First Chapter preview

Here is a free snippet of my novel for all of you interested...

Mars.  The small red rock that started with the dreams of astronomers and sci-fi writers.  It became a place for broken dreams, the desire peddlers, criminals and those who were labeled as criminals.

 My name's 4Pollack.  I'm the fourth clone of the original Pollack.  In my prime life, I was a detective and good at it too.  It was a reason I was cloned in the first place.  Most call me 4Pollack; a few call me Four.  Not many in the last category.  Another reason for my cloning; I fit a certain profile the Terrans needed for their wars.  Hence, I also served in the Eugenic War.  Though that was too long ago to remember, without a 'Catch. Seventy years—and three bodies—later, I'm here on Mars, trying to pay off the debts racked up by my other incarnates: Pollack, seventy years older and wiser, while still looking thirty.  Inheritance fees, memory transfer and taxes, not to mention the cost of jumpstarting a cloned body aren't cheap.  Even with a steady paying job, I couldn't stay more than a half step away from bankruptcy.  Terra and the Luna are too expensive.  My kind wasn't welcome on those pieces of rock anyway.  Rather than being shunned by the moral upright citizens of Terra, I lived on Mars in Old Tharsis.  It's filled with Spiders, chimeras and clones.  Some still look at me with suspicion, yet it's better than the alternative.

Through the window in the apartment, I saw the twin moons, Deimos and Phobos glaring down at me.  The sunscreen was gone and the dim light of twin moons looked down over Tharsis.  The light of moons fought with the pseudo-light of Tharsis at large.  The city was constantly alit with neon, headlights from free-caps and skimmers along with lights of the buildings around my building.  Tharsis was a city of light.  The auto shade was old and faded, letting more of the light bleed in.  The dome over the city warped and refracted the light so the tiny moon of Phobos looked like its bigger brother Deimos.  Most Martians liked to have them both looking the same. 

Not me.   Knowing that the two moons were named for Fear and Nightmare; having those two glaring down at me always caused a small itch between my shoulder blades, seeing that the two moons were close caused something in my mind to dredge up a memory of the latest case. If I was right with the position of the two moons, I knew there had been another murder.  Even before my commlink started to buzz.

It wasn't unusual for a call at 3 a.m. Earth Standard.  It was annoying.  Earth Standard was used on Mars and Earth, since Mars has such a similar day.  There was a Temporal Adjust at midnight, the clocks did it—no one cared.  It was rare to catch the jump forward on a clock anymore.

Part of me knew only an hour ago I had closed my eyes.  I wished it were a dream.  The commlink continued to slide towards me.  I knew this was real and it wasn't going to be a good call.

The bulky commlink buzzed along the metal nightstand again.  The noise drilled into my head.  I looked at it with bleary eyes for a moment, willing it to stop.  I felt sleep dragging at me.  I wanted to close my eyes and sleep.  Tess started to stir and I didn't want her to wake up either.  I chose the lesser evil.  I grabbed the bulky commlink, squeezed the catch and the screen popped up.

The angular face of Rawlings, that is Lieutenant Paul Rawlings of the Tharsis Police Department, stared back at me in the small monitor.  "4Pollack?" He growled, a cigar clenched between his teeth, half gone.  Rawlings only used my full name when shit went down.

Definitely not a good call.

BOOK OUT!

Hey guys, know I haven't written in here in along time.  But I was working on a novel, and a bunch of other things.  Will get back to this thing soon.  Here is the link to the novel. It is a sic-fi noir.  For those who have been my beta and alpha readers, it has changed a little bit and I suggest you try it out.  It is $5, practically giving it away.  Hope you are all well.

A quick update...

So, that draft I was working on...

I just finished it.  It clocks in at 18512 words.  Yes, not very long.  Yet, it is a zero draft and it will be going to be set aside for a little bit.  Currently, I am printing out an old novel I want to take another crack out, a short story that I would love to try and whip into some kind of shape and the draft zero of what I have been working on.

And, this is my 20th blog post for this blog.  Cool beans!

Later all, I will try and get back to this blog soon.

Been on a writing jag...

So, been gone for awhile.  Then, a few days ago, I sat down at my computer and started to write.  And, it has been flowing every since!  Not sure what it is I am working on yet, but I am half way to my first goal of writing, getting the "draft zero."  (I know I have written about it before.  But will again.)

It was in one of the many books I have bought of the years that gives advice about writing fantasy and science fiction.  This particular one was written for fantasy only.  One of the articles was written by Terry Pratchett.  In it, he talks about writing a draft zero, something no one sees, no one but he reads and it is roughly eighty pages.  Well, earlier tonight, I saved my little word document and it comes out to forty pages, roughly nine thousand words and I thought what the heck, I can knock off the rest of the day.  (Which I spent mostly hunched over my computer writing in blocks of thousand word sets.)  Been working on this little thing since Wed.  So, in five days I got 40 pages.  Not to bad.  And, I that is with a few days of not getting anything done because of my girl.  (NO, I am not saying I would prefer to be working on this than with her.  I love her, she is great.  And, there are times when I need a break from writing.)

This draft zero so far is horrible, I can tell you.  I seem to have developed a bad habit of hitting the semi colon button instead of the apostrophe button and that needs to be ironed out soon!  But, the big thing is that once this draft is done, I will have to go back and start to truly flesh it out.  Which is something I want to do now, yet I am forcing myself to wait until I am at least close to 80 pages.  One thing I do not want to do is end the sucker.  There is something about putting in that last scene or group of scenes that stops me from working for a time.  I might have to just not end it and wait until my first real draft for the end to put in.

Anyway, enough of me ranting about stuff...I will be back when I can.

And, I don't remember who made this comment, and it is to long ago to respond to the comment now on that post.  Someone asked if I would ever post some of my writing here.  Yes I will, however, I will make sure it is in much better shape than a draft zero format before I do.

Writing, feels good...and a word count update

It feels good to finally start writing again.  To get back into the chair and work on some fiction.  I have been working on it for a few days now and I will now update the word count, with an aside...18,580 words.  Yes, that is a 12,000 word jump.  I wish I could say that I wrote it all in a blistering pace.  Yet, I am a little bit more humble than that and it is from previous drafts of this same story that I am tacking on.  These pages where always around, I just wanted to start with something new before going back and adding in these pages.

Which is something I am sure other writers do.  If not, it doesn't bother me.  I am different.

Anyway...I now have a problem.  Do I go forward and start editing all of the new stuff or say stop and rewrite the stuff I have.  I am not a big fan--sometimes--of re-writing.  This is the drag.  Going back and re-working the words until they are a little better.  I do know I am very close to hitting the mythical eighty page "draft zero."  I looked through my small backlist of posts and can't find it.  A draft zero is a term by Terry Pratchett.  He wrote in a book I recently found, and then had to box up when I moved, that he always tries to get at least eighty pages done for his first draft.  A draft no one will see but himself.  With it, Pratchett knew he had something that could work.  I am close, I have about nine pages to go.  Which shouldn't be to hard it I put in all of the revisions I need to do.

I will tell you all how it goes.

Learning things...

Well, the light at the end of the pay tunnel never materialized for me.  I thought I had stumbled into something that could work for me, granted it wasn't going to be fiction writing but hey, I have done screenplays in school, I could do this.

Well, I was wrong.

I learned something from it, which is in a way a reason to go through these things.  Yet, it hurt and did a number on some relationships which I won't go into here.

However, I have found recently that I need to be doing something, so I have unearthed an old manuscript of mine and am currently tinkering with it.  I ripped the whole thing down and starting from scratch.

At the moment, it is a sort of gothic/sci-fi/steampunk story.  And, because this is my blog, I thought I would keep a running word count going, so here it is: 6,306.  Not bad for something I started on just a few days ago.  Anyway, I will try and keep updating this blog as much as I can.  Until next time.

Long time, no write...

So, been a LONG time since I have written in this blog.  I have been doing much more writing in my rpg blog, but hey, more stuff is going on there then here.

I am currently working on a TV pilot.  A supernatural one that I will share more of when I get more done and there is some movement on the show.

One thing I haven't done in a long time is any kind of fiction writing, which hurts me a little.  I was hoping that even with the script writing, I would still have some time to write something in the fiction vein.  However, I hope that it will change soon.