Here is the main baddie from my first novel. *And the Tide Turns* it takes places in an alternate history where the Cold War lingers on longer, and the United States is on the brink of a second Civil War:

Gernot:

In the year 2054, the world stood fractured. The once-mighty United States teetered on the brink of collapse, torn apart by ideological warfare between its Red and Blue states. Its people, exhausted and bitter, had retreated into their echo chambers, while its leaders squabbled over the scraps of a once-united vision. Meanwhile, in the frozen expanse of a starving and embittered Russia, the seeds of a bold plan had taken root.

Gernot was born in 2029 in a dilapidated Moscow tenement. His childhood was a bleak tableau of scarcity, where breadlines snaked endlessly through the city’s icy streets, and whispers of the “great betrayal” filled every home.

For the Russians, the post-Cold War promises of prosperity had long faded, replaced by a grim new reality: an America-dominated global economy that had left them in the dust.

Gernot’s parents, once loyal citizens, grew increasingly radicalized, filling his mind with stories of how the West had strangled Russia’s future.

By the time Gernot turned 20, his parents were gone—his father to cirrhosis and his mother to malnutrition during a particularly harsh winter. With nothing left to lose, he joined the remnants of Russia’s intelligence apparatus. It was there that his brilliance for strategy, languages, and psychological manipulation was recognized, and he was given command of his own private group called The Red Hand that operated in the shadows of the Kremlin.

Gernot comes into some old journal written by an Australian scientist who was a good friend of Nikolai Tesla. In these entries Gernot and his crew were able to figure out how to travel into the past, however it was traveling into the future that Gernot was interested in. why conquer the past and change his future so that he does not exist? He wished to learn from the scientist the method to travel into the future and bring back with him weapons and intelligence to win a war in his current era.

Gernot’s Perspective:

For Gernot, the mission was more than duty; it was salvation. He had seen the hunger in his sister’s sunken cheeks, the desperation in his neighbors’ eyes as they burned furniture to keep warm, and the hopelessness of a nation trapped in the shadow of its former glory. To him, America wasn’t just a rival—it was the architect of his people’s suffering.

“They preach freedom while they hoard the world’s wealth,” his handler once said, and Gernot believed every word. The Red Hand taught him to see the United States as a decadent empire, too absorbed in its own internal squabbles to notice the havoc it had wrought on the rest of the world.

But Gernot wasn’t blind to the dangers. Time travel was a Pandora’s box, and each mission into the past came with greater risks of destabilizing the future. Yet he pressed on, even as whispers spread of unforeseen consequences—vanishing agents, ripples in the timeline that erased entire villages, and strange anomalies that hinted at something darker beneath the fabric of time itself.

I could go on and on about Gernot and his motivations but I’d love for you to read them yourselves. And the Tide Turns is available on Amazon. If time travel is not your thing, check out On the Hit List. A roaring comedic story in the vein of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off meets Super Bad meets The Hangover. And if that doesn’t tickle thy pickle. My latest a semi-police procedural character drama about a real life LAPD detective called In the Hunt is available too.

When I see you, the world becomes bright,

My heart feels joy, everything feels right.

Your emerald eyes shine like a flame,

Your smile is bliss, nothing feels the same.

Your makeup so soft, like morning light,

Gentle and perfect, a lovely sight.

The scent of your perfume, a floral breeze,

Enchanting and sweet, it puts me at ease.

You're graceful, like the morning air,

So wise and charming, beyond compare.

You captivate me, my heart’s undone,

And I’m so deeply in love with you, the one!

© 2024 Victoria Lunar. All rights reserved.

Standing in the rain

Drizzle to deluge

Panhandling

To deep sea fishing

For souls

Harvesting soggy morsels

Of philosophical discourse

Colored with

Blue light specials

Worn by beings

Dancing on the far shore

Soaked with angst

In the watery garden

Absurdly harvesting outcomes

In this existential café

In the quiet spaces between words

rests the true weight of wisdom—

not in grand gestures or staged kindness,

but in the subtle art of seeing.

To make others feel like "somebody"

is first to understand:

they already are.

It is not our making, but our witnessing.

And here blooms the irony:

in striving to "be somebody" who lifts others,

we risk becoming saviors

when we were meant to be mirrors—

reflecting back the light

already burning within each person.

The deeper truth emerges:

We do not make people feel like somebody.

We simply stop making them feel like nobody.

Our task is not to create, but to recognize.

Not to elevate, but to acknowledge.

Not to give worth, but to witness it.

The most profound act

lies not in making, but in seeing—

in the quiet nod that whispers:

"I see you were somebody

long before I arrived."

Shimmers fade,

Colors gray;

Summers shade,

Yet I stay.

Flowers wilt,

Cinders chill;

Winters melt,

Yet I will.

With time, each phase

of 'ppointed fate

all nature plays,

and yet I wait.

My love still keeps

its course, my sweet.

My heart still leaps

for yours, complete.

Forests flame,

Oceans drain;

Deserts rain,

I remain.

The golden ratio blooms in every rose,

Fibonacci spirals galaxies to shells,

Yet we draft blueprints, thinking we compose

New formulas for how the future swells.

We calculate our way through sacred proofs,

Draw straight lines where rivers meant to wind,

Stack steel equations into mirrored roofs,

Solve for x where x was undefined.

But fractals laugh in every branch and leaf,

And chaos theory storms our perfect plans,

While gravity holds fast its old belief

That what must fall still falls, despite our bans.

We cannot rewrite what was written true—

These numbers lived before we ever knew.

Waltz with me

Beneath the trees

Of plum

And burnished gold

I love you more

Than all the leaves

That swirl beneath our feet

The koi move like slow thoughts

beneath the choked surface,

flashes of gold and white

through the gaps between green.

This is how desire works:

too many lives in too small a space,

each seeking its own path

through the tangle of what's possible.

The lilypads multiply

with mindless determination,

until walking on water

seems less miracle than certainty.

Somewhere beneath this riot

of leaves and stems,

fish continue their ancient circles,

believing in depth.

I watch a single pad

lift at its edge—

brief glimpse of scales,

then nothing.

This too is a kind of truth:

how beauty can survive

being hidden,

how abundance can become burden.

The pond's surface holds

everything but light.

Even the sky, reflected,

must find its way between leaves.

Some mornings I understand

this crowded silence,

how it feels to move

through too much life.

The fish know what I forget:

that under every green darkness

water remains water,

vast in its simple faith.

The burning leaves curl under the fire's heat, making snaps and crackles that were slowly lulling her to sleep by the heat of the fire.

Tomorrow would be cold, just like the weatherman predicted. Every day was cold now. Every day was a scramble for the food to feed that nights fire. And if she was very lucky, she wouldn't go without the means to feed herself.

Every day was a struggle and every night was a battle of wills. Wrestling with her thoughts every night as she huddled behind a snow bank on the frozen tundra, her brain seldom delivering her anything but nightmares.

The beasts had gotten more bold, and she wondered more and more if the amulet she still clutched so desperately would ever reach its destination.

[I don't know if this fits the prompt, but I enjoyed writing it! (:

Let me know if I should write more!]

And it’s a bittersweet feeling,

really difficult to explain.

I’ve met a lot of people,

I’ve loved them very deeply.

I know I can't control the way they loved me back:

aggressive, intense, tiny little stitches,

they burn my skin.

I look often at their patchwork

and the past we share.

And I’ve known you for so long now—

I love you very deeply,

and I can’t control the way you love me back:

harsh, fierce, tiny little stitches,

they scar my skin.

And it’s a confusing feeling,

so hard to understand.

My skin’s marked by people,

by the people I very deeply love.

I know I can’t control the way they love me back:

piercing, burning, tiny little stitches.

I wish I could see my skin.

I often look back at myself

and the people I’ve met.

I wonder if I’ve marked you the same now.

You love me very deeply,

and I can’t control the way I love you back:

aggressive, intense, tiny little stitches.

I see the scars in your skin.