The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Tentative cover. Thoughts?

is in sight--and it's not a freight train coming from the other direction. At least, I hope not. Deeds of Mercy: Book Three of the Mark Taylor Series is almost done. I've sent out the first 2/3s to betas already and so far, the feedback has been very good. If No Good Deed was your favorite of the two books so far, then you'll be happy to know that Deeds of Mercy is more like that book than March Into Hell. I did try to capture one aspect of that book though. I didn't really tell the betas what I was going for, but here's a comment from one of them:


"In DOM you have recaptured a lot of the injustice of NGD but you have added to it the loneliness and frustration of MIH."


Don't worry though, I promise it's not unrelenting misery for Mark, but there's enough if you like that aspect. I also brought back some characters from No Good Deed that I think readers will like.


You might be wondering where I came up with the title. I actually wanted The Quality of Mercy, from a quote in The Merchants of Venice, but it's already fairly popular. As I read through the whole excerpt though, I realized that the end of the scene ends with Deeds of Mercy. Here's a dissection of the scene according to some internet sites--yeah, I'm not literary enough to figure it out on my own, but once it's explained, the light bulb went off in my head. 

The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's, When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.

 Here's the explanation: 

Portia replies that compulsion is precisely contrary to the spirit of mercy, which is not "strain'd" (forced). Only because mercy is voluntary—because it mitigates the compulsions of the literal law—is it true mercy.

 It's the true mercy--the rendering of the deeds of mercy--that I'm trying to capture in Deeds of Mercy and I was thrilled to see that phrase. 

I'm crossing my fingers that I'll have the book uploaded in a month or so. In the meantime, if you are interested, I've added a few short excerpts from the book. I chose these to give the flavor of the book, but to not give away too much of the plot. I don't know how they'll come across out of context, so I'd love to hear what others think.


From chapter one  here's one I'm not going to explain. *grin* : 

As Mark coughed and sputtered, it crossed his mind that he needed new friends since at least two of them were familiar with the finer points of water-boarding.

The next one involves Dan. He's Jessie's partner in the CPD and he made appearances in both the previous books in the series:

Mark shoved out of the chair, arms spread. "Damn it! What do you want me to do? Manufacture evidence?" He gestured toward his computer. “Create some images with my graphics program? Or should I just say I planted the bomb so that somebody will go investigate?" He turned away in disgust and vented his anger by slamming shut an open drawer of the filing cabinet.

"Did you?" 

Mark glared over his shoulder. "Get the hell out." 

Dan stood and shrugged. "Look at it from my angle. I can't go to the transit authority with some half-assed claim that a guy dreamed a train would blow up this afternoon. Naturally they're going to want details. What train? What time? How do you know? How credible is the informant? And to tell the truth, Mark, your history is going to come back to bite you in the ass when someone looks it up." 

 "Yeah. I get it. I have no credibility. Sorry I wasted your time." The apology tasted bitter on his tongue.

And finally, here's one from Jim's point of view. I'm half-tempted to give Jim his own series. What do you think? Anyway, he's a main character in this book too.

What he was doing could cost him his career or worse, and his common sense screamed at Jim to take Mark into official custody. All his life, he’d done things by the book and for the most part, that strategy worked for him. This one time, he closed his ears to the pleading of his common sense and listened to his gut. The damn book didn’t have a chapter that dealt with guys who could see the future. Jim supposed one day he’d be an expert and could write that chapter, but until then, he was forced to improvise.