This week, we're welcoming author William Burton McCormick, whose latest title is Lenin's Harem. Join us on Sunday, when Bill will offer a free copy of the book to a lucky blog visitor. Here's the blurb:
Lenin’s
Harem is the
story of Wiktor Rooks, a ruined aristocrat swept up in
the chaos of World War I, who by twist of fate finds himself a member of the
elite guard of the Russian Revolution, a group of Latvian soldiers known
colloquially as “Lenin’s Harem” for their loyalty to the Bolshevik cause. Concealing
his aristocratic past from his enemies, Wiktor hides in plain sight from his
enemies while the
Russian Empire crumbles around him. But where does he go when the
revolutionaries win?
“Broad, ambitious, and plenty good.”- The Providence Sunday Journal
**An Excerpt from
Lenin’s Harem**
1905
Courland
(Governorate of
the Russian Empire)
The stone made a spider-web crack in the glass top of
the table, then thudded across the floorboards until it found quieter grounds
atop the rug near my desk. I stood back,
away from the window. Somewhere a woman
was screaming. Mother? Anne?
No, it was the servant Erene in the entrance way, she had dropped the
tray, a flat clang from the platter ringing through the room, the coffee cups
in pieces, a puddle of steaming brown liquid seeping over the floor.
Staccato heart in
my ears, I sprinted to the stairwell. At
their base, near the door, I spied Anne, her arms locked around Mother whose
face had turned grey as her hair.
‘What has
happened?’ my own voice high and girlish with panic.
Our mother’s
words went unheard. Erene passed me on
the stairs so quickly that she knocked me down.
I fell to my knees, holding the banister to keep from falling farther.
Erene’s words
turned fear to stark terror: ‘We’re on fire.
They’ve set the house on fire!’ She
looked to Anne, then back to Mother.
‘Where’s the Master? Mistresses
where’s the Master?’ With each ‘M’ her voice grew shriller.
Anne
shouted: ‘Out. We need to get out.’
Erene’s reply was
incomprehensible, syllables merging, rising to a scream. My sister cut her
off: ‘We must go.’
‘They’ll kill
us. They will.’ A quick and panicked
utterance, it was not my mother’s voice, foreign and cracking, though it came
from her lips.
Somewhere off in
the hall came the chiming of falling glass. ‘Who will kill us?’ I gasped, hands
shaking on the banister. What bandits,
what army of invaders had found its way into our lands?
My head throbbed
as I hurried down the stairs. At the
bottom the heat was that of the kiln, my eyes quickly tearing, black clouds
caressing the ceiling.
This could not be
happening.
A group of
servant girls, cries like seagulls on the Libau docks, ran past and huddled
about Erene. She escaped them, pressed
up against the door. ‘We must leave
Mistresses, the smoke is growing worse.’
Mother jerked her
head around. ‘Where’s Wiktor? Where’s my baby?’
‘Here Mama.’ I
rushed to embrace her.
‘We must go,
Mother!’ Anne pleaded.
‘No, not until we
find Rudolf. He was upstairs.’ Mother released me, tried to climb the steps,
but Anne and Erene pulled her from the stairwell, their calls fading in the
choking fumes, cries turning to gravely wheezes.
The thickening
billows were over-powering. The insides
of my throat cracking, I could no longer hold my breath, inhaled the searing
clouds, my body rejecting each gasp in a spasm of painful coughs. Whoever was
outside, whatever band of marauders ransacked our land was the lesser
evil. They might kill us, staying inside
certainly would.
Yet, even
suffocating, near blinded, I hesitated. What might they do to Mother, to Anne,
if we opened that door? It failed my young sense of justice. Our family had never hurt anyone, why should
they want to harm us? This must be a
mistake, some grievance against the wrong victims.
While I cowered
at the door, the decision was made for me.
The servant girls panicked, and despite Mother’s command, they broke
open the door and fled out into the night.
If the smoke retreated momentarily from the blast of winter air,
somewhere close within this new breath fed the flames. The vengeful gloom
returned, stronger, doubly thick, carrying the scorching heat of its
source. It burned, the hairs on my arms
beginning to glow like embers.
Anne pulled our
screaming mother out into the yard, arms still locked about each other they
collapsed into the snow. Cries again and
again for Father, nowhere to be seen. Please,
God, let him be outside the house.
Head dizzy, I stumbled to a knee in the ice, finally saw them, the
enemy.
An army in
rags. No successor to Napoleon, no
endless hordes of Huns, it was nothing but a group of farmers. No uniforms, no flags, just a bunch of people
in peasants’ clothes. The men, hundreds of them, carried shovels, rifles,
bricks and stones. Many shook torches in
their hands. They had a greasy, dirty
look to them, as if they were children of the hellish atmosphere that had just
released us. There was no roar, no great
swell of sound. Most stood there
silently, letting a few do all the shouting. They screamed fierce words, most
too distorted to understand. But I
caught on in their peasant Lettish:
Degt. Burn.
Connect with William Burton McCormick
William Burton McCormick was born in
Maryland and raised in Nevada. He holds a
degree in Ancient Studies from Brown University and an MA in Novel Writing from
the University of Manchester. His historical mini-thrillers have appeared or
are forthcoming in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Sherlock
Holmes Mystery Magazine and the anthology “Blood Promises and Other
Commitments.” A world traveler, William has lived in seven countries including
three years spent in Latvia and Russia to research and write his debut novel
“Lenin’s Harem.”
“McCormick takes us inside lives
that would otherwise be not simply invisible to us but unimaginable." --Suzannah Dunn, author of “The Queen of Subtleties.”
