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Dronefall My Books Snippet

Lightwaste Excerpt

So, I promised you an excerpt. Here it is. it comes from Dronefall Two, Lightwaste, chapter Four: A Maze of Questions. She has been back at her old school campus, the place where she was raised, seeking answers to the mystery of her inaccessible legal identity files. Her success has not been great, and she is now bound back for District Three Point Five. She’s being careful that no one traces her back to her new neighborhood and has just jumped off a train and landed in an embankment that turns out to be alongside an old churchyard.

The song she sings to herself is part of the same song Reveille is singing in the end of Dronefall. Without really meaning to, I’ve introduced a new verse of this song with each new Dronefall book. We’ll see if it actually turns out to be five verses long.

Anyway, here’s your excerpt:

A black wrought-iron fence materialized from the crisscrossing shadows of the branches and she paused to stare beyond it. At this point, she realized she was in a graveyard. She could see the ancient monuments outlined in the orange light like the skyline of a sleeping city. There was no good way to climb or vault the fence, so she made her way around it, eyes always inward toward the silent garden.

“Oh, would you stay awake and watch with me, ‘til we hear the trumpet sound?
You’ve always been my faithful friends, is there faith left to be found?
You know those weary wanderers you’ve been putting underground?
They’ll all be up and watching, when they hear the trumpet sound.
They’ll be back up and walking….”

  She stopped and her eyes anchored on the silhouette of a cross: a crucifix, two meters high. The church looming in the background had been ravaged and purged. “Faith is for everyone,” said the sign on the door. That meant all the ancient Christian art and distinctive features had been torn down or sealed in glass cases with a lot of commentary alongside so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. But not here in the cemetery.

  “It meant something to those people,” she remembered her tour guide saying in the Second Stage History of Western Religion fieldtrip. So did the church, she imagined. Times had changed, the guide said. Humanity was beginning to mature. And the old spiel would begin: at first man believed everything was a god, because they couldn’t make sense of the world any other way. Slowly, it evolved to more specific deities, then to one god—and this strict dogmatic view had a strong hold on people fearful of death and damnation, and had many negative effects on history and human relations. Now, at last, we were beginning to see the truth, and one day, we will live in harmony.

  And we will leave the body of Christ in the graveyard where we wanted it in the first place.

Remember, the eBook is still just 99c

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Poetry Writing Snippet

Like Chimes in the Wind

I thought I would share a poem of  mine with you today, anticipating the release of my poetry book Songs from the Small Hours, and celebrating the turn of the seasons. (Fall is coming!)

Like Chimes in the Wind
Then autumn took hold

as bloodlessly as rain from off the eaves

a still morning broke

 the circulation changed inside the leaves

Like chimes in the wind

Like yellow warblers dancing in the light

Like voices through fog

Like hidden thrushes singing in the night

The taste of the air

Was like a stream from deep inside the rocks

And in every tree

The nervous feathers gathered into flocks

And then came the hush

Of wonder at the blue behind the gray

And smoke on the breeze

And as you breathe it in, it fades away

Like chimes on the wind

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My Books Snippet

Snippet!

There was a worrisome fluttering and clanging and then silence. Presently, the seabird’s head appeared at the other end of the shelves. Without a thought, Dahskay sneaked up on it and caught it before it could fully emerge. She pulled it out gently despite its clawed feet clinging to unseen anchors behind the shelves. She tucked in the enormous wings and held it firmly against her side.

  “You got it!” whispered Cahathel in amazement, rushing to open the door.

  She glanced nervously down at the bird’s long, ponderously hooked bill as she carried it to the exit.  It didn’t threaten her with it. It just blinked and gazed steadily ahead.

  Just outside the door, she crouched down and let go of it. It fussily rearranged its wings and turned walking into the wind a couple of steps. Before it took off, it looked back at Dahskay through clear gray eyes.

  As the enormous spread of wings climbed away into the stormy sky, Zaarrveck muttered, “Strange, most of them have dark eyes.”
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My Books Snippet

Snippet!

On the other side of the door, she stopped short and stared. The chamber’s ceiling was as high as that of the exterior hallways and it was punctuated by skylights shaped like elongated teardrops streaming from the highest point in the vaulting. Stormy blue-ish light flowed down from these windows and lit the soaring labyrinth of shelves and cabinets that kept the temple’s some twelve-million documents. The air was cool and felt like it somehow came from outside. There wasn’t a sound to be heard.
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My Books Snippet

Snippet!

Dahskay slipped suddenly from the gentle hand of dreamless sleep. It was funny how every time she had awakened from any amount of sleep on this mission, she always expected to be in her room. What was even stranger was the fact that it wasn’t her room at the OAOF on Clilltar. Not even the girls’ dorm on Finzar, but her childhood home that she imagined she would see when she opened her eyes.
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Snippet

Snippet!

They only saw one planet on their way out of the ecliptic. Silita drifted far to the starboard side. Ahead, the stars stared blankly at them, saying quite clearly, “What are you doing here?”
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Snippet

Snippet!

Rising out of Divizah’s murky atmosphere, dim lights mounted on the wings of some eerie unseen vessel could be seen off the Astronomer’s starboard wing. The ship swiftly veered as the Astronomer turned back up toward the ring system for cover. Suddenly, it sprung from the atmospheric haze and charged after them. It was enormous, but very maneuverable, and it swept forward in the Astronomer’s pursuit with the form of a headless bird.

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