Author: Author John G Dyer

Born in Chickamauga, Georgia, John Dyer moved to Asia in 1956, when his father took an engineering assignment with a power utility. He attended grades 1-12 at an international school, touring with his family through 29 countries before settling in the Midwest. A computer scientist turned author of fiction, he is a founder of an IBM-affiliated software company, and an early innovator in electronic commerce. He brings a lifelong interest in science and engineering to everything he writes.

Bar Fight!

A favorite action scene reprised from the Maroli Tango first draft, later in the narrative as a consequence of re-structuring the book, colorized for your enjoyment.

Arlington, Virginia

The landing zone was a dumpster farm behind a strip mall, half a block from a franchise bar and grill. Citra, Mason Fowlkes’ 9-meter spaceboat, was parked inconspicuously alongside a semi-trailer with a flat tire.

The sun had been down half an hour. A dusk-to-dawn fixture above a mattress store loading dock was the only ambient light source. Somebody, somewhere, was smoking a cigarette.

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Hooked!

2024 marks our tenth year renting the same Florida house, wherein hangs our Florida boat, graciously placed in our care by the landlord for a modest sum, and which has since consumed many thousands of dollars in upkeep.

And in all this time I’ve neglected to attend a niggling detail, that of a common iron hook upon which the boat was hanging, shedding rust flakes on fiberglass, leaving stains, and giving the successor captain more work to do.

I’d say I didn’t clean up after replacing the hardware so I could take a more evidentiary photograph, but the truth is that rehanging the boat was a struggle and I was tired. In fact, the business of finding a heavy duty SS latch hook was itself a struggle, which is part of the reason why it took ten years to get the job done.

But the main reason is that we’re getting older, and maintenance has become such a dreaded chore that, this time, when I replaced the hook, I wanted it to be the last time.

Is age creeping up on you? What are you doing to deal with it. Tell us in the comments.

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Ludditeticulous!

So, Linda brings home this $5 Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 2772 printer/scanner from the women’s club rummage sale, because my $20 yard sale Canon Pixma IP3500 that I bought for the Florida house ten years ago doesn’t have a scanner.

The HP is slow, ink carts are expensive, the print head is unserviceable but yes, it does have a scanner. For $5 I can run the ink dry and throw it away. Good so far, right?

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Concise, when verbosity would suffice

While pushing through the poetry segment of Literature 302 at University, I acquired a fascination with expressing as many ideas as possible in every sentence. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert at it, but it’s been noticed by readers who occasionally mention that my prose is one of either, (a) wall-to-wall with nuance and meaning or, (b) hard to understand.

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Psyched Out!

Another teaser from Maroli Tango. Now that I know who the cast is, I'm moving ideas forward in the manuscript and writing new material. I've thrown away almost 10,000 words, but the count is only down 2,000. I don't know if that's good or bad. Yes, it's still a Science Fiction book. No, I'm still not serializing it.

Titan Pass, Nevada

The Clover hab Mason Fowlkes shared with his sister was set apart by a bricklayer’s trowel fastened to a mailbox post, and a girl’s bicycle on a kickstand, propped up by a strategically located chunk of shale rock on the ground.

 Erin Fowlkes appeared with her also-ten-year-old friend Kelly, who said her name, shook everyone’s hand, and rode her bike away as fast as she could.

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Redocktive

My solicitation for dock builders flushed out a pair of sturdy young men who work weekdays for one of the name brand marine contractors.

A discount on the market rate ensued, along with better start and end dates.

But the big payoff may be that I discovered what needed to be done. The pilings were compromised by rot and seaworm predation. The first guys who showed up to bid didn’t say a thing about it.

Six bids in, I found out how bad it was. I hired the eleventh guy, on judgement and instinct.

It’s turning out well.

Have you experienced a satisfactory conclusion to a sticky problem? Tell us about it.

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Maroli Tango — The Front Nine

Appended herein are the first nine chapters of a first-draft, first-master-edit novel-in-progress, which I anticipate publishing around July 2024.

Writing is an activity, something I do for fun. Promoting the work is a grind. It takes a lot of effort. It’s expensive, rarely productive, and I don’t have to do it, so I won’t. This little bit I’m doing here is writing. It’s fun.

If you’re an avid reader, or a writer, or someone thinking about becoming a writer, or curious about process, carry on. Nobody exposes this kind of material. It’s in rough shape, potentially embarrassing. I shouldn’t even let Beta readers see this stuff, and yet here we are.

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Space Soap Opera!

I'm STILL not serializing this book.

White House Marine Guard commander Daryl Price appeared in time to witness Colonel Clarke’s wife Lorretta arriving in an aircar on the Oval Office patio.

Lorretta’s on-call CH Banks bodyguard pulled Brandon and Captain Price into a pow-wow on the topics of anticipated threat level, distribution of fighting drone assets, and whether to eat lunch now or later.

Captain Price told Brandon, “I don’t mind tagging along for the party, but I thought you were functioning as the President’s shadow.”

Brandon said, “I’ll be right there, and that was my intention, but I’ll leave it up to you. She and I are on a date.”

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I’m not serializing this book, okay?

Just having fun with exposition for the first time in a while. Maroli Tango. A second editing pass on early chapters. Pulling material from later chapters, consolidating, foreshadowing, boiling it down, turning up the pace. I hope it's good for you, too.

Pulina Nava, Planet Jivada

It was Wednesday morning on the east coast of the United States, Friday on the west coast of Jivada’s main continent, offset sixteen minutes, deviating further every day on a twenty-seven-year cycle.

Offshore of PN, a stately Tuscan Renaissance villa drifted at a thousand meters altitude, aimless, nudged along by the wind, meandering on gravitic tensors as though sliding on ice.

SagGha House, circa 1438, the work of Italian/AjJivadi architect Mechelozzo, a prototype for Palazzo Medici, Florence, Italy, circa 1444.

Erected nearly six-hundred years in the past atop a surplus grav-lift marine construction barge, commissioned as an owner-managed airborne luxury residential complex, then serving as a monastery, a college and a reform school.

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Expositated!

I'm not much of a wordsmith when it comes to exposition. I rely on that fly-on-the-wall third-person-limited view, where the story is told by action and dialogue, without a narrator whispering in the reader's ear.
But sometimes you just gotta prep the scene, especially in first chapters where motivation might be a little fuzzy. Damn. I'm pretty sure it's something I'm not very good at. Regardless, here goes.

A back-handed compliment often given to Carmen Benequista by her enemies was that she won the senior-citizen vote on a resemblance to Sophia Loren, if only the actress had been two f-stops more photogenic.

Sour grapes, repeated by the entitled super-rich, their minions and thought-slaves, unions, associations, financial institutions, industrial conglomerates, the Mafia, the cartels and so forth, ad infinitum.

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