Tag: preview

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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Sci-Fi for those who don’t read Sci-Fi

The eBook edition of my latest novel is free today and tomorrow, February 9 &10 — an opportunity to try something completely different, whether or not you’re a follower of the genre.

Ghosts of Ancient Vidura is literary science fiction — action, adventure, and family drama against an SF landscape, with an underlying theme about what it takes to create a successful life. About the series, readers have said, “There’s nothing like it” and “Something for everybody”.

Helpful hint — If you’re not a fan of SF, the book really shifts gears in Part Two. But don’t skip. You’ll miss something important.

Elevator pitch — The year is 2025, and the aliens have arrived. Officially, not counting twenty-five-thousand years of under-the-table commerce, a secret that can no longer be kept.

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Ghostly

Now available for pre-order. eBook and paperback launch on February 1st.

An alien invasion tale with an original twist!

The year is 2025, and the aliens have arrived. Officially, not counting twenty-five-thousand years of clandestine interspecies commerce, a secret that can no longer be kept. Earth’s sun will soon micro-nova unless the AjJivadi Constituency does something about it.

An ancient alien migration vessel, previously in service as a tourist hotel, arrives with a disaster mitigation team. A public relations campaign is launched. AjJivadi officials state there will be no exchange of technology. Behind the scenes, technology is offered. Diplomacy lurches forward.

Meanwhile, a human in Oregon experiences past-life emergence — recalling old Vidura and the science that was discovered there. In Washington DC, military authorities cook up plans to hijack spaceships. On Jivada, a sinister cabal maneuvers to rule the two planets. Millions of light years away, an unseen enemy stirs in its nest.

The situation is about to get complicated.

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Edified — John Dyer Writes

After seven-or-so close edits, a flurry of readings, a handful of insights from a first reader, and countless additional flourishes, I thought this book might be ready. So, I worked on the cover (it needed more contrast) and ordered another three proof copies.

Then I realized I’d neglected an opportunity to describe a principal actor early in the narrative. I wrote …

The face of Henri Suraksin, Elbert’s Anye stepson, popped into augmented reality while Elbert was pulling into a parking space. Henri was Mahat Raja, a rare amalgam of the foxy lemur and bearlike lemur genotypes.

It was mid-afternoon at Henri’s location. He’d skipped lunch. Imagine a werewolf, eating donuts, washing them down with goat’s milk out of a sippy cup, appearance made even less fierce by powdered sugar on his nose. “I snuck another bodyguard into the building about an hour ago.”

If I hand out any of the proofs, I’ll have to say, “I made some changes, but it shouldn’t affect your enjoyment of the book.” By then, it will almost certainly be a lie.

When one starts an eBook draft on KDP, Amazon makes the author submit the title for pre-order. I chose February 1st. It WILL be done by then.

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Revisited — John Dyer Writes

Two years ago, I set Vacuum Forged aside to write down an idea for a later book in the series. I ended up writing two complete novels, and only this week did I go back to remind myself where I was on the project.

Oh. I’d written forty-thousand words. Half a book. How about that?

I’ve been reading. It’s pretty good. There are holes in the narrative, which is to be expected. I plugged one of them today.

Kandala, Laghu

Internal Security spy drones had been flitting around town for hours. The moment Isa arrived on-station, the incursion team tripped the fissile plant’s alarm. Parts of town woke up. Lights came on. Phones were answered.

Isa was early to the party by design. There would be no shooting until after sufficient gathering of intelligence — unless it became, for some reason, urgent.

He watched dots accumulate on a tactical map of Kandala. Analysts at IntSec processed seized documents. Other maps appeared, referencing other locations. More spy drones were deployed across Laghu.

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