It’s Sunday again, time for Weekend Writing Warriors (click the logo above) and Snippet Sunday (click the logo below.) As I said last week, snippets will be random for a while, and this one is from my second published book, Tourist Trap. The setting is Falaron, a planet terraformed to resemble Earth during the Pleistocene, and the animal is a flat-headed peccary, common in Pleistocene North America and considerably larger than any peccary now alive. A herd has invaded the travelers’ campsite while they slept, and a young sow has gotten her head caught while trying to get the last of a bucket of honey.
They dived in from opposite sides of the mad, blind creature, shoulders brushing as Timi’s weight collapsed the animal’s hindquarters and Roi landed atop the shoulders. The peccary’s frantic squeals, amplified and directed by the bucket, reverberated in Roi’s ears, and its odor was rank in his nostrils. Its coat was as rough and bristly as it looked, harsh against his hands and arms.
It wasn’t totally blinded, Roi saw. The handle if the bucket was caught behind the sow’s ears, and the eyes were set so high in the skull that he could see them, rolling wildly, from where he lay. But it could not see ahead of itself. Roi opened his mind and used his physical contact with the animal to force his own awareness into the animal mind, controlling its struggles and he had quieted the three horses during the storm. “Hang on to the rear legs until I tell you to let go,” he told Timi, and began struggling to get the handle of the bucket back over the flathead’s ears.
Tourist Trap is available in hard cover, soft cover, and ebook at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. For some reason I can’t get through to Amazon that I’ve lowered the ebook price to below $5, so the Kindle version is ridiculously expensive relative to the Nook or the publisher price. Complain to Amazon; they aren’t listening to me.
Next weekend Horse Power will be free on Amazon, and I’ll have a little more of the stampede.
Buy Homecoming from iUniverse
'Homecoming' Blog 
Bless them. I don’t know that I would be brave enough to jump on such a large animal like that, even if it was to help it!
They have to do something to get rid of it. The thing is rocketing blindly around their campsite, and it’s too panicked for Roi to reach its mind without physical contact.
I love the mental communication with the animals. Hope he manages to free her.
I have a lot of that.
I appreciate they’re trying to help the animal, not just kill it, nice touch. I always enjoy the aspects of communication with the animals that you include. Another excellent excerpt!
They’re on an ecotourism trip and the guide (who at the moment is up a tree) would have harsh words for any killing.
You’ve conveyed the animal’s panic so well. The mental communication is a nice touch too. Interesting story!
This time the ability is Roi’s.
The mental communication is impressive, almost as impressive as two people tackling such an out of control beast! Great action scene and an intense 8!
Mental communication with animals is part of my SF world.
I have the most profound admiration for somebody who can write this kind of story. This scene pulses with life. Well done.
Glad you like it.
At first I thought they were looking for a meal. Nice 8.
No, just trying to protect their camp.
Great description of the scene!
I try.
I’d go for the honey also 🙂 Very nice snippet Sueann – well done. The communication with animals is truly intriguing. Great #8.
Actually, the peccaries (like black bears) have a pretty wide concept of what’s edible. But honey is something they definitely like.
Poor critter! It’s a lot cuter–and less dangerous–when it’s a cat or dog with its head stuck in a jar. But I can see a bigger animal doing that, too!
Nifty book concept you came up with–and nice sensory details.
I like the book, and it’s won best fiction book of the year in one contest, Wish it would sell better.
Love the communication with the animals. Enjoyed the snippet!
I use a lot of communication with animals.
Exciting snippet and wonderful descriptions!
I’m grabbing things more or less at random from this.
This is so realistic, Sue Ann—and familiar, too: one of my cats managed to get his head and a foreleg stuck in twine handle of a paper bag. It took me a long time (and two stitches) to extract him!
Except this one is wild and considerably larger that a cat! (At least its primary defense, its tusks, are blocked by thee bucket.)
I dunno about the wild part, but I’ll admit those piggies sound a lot bigger that even my Maine Coon! 🙂
I have a Maine Coon (named Mr. Purr) in the final volume of the trilogy.
OMG. That is an amazing scene! Nice 8!
Actually, I put this one in for pure comic relief.
Oh, the things they have to face! Nice snippet, SueAnn.
I just submitted the “Found this at a lower price” form on Amazon. If you look at the bottom of the “Product Details” section on The Tourist Trap page, you will see the found at lower price? question. Click on it and add the B&N price and url. I’ve been told that if enough people do that, Amazon will drop their price to match.
This is part of the vacation aspect.
You have created such an interesting world here, right down to the animals. Nice 8!
History Sleuth’s Milk Carton Murders
I didn’t create the animals in Tourist Trap. They are all well known to paleonologists, though many are extinct. It is thought that flat-headed peccaries, for instance, overlapped with black bears in their ecological niche, and with the close of the Pleistocene only one could survive. So I’ve made mine as much of a camp pest as black bears are today, while black bears are locally extinct.
A very intriguing eight and I like the title of the book! I’m off to add it to my wish list.
My goodness! I just found it on Amazon UK but it is priced at over £8 for a kindle edition! Did you mean to price it that high?
As I said, I have not managed to get across to Amazon that the publisher price was lowered to under $5 6 months ago. (iUniverse sets the default price for e-books far too high, but I finally argued them down.) Barnes and Noble and iUniverse both have more reasonable prices, so please complain to Amazon–they aren’t listening to me.
Complain about the price to Amazon! (See above for cheaper e-book prices.)
Great snippet! Love the mental sharing and that it’s difficult to do.
I have a system where empathic abilities (shared emotions and sensations) and esper abilities (mind reading, teleportation, telekineses) are both possible, but are to a large extent separate. Roi has both in high degree, to the point that he has a really hard time blocking emotions.
Yikes, I read this Sunday but don’t seem to have told you!
I love that you use peccaries–they’re pretty unusual in fiction I think. Great suspense here, and you make it very easy to picture what’s going on. Am interested to see how this all gets sorted out!
Excellent sensory description, sight, sound, touch… all very well done.
Have to admit I’ve never trued to jump a peccary.