#SaturdaySpotlight is on David Russell & Pearlman!

Good Morning and Happy Easter Weekend!

Today's guest visited last month so please welcome David Russell back with his book, Pearlman. As we mentioned in David's last visit, although the excerpt is mild, David writes erotic romance so be advised before you buy. Take it away Dave....

This was inspired by a passage in the Spanish epic poem La Araucana, which I have translated. In the original story, a Spanish soldier, after a battle, is accosted by an Indian woman who asks him to lead her to her husband's body, to pay her last respects. In the original story, she disappears. In Pearlman the hero is contemporary, but he does time and space travel to those legendary times, and the woman turns out to be Auchimalgen, the Araucanian Moon Goddess. She seduces and enlightens him. There is a backdrop of Chile, with its incredibly volatile ecosphere and long history of protracted conflict. This story combines romance with sci-fi and time travel.

Excerpt:     Her skill in undoing my armour was worthy of any trained white man. “We are supremely adaptable; we learn avidly from those we observe and oppose”, she whispered, her teeth gleaming in her smile. As I saw the chain mail and the cuirass lying there, discarded, I saw that the rust had all disappeared.

     Deft hands tenderly peeled my sweat-ridden leather and cotton; it was lovely to be nursed without immediate wounds to distract from the exquisite sensations.

     “You must be proud of your exertions!” she said. The power in her words was akin to a duelling challenge. (The time warp flashed me into my happy collaboration with that beautiful fitness trainer, when I imagined that lithe, toned form excelling itself at the Olympic High Jump as her prelude to our delicious consummation.)

     I looked up towards her breasts, to see the matching metal, discs, chains, bangles – an array of gold, silver and jade; I sensed their resilience beneath their cover. She read my response with total ease; with a radiant smile, she whispered “do as you have been done by.”

     My hands trembled a little as I delicately negotiated the pins and clasps, but I succeeded in making a harmonious pattern of them, like a crown at the head of my discarded armour. It was good to have gained intimate knowledge of those metallic treasures in the museums.

     The face of a full moon, reciprocating its radiation on Tegualda’s face and eyes, beamed its glittering reflections, as if casting off a diaphanous robe, to reveal the perfect body of its illuminated rocks, bouncing back and forth around the elaborated grid of our variegated metalwork – steel, bronze, silver and gold – its luminosity almost suggesting that it would all come to life, radiant in the flames of their smelting, almost as two armies facing each other. In turn, the beams flooded our faces, giving an external flourish to our luminous vibrancy charged from within. 

    She took my hand, and made it caress her sealskin robe: “please do the honours”. I lifted it at the bottom. My hands reached up inside it until they could feel her firm but still slender waist. Repeating my earlier gesture, she raised her arms in surrender and conquest, the robe clouding into a transient veil over her noble features.

    Then Tegualda cast off her gleaming white cotton camisera for me with all the challenging flourish of a toreador. She tamed me and fired me simultaneously with her lovely self-revelation.

      The walls of my time-capsule were fractured. There glistened across the world, ricocheted back and forth across the centuries a composite of the world’s beauties, celebrated in poetry and song, painting and sculpture, melted, distilled and poured into one vibrant, impassioned, soul-suffused body. Egyptian and Grecian statues and mural figures melted into an array of Hollywood dream sublimities deeply embedded in my memory. This was a spiritual earthquake, embracing all history and culture, the distilled essence of all artistic striving poured into one giant goblet.

What People are Saying about Pearlman....

"Pearlman" by David Russell is an inspired work. It is fun to read, stimulates unconventional approaches to knowledge and scientific inquiry, and is written in language that is a feast for the senses."

Born 1940. Resident in UK. Writer of poetry, criticism, speculative fiction and romance. Poetry Collection Prickling Counterpoints (1998). Several poems published in Forward Press anthologies, and in International Times. Editor of Poetry Express Newsletter. Speculative fiction works High Wired On and Rock Bottom. Romance publications Self's Blossom, Explorations, Further Explorations, Therapy Rapture and Darlene. I am also a guitarist/singer-songwriter. My main CD albums are Bacteria Shrapnel and Kaleidoscope Concentrate; I have several tracks on YouTube. Find out more about David and his other books by visiting his GoodReads page and get your copy of Pearlman at Amazon or Amazon UK.

Hope you enjoyed David's visit and peek into his book and that you'll check back weekly for Wednesday Words with Friends and Saturday Spotlight.

Until next time, take care and God Bless.

PamT