He steered them past expensive kitchen shops and the dark, hollow spaces where bookstores used to be, and nearly lost him in front of a brightly lit yoga studio pumping trance out its open door. In the window, human women dipped toward the floor, lifted themselves up on trembling forearms, and balanced there as they offered their wet faces and shaking chests to the night.
“Wow,” Junior said.
“Easy.” Javier winked at the blonde in the front. She ducked her head and ruined her balance. He grinned. Humans were so damn adorable. Shaking his head, he tugged Junior down the sidewalk. “Give it some time. You’re only a day old.”
Back to work.
That’s damn intriguing, my wheels are turning trying to imagine the context and the before and after of that little fiblet.
It’s always hard to see good writing go to waste but, as you know, talent is a process not a quantity. Toss the ruby to make room for a diamond.
Thank you! I need the encouragement. I’d be intrigued to know what you guessed in terms of context, actually. I’ve been in it so long I don’t know how it reads to others.
Squeak,
(if I may be allowed to call you that) I would hazard a guess that Javier’s playing steward to a group of young aliens or freshly minted robots. Hard to guess much more than that like where they’re headed, size of group, what makes humans adorable instead of maddeningly self-absorbed and what not.
And speaking of butcher block I did a little beta-reading for your pal squid and he seemed to appreciate *most* of the points I made. I still think aerogel skin would be better than anti-freeze for the thing but we’ll have to agree to disagree I suppose.
It may sound ridiculous from someone who’s unpublished but if you ever wanna swap stories and do some cross country literature-murder well that’s my idea of a fun weekend.
Cheers!
-K
All shall be revealed!
Squid is great about beta stuff. He consistently gives good critique, and is good about taking it, too. He always asks me questions that force me to re-consider the entire story.
What stories are you working on, right now?
PS it’s criminal that it wasn’t done already but I added a review to the blag on stumble upon so hopefully some literary minded stumblers will bounce off your crawl and bring a few more hits with them.
You don’t have to approve this comment I just wanted to let you know.
I’m sort of splitting my time between a long ass short story *right around 12k words once i choose the ending I think best* the working title of which is “Dark Brigade.”
It’s about a fellow who develops schizophrenia in college, spends 5 years as a nut job, and then is cleaned up and recruited by a shady organization to wage a secret and illegal war against the entire continent of Africa.
Lots of scary ass near-future tech, killer robots and whatnot but with a human touch.
The other project, and the only other one worth mentioning from the catalog is a novel that’s actually 3 novellas called “Founder Effect”
Part I centers on the protagonist and his shady dealings with a wholly separate secret and shady organization and his defection from it.
Part II is a look at the antagonist and his even shadier and more secret insinuation into the same bunch of bad guys but he is all kinds of gung ho about it.
Part III is the catastrophic confluence of story lines and plot developments seeded throughout Parts I and II.
There’s a lot of good stuff so far, riot parties, brain washing, evil psychologists, love, sex, violence, a nerd who gets super ripped after having his brain hacked, all sorts of fun conversations about the nature of good and evil, evolution and well anything worth mentioning is too damned complicated to put it all into a short paragraph.
I’m actually taking a break for a few moments but I’ll be back at it soon enough so send me an email if you want to know more.
And if you’re feeling generous tell Squid to check his inbox and let me know what he thinks.
-K
Wow, that sounds complicated. On the other hand, I have a terrible time explaining my stories; the people I talk to about them always get a slightly doubtful look because I can never manage to describe things in order. (I’ve been told that this is a problem in the stories themselves, so there you have it.)
Also I’ll probably get back to you after I’ve finished the things I’ve been procrastinating on so long. 😛 I need those 12K words you have!
Well you’ve got my info, just hit me up when you’re ready. And good luck!