Juliana's world is turned upside down when her husband,
Paul, is brutally murdered in the darkness of an alleyway in Venice. She is
raped and left for dead while the sounds of the Masked Carnival fill the air.
The only thing that keeps Juliana going is the memories of a
perfect love, and her deep desire for vengeance.
With the help of her father, the killers are tracked down,
one by one, and on the anniversary of Paul's death, with the sounds of the
Carnival in the background, the killers come face to face with the Mask of
Deceit, and pay the ultimate price at the hands of a woman who is dead inside.
Paul Zunckel was born in 1957 in Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia. His family moved to South Africa in 1966, where he completed his schooling at Kingsway Senior High School in Amanzimtoti. He did his two years National service in the South African Defense Force as an Ops Medic, wanting to follow his heart and study medicine, but life got in the way. Paul was employed in Air Traffic Control for twenty years, and has been involved in Management positions for over twenty-five years. He has a Human Resource Management Diploma, and is an accredited Facilitator. He started to write full time in August 2014, about something that is close to his heart... Africa. The mysteries, the superstitions, and all the beauty and treachery of the land. He holds his wife responsible for the road he is now traveling, as she was the driving force behind him in his Debut novel, Blood Moon over Africa. Since then, the stories line up to be told. Paul loves to write as it takes him into another world, and he enjoys the reaction that he receives from readers. Apart from writing novels, he also plays the guitar and writes his own material, although he is unable to read music. Music forms a big part of his life, and he can lay claim to having cut one CD, although he does say, “I'm too old to be an idol.” He has two children from a previous marriage, and has been married to Lucie, the love of his life, for the last fourteen years. Paul and his family live in the Eastern Cape, South Africa along with man's best friend, a cross Alsatian/Lab who answers to the name “Pooch” and is at his feet every time he sits down to write and will not move until “his human” is finished and types The End.
I sat so merry in my abode
Loving hands around me
I dreamt of such glorious days
One day i would see
I remember the day I left
My room
I closed the door behind me
One quick look again
Then walked away
The room which would always remind me
The glorious days I had dreamt
I did merrily spent
How little did I then know
Life turns on a dime
My room is now not as it was
When I closed the door
Behind me
My room now is a prison
But not how one would invision
It is one of sorrow and grief
Sadness burns into the bare walls
I catch my breath
And weep
Why did thou'st doth betray?
The room which once embraced me
I ask with riddled heart
Jagged and torn
Which wicked riddles have I thus sought?
I sit still
I am now my room
No dreams as once before
I age before my open door
In my room long ago
I sat merrily in my loving abode
Loving hands did hold me
All gone
My room and myself
Now one
Two thrust to be together
Forever
Alone