Tag: preview

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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Maroli Tango

A possible final title for the novel. On the cover, I'm thinking we dress Pascal in a sash and do-rag, holding a long-stem rose in his tertiary tentacles.

On Tuesday, Secretary of the Treasury Norbert Donaldson denounced President Carmen Benequista as a “Reckless tyrant, having no understanding of fundamental economics, willing to wreck the world financial system to settle her petty grievances.”

Angela Moss, Carmen’s Chief of Staff, said, “You should go ahead and dump him in the ocean.”

Carmen loitered in an Anodyne corridor, natural body lying comatose on her bed, speaking with her friend virtually, from the Virtuality. “He obviously didn’t believe I’d do it.”

“It’d be nice if we had intel about his situation.” Angela arranged papers on her desk. “Who do you think’s leaning on him? CIA? East coast mob?”

“Enforcing policy for central banks? Has to be the CIA.”

A door at the end of the hallway changed color from red to seafoam green. On the other side of the door, an oval opening waited, the sort of thing one might find on the back of a gorilla costume.

Carmen took three steps into an abrupt scene change. Angela Moss snapped into clear focus, in Super 3D Ultra-Vision, delivered by her maroli valet’s high-resolution sense array.

The aroma of lavender filled her nostrils. She said, “Pascal; did you take a shower in my quarters?”

Pascal replied, “This one has never felt so fresh.”

Angela said, “You guys are creeping me out.”

Carmen bounced on phantom legs, feet barely connecting with the floor. She wiggled a tentacle. “Give me a pen.”

With a few delicate strokes, the Treasury Secretary was fired.

Angela grumbled. “Let’s not tell anyone we’re signing documents this way.”

Carmen pedaled her legs, invoking flight mode, soaring to the ceiling. She said, “I won’t if you won’t.”

Her chief-of-staff retreated to a corner. “You could swoop down on Norb Donaldson in his back yard. Nobody would see it.”

Hovering in front of a mirror, Carmen attempted a shrug. A maroli has no shoulders. It didn’t translate. “I could, couldn’t I?”

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Warbot!

A teaser from the current WIP, working title 'Maroli Winter'.

The sensation of operating the breaching waldoe was an order of magnitude more intimate than the same experience within a simulation, and Myra Fowlkes knew why — the Anodyne virtual tutorial authored by the manufacturer was pathetic.

The machine’s vision was intensely sharp and focused, with more depth of field than delivered by organic optics. While waiting to deploy, she smelled silicone grease with sufficient precision to locate the source without taking a single step — it was on a flexible seal dovetailed into the spaceboat’s hatch opening.

The warbot felt like a neoprene wetsuit. Its hands were her hands, clad in half-finger diving gloves. Its feet wore hiking boots like ones she’d taken back to the store because they were too stiff, except these had so much traction she had to take weight off one ankle if she wanted to rotate.

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YA-ing

Another teaser from a work-in-progress. 77,000 words and no title, yet.

Chapter 203

Anuraga, The Dust Cloud

Mason Fowlkes went straight from lunch to a partially shut-down docking terminal, its boarding passage absent of patrons, occupied only by a shipwright replacing airlock seals.

Mason told him, “I’m going out of slot five in a few minutes for a podcast interview. I’m cleared with the house, but …”

The man held up a hand. “I’m done with five.”

“Okay, because I didn’t want to …”

“You’re not in my way. Where’s your boat?”

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Space Soap Opera

Another teaser from work-in-progress

Espinho, Portugal

Portugal’s time zone was an hour behind Serbia, the sky still illuminated by the last rays of a setting sun; making it imprudent to land Advaita Vedanta in an alley, invisibility technology notwithstanding.

Brandon Lopez should have flown the van, a mistake painfully evident upon deboarding, unremedied by sending the spaceboat off to a parking slot in orbit.

Maryanne Orsa’s one-hundred-eighty-two-year-old English/Norwegian/AjJivadi mother, Lisbet Porter, met him at one end of the alley with a tiny dog on a leash and an admonishing tone in her voice. “Did I just see you land a spaceboat seven blocks from where I’m living?”

He cringed. “I’m an idiot.”

“That’s what you are.” She gestured. “Let’s get moving before the neighbors show up.”

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Name this book!

Seriously. I’m at 43,000 words and I don’t have a title. Here’s a teaser from Chapter 109.

The White House, Washington DC

It was four miles from the White House to a bar and grille in Arlington, where an Ivy League educated economist had been ensconced for the past hour-and-a half.

Carmen boarded the same housekeeping maroli she’d used twice, once earlier in the day, for the purpose of signing documents in her own hand. The machine was off-duty, in a dark closet, sipping nutrition through a straw out of a crushable plastic box.

She wiggled her avatar into the maroli’s form factor, arms operating two large tentacles on the top row, saying, “Hello again. Are you finished with supper?”

It tossed the box into a waste bin. “This device has eaten.”

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Stepping away from the WIP

After a few weeks working on the ninth (and presumably last) volume in the Anye Universe books, I’ve decided to give it a rest. The fourth book has lain fallow long enough for a fresh restart, so that’s what I’ll do until inspired to switch horses again.

Here’s a look at the first chapter of Vacuum Forged after some brutal cutting. Who knows what it’ll look like a month from now.

Part 1 – Chapter 0

First House, Planet Vidura, 70,000 BCE

Upon the sixth anniversary of First House’s instantiation, Master Sa summoned his three most important cub-school students to tell them what they were.

Spring was early in the Northern Reach. The scent of young blossoms drifted through parlor doors. Birdsong rang in the air. Tree pollen tickled noses. It was all, said Master Sa, an artful deception. “We call it the Anodyne Virtuality.”

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