Michelle L. Levigne's Blog, page 122

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #2: The Truce

Commonwealth UniverseDownfall Era/Era I
The Sorendaal/Pirate novels
From Writers Exchange
“What’s been going on outside?” Niall finally asked, when the hubbub finally calmed down and people went back to their bunks, got in line to use the sanitary cabinets now that there was hot water available, or gathered at the other table groupings to talk. Kimber and Sureena and the leaders of the prisoners in the other compartment joined the command team and Dr. Hallbar. It was time for a serious conversation, to finally get facts and decide what they could do.
“All clear, Doctor.” Selendon’s voice came through the medical insignia pin on the doctor’s collar. “Tell them whatever they want to know. It’s the only way we’re going to survive.”
“Tell me, Commodore,” Niall said, struggling to keep his voice calm, though it still felt like his throat had been scraped with sand, “did you authorize--“
“Absolutely not. And you should know that the ship punished those skabblenaqs before we even knew what was going on.”
“How?” He met Dr. Hallbar’s gaze, saw the shift to bleakness mixed with something like weary horror.
“Everything that could go wrong in the room where they conducting their questioning,” the doctor began.
“This is no time for niceties, Dru,” Selendon cut in. “Call it what it was, torture, plain and simple. The ship turned everything backwards in the room. We’re still trying to untangle the programming, figure out if it was a cascade failure on a massive scale, or this ship of … it’s our ship, not mine any longer.” A gusting sigh came through the connection, buzzing a little. “Our ship might just be sentient. Somehow. An angry, confused, hurting, frightened child, lashing out at the ones who hurt its friends. Or maybe even part of its consciousness. Who knows? We have no access to any of the research, any of the theories or science behind what the researchers were doing when they built the ship. Too much was either lost or deliberately destroyed and hidden.”

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #2: The Truce

Commonwealth UniverseDownfall Era/Era IThe Sorendaal/Pirate novels

From Writers Exchange
At the end of twelve days, Niall was escorted to the captured RA ship -- expected. The cargo bays had been modified into dormitories, and all the former crew of the Nova Vendetta were housed there -- also expected. The section where Niall was left contained almost all of his command crew -- not expected. He hadn’t identified anyone by name, but then again, Selendon also hadn’t asked about any of his tribe.
Everyone wore clothes similar to his. Simple, long tunics and loose trousers and shipboard-boots with magnetic plates in the soles. Dark cloth in blue, green or brown, with the silver sensor threads woven into a loose square over their hearts. Niall looked around the dormitory room with bunks for thirty and found an unoccupied bunk. He assumed it was unoccupied because the sleeping sack was still rolled up on one end, unlike the other bunks. Most of them had bags hanging from the support posts, just like the bag given him when he was finally dismissed from Selendon’s office for the last time. There were a few personal items in his bag, retrieved from his prison quarters. He assumed everyone else had been given the opportunity to find something they valued, to take to their next point of incarceration.
“They fixed the engines,” Nesta said, approaching him.
“Their mistake.”
“They’re listening,” Doc said from a bunk two rows away.
“We’ve had bigger challenges.” Niall sat down and settled the bag at his feet. He closed his eyes and felt the rumble of the engines coming up from the deck, through his boots. Flickers of his hallucination-dreams came to him, and he shivered deep inside as he imagined the Nova Vendetta had welcomed him home.

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #2: The Truce

Commonwealth UniverseDownfall Era/Era I
The Sorendaal/Pirate novels
From Writers Exchange
Niall and his crew were just centimeters away from freedom, escaping in the stolen starship they had christened the Nova Vendetta. Then disaster struck, paralyzing their ship. Retaken as prisoners, they found themselves transported on the very ship that had been their ticket to freedom.
Then the unthinkable happened: experimental technology and a risky gamble put the ship under their control. The escaped prisoners headed for the furthest reaches of known space, determined to stay free at any cost.

Labeled rebels and pirates and criminals, they held to the principles that had let them survive and stay Human during their time in prison. To the outlying colonies slowly being abandoned by the disintegration of the Central Allied Worlds, the crew of the Nova Vendetta and its slowly growing fleet of allies were heroes in the truest sense of the word.
Then the revolution reached out to threaten Niall's homeworld. It was time to go home. He had to protect Sorendaal, even if it meant giving himself into the hands of the very people who wanted him dead.

Off the Bookshelf: SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS, Terry Brooks

The subtitle is: Lessons from the Writing Life

In case you've been living under a rock for the last forty years, Terry Brooks is the author of the Shannara and Landover books. He's been compared to Tolkein -- all other comparisons don't really matter, do they?

I remember reading Shannara in college, with the incredible Brothers Hildebrandt illustrations. The glory days when I was buying every book I could afford from the Science Fiction Book Club.

Yes, this book is about writing. I love seeing inside other writers' heads, getting glimpses of their struggles, the processes they go through, the breaks they got and didn't get. Brooks offers some insights and wisdom applicable to all writers of fiction, no matter what genre you love or loathe. It's a shorter book compared to some of the massive explorations of other writers' careers and minds and journeys that are on the market. Easy to digest, but a lot of "writerly nutrition" packed into it.

Read it. You'll be glad you did.

And when I get my to-be-read skyscraper whittled down a few million pages (yeah, that big!) I'll have to pull out the first books of Shannara and Landover and read them again, and see how different they are, now that I've had a glimpse through the eyes of the wizard behind the words.

TURNABOUT: Phoenix Fan Fiction

John Wolf was the best -- as partner, agent, and friend. With Preminger, he was all three. The agency took care of their men and their families, and when John was murdered during a very important case two years ago, the agency took responsibility for his orphaned daughter. But there was one problem: Joanna had been kidnapped by the very people her father had been investigating, to use as a tool against him. His death was kept secret to keep her alive, and the investigation went on. But now the group had been found and the agency men were closing in. Preminger was allowed in on the operation for the sole objective of getting Joanna out. He was an old friend, and would be able to handle her easier than a stranger, no matter how well-intentioned. It was imperative she be rescued, for the information she would have about these people and their operations, as well as being a ward of the agency. She was fourteen years old now.
"I need your help to get her out," Preminger concluded, his eyes fastened wearily on the dark road in front of him.
"She means a lot to you," Bennu observed.
"A lot? If my wife had ever had children..." His voice trailed off. "She couldn't pronounce my name when she was little, so I was always Uncle Jay. You wouldn't believe the red tape I had to fight to be allowed to be the one to go in after her."
"And you want me as insurance." Bennu smiled at the crooked grin and hasty nod the agent gave him. "John Wolf was a good friend for you to do so much for him."

"We were brothers. Blood brothers, by an old Indian ceremony. John was a full-blooded Indian, descended from Shamans, and the ceremony meant a lot to him. John Snow Wolf." Preminger shook his head, a fond, reminiscent expression on his face. "He was a born hunter. Instincts like you wouldn't ... well, maybe you would believe. Always claimed his bloodline had given him the ability. Magic, he called it."

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #1: The Injustice

Commonwealth UniverseDownfall Era/Era I
The Sorendaal/Pirate novels
From Writers Exchange
“End the suspense already,” Garen said, reaching as if he would take the box from Niall’s hands.
The other four laughed, mostly because Garen was usually the one who tormented the others by making them wait for news or to find out the latest rumors or which professor was taking interns and apprentices.
“All right.” Niall pulled out the multi-tool his professor of field service had given all the graduates. In a moment, he had slit the outer sealed skin. The box was held shut with straps that he cut in a moment.
Inside were small translucent green cubes.
“Old-style video cubes,” Garen said, picking one out of the box. He turned it over between his hands. “I think I know where you can find a player.”
By the time Niall, Amber and Garen tracked down a machine that would play the cubes, they had lost the other two friends, who professed sleep interested them more than video cubes. The trio ended up in one of the machinery archives. They were just as amazed as the archives keeper that there were more than a dozen of the obsolete display and playback units in storage. One cube was marked, “play this first,” so they did.
“Hello, son.” Gaellon Encardi smiled from the screen, looking even more battered and worn and browned from thin ship shielding than he had the last time Niall saw him -- when he was twelve Standard years old. His Exploration Corps uniform looked new enough for all his badges and insignias and honor citations to be crisp and clean and bright. That meant he was heading out for another long-range mission. The elder Encardi specialized in finding habitable planets and clearing them for colonization. If there were any conditions that would threaten the security and success of a colony, especially the health and reproductive ability of the colonists, he could identify it faster and with more accuracy than most others. It made him a valuable asset to the CAW’s colonization efforts. If the truth were ever admitted within the Niallon household, it gave him an excuse to stay away from Sorendaal and his wife’s family, the dynastic leaders of the colony.

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #1: The Injustice

Commonwealth UniverseDownfall Era/Era I
The Sorendaal/Pirate novels
Niall Encardi heard the news of the coup at the beginning of the final lecture in MERAH, before graduating as a doctor from the Merkator Medical Academy. His classmates spread the rumors and speculations in harsh, rapid whispers, punctuated by curses, as they waited for the team of professors to step up to the lectern in the center of the lecture amphitheater.
The timing of the news struck Niall as symbolic and ironic. The new regime called itself the Restoration Alliance, and had been threatening the entrenched government of the Central Allied Worlds for nearly three years now with strong backing from the Set’ri, who insisted on “purifying” the Human genome. Their dogma included sterilizing all “defective” genetic variations, and making slaves of any humanoid race that didn’t match their narrow, exclusive criteria. 
MERAH stood for Medial Ethics Relating to Augmented Humanoids – meaning Wrinkleship pilots, Khybors, and all the lesser mutations and variations that had come about by accident or as byproducts of the tinkering of generations of scientists. The ones who couldn’t reproduce were safe, and perhaps to be envied. The Set’ri didn’t care about them. The ones who could pass their augmented genetics on to their children -- especially Khybors -- or whose tangled genetic side trips could show up in future generations of their family line even if they themselves didn’t or couldn’t reproduce -- such as Wrinkleship pilots -- were their targets.

The War Room

Works-in-Progress: Second Wave, book 1 in the Bridges series.

At least, that's what it is called right now. Doggone it, but as I write more and discover more characters and details about this mysterious alien world I stranded the colonists on, I'm thinking I have no idea what this book is supposed to be about. It's gonna be a LOT bigger than I planned, when I sent the proposal to my agent.

*sigh*

CAN you call it a YA series if the first 70K words are from the POV of adults? The story is supposed to be about Jess and Bridge meeting up, two fugitives on an alien world, and forming an alliance that will remake the entire society when they're both older and the process of changing a group of Human children into a bridge between the species has finished.

Maybe. Right now I've told the story from her parents' POV.

I keep getting more IDEAS!!

Love it and hate it. Just don't tell my agent I'm having these problems, would you?


WANT A FREE BOOK???
Next week, the giveaway opens up for my SF romance novel, STARBLUE, from Desert Breeze Publishing. It's the sequel to BLUE FIRE -- because the heroine, Starblue Ash, is the daughter of my heroes from the first book, Rhianni Day and Petroc Ash. Makes sense, huh?

Go to Goodreads and click on the Giveaways page, or just look up the book by its title, and you can enter the drawing. I'm giving away three print copies.

Or you could just skip the waiting and go right to Amazon or Desert Breeze to get your copy in either print or ebook. I don't mind. Go ahead. You'll be glad you did!

Book of the Week: NOVA VENDETTA #1: The Injustice

Commonwealth Universe
Downfall Era/Era I
The Sorendaal/Pirate novels

From Writers Exchange

Niall Encardi was ready to graduate after long, intensive years of medical training, and go home to the colony world of Sorendaal. His life-long dream was to be a healer and help the people led by his uncle, the governor. 

The revolutionaries who overthrew the current government of the Central Allied Worlds had other plans. When the homeworlds of Niall and his classmates didn't immediately give support and approval to the revolutionaries, the medical students were labeled enemies of the state, and transported to prison.


Despite every effort to stay focused on his first calling, healing and medicine, Niall became a leader, first on a prison planet, then on the prison space station known as the Abyss. Every time the government changed hands, he and his friends and then his allies in the prison society were labeled conspirators and sympathizers and condemned to yet more imprisonment.

By the time the Abyss was attacked, Niall and his people had become a force to be reckoned with. Their goal: freedom, even if meant turning pirate like the falsely imprisoned nobleman who sailed the ancient seas, on a ship called the Vendetta.

Off the Bookshelf: HAVAH, by Tosca Lee

The subtitle is: The Story of Eve.

Should say it all, right?
Umm, no!

One-word reaction when I finally finished reading this (after kicking myself for taking so long to get to it?):  WOW.

Beautiful writing. Beautiful imagery. Intense.

But don't read it just for a compelling literary journey. This is the kind of book that keeps you up late, reading past midnight when you're supposed to get up early because you have a long day of physical activity in the July sun ahead of you. Yeah, that intense.

When you think about it, what could be so compelling about a book that covers a story we all know? Or at least, a story we all THINK we know?

That's the genius and the skill and the gift of Tosca Lee. We all know the bare bones of the story of the first people, the Fall, the Curse. All the slanted variations of the story to fit in with different ideologies and trying to place all the blame on one or the other, or even rewriting the truth -- another way of saying we've been lied to. We all know who is at the bottom of every attempt to change what God said, don't we?

No, this puts flesh on the bones, and tears, and joy, and wonder, and innocence and pain and an aching sense of that oneness that was lost, the tragedy of the destroyed Paradise. This makes Eve's story more real, more understandable, and yet doesn't excuse anyone.

Bravo. And again, WOW.