A Present for my Readers

As promised!  In the spirit of the Holiday Season, whichever present-giving holiday you prefer.  A selection from the beginning of my new book Scent of Metal –now undergoing final rewrite. A tale of science, courage, and Pluto…

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The emergency survey team moved down the rough-surfaced corridors at a jog-trot, looking for changes.  The air was dry and cold, with no scent.  Lea Santorin did her best to keep up, holding panic at bay by trying to figure out when things had gone wrong.  It couldn’t have been their ship; after all there had been at least three ships from Earth before Kepler and nothing happened.  Removing the alien…device hadn’t done it.  But she had, just briefly, put the thing back in the niche where it had been found.  The surface ablation of the ice layer had started shortly after.

“It’s my fault,” she mumbled, sure of it.

Ivars continued his careful, quick sweep of the corridor like he hadn’t heard her, weapon always pointed where he looked.  “If you know that, then you know how to fix it.”  The other soldiers behind her didn’t even pretend to pay attention to the conversation, and Dr. Adi was still slack-jawed with horror and shock.

Continue reading

The Long Way Home: Sequoyah begins

cover for The Long Way Home

Webspace pilot Moire Cameron is one of the best–but even she can’t fly her way out of a catastrophic drive failure that triggers a time-dilation bubble.  Left suddenly eighty years out of date, she is on the run in a world she no longer knows, caught in the middle of a human-alien war while agents of Toren hunt her for the information only she has–the location of the pristine world of Sequoyah.

Well, this is going to be a whole bunch of experimental.  The Long Way Home is the first book in the Sequoyah trilogy, an optimistic science fiction tale of relativistic side effects, aliens, adventure, and promises kept.

Reasons Why You Should Read This Book

  • I’ve written all three volumes already.  In the event of alien abduction I have left instructions for books 2 and 3 to be uploaded so you won’t miss out.
  • Did I mention the cool aliens? (Not the abducting and probing kind)
  • If you have a Kindle, it will be in the Select program for the next three months and FREE now and then. (If you sign up for my newsletter you will know ahead of time…)
  • If you don’t have a Kindle but know how to use a conversion program like Calibre, you can wait for it to be FREE (newsletter, blah blah), or you can pay a mere $2.99. (For now. Epub version will be for sale eventually when Select ends.)
  • If you don’t have a Kindle or don’t want to deal with Amazon, I had a sneak preview Epub version in my store, but only people on my newsletter list knew about it (hint hint) (other cool stuff is planned, like Advance Reader Copies for those who just can’t wait to find out what happens next.  Newsletter!)
  • It is written in the spirit of the Human Wave SF movement, where someone wins, things happen, and life is worth living.

Now available on Amazon

Remembrance of Things Past

Burma Shave

The Burma-Shave shaving cream company came up with a grand advertising plan back in the 1920’s — a clever little poem, with each line on a separate sign, spaced out along the roadside.  You had to pay attention to get every line and complete the rhyme, and they always ended with the sponsor’s name.  Sometimes extolling the improved dating prowess of smooth-chinned men, sometimes giving humorous driving safety tips, they entertained many a long boring road trip.  An example:

Burma Shave signs

It just so happens that “Burma-Shave” maps rather nicely to “Human Wave”, and my evil mind proceeded accordingly.

Plucky human

Saves the day

Let your brain

Come out and play

HUMAN WAVE

Spurred by my bad example, others have joined in on the fun … (these two courtesy of Phil Rose)

Future Earth:

A dreary place

So let’s all go

To Outer Space!

HUMAN WAVE

 

When planning for

Vacation fun

Pack your trusty

Laser gun!

HUMAN WAVE

Readers are encouraged to perpetrate their own attempts in the comments, and to spread these rhymes far and wide along with the Human Wave link!