Launching Romance into the stars.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

What I've been working on this week.

It's that time again, when I share some short excerpts from my current WIPs. This week it was all about the military. Maybe because my baby enlisted to become a combat medic in the Army this week.

So here we go again.

When my oldest son joined the Marines and contemplated signing up for EOD, it kicked off major research on ordnance specialists, and resulted in my science fiction series, Blown Away.

This time, the story is about a combat medic with the 10th Mountain Division, PTSD and a mysterious cargo in a convoy that could be the start of a pandemic. Here's an excerpt of my project this week:

His unit had been called in to extract survivors of a mangled convey, and ended up needing rescue themselves. Caught off guard in an ambush, they’d been hit hard with anti-armor and IED. They had heavy casualties, and a cargo they were ordered to keep out of enemy hands at all costs.


Everywhere smoke choked the air with the smell of burnt hair, blood and charred flesh, akin to a slaughter house on fire. Men cried out from the dark—for themselves, for their friends—brothers-in-arms.


He couldn’t get to half of them fast enough, and one he’d found in pieces. The sight had churned his guts and he’d ended up leaving the contents of his stomach a few feet away, not his usual reaction, but then again, nothing was usual about what he’d seen.


The soldier clung to his friend’s torso, what little was left of it. He’d begged Justin to save him, all the while continuing to encourage the deceased soldier to keep going, though it was clear his friend hadn’t taken a breath in hours.


Everywhere Justin went there were glassy-eyed stares and mumbles of men, too shocked to speak coherent phrases, injured and completely out of their minds. The kill-site was full of the walking dead—nothing more than zombies.


“Do it.”


“Sir?” Justin said as he pressed the plastic package from the dressing on the sucking chest wound of a radio operator, he’d gotten to just in time. A deflated lung, but if they could load him on a chopper, he’d stand a chance.


“Broken Arrow,” the colonel said softly, so no one could hear the order.


Perhaps he’d heard wrong? Justin looked up from where he bandaged the wound, fighting to seal the hole so the kid’s lung would inflate.


The silver-haired battalion commander, stood in the middle of the disaster, a look of desperation on his face. “You heard me, sergeant,” the colonel said.


Justin blinked. He hadn’t imagined it. “If I take the pressure off this wound, he’ll die, sir.”


“Call in the God-damned air strike.” Colonel Joseph dropped a GPS in Justin’s lap and continued to stare off into the dark, not bothering to look him in the face as he ordered him to commit suicide, and take the unit with him. “When that sun cracks over the horizon, we’re done anyway."


Whatever was in that convoy, the colonel didn’t want the enemy to have it. It had some importance—a Green Beret escort, a battalion sent in to extract, more Taliban than Justin had ever seen in one place. Important enough that a full bird had ordered his own death, and the deaths of everyone in the battalion to ensure the enemy didn’t get their hands on it.


The colonel pulled his side arm and pointed it at Justin’s head. “I gave you an order.”


Justin let go of the dressing picked up the GPS. He gave the commander one last look and called in the coordinates. As soon as he heard “roger,” Justin dropped the radio and reached for the soldier, but it was too late. The radio operator gasped, let out a sound like a nickering horse, and died with blood bubbling from his lips.

From that point forward, everything became a blur. Justin dropped to his ass beside the dead soldier and leaned against the roof of the five ton, turned on its side.


He didn’t know if it had been minutes or hours, but he knew the sounds of F-16’s and A-10s roaring toward them, were answering his call.


“Incoming,” someone screamed. He didn’t want to die, not like this. Justin scrambled to his feet and ran through the wreckage until he reached the end of the destroyed convoy. He dove to his belly in a nearby ditch, covered his head, and replayed his life as the explosions rocked the word around them, knowing they most likely were the last thoughts he’d ever have.

He didn’t have much to look back on. A mother that ran off when he was six. A father in prison for armed robbery, not even a current girlfriend that stuck around while he was deployed.


Debris rained down, everything from rocks, to vehicle parts, and human remains. Something solid connected with the back of his skull, and then chaos fell away.

 “This one’s alive.” Someone pressed fingers against his throat, feeling for a pulse. Justin was lifted onto a stretcher. Pain rode his nerves like they were electrical wires, sending jolts of agony to the tips of his fingers and toes. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Every step the medics took as they hauled him toward reprieve, hurt. Broken bones, burns, he wasn’t sure what was worse--living or dying.  


Let me die. He deserved it. He'd killed them all. 


Whump, whump, whump, the chopper’s blades beat against the air. The pressure seemed to pound down on him as they loaded him on board. He turned his head, opened his eyes and stared out over the battlefield, now a large crater. Below, a graveyard covered the landscape. Soldiers picked through the debris, searching for survivors. It was amazing they’d found any. From the looks of it, the bombs had tried to punch a hole through the planet.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Getting Acquainted

Happy Friday everyone. I'm Graylin Fox and like Jessica Subject I have recently joined this blog. My science fiction book is still one of my Works In Progress but the main character has been yelling at me for days. So it seems it's going to move to the front very soon.

I grew up the daughter of an avid reader. My mother found her greatest joy sitting on the living room couch buried in a book. She taught me to read before I hit nursery school and I can remember pulling a book onto the nap mat with me in Kindergarten.

Writing started out as an escape from a job I *hated* in 1993. Data entry still makes me want to run and hide. So I got a pencil and notepad from the supply closet and while I didn't need my mind to type in numbers for hours it wandered around my imagination and came up with stories. I would take my notepad to lunch and rush to write down everything in my head. It's a strange way to become a poet but it worked for me. I'll never forget writing a horror poem (still not published) that made me skip lunch that day. But I had a stupid silly grin for the rest of the afternoon.

I didn't move onto longer forms of fiction until more recently. My first title, Coming Home, was released by Decadent Publishing on 1/1/11. With another fantasy story released in April 2011, Contagion: A Summer Fae Story. I completed a trifecta with the psychological thriller, Your Biggest Fan, which released in July 2011. I have six or seven other works going right now including the just finished Bloodlines: The Second Summer Fae Story. The current title of my science fiction work is Deadly Beauty and it has made appearances on my blog for Six Sentence Sunday.

I write in my spare time and sometimes that means spending a weekend in the recliner under a laptop. My day job is a psychologist. I have a small solo practice that I love and I get to hear the best stories every day. Some make me laugh and others make me want to weep. I am honored my patients open their hearts up and share their private moments with me.

I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you and can't wait to read the Valentine's Day stuff!

Graylin Fox

You can find me on Twitter or at my Website.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

New Writer On The Blog


Hello, everyone! I'm Jessica Subject, and I'm new on the blog, so I thought I'd stop by and introduce myself. But first, I must thank DL Jackson for inviting me to join the blog. Not only is she an awesome author, but a fabulous critique partner, and great friend. Thank you! :)

And hello to Graylin Fox another wonderful author, who also joins the blog! *waves*

So, every Thursday, I will be blogging here, and I'll also be a part of Backward Momentum's First Annual Valentine's Bash. It's the first of hopefully many science fiction romance events we'll be holding on this blog.

About me. Well, I'm a wife, a mother of two, and I also have a part-time job on top of all my writing. I started putting pen to paper when my daughter was in kindergarten. She hated reading, to the point where she would scream and cry when she had reading homework to do. I thought if I wrote her a book about something she liked (superheroes), she might enjoy reading more. Well, that story turned into my Mark of the Stars series (and the superheroes turned into aliens), which she can't read until she's much older. But now she loves reading and reads above her grade level in English, and even reads French.

My first published work is Celestial Seduction, which released in July 2011 as part of Decadent Publishing's 1Night Stand series. I have two other stories as part of this series, Beneath the Starry Sky, and Unknown Futures. The first story in The Underground scifi/dystopian series, Never Gonna Let You Go, releases on January 31, and The Zurian Child, my first novel, and the first book in my Mark of the Stars series releases March 24. I have several other projects on the go right now as well.


Favorites:

Color - green
Food - pasta
Time of Day- in the morning when everyone else is sleeping
Music - pop and dance
TV Show - Castle
Movie - Um, so hard to pick just one, but...Star Trek (2009)
Place to visit - Duchesnay Falls
Superhero - Superman

You can also find me here:


Thanks for stopping by, and we'll see you next Thursday!

All the best!
JES

Sunday, January 22, 2012

We're having a party!

Two new co-bloggers are joining me on Backward momentum. Please say hello to science fiction romance authors, Jessica Subject and Graylin Fox.

We've decided to throw a party on Valentine's Day, and invite a few of our science fiction romance friends to help us raise the roof off this place and break it in. Well have fun posts all day, celebrating love and science, some great giveaways, and a few authors you know, and maybe a few new authors you've just got to meet.

So mark your calender, and we'll see you on V-Day.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Say No to SOPA

Yes, artist, musican and author copyrights need to be protected, but not at the price we will have to pay. No controls and way to much wiggle room for big corporations to abuse this law.

As an author, I'm opposed to this bill.
Speak to your congressmen and women, let them know that Big Brother has crossed the line and we will not tolerate cyber-babysitting. Say No to SOPA and make sure those considering passing this law know how you feel.

D L Jackson