Lucifer's Odyssey by Rex Jameson

Kindle Price: $3.99
Available from: Amazon
Authors Website: therexfiles.blogspot.com




Lucifer languishes in an earthly prison, awaiting the apocalypse that will finally free him after 200,000 years. Before breaking loose, he discovers that the armageddom he set in motion will destroy the capital of Chaos, his home universe.

He travels back to Chaos and stumbles upon a bloody civil war devastating his homeland. The realm’s magic wielders are firmly under the control of a rival clan, and without their protection, Lucifer's family is in mortal peril. As old demon clan rivalries blossom and a new hostile universe expands across the known multiverse, Lucifer is faced with not only protecting Chaos from annihilation but also saving his rightful place on the throne.

Bio:

Rex Jameson is my pseudonym for speculative fiction. The name is derived from my great uncle, who was a journalist of good repute. He died recently, and his biting wit and charm in everything he did inspired me to publish fiction. I can only hope to entertain others half as well as he did.

Excerpt

Chapter 3 – The Heist

Sariel paid little attention to his brother pacing around the corridor. Lucifer could get as angry as he wanted, but Sariel had to know the truth. Unlike the rest of his body, Sariel’s wings could be at the Council Archives in seconds.

“Are you listening to me?” Lucifer asked.

“No. I’m busy. Shut up for a second.”

Lucifer’s dark mutterings faded into the background as Sariel rummaged through bookshelves in a library. This particular archive was inside of the Chaos Primal, which gave Sariel ready access from almost anywhere in any dimension.

“Assassination… Goblin Realm…” Sariel mumbled as he passed over parchments and orbs.

“Azazel is dying,” Lucifer reminded him. “Stop whatever you are doing and think.”

Sariel’s disappointment came through him in the form of a deep sigh. He would have to look for the viewing orb later.

“What about a space shuttle?” Lucifer asked. “We could pump all the air out of it. Our lungs would certainly stand the pressure.”

Any heist plan immediately got Sariel’s attention, but there was a major problem. They had tried this before in the 1960s and lost one of their closest guards, Beelzebub, in the process. Despite the human successes with busting through the atmosphere, the demons never tried to escape in a manmade spacecraft again. They had decided to wait out the apocalypse.

Lucifer appeared to see the concern on Sariel’s face. “They’ve gotten better. There hasn’t been a major catastrophe in years.”

Sariel shook his head. “That’s not the point. We have no idea if Beelzebub being in the cockpit caused that catastrophe, or if it was a mechanical failure. The Ruskies destroyed all evidence of the launch before the debris even touched down on Earth. If we just wait a couple of years, the black holes will suck out the atmosphere, and we should be able to lift off from the back of the planet in time to avoid the event horizon.”

“It has always been a shaky plan, brother, and Azazel doesn’t have two years.”

“Don’t let me die here,” Azazel groaned, looking up from his bloody bed of gore on the floor.

“I’ll be right back,” Lucifer said, as he pushed himself through the doorway and back into the warehouse. He returned to the corridor with the damp towel that Azazel had tossed him and wrapped it around Azazel’s torso to cover the wounds. He pushed both hands down on the wounded demon’s chest.

“Do you have a better option?” Lucifer asked Sariel.

“No.”

“Then let’s hijack a shuttle launch.”

“Why the hell not? Should be exciting!”

Lucifer shook his head and looked at Azazel, who choked on some blood as he laughed.

“There’s one set for tomorrow at Cape Canaveral in Florida,” Lucifer said. “Might be our last chance to target a fully fueled one for several months.”

“I’ll get some more towels for Azazel,” Sariel said. “Should we bother packing?”

He knew the answer before he even asked the question. He looked through the warehouse doorway at the accumulated resources he and his brother had acquired over thousands of years of playing the markets. Millions of dollars of wealth in just this room alone. Oh well. It was just a game to bide their time here anyway. Beating humans at anything wasn’t much of a challenge. Bigger games were afoot in Alurabum, the capital of Chaos, and this was their chance to finally get back home.


Interview with Rex Jameson

What will readers like about your book?

Speculative fiction readers will love the diverse universes and themes that pervade this novel. Lucifer's Odyssey tackles some lofty concepts including technological impacts on mankind's future, our path to immortality, and how we'll have to deal with the pervasiveness of sensory inputs that will essentially render us omniscient or at the very least omnipresent.


Why did you self publish?

I love the idea of having control over my work. I submitted to three to four agents before I found Joe Konrath's blog and the Kindleboard Writer's Cafe, and I haven't looked back since. Traditional publishing is certainly an option for brand building, but for my first series, I am extremely happy with the idea of controlling my pricing, advertising, etc. I plan to continue the next two books of the series as self published works.


What is your writing process?

My writing process isn't finalized yet. For this book, everything started as a short story, and I thought about it from time-to-time for 10 years. When I went back to college, philosophical and scientific ideas melded into a set of themes that I wanted to express. From there, I planned out a story arc for at least one book. When I knew I wanted to write a series, I planned the story arcs for the next two books in advance. Trying to retrofit story arcs seemed like too daunting of a task for me to write the first book and simply hope for the best. I'm sure I'll have to do redo some of it anyway, but the way I have the series laid out, readers will hopefully have crafted "Aha" moments scattered throughout.


How long does it take you to write your first draft?

Depends on what you consider the start of my writing process. This novel began as a short story ten years ago written through the perspective of an angel reincarnated on Earth. It sat on my computer for a decade until I was in grad school. I dusted it off shortly after my uncle died, and within six months, the rest of the story fell into place. The first draft didn't include a lot of the arcs that I wanted to bind together in the other two novels. If you want to count that in the writing process, the story drafting took about nine months total, including a substantive edit though.


What inspired you to write this particular story?

Even as a kid, I always wanted to know the origin story behind Lucifer and Jehovah and all those beautiful angels in paintings. When my parents couldn't give me an adequate one, I created my own and freely improvised commonly known facts under the guise that the stories we are told are slight exaggerations or at best hazy reinterpretations of true events.

After the novelty of an origin story wore off though, the main theme of humanity's future and involvement in a universe of billions of galaxies, countless stars, and even more abundant planets lit a fire under me. The novel offers philosophic possibilities that are manifested in the various races and groups of immortals, and hopefully, all of this is woven into an interesting, engaging and extremely fun story.