Weekend Writing Warriors: Homecoming

It’s Sunday again, and time for Weekend Writing Warriors (click on the logo above) and Snippet Sunday (click on the logo below.) Today I’m posting 8 sentences from my first published book, Homecoming available in all formats from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.

Continued from last week: Nik is speaking to Derik.

Photo Source

“And you’re dead right about the muscle tone. He’s moving his body entirely by telekinesis and levitation – no muscle control at all. I didn’t catch on because he wouldn’t let me into his mind, I didn’t think he was capable of that kind of esper control, and I was giving him some electrical stimulation to keep the muscles from wasting too much until he regained control. Five months without that – he’s a mess physically.”

“And he’s obviously not properly blocked,” Derik added. He was thinking faster than he could move, stunned by Nik’s insistence that they’d caught only a fraction of the boy’s possible reaction. Like Lai and Nik, he had assumed that the boy was a latent – carrying almost the full suite of R’il’nian genes, but expressing only a fraction of them. He’d caught only a fraction of the reaction – not nearly as much as Nik.

And even that fraction was enough to flatten Derik.

Weekend Writing Warriors: Homecoming

Photo Source

It’s Sunday again, and time for Weekend Writing Warriors (click on the logo above) and Snippet Sunday (click on the logo below.) Today I’m posting 8 sentences from my first published book, Homecoming, available in all formats from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.

This is a continuation from last week, and Derik is speaking. Intense esper activity lowers blood sugar, by the way, so “esper shock” (hypoglycemia or insulin shock) is a constant danger for espers. Derik is responding to Ander’s dumping Roi in the pool when things went south.

“Good thinking. Now get some food into him. Get his blood sugar up,” Derik replied. He straightened up cautiously to stagger past Vara, on her way to the service pillar, and dropped to his knees by Nik’s side. “How bad?” he asked.

“Broken collarbone, some bruises, and one hell of a headache, but I suspect every esper on the island shares that. Derik, he pulled most of it. It was a brainstem reaction, and the instant he was aware of it he pulled it.”

So it wasn’t deliberate on Roi’s part, just lack of control.

Incidentally, last week’s image was of V 838 Monocerotis, taken April 30,2002. This week’s is the same star taken May 20 the same year. I’ll have more shots taken in September and December the same year, as well as one from 2006.

Weekend Writing Warriors: Homecoming

It’s Sunday again, and time for Weekend Writing Warriors (click on the logo above) and Snippet Sunday (click on the logo below.) Today I’m posting 8 sentences from my first published book, Homecoming available in all formats from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.

I hadn’t planned to do more than two snippets from the scene where Roi’s mind threw Derik and Nik for a loop (literally) but it turns out that section will give several 8-sentence bits. This is the third of the sequence. And we’re still in Derik’s point of view.

Sorry I’ll be late responding and commenting today; I’m at a cousins’ reunion in Oklahoma.

Photo Source

“What happened?” Vara demanded, one hand massaging her temple while she clung to the wall with the other.

“Poltergeist reaction, I think,” Derik replied. “We’re all in esper shock, Vara. Can you get some food out here?” At least the table was still standing, and he needed its aid on a second attempt to rise. “Ander,” he called as he clung to the table and waited for the world to stop its whirling, “why are you two so wet?”

“Figured the water might shock Roi out of whatever state he was in.” Ander called back, “so I jumped into the pool with him. Scared him, though, so I got him back out in a hurry.”

The images for the next few weeks are all of the same star, over time, as it shows various stages of a “light echo.” This first one is of V 838 Monocerotis on April 30, 2002.

The blurb for Homecoming:

Snowy is a slave, a dancer. His first priority is keeping himself and his friends alive, and this means hiding the odd abilities that could get him killed. How can he cope with being totally paralyzed and sent to school with a group of telepathic bullies?

Lai is the last survivor of the R’il’nai, the species that has kept the Jarnian Confederation going for a hundred thousand years. He is in mourning for his Human lover, Cloudy, but now it seems there might be more R’il’nai somewhere beyond the borders of the Confederation. Can he find them? Should he?

Marna was on an isolation satellite when a plague wiped out all the rest of the population of her planet. Now the life-support system of the satellite has failed, and Marna must try to return to a planet where no other intelligent creature is alive. Is the plague still there? Can she survive? Does she want to?

Weekend Writing Warriors: Homecoming

It’s Sunday again, and time for Weekend Writing Warriors (click on the logo above) and Snippet Sunday (click on the logo below.) Today I’m posting 8 sentences from my first published book, Homecoming available in all formats from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.

Today’s snippet is a direct follow-on from the one last week.

Image source

[Derik] found himself lying on his back in the ruins of the chair, with the noon sun beating though his closed eyelids. Hysterical sobbing, intermixed with his own name and Nik’s, was coming from the direction of the pool, and he rolled his head to the side and forced his eyes open.

Vara was coming out of the door, her face white with shock. Nik was huddled on the ground next to the house wall. Derik tried to scramble to his feet, but the ground seemed to be spinning and tilting under him. He managed to pull himself to a sitting position and located the boys: Coryn with his head in his hands, sitting on the edge of the pool, and the other two sprawled on the patio, sopping wet. Roi was shaking violently, but all were breathing. He looked back toward Nik, and gasped with relief as his half -brother made an abortive attempt to rise.

At least they all survived, but what happened?

Weekend Writing Warriors: Homecoming

It’s Sunday again, and time for Weekend Writing Warriors (click on the logo above) and Snippet Sunday (click on the logo below.) Today I’m posting 8 sentences from my first published book, Homecoming available in all formats from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse.

Roi, paralyzed and beginning to realize he is no longer a slave, has just returned from his first semester at boarding school. But has he understood what Nik, who has just arrived, tried to tell him before he left?

 

Nik, Derik ’pathed, unable to keep all of the anxiety out of his mind-voice, shouldn’t he have better muscle tone by now?

Nik looked up, startled, and walked briskly across to join them. “Here, Roi,” he said as he placed one of his hands on the boy’s and wrapped the other around Roi’s upper arm, “try to lift my hand.”

Derik was uneasy, but couldn’t analyze why. Nik’s face changed as Roi lifted his hand. “Here,” he said sharply, “let me see exactly what you’re doing.”

“Nik, don’t,” Derik started to say as his own awareness blossomed into real fear, but it was too late. He was thrown backward, chair and all, while Nik went flying toward the house wall and a volcano seemed to erupt inside his head.

What happened?

Weekend Writing Warriors: Homecoming

It’s Sunday, and time again for Weekend Writing Warriors (click on the logo above) and snippet Sunday (click on the logo below. Both blog hops involve authors posting 8 sentences or less of their work, anywhere from first draft to published. Mine for this week is from a published work, Homecoming, available from Amazon or Barnes and Noble in a variety of formats.

Last time I quoted from Homecoming I covered Marna’s discovery of the mummified body of a plague victim and her immediate response. Here is the follow-up to that discovery. I’ve done a little creative punctuation to get it under the 8-sentence limit.

Logic said she should get away, that the person was long gone and the body might still harbor the plague.

She could not abandon the remnant.

The body refused to be composed into any semblance of rest, but she brushed away the last of the sand and carried it into the sun, now high in the sky. Deaths among the R’il’nai had been rare, and she finally had to ask the computer for the proper words.

“I do not know who you are,” she told the body finally, “so I cannot speak of your life and the joy you brought those who knew you. I can only say the final farewell. Take the goodness and joy of your life with you as you go before, and let all sorrow and evil be consumed with your body in the furnace from which it came.”

She reached out to cup her hands around the skull-like face, locking her mind on the body; then she gathered herself mentally, reached for the sun, and thrust the body into its nuclear heart.

Funeral rites of the R’il’nai.

Weekend Writing Warriors: Homecoming

It’s Sunday, time for Weekend Writing Warriors (click on the logo above) and Snippet Sunday (click on the logo below.)

My snippet this week is from Homecoming, published in 2010 and available in print and electronic formats from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iUniverse. Marna has returned to Riya, which was depopulated by a plague two centuries earlier, and is wandering over her home planet. She has just found an isolated stone hut in the desert, and while her eyes are adjusting she lets herself believe she might have found a survivor. I’ve used a little creative punctuation.

Something dark protruded from the sand to her left, and Marna thought at first it was a tree branch, oddly shriveled and distorted. She scuffed her way across the room to try to pull it free, and only then realized that what she held was a hand.

Her knees buckled and she collapsed into the sand, still holding that poor, withered travesty of a R’il’nian hand. She stroked it gently while tears ran down her face and the trained Healer in her mind noted the spread, backward-stretched fingers and bent-back wrist. A plague victim, no doubt hidden from scavengers by the drifting sand and mummified by the heat and dryness of the desert.

Gently she dug the sand away, revealing a contorted body that seemed little more than a skeleton covered by stretched, dried leather. Someone tired of the press of crowds had come here for rest and renewal, perhaps, but had brought the plague along and died in agony, far from any help. Elsewhere, the last to die had been reclaimed by the life of the planet, not even their bones remaining, but here, there had not even been a scavenger to accept the poor body.

Weekend Writing Warriors, Homecoming

It’s Sunday again, and time for 8Sunday (click on the logo above) and SnipSunday (click on the logo below.) I’ve posted as much as I’d planned to from War’s End, and for a while I’ll take turns posting random snippets from my published science fiction. Today’s is from Homecoming, available in all formats from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. This snippet is from Marna’s re-acquaintance with her home planet, Riya, after a plague has depopulated the planet.

Back among the trees, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and caught her breath with delight as she managed to make out the form of a butterfly cat, as long as Marna was tall, even without its tail. Its sleek coat was greenish yellow with dark green swirls on its sides, rings of the darker green on its legs ad tail, and four angled swirls like butterflies flaring out from its forehead to encircle its eyes and its tufted ears. Butterfly cats were solitary hunters, and rare, and Marna felt privileged to see one.

She kept walking, afraid any break in her steady movement would frighten the animal away, and tried to watch it out of the corner of her eye. Its peridot eyes clearly saw her, but the creature showed no sign of fear. It was stalking something, she thought, its movements as fluid as the river and utterly silent. She reached out with her mind, wanting to feel its wildness ….

The beast was stalking her, and preparing to spring.

Sorry if I don’t get around much this week, the chemo has really caught up with me.

Zhaim Laian (A to Z Challenge)

Zhaim is Lai’s oldest R’il’noid son, and as long as he has the highest fraction of active R’il’nian-derived genes of any of the R’il’noids alive, he is his father’s heir – if anything happens to Lai, Zhaim will take over. He took this position from Derik (who was just as glad to be rid of the responsibility) when he came of age several hundred years ago, and has come to define himself in terms of how he will improve the Confederation when he takes over from his dowdy and senile (in his opinion) father.

Zhaim is quite handsome in his way, vain about his appearance, and very fashion-conscious. His complexion is dark bronze, like his father’s, and his hair is black. His eyes are almost clear with silver veining – “ice and silver” is how they are often described. His hobby is making “artistic” sculptures out of living things (including slaves) and he considers himself a great but misunderstood artist. He likes and admires cats, but is violently allergic to them.

He is an important character in both Homecoming and Tourist Trap and will continue in the trilogy. Here he is speaking from the Bounceabout, early in Homecoming.

The Bounceabout. Ha! The Nausea would be more appropriate. And twice in one day?

Damn the old man! He knows how those rough jumps affect me. And he damn near ordered me to come. Blast Derik. I should have been the one left on charge, not that soft-headed fool. He’s even older than my father!

And now my father even admits he doesn’t have the slightest idea of where he’s going. Just that some possible jump points feel more “right” than others. Well, I knew it was a useless quest.

Still, he has a habit of being right. And if there’s even a chance of other R’il’nai out there …. If one of them were female ….

Damn it, the R’il’noids are better than either race! We’re smarter than the Humans; more practical and creative than the pure R’il’nai. We don’t need the R’il’nai any more. But if the old man finds others ….

I’m his heir, the son who has inherited the most of his R’il’nian genes. He mustn’t have a child by a pure R’il’nian!

I’m doing my A to Z blogs from my books, both characters and background information. For characters I’ll introduce them quickly, say what point of time they’re talking from since their situations change drastically through the books, and let them talk. The format of background information will vary according to what I’m talking about. Bold type indicates that more information has been or will be available in another A to Z post. All of these blogs will be scheduled to go live just after midnight Alaska time.

 

Xazhar k’Zhaim Laian (A to Z Challenge)

Xazhar is Zhaim’s son, raised by his father. He is the top student and the student leader in his 10^th year class at Tyndall, an elite boarding school for R’il’noids. He is not only highly intelligent, but a top athlete as well, captain of the school plasmaball team. (This is a goal-and-ball game played in free fall with ball lighting for the “ball.”)

His father has led him to believe that Roi is in fact Derik’s catamite, and that Derik enrolled him in the school as a practical joke. Xazhar is somewhat of a bully anyway, and he does his best to make life at Tyndall miserable for Roi.

Like his father, Xazhar has bronze skin and pale gray eyes veined with silver, but his hair is never seen in its normal shade. At the time he is at Tyndall, he is wearing it in an elaborate braided style, and the color is mahogany on top and coppery at the sides, with twin flares of gold running back from the corners of his forehead.

It’s disgusting, that’s what it is. Derik was a student here himself, for Jarn’s sake, and he’s on the Board! How could he consider a so-called joke like this? And the brat’s not even healthy – runs around in a mechanical float chair, no muscle at all, acts like it hardly has the strength to raise its arms.

If you’ve got power, use it – that’s what Dad says. I may not have my full powers yet, but I’ve sure got enough to stymie this crap. Physical education – what a joke. It can’t do anything, except maybe paddle around in the pool. Well, I doubt it’ll try that again, after the dunking we gave it. Would have drowned it, if the instructor had just stayed away a little longer. And then it fainted, the weakling, when they tried to get it back in the pool.

No, it won’t last the first half-year here. I’ll see to that.

I’m doing my A to Z blogs from my books, both characters and background information. For characters I’ll introduce them quickly, say what point of time they’re talking from since their situations change drastically through the books, and let them talk. The format of background information will vary according to what I’m talking about. Bold type indicates that more information has been or will be available in another A to Z post. All of these blogs will be scheduled to go live just after midnight Alaska time.