Guest Post With Author Adam Gaffen
Hello everyone! Today, I’m hosting Adam Gaffen here on my meager little blog. 
I hope you enjoy the post and don’t forget to enter the Rafflecopter drawing HERE! You can get entries just for downloading Adam’s free eBook, the Kildaran.
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Thanks for the invite CM! It’s great to be here. *looking around* Roomy in here – what’s behind this door?
*CRASH* *dust flies*
Oops. I’ll clean that up later, okay? Heh.
My blog is called Adam Gaffen’s The Kildaran – and it actually started as an exercise in fandom.
You see, I read. A lot.
And when my authors don’t put out the next book in the series quickly enough, I get cranky. Oh, I’ll reread the series, or other books – but when they leave me hanging, well..
One of my favorite authors is John Ringo. (I hope to meet him – and talk shop! – next summer at Dragon*Con. If YOU’RE going – yes, you, reading this! – look me up!) He’s written a bunch of books, many in what would usually be termed Military SF. But one series of his, GHOST, is more like pure MilFic (military fiction), and it ended abruptly in 2008 with A Deeper Blue. Keep in mind, he had written FIVE books in this series in TWO YEARS. So I was hooked, hooked bad – and then bam! Cold turkey.
What does a writer do? WRITE! So I started to write ‘the next book’ in John’s series.
THEN I found his fansite – and started posting chapters there. I got good feedback from the other fans, enough to encourage me, and made contact with both John and a fellow fan/author, Dick Evans. Everything was going swimmingly, when…THE SITE CRASHED.
Well, it IS based in New Zealand. And they did have the quakes. So, maybe not entirely their fault. But that’s when I realized I needed a place to put my stuff that >I< controlled.
Hence, The Kildaran.
Even though my book ended up huge – 234,000+ words! – eventually I ran out of chapters. So then I expanded it to include other stories and more run-of-the-mill stuff – work, family, etc. But it’s still The Kildaran – and anyone who wants to read the novel in serialised fashion is welcome there!
Lately, I’ve been concentrating on another series. This is The Cassidy Chronicles. I’ve written the first two books (Run Like Hell and A Deadly Quest) and am working on the third, A Desperate Gambit. Oh, you want to know what they’re about? Hold on; let me get someone.
- Hello?
-Hi, Adam!
-What? You know who this is! It’s Kendra!
- Oh! You mean – now? Okay, I guess.
- It was our wedding day – beautiful day, perfect early summer weather – and Cass and I were up at the altar with Derek when the minister – total ass named Farrelly – pulls out a flechette gun and tries to off us! So we took off!
- Hey, Cass is back; I need to go. Yeah, we’ll talk later, kay? Bye!
Sorry; Kendra and Cass are a busy couple. It’s been like pulling teeth to get the latest story out of them. Tell you what – if you don’t mind? – I’ll share a bit of it. Cool? Good!
Chapter 1: I Get By
“This sucks.”
“Shut up.”
“Where are we going?”
“This sucks.”
“Shut. Up.”
“You didn’t answer me; where are we going?”
Christina Montana, agent of OutLook and specialist in hurting people and breaking things, took her attention from the road for a brief moment.
“Hotel.” The one-word answer was enough for the questioner, Dr. Lisa Mantchev, at least for the moment.
“This sucks.”
“So help me, Mac, you say that one more time and I’m gonna throw you through the window!”
“I can’t help it – Cass should be with us!”
Montana had to admit that her fellow agent, Amanda McAllister, known universally as Mac, had a point.
The three women were returning from rescuing Dr. Mantchev from a holding cell in the headquarters of her employer, Heavy Lift Corporation. A fourth woman, Aiyana Cassidy Foster-Briggs, had spearheaded the effort. She had been an employee of HLC as well, until an assassination attempt at her wedding. If correct, it could lead to a revolution in transit and transport, cutting right to the heart of HLC’s multi-billion dollar business. Cass and her wife, Kendra Foster-Briggs Cassidy, had contacted Lisa to dig into the files and uncover any proof of HLC’s involvement in the shooting. Unfortunately for Lisa, she must have left tracks, because goons from the Security Department of HLC had picked her and her husband up.
Cass and Kendra, meanwhile, had problems of their own, including a cross-continental chase from Los Alamos to Massachusetts and down to the ruins of New Orleans. There, hidden away in plain sight, was the home office of OutLook, a company with a secret. Ostensibly a support organization for far-sighted people and companies, providing inspiration and funding for true blue-sky projects, on another level it was much more sinister, engaging in personal protective services, industrial and international espionage, and even assassination. Kendra was a highly-trained courier, who had done stints as both a protective agent and assassin. She had semi-retired and moved to Los Alamos, in the Sonoran Republic, where she’d reconnected with Cass, her best friend from high school.
OutLook, she thought, would provide them sanctuary. Instead, Director Talbott had sent Kendra off on a courier run and offered Cass quarters, and Mac as an escort, in the interim. Cass had taken the most liberal possible interpretation of the Director’s instructions and embroiled Mac in hacking HLC’s systems. That’s how she discovered Lisa’s predicament and, feeling guilty, decided to fetch her from her imprisonment. Of course, she couldn’t begin to stretch the instructions to Mac that far, and had to go to the Director herself with her request. To her shock, Talbott not only granted it but added another agent to serve as a bodyguard.
That agent was Montana. She and Mac had a rocky past, but they put it aside to help Cass plan and execute her infiltration. Things had seemed to go well right up to the point that they’d split up to fetch Lisa and her husband out. Mac and Montana had taken one room, Cass the other, and then they were supposed to meet at the transport.
Cass hadn’t made the rendezvous.
It was a testament to her personality that the two professionals had actually obeyed her direction and departed for their hotel room, the secondary meeting point.
“You’re right,” Montana said at last. “She should be. She isn’t. Yet. Don’t give up on her, though. Maybe she’s following another lead.”
“Yeah, sure, like that’s liable to happen, if she fetched out Lisa’s husband, what did he do anyway, I don’t think we every asked but I guess it doesn’t matter now, he’s a package deal, but maybe she got lost getting out or detained or there was some other problem and she came out right after we left, that would be horrible for her, she must think we deserted her!” Mac’s speech tended to be very stream-of-consciousness; working around IT had stunted her social skills. Still, it was a positive sign that she was saying more than just two or three words.
For now, at least…
“What did you say, about my husband?” asked Lisa from behind.
Montana answered before Mac could drown her in a torrent of words. “The records showed two rooms being used to hold you and your husband. We chose one room, Cass the other.”
“Why?”
That was unexpected.
“Because you were in one and your husband in the other?”
Lisa’s voice caught. “My husband’s dead. Kaine’s goons killed him.”
The transport screeched to a halt as Montana attempted to mash her foot through the floor.
“WHAT?”
“He’s dead!”
“Shit, shit, shit!” Montana clenched the wheel for another moment, then forced herself to relax. “Mac.”
“Yes, Montana?”
“Hack back into HLC. I want video and audio taps on all their internal cameras, I don’t care if they can trace it, and I want it before we get back to the hotel.”
“On it.” For once, there were no questions.
The last connections were being made as they parked. Mac handed the padd to Montana.
“I don’t know how long the connection will last, it’s stealthed but a determined attack will reveal it, but at least they’ll just track it back to this padd, we can always just junk it if we have to, it’s an independent system, hopping networks -” Montana waved her hand at Mac.
“Can I search for audio clips?”
“Yes,” answered Mac, offended, but her pride in her work won out. “Tap the audio key, near the top? Then type in the search string in the pop-up.”
Montana typed in ‘Cassidy’. The screen shimmered, blurred, then reformed with a single scene. Montana tapped ‘Play’.
“…subject Cassidy apprehended without incident…” was all she heard before the clip ended.
“Expand that!” demanded Montana.
Mac fiddled with the padd as they made their way to the room. “I told it to search for more incidences of the term, plus it’ll now play back until you tell it to stop, though that puts us at a greater risk of discovery.”
“Right, so listen carefully.” Montana keyed the padd to life again.
“…subject Cassidy apprehended without incident, being held pending interrogation. Subject Mantchev allowed to escape. Agents Beth and Malone assigned to Cassidy. Pause record.” The clinical nature of Kaine’s voice changed and became much more menacing. “If those two bitches that called themselves Jess and Amelia attempt to return, they’ll have an unpleasant surprise.” He cleared his throat. “Resume record. Interrogation commences at zero three hundred hours on Friday to allow for maximum psychological effect. End record.”
Montana stopped the playback. “He’s going to hold her for two days before talking to her. That gives us a window.”
“You heard him, Montana, he’s assigned two guards to her, he’s probably deleted all of our access codes and I don’t know if I can get in and hack new ones, not with what we have here, and we can’t go back to OutLook, not yet, not after what we did on the way out, and Kendra doesn’t know where we are or what we’re doing either, and what are we going to do?”
“Call for help.”
“But…”
“Not OutLook. Not directly, at least.”
Well, that’s about it for now. Thanks for letting me visit, CM!
…Oh, yeah. *gets out a broom* I’ll take care of the mess.
Blog: http://www.thekildaran.blogspot.com/
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Adam-Gaffen/e/B009QMIW3K/
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/AdamGaffenAuthor?
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Adam+Gaffen
