200 Words--Dust and the Devil's Mouth

I was left in the cold dim air between existence and nothing.

“Hera?” I called.

But I already knew she was gone forever, and so I crawled across the cosmos until I found a home, a hundred years later. I suppose I should consider myself lucky. It’s a nebula that towers light years across and millennia can pass from one side to the other along its circumference.

We’re all still there, on a planet I formed from the dust and gas.

It was on one such planet that life formed; a trick Hera never taught me, so I had to wait for it to happen on its own.

You call the place I landed Devil’s Mouth, and I suppose it’s a proper name, for I am a devil, and things do tend to burn once they fall into it.

But do not mistake me for a god. Amber flows through my veins, not blood. I am a being of time, not space. I’ll fall back into the past once I grow tired of the present, or perhaps fling myself into the future as I wish.

I looked far ahead once.

But there was less there than here, so I left.

200 Words--The Amber Elevator

The amber dripping from the holes in my hands scared them, I think. They raised their flintlocks and fired in unison, as though commanded by gods.

I tried to dash to the side. It’s hard to do that when you’ve lost most of your blood.

I fell into the elevator with a soft thud beside Hera’s feet. She looked down at me like a cat to a dead dog, and then dragged my feet inside and hit the button for the enth floor. The elevator ascended like an angel.

“I never wanted it to end this way,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

I could see the redness dripping from her tear ducts and knew that I’d really done it this time.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again.

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” she said. “I told you it makes you sound weak.”

All the while I pulled the knife from its sheath within my coat. “I have to do it.”

She reached into her chest and pulled out her heart, and handed it down to me.

I stuck the knife into the gears and held the heart tightly. My fingers slipped once but by then the universe had stopped.

200 Words--A Mystery

When I stepped into the living room it was with the careful grace of someone trying to avoid hidden piles of animal droppings (this is the most accurate metaphor I could come up with because my pets used to not be entirely trained).

It was the dark of night, the darkest I mean, and the only illumination was the soft orange glow from the streetlights through the shutters. They cast uneven lights on the sofa and loveseat, which fluctuated as the vents blew warm air over the drapes.

I saw a shape move in the kitchen doorway across the room. I had the baseball bat in my hands as I advanced, ready to deal with this unwelcome intruder.

“Son?” He asked as I, now in full swing, realized who it was I was about to kill.

I would have asked him what he was doing in my house, why he’d broken the locks on the back door to get in, why he hadn’t called first, where he’d been for the past three years, but instead, he was on the floor, bleeding from his skull which it turns out I fractured in three places.

The police said they don’t believe me.

adventure friends updates

Figured this is as good a place as any to announce Adventure Friends things:

Thinking that instead of being The Obsidian King, it's The Eventide King. His mythology changes a bit, as he's merely the one that hearkens in the night of the universe, rather than the darkest foe. Which makes for some fear at what waits in the night of the universe.

Adrian is no longer a secret arcane user. He is actually a secret natural user. He has an innate ability to heal, which once he learns, he can use this to heal others. He is really good at swordplay because he's been able to learn from his mistakes instead of just dying from them.

NEW CHARACTER YO: Ty Darko is sort of a prototype character for who Adrian was going to be. She can do the timetravel shenanigans, and is actually like something of a guardian angel. The reason the Adventure Friends have never died is because she goes back in time and fixes things before they get super bad.

Nothing else for now. Thoughts???

(A Tepid Crossing is at 55,000 words right now, so I'm still writing it. Don't be afraid. I feel like it has another 10,000 left in it at least, maybe another 15,000.)

update: a tepid crossing

So, planning this thing out is really hard.

I'm moving up the official "resume" time for August. My original estimate of this book being halfway done is now outdated, I would say it's two thirds of the way done. I realized that I have to get less ambitious about this thing if I want to finish it ever. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to do a cop-out and have it end really terrible. Don't worry about that. I'm trying my hardest to make it finish the way I originally wanted it to.

Don't know if that's possible but sheesh I am going to try, ok?

future of A Tepid Crossing

You all saw this coming, I'm sure.

I'm going to put an indefinite hiatus on A Tepid Crossing while I figure out exactly how I want the story to end. I've been putting it up chapter by chapter, proofreading after each. I've been treating it like a television show, or at least trying to, where each chapter contains a beginning, middle, and end. But books aren't supposed to function like this. The whole thing is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end, not the chapters.

Thus, I'm going to plan out the second half of the book before I start writing the chapters.

Why?

I flew into this book headfirst, and never expected to write a second chapter, or to continue long enough to the point that I'd write chapters about Harriet Lyre. When Abigail Tyrell became a character, it was not planned. I just simply needed someone to keep an inn of sorts. It wasn’t until I finished the chapter that I began to really flesh her out. Everything was made up on the spot, to serve a different purpose in each chapter.

This is an absolutely awful way to go about things. But it’s because I didn’t think I’d even write that much.

If no one had liked any of it, I never would have continued it. I wasn't wholly invested in it, and I'd already started planning other things, when all of a sudden, three/four people said they wanted to see more (this isn’t to say I didn’t like this; on the contrary, I thought it was awesome). So I wrote another chapter, expecting my "fans" to go away. Two of them did, but two of them didn't. So I wrote another chapter, still expecting interest to fade. Yet there you two were again. And one of the other fans came back.

That's when I realized I had something on my hands. So I kept writing, and started liking it more.

And then, while writing Ch. 8, I realized I didn't like the process anymore.

I wanted to make it all work better.

As well, Work has been making me braindead. I can't come up with stuff as well as I could when I had the whole day to plan things out…

So here we are.

Expect A Tepid Crossing to continue at some point in July; maybe mid-way, maybe later. In the meanwhile, I will continue writing. I've had some ideas involving a certain Museum, and a certain group of Friends who tend to go on Adventures. I'll try to get those things written up and posted while I work on the overall plot of A Tepid Crossing.

Don't worry: This isn't going to turn into the last book I tried to write. I REALLY want to get A Tepid Crossing written and sent to a publisher. I think this is my best shot at getting a writing deal so far. I won't screw this up. And I know how much you guys have enjoyed the first half.

So in the meanwhile, feel free to tell people about it. Feel free to go over the first eight chapters and tell me what you think can be improved. Feel free to forget about it, and then be surprised when chapter nine shows up like an unopened Christmas present (at least I hope you’ll think of it like that.) Feel free to do whatever you want. It’ll go up when it’s good and ready to go up…

So, that's it.

Urban Survival: Prologue (editted)

Joe’s fingers tapped ever so impatiently on the desk as he read through the file. He had to find the right one, the perfect one, one that would allow him to leave no trace behind. He glanced up at the mountain of files on his desk. Each one contained old blueprints, information, history and occupational status on temporary and permanent military bases alike. Joe missed his days as a soldier when he led missions for the safe house as opposed to plan them from behind the safe house's walls. He clenched his jaw in anger. His injury had grounded him in a cowardly place; stuck behind a desk instead of out there in the field. It wasn’t fair!

He had to find one base, just one that had been overrun by the freaks who had been dubbed the Cretin by the United Nations, yet still was not too far from the safe house itself. Then he would be able to exact his long awaited revenge.

Joe thought back to when the US Government had used up most of their money in order to build the hidden safe houses deep within many of the United States National Parks. It had all started with those freakin' aliens who called themselves the Ayra. Once they had began to turn hostile the government's priority was to protect the civilians, and to them shipping everyone into local safe houses seem the most proper.

The Morristown National Historic Park's safe house had made itself a home to Joe as soon as he had moved in during the incident. He almost felt bad for the human-like aliens. All they had wanted was a place to stay since their planet had been destroyed. He winced and began to feel pity for the poor Ayra… until he remembered he hated anything that was not Human.

Joe’s head suddenly felt like it was going to split in two. He heard an ungrateful noise, the same noise he had heard ever since his injury where he had nearly been killed by one of the Cretin. He could feel a tear leak past his clenched eyelids as he heard the “purring” of the Cretin in his head. How was this even possible? It seemed even after his accident he could still hear the freak of nature as if it were literally in his head. The “purring" then changed into unrecognizable words. A harsh whisper which unnerved him.

Maybe he had been infected and the parasite? And the Kreton was attempting to turn him into one of those things? No, no! He was only getting paranoid that's all. Joe knew he was immune and it was impossible for the little pests to turn him.

The whispering was making it tough to think though, so he put his full concentration on it and his brain slowly worked out each syllable into comprehendible words and finally into a full sentence. But once he was able to understand the words, his head began to ache even more. The words chanted in what sounded like a chorus of raspy whispers, all of which said the same thing over and over like a broken record, “Kill him! Kill the man that did this to you!”

The violent whispering slowly died down, however, after what seemed like days and he was able to start thinking clearly.

“They’re right! They’re always right!” Joe yelled aloud, punching the desk with so much anger his knuckles began to bleed.

He looked around the room slowly. He was glad he was in his private quarters because there was no telling what someone might think of him if they had seen him. They would probably lock him in the loony bin.

Many people said that the “purr” of the Cretin could make a man go mad, Joe on the otherhand thought this was rubbish. No sort of noise, of any type, would be enough to make him break psychologically! Joe rationalized the voices in his head by saying they were nothing more than his conscience telling him what he should, or needed to do. But just to reassure himself that he was still sane, Joe liked to use big words as a way to prove to himself that he still knew fact from fiction.

But this was the whole reason he hated anything not human. Because of what that Cretin had seemingly done to him... If it was not of human origin it disgusted him. Some claimed that the Cretin were still human and this was where the arguments got him for the Cretin were of human origin... In fact they had been humans at one point in their lives. Well, except for the Cretin who were born to Cretin parents. But he hated when people said such things. According his rules anyone or anything that is a cannibalistic psychopath deserves hatred and should be destroyed.

Joe leaned back in his chair and rested the file on his lap, continuing to read through it. Most of the words he read through were blobs of black and white as he began to blank out all of the “boring” bits. He stopped to relish a few words such as ‘death’, ‘died’, ‘explosion’ and the like. Although all of these words dealt with violence and misfortune, Joe couldn’t help but feel intrigued by them.

He flipped to the last page of the file and began to read it over. It was a typed log of the bases last comm. link transmission. He skimmed through it blanking the words out like he had before but then stopped and sat up quickly as he read the last three words, “we are overrun.” Joe’s eyes widened as he went back and reread the whole transmission over again.

Quickly flipping back to the first couple of pages in the file he found a map of the base's location. And after staring at it for a few moments he stood up and with somewhat of a limp, walked over to a bucket in the corner of his room. The bucket was full of many maps of various sizes, which he rummaged through hastily until he found the exact map he was looking for.

Rushing back over to the desk he knocked the mountain of files onto the floor carelessly with a single sweeping motion. Joe then unrolled the map quickly and threw it on top of the table smoothing out its edges. He glanced at the map in the file then looked back to the jumbo map and smiled. New Jersey was certainly a beautiful state.

Opening a drawer in the desk and pulling out a marker, Joe plotted out the coordinates of the base in the South Western regions of New York City and then the coordinates of the Morristown National Park’s safe house in New Jersey.

Joe stood back and admired his beautiful, yet sloppy scribbles. To him a master piece... others, not so much. But he was proud of it.

He then proceeded to cap the marker and throw it over his shoulder. He then walked his fingers from point A to point B chuckling more and more as his fingers neared the final destination.

“Perfect!”

He hurried over to a shelf on the opposite side of the room and fumbled with the objects atop it, until he found his radio.

Pressing down the button he spoke into it, “Miss Jane… Miss Jane, are you there?”

He released the button and heard static. So he tried again, “Miss…”

“Yes Mr. Hunt?” a young female voice interrupted him before he was even able to finish his statement.

Letting out a sigh of relief he calmed himself, “Miss Jane, is the Drone still up over New York?”

Jane stumbled to say something but paused and after a moment replied, “Yes?”

“Good! Transfer the controls to my console please,” Joe said almost gleefully running over to the computer in the other corner of his room.

“Yes sir... may I ask what for?”

Once he saw that he had the control of the UAV he stated simply, “I love Drones.”

Upon saying this he shut off the radio and grabbed hold of the joy stick which was sitting on the computer desk in front of him. Images of buildings far below appeared on the computer screen and flew by quickly, reminding him of some videogame he used to play as a teenager.

Joe typed in the coordinates of the military base into the computer letting the Drone autopilot itself to save himself the time of trying to find it manually. Rather soon afterward a message blipped on the screen indicating that the Drone had arrived at the destination.

“Excellent!”

Once again grabbing the joystick, Joe piloted the drone angling it down, closer to the ground. When he felt that it was at a sufficient altitude, he locked it in a large circling course above the buildings in that sector. He then took control of the camera and began looking at each of the buildings trying to find the base.

After a few minutes and some conformation from pictures in the file Joe was sure that he had found the base.

He sat there watching the building for about thirty minutes and was about to give up until at last, he saw what he was looking for. Around the back end of the base in an ally, Joe saw the pale nearly naked bodies of a group of Cretin enter the base carrying the dead bodies of some other Cretin, likely to be from a rival clan; in other words their food.

This was great news for Joe, it meant that there was a Cretin clan living in the base and he could enact his revenge.

Suddenly the splitting headache started again and Joe grabbed his head as if holding it would keep it from splitting in two. Just as before he could hear the Cretin’s “purr”, and as it got louder and louder it turned back into the harsh, raspy whispers again whispering the same thing, “Kill him! Kill the man that did this to you!”

This time the voices began to laugh after a few choruses as if what they had said was the funniest thing in the world. Joe joined into their madness and the headache died away but the laughing voices remained as they all laughed in unison.

“Yes!” Joe cried out, “It shall be soon!”

Joe grabbed the file and tore out the comm. link transmission. He then produced a lighter and proceeded to burn its edges. Once it was ablaze, he dropped it into the metal waste bin at his feet.

“My revenge shall be fulfilled! The man who did this to me shall pay!” The voices laughed more gleefully than before as he spoke the word 'revenge', “Max Urban shall pay for what he did!”