Gwen Perkins's Blog, page 10

The Universal Mirror – Book trailer!

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Don't forget–you can purchase the book at Amazon.

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Dimestore Soldiers – excerpt

I thought that it would be fun to share the second chapter from a cyberpunk novel that I've set aside for the time being.  Who knows? If there's interest, I may pick it back up at some point. 

What you're seeing here is a never-edited first draft. Errors may abound.

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Dimestore Soldiers

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RUTA

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The hiss of the engine steamed out into the early morning air, heat breaking the fog. Old trains still dominated the yards, rusted metal hulks coated with splashes of graffiti. Two sets of tracks crisscrossed the northern end of Tahoma—the old freight trains' wooden ties and steel spikes contrasting with the sleeker metals of the light rail lines, so new that they shone where the sunlight hit.

Just after dawn, it didn't matter how old the trains were. There was no one there to see it.

"Come on–" A female voice broke the silence, clattering over the fence that separated the station from the rest of the city. It was followed by the ringing of a steel-toed boot against a chainlink fence. "The 4:57′s about to pull out."

The whistle blew—one note, loud and long.

"What do you want with that old train anyways, Ruta?" A second voice echoed behind the fence, also a woman's. It was quick and breathy, words so labored they demanded interruption.

"We're going to jump it." Ruta hit the ground as she jumped off the fence, her weight shaking the dirt as her feet hit it. The other woman followed her, dangling before she dropped, then caught herself by flattening her hand against the ground. Juanita's landing was so unsteady that the taller woman grabbed her and pulled her upright. They stood there, breathing in the coal fumes and dirt rising up from the train tracks.

Neither of the pair fit the place in which they were standing. Juanita's clothing was so new that it glistened, the false leather on her jacket shining from the glossy coat on it. Ruta's was little better, rough only because she'd taken scissors to it herself, mocking new fabric with a few artfully placed rips and tears. Juanita seemed more aware of the contrast, brushing away imagined dirt from the collar of her shirt. Ruta sneered as she saw it, her lower lip twisting down.

"Jump what?" Juanita sighed. "That train looks slow. If this is for some zoomsite, I don't see the point."

"You seen anyone else trainjumping? I didn't think so." Ruta knew zoomsites better than anyone she knew. She tapped into them when she first woke up, scanning the feeds to see what new experiences were up for sale. Sex was popular but that was something anyone could capture, upload, and make accessible for direct download to any braindancer. It took creativity to find the new in a world that most people preferred to access from the net in their living rooms. People had started calling the sites where viewers could purchase a stranger's experience "zoomsites" because it was a way to "zoom" in on the life of another person. Ruta didn't think so. The only experience anyone ever shared was the lie.

"That doesn't mean that we have to be the first," Juanita said.

"Being the first is the only way we're going to get noticed." Ruta leaned down, checking the buckles on her runners. She'd had her joints replaced last year but all the running that she'd done had been on sidewalks and rooftops.

"Don't be so obsessed."

"Obsessed? What else is there?" The train was pulling out of the yard and Ruta put on her goggles, turning on the embedded camera. Juanita didn't but Ruta said nothing.

The taller woman began to run, her long legs picking up speed as she loped alongside the tracks. Juanita followed, slower but more graceful as she followed. Black smoke billowed from the engine stack, filling the air with soot as the train coughed its way down the tracks. Sun was beginning to break over the mountain that gave Tahoma its name, throwing golden-pink rays against the sky.

"Hurry!" Ruta called back, looking over her shoulder as she ran. Black hair whipped her face, slapping her goggles. She took a deep breath, then lept on the back of the caboose.

The metal slammed against her palms as she caught the handrails and clung, pulling herself up rung by rung. Juanita was still running behind, stumbling as the wheels kicked up gravel and dirt.

"Jump!" Ruta yelled at her.

Juanita sprang. The sound of her impact was dull, her chest hitting hard. She whimpered as her arms wrapped around the handrails, locking her body steady. Ruta continued her climb until she reached the top of the caboose. Her hands gripped the sides, steadying herself against the jerking rack of the freight train.

"Come on up," she called down to Juanita. "The view's fantastic." Ruta twisted her body halfway to see if that was true.

Even with the enhanced sight her goggles gave her, the line of boxcars seemed to stretch out forever. Most of the cars were enclosed, rust-red hulks of steel that followed one another in a straight line. Cargo was visible in a few—raw grains and rubble piled high, picked up by the wind and scattered into the concrete jungles they were passing through. The landscape that the freights traversed had been given up on long ago. What remained were the shells of ancient companies—buildings so small that no screens lit the outside. It was dark in this land, Ruta realized. This was the wilderness.

She remembered that she was recording and swiveled her neck, turning herself so that she could survey the road behind. Tahoma was growing distant, the sloping cityscape coated by the fog that crawled up from port and sewer.

"I can't believe we're doing this," Juanita said. She crawled up on top of the caboose, then laid down flat on the steel. "And you still have those goggles on."

"I'm catching the moment."

"Recording isn't living," the other woman told her. Ruta glanced down, reaching out to tug a strand of hair out of Juanita's collar. It was dusty with soot, glazed with bits of debris from the breeze.

"Define life." Ruta stood up, trembling as the force of the wind roared at her. Juanita squealed. "Is feeling the wind slapping your face so hard you can't breathe dying?" She inhaled deeply, half-choking on the smoke. "It doesn't feel like it." Her arms spread themselves out in the air as if they were wings. "This—this is alive."

"If it feels so good, why do you want to share it? With the whole world?" Juanita muttered.

Ruta didn't hear her.

She took a few steps forward, wobbling with the forward motion like she was walking on new legs. Her vision was jarred with each step, sight jolting down to her feet instinctively, then back ahead.

"Think I can jump to the next car?" Ruta asked.

"Don't," Juanita said.

Ruta gathered up her strength, coiling her muscles as she peered down at the corner of the car. Taking a few steps backwards, she ran, her heart pounding in her throat as she reached the edge and lept. Her body was adrift only for a second, air whistling past her ears, the ground just below, and then she hit, her feet landing solidly on the roof of the next car.

"Aiiii—yeah!" She screamed, the sound somewhere between cry and exclamation, pumping her fist in the air. Juanita walked towards Ruta, staring at the gap between the two train cars on which they stood. Her eyes slitted, measuring the distance between them. Ruta's fist dropped but remained clenched at her side as she said, "Jump."

"I don't think so," the woman shook her head. She kept looking at the gap, staring down at the tracks as the wheels rolled over them. It was nothing but a hissing steel blur.

"You're always such a coward," Ruta said. "All that talk about living and you're as bad as the rest of those vidiots." The words dripped from her tongue, forming slowly, then falling one by one.

"I just don't want to. I'm still on last year's cyber."

"So?" Ruta asked. "Just because Daddy can't get you an upgrade doesn't mean you have to be chickenshit."

"Like you paid for your own."

"I'm not scared to use it." Ruta lept up, landing neatly a few seconds later and remaining steady as a cat.

"I'm not scared," Juanita said and it was then Ruta knew that she had her.

"Prove it."

"Fine." Juanita's body shriveled, caving in on itself as her face turned again to the gap. The shiver of anticipation teased the back of Ruta's neck as she stared. She wanted to see the other woman jump, experience the adrenaline rush by watching it in someone else. Whatever Ruta claimed, she was a voyeur at heart and her entire self tingled as she saw Juanita come running for the edge, her feet picking up speed as they flew.

Juanita's runners lifted up, a buckle flying open as her body rose into the air. The look in her eyes was terrified. Her legs left the security of the steel under foot as she jumped, her limbs losing control and flailing. It only took a moment.

Her fingers caught the side of the car as she missed. Bone cracked as it slammed against the moving train. All Ruta heard was a sharp intake of breath as she stared towards the gap, running towards the dark fingers clutching the rail. Blood splattered Juanita's knuckles, all that Ruta could see.

Ruta reached for the hand, her arm stretched as far as it could go, her muscles bulging as she hit the car, knees first.

"Catch me, Ruta," was all she could hear over the roar of the wheels of the tracks. A whimper followed, then the fingers slipped away.

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Writing by Gwen Perkins (c2012). Find out more about my work at my website or at my Amazon author page.

The image is courtesy of weheartit.com.

Worldbuilding: Extinction Events

Blood: The Brotherhood Saga

I am pleased to introduce to you my first guest blogger, Kody Boye, author of Blood: The Brotherhood Saga. Kody and I first connected on Facebook where I discovered this novel and became rapidly engrossed by the work (expect a review forthcoming). It's currently available at Amazon. If, like me, you enjoy epic fantasy, I recommend picking up a copy.

But for now, on to the post!

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Extinction Events

A guest post by Kody Boye.

It became prevalent early on within the writing of the Brotherhood saga that much of the world and the sentient creatures that populated it had already died off. Due to human encroachment, disease, mass extinction events or all-out genocide, several races that bore intelligent thought within the world of Minonivna perished or are in the process of dying off as the first book begins.

You might be wondering after reading the introductory paragraph: Why?

Why did entire species have to die off, you ask? Simple: they just did.

If we are to follow what the fossil record shows, there have been many a man (or things resembling men) that have fallen to the greater acts of nature. Who can forget the Neanderthals that roamed parts of Europe and Asia or, more recently, homo floresiensis (better known as the Hobbit) in Indonesia? These are only two of the many examples of sentient, human-like creatures that existed on planet Earth throughout its billions of years of existence, yet they died out. Nature is a cruel and savage beast, as she whittles out many a creature either through predation or natural disaster. Many a theory has been proposed about how the Neanderthals died out (climate change and lack of food, interbreeding with or being killed off by homo sapiens.) Even the Hobbit is believed to have been wiped out by a volcanic eruption that completely annihilated its species, so to think that such species-killing disasters are common are not entirely out of the question.

However, though history has shown that life on Earth has a tendency to die out, what does that mean for life in a fictional setting? Why kill of entire races of creatures when a world builder can avoid such atrocities?

There's a few reasons.

Reason numero uno is simple—I wanted there to be depth and realism to the world. Earth's history has shown that life, especially dominant or intelligent life, has a predisposition to death. I wanted to explore the concept of mortality within the world I call Minonivna, particularly because it's interesting to see the demise of grand creatures, but also because it makes a more well-rounded world for there to be extinctions.

The second reason, and possibly the more complex of the two, is the idea that humanity may have played a role in killing off some of their fellow sentients. This theory has been proposed particularly for homo erectus (what we modern humans are.) We have, over the course of several millions of years, hunted dozens upon dozens of animals to extinction. Off the top of my head in but a moment alone, I can name: the Moa bird in New Zealand, who was killed by foreigners by stealing their eggs after settling on the island; the Thylacine, who was hunted to extinction in Australia; the Yangtze River Dolphin, who was killed for food and poisoned by garbage dumps in China; and the Passenger Pigeon, which was wiped out in a mass hunt in North America. These are only a few of the creatures who, though not sentient in any way, were wiped out by humanity. Since there are no modern examples of humanity wiping out something that is capable of thinking intelligently and with a conscience, I wanted to explore the idea of human cruelty or ignorance and how, through rash choices and decisions, our actions may have killed off creatures that may have compared to us emotionally.

What kind of creatures were or are in the process of being killed off within the Brotherhood universe, you ask?

Allow me to demonstrate.

The Centaurs were a race of humanoid equine creatures that existed within a part of the world southwest of the Northern Coastline called The Whooping Hills. With a human torso connected to an equine lower half, they lived in tribal structures and hunted local wildlife. Called 'abominations' by modern humanity due to the belief that they were 'created by horse demons who slept with women,' they were hunted to extinction.

Further southwest, beyond the Whooping Hills, exists a place known as the Abroen Forest—a vast, sprawling forest that is commonly known as the home of the Elves. Within the forest exists a multitude of intelligent or somewhat-sentient life. A race of rat creatures known as the Unclean were hunted to death in a mass genocide by the Elves. Known as the Great Hunt, the creatures were hunted to extinction because the Elves could not prevent the creatures from preying on and killing their children.

Beyond the coast of Minonivna, in an arctic wasteland known as Neline, a race of upright-walking bear creatures known as the Kerma are afflicted with a flesh disease that creates tumors along the body that rot through flesh, bone and, eventually, the matter of the inner body. Though not yet extinct within The Brotherhood Saga, the creatures' numbers are rapidly declining. No source to the disease has been found, though it is believed by the Kerma people that human settlers brought the illness to the island that is ultimately decimating their numbers.

Within the world of The Brotherhood, I tried to create a realistic background in regards to not only humanity, but the creatures that coexist or have coexisted around them. It's a harsh stretch to destroy entire creatures that could have added a positive dimension to the story, but as a writer, and as a world builder, I believe killing them creates a more well-rounded, three-dimensional world.

Kody Boye

Kody Boye was born and raised in Southeastern Idaho. Since his initial publication in the Yellow Mama Webzine in 2007, he has gone on to sell nearly three-dozen stories to various markets. He is the author of the short story collection Amorous Things, the novella The Diary of Dakota Hammell, the zombie novel Sunrise and the first book in The Brotherhood Saga, Blood. His fiction has been described as 'Surreal, beautiful and harrowing' (Fantastic Horror,) while he himself has been heralded as a writer beyond his years (Bitten by Books.) He currently lives and writes in the Austin, Texas area.

Just a little humor…

A photograph of how bad things are getting in Tacoma, Washington.  Courtesy of Rusty George Creative. 

 

(And now I go back to working.  Look forward to a guest post tomorrow from fantasy author Kody Boye!)

 

This blog protests SOPA

Since WordPress' Protest SOPA settings don't appear to be working, I give you this post instead:

Many websites are blacked out today to protest proposed U.S. legislation that threatens internet freedom: the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). From personal blogs to giants like WordPress and Wikipedia, sites all over the web — including this one — are asking you to help stop this dangerous legislation from being passed.

Tools for Authors: Kindlegraph

I'd planned to write a post about the difference between yWriter and Scrivener but because of a number of things (including the snopocalypse in western Washington), I haven't put enough time into using Scrivener to feel that I'd do a fair job of it.  So instead, I'd like to spotlight a tool called Kindlegraph.

Kindlegraph is a tool that allows authors to autograph e-books, at least those formatted for Kindle.

How it works:

1) You sign up as an author, preferably using your Twitter account.

2) Upload your books.  The site will search the Amazon database for you so this part is fairly easy.

3) When you have an autograph request, it will pop up (within about a minute, in my experience) in your inbox.  Click on that and you will see the name of the person who requested your autograph.

4) Go to "sign" the book.  This screen will look like the one below: 

Here are a couple of things to know about signing your book.  First, Kindlegraph will force you to put something in that top box.  If you want the entire inscription to show up in your handwriting, I'd recommend just putting a period there.  

Secondly, you'll have to write everything in that second box using your mouse.  Unless you're fantastic with a mouse or trackpad, my advice?  Try it with a tablet.  Or resign yourself to having the signature of a first-grader.

I initiated the process myself and discovered a couple other things from the fan perspective.  The kindlegraph can't be edited or resent by the author once completed (if any of you find differently, please let me know).  

The other thing–and this isn't obvious–is that Amazon may bounce the signature back if it thinks that it's spam.  In that case, the reader may never get their signature from you.

To avoid that, I recommend you tell readers in advance to add the email signature "@kindlegraph.com" to their approved senders list for Kindle.  This can be found by using these settings: 

1. Visit Manage Your Kindle page.
2. Sign-in to Amazon account. 
3. Go to "Personal Document Settings" under "Your Kindle Account".
4. Under "Approved Personal Document E-mail List" click "Add a new approved e-mail address".
5. Enter the e-mail address to approve and select "Add Address."
6. Instruct the sender to resend the document. 

Is Kindlegraph a good tool?  I think it will be.  I can't count the number of people who have said they were waiting for print in order to get a signed copy.  Those publishing in e-only might like this tool for that reason.

But does it have far to go?  Yes, I think that having no ability to resend autographs is a major problem.  I'd like the ability to edit as well, should the signature somehow get written incorrectly (misspelled names, etc).  But this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Reading a Good Book…

I love this video because the imagery reminds me of what it's like to read a good book. The story shown here is imaginative as well.

The song is "Lille" by Lisa Hannigan. Unfortunately, I don't know who created this beautiful book.

E-release of the Universal Mirror – Get it Now!

The e-edition of my novel, The Universal Mirror, has just been released! Free to Amazon Prime members (though the lending library) and $2.99 for your very own e-copy.

About the book:

On the island of Cercia, the gods are dead, killed by their followers and replaced with the study of magic. Magicians are forbidden to leave their homeland. Laws bind these men that prevent them from casting spells on the living—whether to harm or to heal.

Quentin, a young nobleman, challenges these laws out of love for his wife. His best friend, Asahel, defies authority at his side, unaware that the search for this lost magic will bring them both to the edge of reason, threatening their very souls. The Universal Mirror shows how far two men are willing to go for the sake of knowledge and what they will destroy to obtain it.

If you enjoy fantasy stories with a focus on magic, head on over and check it out. Hey, it's less than a cup of coffee.

(And please feel free to spread the word!)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Universal-Mirror-ebook/dp/B006VYHLNS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326328979&sr=1-1

Excerpt: The Jealousy Glass

I don't often share excerpts from my first drafts. As a writer, I tend to just outline the whole story as I complete the first draft with somewhat minimal description and often poor language, then I go back and fix it/reorder chapters/add-remove characters/etc.

But since it's been a while since I blogged anything, I'm going to put a little unpolished snippet up from The Jealousy Glass, the sequel to The Universal Mirror.

This is part of a conversation between the two main characters, Asahel and Felix. Shouldn't be taken as anything like a final draft, rights to the characters/setting/excerpt are mine, yada, yada, you know the drill.

"Heresy. It's such an odd word," Asahel murmured.

"Not so odd, considering. We had a god…once."

"And then he was killed." Asahel turned even more thoughtful. "No one ever questions that either. Just like no one questioned why we had laws that prevented us from using magic on living beings–even to heal."

Felix smiled as Asahel said it.

"I thought you'd be done with dangerous questions," he replied. Asahel pinked, ducking his head as he tried to think of a suitable response.

"Someone ought to ask," he said finally.

"And why?" Felix countered. "So we can create new gods? Or should we come here to seek them out? If we take their beliefs for our own, then there's no point to war, is there? We'll already have given them the best of our country."

"What is that?" Asahel asked.

"The one freedom we had left," he said. "The freedom not to believe. The freedom to rely on ourselves for our own morality and to know for certain that our goodness came from ourselves and not some distant unknown."

"And you believe faith in a god would erase that?" He wasn't sure himself what he believed. Everyone grew up with the stories of the dark times when Cercians had worshiped a vengeful god. The idea was so distant that Asahel considered it little more than an idle theory to pass the time.

It was clear that Felix had thought about it more often as he answered, "Yes, I do."

"I don't think so," the younger man said. "People are the same whether they believe in a higher being or not. I shouldn't see that having a god absolves anyone of responsibility. Rather, it ought to give them more of it."

Felix laughed. "I hope you've the right of it, Soames."

The Cliffhanger Moment

The hardest thing for me as a writer is starting. Not just that moment at the very beginning of a story or novel where I'm staring at an absolutely blank page but also simply sitting down to write for the first time in a day. Maybe I'm alone here but after I've spent 8 hours at work, come home and helped the kids with homework, and finally have that time to write, I'm worn out. The energy is gone, sapped out by everything else I had to think about that day.

How do I get over this problem? The answer is simple: cliffhangers.

I don't mean this literally–at least not all of the time. When I sat down to think about what motivated me as a writer and how I could keep that energy flowing, it turned into thinking about what hooks me as a reader. At the time, I was on a reread of Game of Thrones and realized that Martin is very, very good at the cliffhanger. While he juggles many points of view, he manages to end each chapter on a dramatic moment. It's one of the reasons that I think he's found such success. Not all of these moments are action-packed. Some of them are just emotional revelations or an intriguing statement but all of them are focused on leaving you with a question. They drive you as the reader to want to get to that next moment.

It struck me as I realized this that there was no reason I couldn't do that as a writer. Not for my audience but for myself.

This is how I do it. I sit down and I write until I find that cliffhanger moment. It might be in the middle of a scene, it might be at the end of a chapter. But when I hit it, I force myself to stop. I stop, put away the laptop (or put down the pen), and walk away from the manuscript, telling myself "you get to go back to that tomorrow."

What that moment is, varies. Sometimes, it's a pulse-pounding action scene. Sometimes, it's just a conversation or dialogue I know will be fun to write. But either way, I know that it's something I'm going to be really excited about. I'm going to have it in the back of my head the next day. I'm going to write it mentally in spare moments and when I sit down and finally have a chance to type, instead of being exhausted, I'm going to be excited because I've been anticipating–rather than dreading–this time all day.

Does it work all the time? No. Is it frustrating? Oh, yes, especially if I can't actually get to write that day and I have to hold on to the thoughts. Sometimes, I end up scribbling bits out on post-its because I just can't wait.

But it works for me a lot of the time and perhaps it'll work for you too. Try it and see.