Author Topic: Fits and Starts  (Read 11990 times)

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geronl

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Fits and Starts
« on: December 07, 2016, 07:42:33 am »

New Day Dawns

Chapter One
Quote
“I have my whole life invested in this company. We produce products people want, even if the other manufacturers are out of business,” Darrell Heine explained to me once.

His company bought assets of companies that had fallen out of favor with the Power, for whatever reason. It kept production lines going and most of the staff employed when possible. For a while this kept people employed and products on the shelves through adversity.

It was obviously a downward spiral.

Darrell Heine won Businessman of the Year and was able to give a speech to a national television audience about working hard and the value of a free economy. He only stumbled once, even though he was not a trained speaker and suffered from stage fright.

“Companies in a free economy competing for the approval of the consumer, not the government, is how innovation and advancement of the economy happens!” one line of the speech went.

Little did I know at the time that my friend had stepped in it badly.

That one line in a pretty ordinary speech was enough. First there was online chatter and raised eyebrows that this was implicit criticism of the Power. Darrell Heine had dared to suggest that his company only needed the approval of the consumers and not the Power?

Within hours the President himself had released a message that sent DH Inc shares plummeting and calls for partnered companies to cancel contracts. Supporters of the President were calling for boycotts of DH and “allies who hate the President”.

Meanwhile the Power media had began reporting that a big DH competitor's CEO had paid a visit to the leader and said complimentary things. Within days it was announced that the competitor would receive favorable tax rates and incentives.

Meanwhile one of the unfavored companies that DH had purchased the assets of was being accused of off-shoring. It was now a real possibility that DH Inc could be slapped with a 35% tax that unfavored companies were subject to at the whim of the Power.

The next time I saw Darrell it was in the back of a greasy café where he told me of plans to hide out in the wilds of Alaska. “It's a favored state, they supporting him in the election. I think I can find a safe haven there for me and my family, Matthew, if we lie low,” he said in a way that sounded like he was asking if I agreed with the idea.

With DH Inc on the outs with the leader, there was no reason not to resign and go into hiding. He just could never be safe otherwise.

“As good a plan as any,” I told him, “You should go as soon as possible.”

On the way home I ignore the panhandlers and beggars. I didn't have enough to support my own family in this failing economy, much less others. Even though it pained me to see so many feet wrapped in old clothes for the lack of shoes in this cold weather, it made me wonder how long my old pair would hold out. Snow was coming soon, after all.

I looked both ways before pushing my way into the nondescript barn-like building behind the blue house. Inside I found a hidden shop but the goods therein were becoming scarce. There were only a few canned goods, not much choice.

A few days ago I had looked in the cupboard to find a can of corn and a can of green beans. My wife hated corn, so that had been my dinner. I count the notes in my pocket before grabbing two green beans of different brands, then a box of powdered milk and one of instant mashed potatoes that was dented in one corner.

“Hi, Matthew,” the old woman Lisa Carnes said as I handed her the mess of notes, “How is little Bobby doing these days?”

“He's gotten better. Still hasn't gone back to school, though” I tell her. She nods as she counts the paper money, we both know that schools weren't a good place for kids but at least they usually got to eat something. Well, something better than we got at home these days at any rate.

Bobby usually sat on the mattress in his room and looked out the window most of the day. He had become a reclusive shut-in. Me and my wife were sort of grateful, because the world was not a nice place. We were also worried about his emotional and mental state, this was not normal for a fourteen-year-old.

“Bethany,” I say to her in a low voice after dinner.

“Hmm?” She asked, sewing a patch on one of my old pants.

“What would you think about getting out of here and trying to start over somewhere else?” I asked her, she looked alarmed at first and then her face softened and she smiled.

“Where could we go? How could we get there?” She asked wistfully and dramatically, “Didn't you apply for a job at the Infrastructure Bank?”

I look down at the hands on my lap, “That was never realistic. I made too many comments about the President online, I can't keep them from finding out. None of the state enterprises or favorable companies are going to hire me.”

She sighed, “I guess so. Still, there has to be something.”

I didn't always have the heart to tell her that I expected things to get much worse before there was a chance for it to get better. If that chance ever came, who knows when it might come?

“Alaska might be a good place,” I say and shrugged my shoulders.

“Are you planning to walk?” she asked, her eyes were smiling though.

TBC

Oceander

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2016, 02:17:07 pm »
Nice!  Thanks for posting. 

geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2016, 07:03:01 pm »
I'll update when I can, at least weekly

geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2016, 10:11:02 am »
Setting & character intro

rough draft

No real story plot yet

---- @sneakypete


----------------


Stanley opened the file cabinet and thumbed through the contents to find the right spot to slide the folder into place. With it he closes his briefcase. It was this thing about his job that brought him satisfaction, putting things where they belonged.

Stanley is a short bespectacled man with thinning hair. He wears a crisp white button up shirt and a bow tie. The bow tie is not an affectation or a sign of character, it was just than a dangling tie could get caught up in a drawer or one of the machines he was in charge of when necessary. Stanley wouldn't hear of going without a tie at all, though; shudder the thought.

In fact not only is Stanley of the most white-bread, vanilla personage, he utterly lacks ambition and imagination. If he were the King of the Vikings, they'd never have invaded the English isles or discovered Nova Scotia. He is made of such stuff that abusing his power, even to retain the throne, would be unthinkable.

This made Stanley the perfect figure to keep order in the Universal Exchange that links and keeps track of pretty much everything that happens everywhere, all the time. A person with imagination or ambition would use such a position to, perish the thought, change things. Play God or at least play favorites and enrich themselves.

The filing cabinet was just one of trillions that Stanley is responsible for. Also he has been responsible for them for as long as he could remember. Not that it mattered. It could have been decades or centuries or epochs, but time didn't exist in this place as it did elsewhere.

A distant alarm sounded, sort of like the bugle of war but very far away. Stanley checks the readings on his holographic wrist computer.

“Oh dear, this is out of place!” Stanley utters to himself. Things being “out of place” is one of the worst possible things in his mind, the other was being “out of time”. Space and time are like longitude and latitude on a planet, they are like coordinates for the universe.

Quickly Stanley moves toward his waiting conveyance, which resembles a 1929 Ford Roadster convertible with the top down. “Sagittarius Majoris,” he intones to the vehicle, “2123832-1232”. This completes the coordinates and the vehicle takes off toward that sector. Although the vehicle was moving fast enough that everything else became a blur, it still took a good minute to reach the desired place and time index.

Stanley exits the vehicle and runs up the path between two tall rows of filing cabinets and assorted other things, as he turns a corner he spots the disturbance. Meanwhile the details of the incident appear within his briefcase, but Stanley paused long enough to take in the sight.

The creature was nine feet tall, humanoid, except that it's head was six heads all meeting at the center where they shared a mouth. Six noses and twelve eyes and six bushy heads of hair that sort of gave the impression of some bad artistic impression of a flower. This was a Sagitarian. A very confused and lost Sagitarian who was in a mild state of shock, unfortunately he wasn't the only one.

Stanley walked purposefully toward the creature and waving the file he had retrieved from his briefcase. “It says here that some sort of anomaly whisked you away from Sagittarius Majoris and deposited you into the closet of one Maylilin Disli of the planet they call Aslastia. The poor child was frightened out of her wits and nearly fell into a coma by getting a glimpse of you.”

The large Sagitarian responded, but it was short.

“Yes, yes, you've never seen a three-eyed being before and it's not your fault that you were there. The problem is that the anomaly must be hanging around your planet, possibly in some kind of orbit. It must be studied and rendered pacified,” Stanley tried to explain.

Obviously Sagitarians won't do it, being beastly and stupid. You would think they'd be more intelligent with six brains. All that wasted potential just waiting for evolution.


The creature responded again.

“About that, yes come with me. I'll get you back home to your...” Stanley checks the file, walking back toward the vehicle with a confused creature following him, “Two wives and seven children. I can't believe you can afford to support them on your waste retrieval salary.”

The creature responded.

“Oh, I see, you make them work and support you.”

The creature climbed into the passenger seat of the Roadster as Stanley got in on the opposite side.

“I'll have you back in your time and place in no time,” he assured the Sagitarian who was starting to become more animated as the shock of his circumstances wore off. They arrived at a large column-like fixture with a large transparent door.

“Just step through the door and you'll be home.”

The Sagitarian walked around the column and sniffed the doorway suspiciously.

Stanley checked the readings on his holographic wrist computer, “It's perfectly safe, I've used it often enough to send wayward beings back to where and when they belonged. All you need to do is step inside and you will be home again.”

Twelve eyes became suspicious slits for a moment but the creature sighed through its mouth and stepped inside and made a noise. The door slid shut again.

“Well, no, I didn't say it was painless. It's not completely painless,” Stanley explained as he hit the ENACT key and began walking back to the vehicle without even looking back and the creature was sucked upward with the sound of a pneumatic tube before a bright light erupted for a second and his atoms were separated and then compressed before being shoved through a singularity set toward his appointed time and place.

The Sagitarian had been properly filed back to his own time and place, where he belonged.

--------

Offline sneakypete

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2016, 12:36:21 pm »
@geronl

Reads pretty good,but if it were me,I'd loss any hint of homosexual affections like "Oh,dear!" Most file clerks all over the world are no more homosexual than most truck drivers. It's just a job/career field they "fall into" early,and the job security is what lulls them into staying. The job may not pay much or have much status,but at least the work and the pay are stable,and they can begin to think about starting families based on that stability.  Most people aren't into taking chances. They will go for the sure thing every time over taking a chance that could pay them several times more IF it works out.  They are not risk takers/adventurers. That is pretty much how it has to be because it is these people that provide the stability you need to establish and maintain a civilization. If risk takers/adventurers were the majority,chances are we would all still be members of wandering tribes.

In MY opinion,which is free and worth every nickel it costs you,if you demean the character of your main character you will alienate the majority of your readers who would have identified with him. Everybody may want to be the hero,they they identify with the typical man or woman. Pull them in with a "hero" they can identify with,and then you can get them emotionally involved as he or she evolves and morphs into becoming a risk taker and leader instead of a human drone and follower.

Don't get me wrong. Most people don't hate a homosexual of effeminate male,but they damn sure don't identify with him,either. You might as well have a main character with a third eye in the center of his forehead so he can see better. Make his foes abnormal to your hearts content. It would even help your story line because it gives you a wider world of possibilities for the personalities and actions of the opposition characters,but you can't do this with your main character any more than you can start your main character off as a Ben Hur character. Readers need a main character that grows and evolves so they get interested in following him to see "where" he goes and the process that takes him there.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2016, 12:39:20 pm by sneakypete »
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geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2016, 07:18:50 pm »
I wasn't trying to make him sound like a homosexual. I was trying to make him sound like a stuffed shirt "dweeb" from a 30's movie but I get your point. This is a very rough draft.

The character will grow and change. That's what main characters do in a good story.

geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2016, 08:25:32 pm »
snippet from a book I am working on

This is where the girl meets the alien. (She's not the main character, and she's not going to be some little girl who defeats trained soldiers in combat - those kinds of stories are dumb to me. She is a secondary character who will have bigger roles in future stories as she gets older. If this thing gets a book 3 she'll be an adult and the main communicator with these aliens.)

Quote
Seoul National Capital Area

There was no school because of the invasion but Park Eun-Hee really needed to study for her upcoming math exam. She had left her book in her desk. Eun-Hee didn't have to walk far from the family's sixth-floor apartment to reach the school. Just a quick trip, no reason to ask her parents for permission. They'd just be worried.

The shops along the way were all closed. The streets and sidewalks almost completely deserted. The fighting was miles away but she could see a military vehicle blocking an intersection in the distance. The soldiers would protect them from any of the aliens, she believed.

The door was unlocked as usual but the building was so quiet it was eerie. She giggled to herself, probably had seen way too many movies about haunted schools. She climbed up to the third floor and found her classroom. There was the book, right where she had left it. Easy as...

There was a scuttling sound. Something was behind her. Please be a stray cat or a bird that flew into an open window, she prayed. When Eun-Hee looked into the darkened area behind her, against the wall, she saw it. It was one of the aliens, out of its armor and looking injured.

“Why did you come here?” She asked it. She sat at her desk. It blinked but otherwise did not move. It was carrying no weapons, in fact it was naked. It gave off a barely audible shrill whimpering sound.

“Is that your language? If so, I doubt we'll ever understand each other.” She told the alien. Trying not to show that she was shaking like a leaf.

Eun-Hee had seen the television footage of these things fighting. They were very agile. This one must be injured. The news reports said these things were viciously cruel, they had sent the beasts yesterday. Today they were invading.

“Your world has a new sun. It can heal over time. None of this was necessary was it?” Eun-Hee asked, although she would admit they might have a thousand reasons why it could not wait. “If you had just come peacefully...”

Maybe they had no concept of peace. She wondered if they could learn. Then she laughed at the idea of trying to teach this creature anything. Being in the school felt ironic. She would just slowly leave and then run home to report this to the authorities. It would be the right and proper thing to do. If they took it alive they could learn a lot about the aliens.

Internal injuries. Maybe it was just scared. It may have been forced to join the invasion against its will. Not all of the aliens could be the same. She always thought it was strange in books or movies where an entire alien race acted the same. Why couldn't they be individuals too?

The aliens were losing all the battles around Seoul. The aliens were doing much better near Busan and Jinju. There were reports that some of the landing vessels were burrowing into the ground, possibly digging underground bunkers.

They had lived under ground for so long. Eun-Hee looked out the window at the reddish world in the evening sky. When it was darker, and that would be soon, it would glow brighter. She pointed at the other planet.

“Dangsin-ui segye, i-e-yo?”

She saw the creatures eyes look at where she was pointing. It saw its home world. Another whimpering sound came from its throat. A very lonely sound. To her ears, Park Eun-Hee did not think this alien was like the others. It didn't seem like a soldier. Then again, didn't all soldiers long for home?

Finally she stood up from her desk and started moving toward the door. She kept eye contact with the alien. It watched her. She was in the hallway and she slid the door shut. She breathed a sigh of relief as she turned and started running toward the stairs. Eun-Hee heard a crash behind her and the noise of something chasing her.

She screamed but something hit her as she reached the end of the corridor. It slammed into her and she was crushed between it and the wall. Eun-Hee saw stars as vision faded. The thing was holding her up after her legs failed. She looked into its face and had no idea if there was an expression as she passed out.

Offline Idaho_Cowboy

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2016, 09:35:59 pm »
Setting & character intro

rough draft

No real story plot yet

---- @sneakypete


----------------


Stanley opened the file cabinet and thumbed through the contents to find the right spot to slide the folder into place. With it he closes his briefcase. It was this thing about his job that brought him satisfaction, putting things where they belonged.

Stanley is a short bespectacled man with thinning hair. He wears a crisp white button up shirt and a bow tie. The bow tie is not an affectation or a sign of character, it was just than a dangling tie could get caught up in a drawer or one of the machines he was in charge of when necessary. Stanley wouldn't hear of going without a tie at all, though; shudder the thought.

In fact not only is Stanley of the most white-bread, vanilla personage, he utterly lacks ambition and imagination. If he were the King of the Vikings, they'd never have invaded the English isles or discovered Nova Scotia. He is made of such stuff that abusing his power, even to retain the throne, would be unthinkable.

This made Stanley the perfect figure to keep order in the Universal Exchange that links and keeps track of pretty much everything that happens everywhere, all the time. A person with imagination or ambition would use such a position to, perish the thought, change things. Play God or at least play favorites and enrich themselves.

The filing cabinet was just one of trillions that Stanley is responsible for. Also he has been responsible for them for as long as he could remember. Not that it mattered. It could have been decades or centuries or epochs, but time didn't exist in this place as it did elsewhere.

A distant alarm sounded, sort of like the bugle of war but very far away. Stanley checks the readings on his holographic wrist computer.

“Oh dear, this is out of place!” Stanley utters to himself. Things being “out of place” is one of the worst possible things in his mind, the other was being “out of time”. Space and time are like longitude and latitude on a planet, they are like coordinates for the universe.

Quickly Stanley moves toward his waiting conveyance, which resembles a 1929 Ford Roadster convertible with the top down. “Sagittarius Majoris,” he intones to the vehicle, “2123832-1232”. This completes the coordinates and the vehicle takes off toward that sector. Although the vehicle was moving fast enough that everything else became a blur, it still took a good minute to reach the desired place and time index.

Stanley exits the vehicle and runs up the path between two tall rows of filing cabinets and assorted other things, as he turns a corner he spots the disturbance. Meanwhile the details of the incident appear within his briefcase, but Stanley paused long enough to take in the sight.

The creature was nine feet tall, humanoid, except that it's head was six heads all meeting at the center where they shared a mouth. Six noses and twelve eyes and six bushy heads of hair that sort of gave the impression of some bad artistic impression of a flower. This was a Sagitarian. A very confused and lost Sagitarian who was in a mild state of shock, unfortunately he wasn't the only one.

Stanley walked purposefully toward the creature and waving the file he had retrieved from his briefcase. “It says here that some sort of anomaly whisked you away from Sagittarius Majoris and deposited you into the closet of one Maylilin Disli of the planet they call Aslastia. The poor child was frightened out of her wits and nearly fell into a coma by getting a glimpse of you.”

The large Sagitarian responded, but it was short.

“Yes, yes, you've never seen a three-eyed being before and it's not your fault that you were there. The problem is that the anomaly must be hanging around your planet, possibly in some kind of orbit. It must be studied and rendered pacified,” Stanley tried to explain.

Obviously Sagitarians won't do it, being beastly and stupid. You would think they'd be more intelligent with six brains. All that wasted potential just waiting for evolution.


The creature responded again.

“About that, yes come with me. I'll get you back home to your...” Stanley checks the file, walking back toward the vehicle with a confused creature following him, “Two wives and seven children. I can't believe you can afford to support them on your waste retrieval salary.”

The creature responded.

“Oh, I see, you make them work and support you.”

The creature climbed into the passenger seat of the Roadster as Stanley got in on the opposite side.

“I'll have you back in your time and place in no time,” he assured the Sagitarian who was starting to become more animated as the shock of his circumstances wore off. They arrived at a large column-like fixture with a large transparent door.

“Just step through the door and you'll be home.”

The Sagitarian walked around the column and sniffed the doorway suspiciously.

Stanley checked the readings on his holographic wrist computer, “It's perfectly safe, I've used it often enough to send wayward beings back to where and when they belonged. All you need to do is step inside and you will be home again.”

Twelve eyes became suspicious slits for a moment but the creature sighed through its mouth and stepped inside and made a noise. The door slid shut again.

“Well, no, I didn't say it was painless. It's not completely painless,” Stanley explained as he hit the ENACT key and began walking back to the vehicle without even looking back and the creature was sucked upward with the sound of a pneumatic tube before a bright light erupted for a second and his atoms were separated and then compressed before being shoved through a singularity set toward his appointed time and place.

The Sagitarian had been properly filed back to his own time and place, where he belonged.

--------
That was surreal...
“The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail.” ― Louis L'Amour

geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2016, 09:56:04 pm »
A few chapters later

Quote
Park Eun-Hee had to tell her story at least a dozen times. First to her parents, then to a local official, then to some military types and politicians and finally at a press conference. It was all too much and it wore her out. Everyone asked the same kind of questions, the whole thing was scary at first but it got to be boring.

Not that her story was going to make people feel any better. Sure, an alien had seemed friendly more or less, that was a good thing. That news was dwarfed by the plans that the aliens were carrying out though. To strip the Earth of anything useful, even the minerals in the ground and the water in the oceans and take it all to their world. Then they'd leave.

This would take a long time, it would seem. Although they had done a good job of invading Earth, so far, in only a few days. Eradicating humans would take a bit longer. Their world had caused all sorts of tidal waves, flooding, hurricanes when it passed by, but for some reason they hadn't parked their planet-ship closer. Why?

The South Korean government had put her family on an Osprey and flown them to Jeju Island, where no alien activity had been reported. It turned out that a lot of wealthy and politically connected people had gone to Jeju Island. It was a resort, after all.

Park Eun-Hee was then escorted into a small building nestled against the side of a mountain. Taken into a tunnel and then to an underground chamber.

“I don't know what's going on.” She said to everyone. Soldiers, scientists and others were working in this place. Then she reached the end. Behind a thick transparent wall was a small chamber, a cell, and inside of it was the alien. The splotchy marks were the same, this was the same alien she had spent hours with in her school.

A scientist-looking person came to her. “We're trying to communicate with the creature. We thought maybe you could help.”

She looked at the man as if he had lost his mind. “What makes you think I can help?”

The man pointed at the wall in the chamber. A sketch was there, apparently drawn by the alien and it was unmistakably a drawing of Park Eun-Hee.

Offline sneakypete

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #9 on: December 21, 2016, 02:44:00 am »
snippet from a book I am working on

This is where the girl meets the alien. (She's not the main character, and she's not going to be some little girl who defeats trained soldiers in combat - those kinds of stories are dumb to me. She is a secondary character who will have bigger roles in future stories as she gets older. If this thing gets a book 3 she'll be an adult and the main communicator with these aliens.)

@geronl

I'm already looking forward to reading more of this book.

I am no authority,but I do believe you have the talent and the patience to be a successful author if you decide to keep working at it.

Ever consider trying to sell short stories to "Analogue,the magazine of Science Fiction and Fact" ? http://www.analogsf.com/,or "Issac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine"? Doing so might be the easiest and best way for you to start establishing a reputation as a science fiction writer,and practically guarantee you a readership once you do publish.

BTW,I think so highly of both that I have given out free subscriptions as Christmas presents to the children of friends that I consider to be VERY bright. Nothing to keep them interested in school and learning more than to introduce them to good science fiction and facts that will entertain them at the same time it educates them and makes them want more.
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geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #10 on: December 21, 2016, 05:06:37 pm »
That was surreal...

I haven't really done anything with that story start. I think it has a lot of potential but I have a lot of stories that need endings

geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #11 on: December 21, 2016, 05:10:46 pm »
@geronl

I'm already looking forward to reading more of this book.

I am no authority,but I do believe you have the talent and the patience to be a successful author if you decide to keep working at it.

Ever consider trying to sell short stories to "Analogue,the magazine of Science Fiction and Fact" ?

Yes, I have tried in the past.

Offline Gefn

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #12 on: December 21, 2016, 06:02:03 pm »
keep on writing. there’s talent there.

read everything you can get your hands on as well.

what really also helps is take a creative writing class at a community college -if you can. Criticism from your peers is priceless.  I’ve had  a few creative writing classes in my lifetime and they were priceless to me.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2016, 06:03:29 pm by Freya »
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Offline sneakypete

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #13 on: December 21, 2016, 11:24:15 pm »
Yes, I have tried in the past.

Well,in my defense,I DID say it was a "good idea". I didn't say it would be easy,though.

Keep trying. You'll get there.
Anyone who isn't paranoid in 2021 just isn't thinking clearly!

geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #14 on: December 23, 2016, 10:46:15 pm »
I did add another chapter with the little girl and alien. It's coming up toward the conclusion of "book one"...

note; her and a scientist decided to create a sign language to communicate with the alien

note: "Oppa" in Korea is what a girl would call her older brother (but has since come to be used to refer to unrelated guys they know and even boyfriends) When Eun-Hee named the alien Oppa, the Colonel chokes and spills his coffee. I thought it'd be funny.

..........
Quote
Eun-Hee had been called to the Colonel's office. He implored her to have a more pointed conversation with Oppa. The alien always seemed to clam up with the adult sign-language interrogators, but the man admitted that the alien seemed to like her.

“Maybe we're not paying close enough attention to his answers and his statements. It's possible they mean something a bit different to him,” The Colonel had speculated, “Look, the thing is, the Americans are putting real pressure on the government to hand over the alien. We need to make some progress.”

Eun-Hee took it as a mission. She knew that making demands would cause Oppa to clam up. That was probably what the adults had done wrong. Oppa always seemed to brighten up when she entered the room where he was kept in the transparent isolation area.

He shared some of his latest drawings. One of them was of a planet that was not Earth, nor the red world that he had arrived on. Eun-Hee remembered that he had drawn this before, but it had skipped her mind.

“Is that your home world?” she signed.

Where I was born before I was made a worker.

He had mentioned that he was a worker, not a soldier. This time he said he had been 'made a worker'. In the past Eun-Hee would have assumed he meant that jobs are assigned there, but she thought it might be important.

“Made? Made by who?”

The Overseers.

“Your boss?”

Our masters.

Something about Oppa's choice of words to sign made Eun-Hee's stomach drop.

“Can you draw your overseer?” she signed to him.

The alien took his sketchpad and began drawing. Park Eun-Hee had a bad feeling about it, something was definitely different in the aliens demeanor. The look on his face as he drew was vicious, angry compared to his usual docile nature. The aliens really did look mean when they made that face.

Finally he finished. He showed her what he had made.

“Oh my...” Eun-Hee gasped.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2016, 10:49:30 pm by geronl »

geronl

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Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #15 on: December 24, 2016, 03:13:10 am »
I don't like the idea of starting a book like this, but here is what happens before the story really starts....

I will rewrite the beginning

Quote
January 21,

“We have breaking news this evening,” the news anchor announced as the music of the opening theme ended, “Scientists are rushing to study what is said to be a rogue planet, a wandering planetary body that doesn't orbit a star. It has entered our solar system and from the chart here you can see if will cross the orbital path of Neptune before moving on its way out.”

April 18,

“More breaking news, the rogue world some are calling Nemesis has reportedly changed course for unknown reasons. Scientists are debating if this could have any natural cause,” the news anchor reported.

July 30,

“The rogue world known as Nemesis is making a beeline for Earth. Scientists and government officials say that this is the first indication that intelligent life is in control of Nemesis. Also studies of the world indicate that it has a similar electromagnetic field as Earth. By the end of the week Nemesis will have crossed the orbital path of Mars...”

September 12,

“Radio frequencies have been detected from Nemesis, while we cannot decipher them it is a sure proof that there is life on the planet that is closing in on Earth...”

September 25,

“Storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves are being reported all over the planet as Nemesis shines as big as the moon in our morning skies. The world has reacted in shock to the loss of the moon which was thrown out of Earths orbit by the interference of Nemesis' gravity....”

“Long-term, the loss of the moon could mean a pronounced wobble to the Earth instead of a slight tilt, in centuries Earth could be inhospitable to life as we known it...”

September 27,

“Nemesis has taken up a leading orbit of Earth, meaning it is circling on the same orbital path but is a million miles in front of us...”

September 30,

“Reports of meteor showers over east Asian nations is being reported...”

“Large black sphere's have landed all over the place here in Seoul and over in Tokyo, as you can see this one has crashed into an apartment building.... police are trying to cordon off the crowds that have gathered... Are you seeing this James? The sphere has opened, and.... oh my God, some kind of monster has emerged and it has torn a police officer in half...!”

“The black sphere's have now been reported falling over China and India and seems to be moving with the spin of the Earth... we have news that Russia is preparing to explode a nuclear bomb in orbit to try and....”

“Europe and the US is now preparing to duplicate the success of the Russians in killing the monsters before the spheres fall...”

October 1,

“NASA is now reporting that many large objects have launched from the surface of Nemesis. The armed forces are presuming this to be the second wave of an invasion...”
« Last Edit: December 24, 2016, 03:14:18 am by geronl »

geronl

  • Guest
Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #16 on: December 26, 2016, 03:41:18 am »
prologue to another unfinished story


Prologue
Quote

Tahm, the dwarf, ignored the screams and the dying soldiers along the high wall facing down into the mass of the demon army. There was no time to worry. "Keep firing!"

Even enchanted walls could not hold up against so many Han warriors. The first wall would be breached, they would be forced to move to a fall-back position. The second wall was not as big or as strong as the first.

Soldiers around him continued to launch bolt after bolt into the enemy mass from their lightening crystals. If only there were flame sticks to be had on this side of the war.

The Han army was moving aside, something large was seething through through them. Tahm jumped up and peered down.

"Oh crap." A soldier screamed. Tahm had the same first thought watching the dragon move smoothly and quickly up to the main doors of the city.

"It's a dragon!" Someone yelled.

"Well, why the hell not?" Tahm told himself, cursing fat Isaac for the intelligence failure, "Of course a demon army would bring dragons."

What other surprises would the Pai send?

geronl

  • Guest
Re: Fits and Starts
« Reply #17 on: December 28, 2016, 03:26:56 am »
We should have a space station around Mars by now...

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