Call It Southern Gothic Rock & Roll Paranormal Fiction
Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player (ISBN 978-1977037473, formerly known as Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World) occupies a literary category of its own making. The easy way out is to recognize that it is very much like an extended song on the nature of life, love, death, and music. Enter the world of its struggling hero Danny Blue and you enter one where few things are exactly what they seem to be and where everything is filled with powerful meaning and significance.
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Diving into the Mystery
Written by the Savannah, Georgia-born award-winning author and poet Aberjhani, the novel is described as one that takes readers “inside the world of Danny Blue, a young man struggling to make peace with the death of his girlfriend, a gifted artist named Valerie Hyerman whose passing sparks the creation of a controversial spiritual movement. Was her death suicide, murder, or something completely different from either?”
The Black Skylark Sang a Prophecy
Oh I have seen the days and nights
of killing winds to come,
with the best of men
living sorrow on the run.
And I have heard souls of children
crying out in vain.
I saw heaven
tremble with their pain.
If all else fails and rumors of war
remain a fearful truth,
one thing’s for sure
that I can do--
oh I will fly, fly,
I’ll sail away with you.
Love will shine the power
to carry us through.
I’ll sail away with you.
Millions cheer the warrior
spilling blood across the ring
while the one who stands for peace
is ridiculed and shamed.
Must hearts forever suffer
from ignorance and greed?
Can bombs heal our souls
or set our spirits free?
Now I’m searching for a vision
to still the terrors of this night,
a bridge to span the shores
between black and white.
And I’m counting on some wisdom
in the magic of the rain
to heal the burning wounds
between woman and man.
If all else fails and rumors of war
remain a fearful truth,
one thing’s for sure
that I can do––
Lover I will fly, fly,
I’ll sail away with you,
Love will shine the power
to carry us through.
Said I will sail away with you,
my sweet joy,
said I will fly away with you
oh my joy, my joy!
by Aberjhani
from the novel Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player
Style & Controversy
Addressing as it does the potential link between something as catastrophic as mass suicides and as celebrated as popular music, the novel has stirred some controversy. Nevertheless, the author’s style and literary daring have drawn favorable comparisons to such writers as Philip K. Dick, Khalil Gibran, and Franz Kafka. A particularly unique aspect of the novel is the author’s use of song lyric’s as an integral element of the overall prose narrative. Lyrics featured throughout the book are included in an appendix at its end.
Explore a Musical Multiverse
Intensely Visionary and Mystically Poetic: What's It All About?
The stunning truth unfolds in Froggtown, a college community where many people are said to have “died dirty” and wander the streets in search of release from a spiritual limbo. Such a town seems an unlikely place for a superstar musician like Jimmy Redfyre to kick off his tour on Christmas Eve, or for his main rival Ruzahn to keep popping up in Danny Blue’s life. Moreover, how is it that both singers seem to have released songs about his life? Equally bizarre are the strange changes that Danny Blue himself begins to experience and that appear to be causing him to evolve from an ordinary human to something not so ordinary at all. Written with the visionary intensity of Franz Kafka, the mystical poetics of Khalil Gibran, and the psychological complexity of Philip K. Dick, Songs from the Black Skylark zPed Music Player is a one-of-a-kind work of extraordinary modern fiction.
“Soul of a Black Skylark Singing” front cover artwork by Luther E. Vann.
“Soul of a Black Skylark Singing” front cover artwork by Luther E. Vann.