus, train or in the car pool on their long boring commute to work. They can read our rag during a lunch break or while standing in line at the bank. People’s lives are dreary enough what with the daily grind and the grim headlines they see in the papers. I want to get the juices of their imaginations going, fill the tedious hours with fantasy, and remind the average reader that romance is not dead. It just needs a little mouth-to-mouth.

A cross-dressing vampire and a warm-blooded woman try to survive in a world ruled by the corporate undead out to cull the human herd. Neomodern Nosferatu,

Part I

Women use computers too! Check

out these services.

got you covered, doll. Follow me.” He moved to unlatch the door.

She sniffled to regained composure. “You’re not going out with me dressed like that, are you?” She pointed to his wig, gown, and high heels. “I mean, won’t it seem odd given how you expect us to appear out there?”

“Yes, I see what you mean.” He scanned the shadows. “Hold the princess phone. I think I can resolve the matter. I see some costumes way in the back.” He disappeared silently into the penumbra.

Gina squinted. “How can you see anything in here?”

“Excellent night vision.” When he reappeared, he bore a canvas pouch stuffed with garments and wore a baggy striped suit. “It was either this or Elizabethan,” he explained.

“What about shoes?” Gina pointed out. She heard him rummage around and saw him step out in a pair of paint-splashed workbooks.

Gina giggled. “Oh, and I suppose you’re dressed like a

Versace model.” He approached her and adjusted the lapels of her tattered and soiled jacket. “I may not be willing to make you viciously immortal, but I can certainly make you more fashionable. Shall we? Oh, one moment. I nearly forgot.” He looked around to find his black sequence purse. He reached in and pulled out an item that he slipped into his mouth.

“What’s that?” Gina asked. “Fake teeth,” he lisped. Gina raised her eyebrows in a questioning

look. (continued on page 8)

Gina balked. “But if I go where there are no vampires then I won’t exactly be needing your help, now will I?”

“I hate to pop that idea bubble over your grungy little cartoon head but vampires are everywhere. Our numbers have grown since Os have sanitized our image in the media, made us more appealing, cute and cuddly even.” He lightly pinched her cheek then backed away to wax theatric. “But with an increase in population comes the need to cull the herd. Enter the harpoon hunters. And when the pressure is on, the hunted become more desperate to survive and add to their ranks. Those fanged beyotches have marked you either for a meal or a conversion, baby, so unless you want to undergo a hardcore manicure....” He reached down to pick up a dead vampirella’s severed finger from the floor and held it up in the pale window glow. “God, who does their nails? Ace Hardware?”

Gina bit her knuckle and squeezed her eyes closed to shut out the image.

He tossed the grim appendage aside and wiped the gore from his hands. “So, do we have a deal -- at least for tonight?”

“Okay, deal!” Gina blurted. “Until you get me home safe and bite-free. Then we’ll see.”

“How far is it? Can we make it before sunrise?” He glanced worriedly out the window.

“Well, the buses aren’t running now. I suppose it’s a good forty-minute walk.”

“Walk? Heathen’s no, child. Not on these tired dogs. We’ll grab a cab.”

Gina balked. “Oh, God. Where’s my purse?” Like a blind woman she groped the darkness. “I must have dropped it in the chase. Now, I don’t even have money for bus fare.” The tears began to roll.

He cupped her moist cheek in his sere palm. “I’ve

The flamboyant vampire put his hands on her trembling shoulders. “Aw, sweetie, don’t cry. Maybe I can help. In fact, maybe we can help each other.”

Gina wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “How?”

“Well, you need protection from those vampirellas, and I need protection from the Os.”

“So?” “So, maybe we can become the first neomod odd

couple, you know, I pose as your boyfriend, you as my girlfriend.” He took her small hand in his and softly stroked it. “Only I’m a vampire and you’re an Ordinary. I’m gay and you’re straight. At least I assume you’re straight given your sheer terror of being bitten by a lesbovamp. I wonder, was it the fear of lesbianism that made you run or living the life as a bloodsucking immortal?” He grinned and bared his fangs.

“Both.” Gina tried snatching her hand back but found it securely gripped. “What’s neomod?”

“Neomodern, dearie. Postmodern is très très passé. Now, it’s a brave new modernity where ancient sodomy laws are being resurrected in an effort to dash any and all prospect of legally sanctioned gay marriage, where women can still work twice as hard for half the pay as men, and macho neocons can freely and without shame cozy up to wimpy bleeding-nosed liberals in their fight to erase vampires from the planet.

“Imagine it,” he continued. He curled her small fingers inside his. “We walk hand in hand down the dark dangerous streets and keep the other from harm’s way in such a world. Lesbovamps won’t descend on you in the company of a man, especially a vampire man. Os will see you with me, think I’m as straight and boringly ordinary as they, and therefore won’t bash in my skull or perforate my aorta. How perfectly romantic.”

“How would we make that work? I don’t know where you live. I don’t even know your name.”

“My name’s Clive, and all I need is a dark closet during daylight hours.” He set a finger under her chin and pushed it up. “What do you say, hmm?”

“I…,” Gina squeaked as though her jaw needed oiling. “I’m Gina.”

“Enchanté, Gina.” His lips softly pressed the back of her hand.

She gasped and jerked it away. “What? I told you I’m not the sort to bleed a

woman dry.” “I don’t know,” she wavered. “Maybe I should

just pack up and leave this town. Start somewhere new and vampire-free.”

“Why not go together? I could use a fresh start with fresh material,” he suggested. p

Volume 1, Issue 1

To place an ad with our ublication, contact Laurie

Notch at: (202) – 746 - 5160.

Host of IDEAGEMS

Ask about our franchising options!

Page 7

“Gina, I think this is the beginning of

Your name and mailing address will appear here as soon as you subscribe! Fill out and mail in the inserted coupon along with your check or money order for $2.00 for a single issue or $15.00 for twelve issues. AFTAW thanks you for your support (as well as for paying for the stamp).

Check out more at www.ideagems.com

AFTAW at IDEAGEMS 1110 Bonifant Street, Suite 600 Silver Spring, MD 20910

Boldly go wherever your imagination takes you… Even if it’s to embarrassingly naughty places you only dare read about while sitting in the walk-in closet with the light on… Or off.

Neomodern Nosferatu (continued from page 7) a beautifully bizarre relationship.”

PLACE YOUR AD HERE

“What? You Os wear fake fangs at Halloween and fancy dress balls,” he awkwardly annunciated.

“But why do you need fake teeth?” Frustrated with trying to articulate against the plastic impediment, he pulled it out. “In spite of popular myth as touted by Hollywood, our fangs do not retract then re-extend. They are permanently in place. I use these to keep O suspicion down. They see my elongated bicuspids and,” he made the whooshing sound of a fleet arrow, “vampooned!”

He cast a worrisome glance at the mutilated door then slid the prosthesis back into his mouth. “How do I look?” He flashed his plastic smile.

“A little long in the tooth, but passable,” Gina remarked.

Fill out this coupon and mail it in with a check or money order for $2.00 an issue or $15 for 12 issues to subscribe. Make checks payable to IDEAGEMS PUBLICATIONS.

me ______________________________________________________ Na

dress____________________________________________________ Ad

ty ______________________________________________________ Ci State______________________ Zip ____________________

“It’s hard to speak, so if we meet up with any Os, you do the talking and I’ll just smile, okay?” He adjusted the fake teeth on his denture with his tongue and flashed a corny grin.

“You have a little, uh…,” she made a wiping motion along her jowls.

He ran the dusty sleeve of the coat over his mouth. “How’s that?”

“Less bloody, more human.” “How quaint.” He tousled his flattened hair to

release its natural wave. “Maybe you should give me that to carry.” Knitting his brow, he looked down at where she

was pointing then handed her the purse. The door swung open heavily with the weight of

the impaled vampiress. Clive’s long fingers twined around Gina’s right hand and roped her along

out the door, past the gore, and into the alley. “Your skin is so cold,” she noted. “But it’s early

summer.” “Poor circulation, dearie. Had it all my

afterlife.” My ankles swell something awful during my

period, and I got varicose veins,” Gina commiserated.

“Gina, I think this is the beginning of a beautifully bizarre friendship.” The two hunted souls strolled out into the night with the hope that each had found a personal savior in a foreboding neomod world.

Order your copy of AFTAW today!

Adventures for the Average Woman Page 8