Showing results by author "Velma Loftin" in All Categories

A word of caution to decent folk and God-fearing travelers: there walks among us a man not born to honor nor to law, but to spite and cruelty. He is called Douglas Flannery O’Kemp, though most know him simply as the Bastard O’Kemp. He was sired by a planter of ill repute and a servant woman of northern stock, pale as snow and marked by heathen tales. From his first breath he was raised on blows, and from his fifteenth year he carried his father’s scalp to market for coin. Since that day, he has known neither home nor mercy.

Appomatix stands unshaken in his crown, master of the pride whose roar steadies the sawdust ring. At his side, Vaidya weaves fire and shadow, her chants feeding both wonder and fear. And from the forest emerges Lazare, a youth half-feral, half-royal, the living echo of Henrik’s final prophecy, a ringmaster born of blood, music, and myth. Together they forge a power both enthralling and dangerous: the crown, the fire, and the voice. But the line between spectacle and fate grows thin, and what is born in the ring may yet consume them all.

In the Pines follows the lives of the Loftin family, their kin, and the women who keep their homes, heal their wounds, and carry their burdens. As sons march off to war and daughters face the echoes of past choices, matriarchs Ma Loftin and Annie Cole anchor a legacy woven with heartbreak, resilience, and quiet magic. From the work camps of the South to the icy shores of the Aleutian Islands, this sweeping saga captures the strength of ordinary people in extraordinary times, people who bury their dead, raise each other’s children, and fight fiercely for every small joy that remains.

In the hushed wilderness of southwest Louisiana, shadows linger longer, and secrets sink deeper. When two bodies are discovered in the pine-strewn outskirts of Beauregard Parish, an innocent child dressed for church and his young stepmother whispers stir beneath the magnolias and coffee brews dark at The Oaks Café. Roy Allen Cormier’s arrest stuns a town that watched him grow up and ride his bike down gravel backroads. But guilt is never simple in a place where loyalty runs deep, and justice doesn’t always arrive clean.