Category: Book News

This is most likely the prologue to book 2. Most likely. Because all the usual stuff remains true: content is subject to change, there may be typos and grammar mistakes, as well as continuity errors.

With all that in mind, read on! Oh, and if you’re interested in reading along as I do my first draft, please leave a comment below. I plan to get that up and running soon.

Blythe shrugged away the chills that flashed across her skin like an electrified cloak as she gazed through the trees up at the hill halfway across the valley. Though the night was moonless and dark, the building and its surrounding area gave off as much light as an eclipsed sun. Thousands of watts burned. It was like looking at a small city nestled on the foothills of a distant mountain. Only, the lives that city knew were the billions of human stories turned into digital signal and pixels and broadcast across airwaves.

She knew this place. Had known it as a barren mountain that was beautiful in its own quiet way—it was unobtrusive, something a person only noticed in passing, unless they’d grown up around it, like she had. The concrete structure, the enormous electrical substation nearby that powered it, and the glaring lights that consumed the formerly welcome darkness, all of it represented a sort of untamable leviathan. A thing that could never be overwhelmed or reduced to a manageable size or broken down and forced into submission. It was too big. Or so it had always seemed.

She would be glad to see it crumble.

This is a scene featuring Blythe and Ghosteye. All the usual stuff remains true: content is subject to change, there may be typos and grammar mistakes, as well as continuity errors.

For those who have already read the first book: the Decemviri has been changed to a corporation called Kirkwood (after feedback from other readers, I decided to make this change).

With all that in mind, read on! Oh, and if you’re interested in reading along as I do my first draft, please leave a comment below. I plan to get that up and running soon.

Ghosteye laughed. “Listen, I don’t really think Beth’s going to be able to turn these, well, refugees, really, into soldiers before something needs to be done. To save Ramone, I mean. You’re still planning to launch a rescue, aren’t you?” He hobbled along beside her, occasionally wincing when his foot bumped against the inside edge of his crutch.

“Look, no offense, but I’m not sure I want anyone getting in my way. With that injured foot, you’d be in my way,” she said, glancing down at the thing. An oversized sock covered it and a mess of leaves and brambles stuck to the fabric.

“Of course not. But you need me. And you could use Marci. We’ve been a team before. We can work together again,” Ghosteye said in a level voice. “Look, I’m the last one in the veritable universe who wants to ‘work together.’ Why do you think I became an Editor? Because I work best alone. I hate groups. This is all different, though. A life depends on this. Ramone’s life.”

He stopped, having whispered that last part, and Blythe turned. His face had gone more pale than what it normally was.

“What’s wrong?” Blythe asked, cocking her head to one side.

“This is Ramone, Blythe. He’s special, somehow. You know it. We all know it. That’s why we’ve given up our normal lives for him. You, me, Marci. We’re not the only ones who get it. All these people are here for him, not Beth. Not for some idealized rebellion. For Ramone. Don’t let your pride, or whatever it is, crush Ramone’s chance for surviving whatever they’re doing to him. He needs us.”

Briefly, Blythe considered smacking Ghosteye in that pertinent, British-looking face for calling her out on her pride. Who did he think he was? She could just see his spiky hair—floppy this morning—responding in a satisfying jolt from the tiny assault. Instead she narrowed her eyes into a begrudging glare. “Nice one. You’re lucky I don’t believe in responding to verbal abuse with physical abuse. Otherwise you’d have my handprint on your pasty white cheek.”

All the usual stuff remains true: content is subject to change, grammar and spelling mistakes are possible, and content references are potentially wrong. With that in mind, enjoy! (And also, yes, that image is from Edge of Tomorrow…such an excellent movie. It should have been mine!)

Bethany scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Who told you that? It’s a total lie.”

“Beth. Come on. This is me. Be honest. We have too much history for lies,” Ghosteye said.

She shrugged and pulled a large elastic off her wrist, which she used to pull her dreadlocks back. “You forgot, then.”

“Forgot what?”

“The day you showed up? That night? We talked in my tent—you knew then what my plan for Ramone was,” she smirked. “I guess the drugs do work.”

“Drugs?”

“Come on, Gale. I gave you some medicine so you could sleep.” She sighed then squeezed his uninjured foot fondly, and looked up at him through her dark eyelashes. It was a bedroom look, and Ghosteye felt his body respond to the possibility of something happening with her. Still? After all this time? She wanted him? Maybe? He couldn’t afford to think it true. Beth went on in a familiar, somewhat playful tone. “I’d forgotten you were such a lightweight. But yeah, Gale, of course I was going to do what’s best for the resistance. If that meant brokering a deal using Ramone, then yes. I guess I was ‘going to betray him.’” She made air quotes and shook her head. “Look. This is war. In war there are casualties, as hard as that is to stomach. I don’t like it. But I also don’t like what our country has become. If we don’t figure something out now, there will be nowhere left to run.”

Ghosteye rubbed his face and pressed his fingers into his eyes where the beginnings of a headache thrummed. The thought of rekindling things with Beth made him hesitate for just a moment. “God, Beth. My god. Look, just, just don’t give me that. This is you, Beth. This is who you’ve become since you left me. Sincerely? The girl who left me over her principles, she wouldn’t recognize this, this person who would simply hand over a man like Ramone. He’s the key to all this. The key to our survival in a changed world—a renewed world. And you would have done that, give him away, without even a trial? I mean, you were his judge. Did you even talk to him?” He shook his head, the disgust of what she’d been willing to do suddenly striking him hard like a punch in the face. His head hurt. God, did it hurt. “You had ideals. What’s become of them?”

Hey! Yeah, so the baby arrived on June 17th. I’m still recovering because babies are hard work! And recovering from surgery is a total whack job. I mean, really, the hardest part is the emotional surges and overall hormonal drainage. It’s like a hormone vampire came and sucked me dry and now I’m just a husk of a woman.

I’ve been posting pictures of the baby on Instagram, so if you want to see the adorable little tyke and her brother, sign up and follow me! I probably won’t post images here just because it’s kind of off-topic and I prefer to keep them on Instagram at this point.

But anyway, what you’re really here for is the teaser for Feed 2. I’m still not sure about the title, but I’m working hard to figure that out (The Second Feeding [?!]; Fast Feed [!!!] hahaha) and writing as often as I can (the baby is rather fussy, so the going is slower than I would like). I set a draft deadline for July 30. Whether I make it or not is up in the air. I’ll work my arse off, though, you can be sure of that!

Just a note on excerpts: these are generally rough drafts and are subject to change. Details may be wrong at this point because they haven’t been held up to the first book or compared to make sure there are no continuity errors and whatnot. With that in mind, enjoy!

Ramone flexed his throbbing fingers and squeezed his eyes shut. In the black of his brain where he confronted a massive darkness, he could still smell Blythe—her hair tangling around his shoulders as she hovered over him, the delicate flesh of her neck giving off the odor of jasmine . . . or coconut. Something. Ramone was horrible with the names of smells. In his mind he felt her body tense as he whispered—almost soundlessly—his plan into her soft ear. The nanocameras wouldn’t have heard it. He hoped. Once he had known their limitations. Now he was sure things had been pushed past a threshold even he hadn’t imagined.

The zip-tie around his wrist had been removed finally, but now he was stowed in a tiny bunker with a cramped bed, one small lamp on a table attached to the wall, and no way for him to leave without an escort. Staring at the ceiling, he rehearsed the tentative plan he’d told Blythe. Of course it was tentative, not that he told Blythe as much. It wasn’t like he’d been in a position to casually recite his idea, as though over coffee or tea. Not that Ramone was ever casual, he accused himself scornfully, reflecting back on that day in the coffee shop that preceded all this madness. What was it, a week ago? Less maybe? It felt like ten years had passed.

He’d been so nervous that night with Blythe. Even in those precious moments sharing a cot with her, the bumbling fool still hovered in the corner of his mind, mocking him and belittling his abilities as a lover and his capacity as a man.

Assuming that plan he’d shared with Blythe wasn’t tentative, he mentally worked on what he’d need to do to achieve the ends he desired. There was something he’d done from the very beginning, a safety device he’d programmed into his creation. Whether or not it remained, he couldn’t say. The nanocameras had become something so different from his initial vision. But if the design still followed his own concept, then there was hope. And if not, perhaps there was still a reason to hope.

If Ramone held his breath, he could hear, almost feel the hum of the building. Though it remained to be seen if this was the building, the throbbing feel of some kind of heartbeat coursing through the walls made him believe that it was. Was it the nest, like he hoped?

A scuffling sound at the door made Ramone sit up expectantly. When it opened and revealed the Director, he let the breath out that he’d unconsciously been holding.

“Come with me,” the frog-lipped man said.

Boom! Scary! Yeah! There’s more where that came from if you stick around.