Some time in late September or early October, I'll be releasing two previously published short stories to Kindle via KDP.
Silver, a story about a girl, an arranged marriage and some... well, you'll have to read to see what happens.
And then there's, John and Lee, Down by the G'star, a tale involving a president, an assassin and a Gravastar. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I'm also working on my next novel, Refugium. It's early days yet, but things are shaping up. Below is a rough draft of the beginning. The novel won't be finished until some time next year, when I plan to submit it to Angry Robot books.
Did I say it was a rough Draft...?
REFUGIUM
2368:
Bluff overlooking Samuel’s Landing, Aotearoa.
Forty-five days since first-strike.
Total
number of survivors unknown.
Pennymae Niedojadlo-Sandelanie crashed
into a slush-filled ditch in an explosion of mud and icy water. Exhaustion threatened; her body shuddered as
she gulped in cold, salty air, a momentary stillness affording time for her to
wonder how many people they had lost.
Glancing into an
overcast sky heavy with sleet, Pennymae’s resolve returned. I won’t
forget the blue, nor the sun, she told herself. Teeth gritted, she rolled onto her stomach and
slithered towards the edge of the gully.
Ignoring the freezing water that ran around and across her body, she
took a quick peek over the edge.
Two dark figures
scurried uphill, toward her. Apparently
fatigued and hunched against the weather, the silhouettes stumbled into the gully
a couple of meters to Pennymae’s right.
Pennymae crouched down, and shouted, “Sound off.”
“That you Penny?”
“Bains?”
“Rendle too.”
“Like we trained, Bains. Discipline.”
For a second her confident retort almost brought calm.
“We’re scared, Penny.”
Yeah, aren’t we all. Pennymae
sagged back against the trench-wall. Okay, deep breaths, concentrate, take
control. “Did you see any others?”
“Carlos, Rheanna and
Kendai were behind us, but...”
But they’re gone, like
so many since first strike. Snatched by
the Skeeters; a flickering elusive death – a fact-of-life now, a constant dance
of survival with an apparently almost undefeatable foe. Twenty had set out; now only Pennymae, Bains
and Rendle remained – a trio to bear witness.
Why, Death himself could do no better.
“Right you know why we
are here. Edge up and record.”
Seeing her companions
pop their heads above the ditch, Pennymae followed suit. Her
optic-overlays dropped figures and icons - distance, time, menus -into her immediate
view. She glanced at her menu, scrolled
options, selected scrub image and watched as programmes removed much of the
clutter of the sleet blizzard, massaged contrast and brightened the image.
Not as light as a
summer’s day, but good enough.
Down the bluff and
across a wide bay sat Samuel’s Landing, their first town, their only town. Central buildings, four or five story
structures, spiralled out, giving way to smaller, squatter structures,
warehouses and factories, eateries and drinking houses, all tumbling outward
towards the one, and occasional two story dwellings the colonists had lived in;
six years of effort, surrounded by hard-won crop-fields and regimented animal
paddocks. We came so close, Pennymae
thought. And that after such a
disastrous start.
In the upper left of
her vision numbers tumbled, changed red.
Selecting her optics menu,
she zoomed the image. A mix of disorientating
buildings and fields flew forward, they crowded her. She blinked.
“Are you two getting everything?”
Bains grunted, and she
thought she heard Rendle whimper.
Something slithered
over her leg. She ignored it, concentrating on the view.
Below, in the abandoned
town, motion toyed with her gaze. Black
figures darted, daring her to lock on, see them, in fact toying with her sense
of reality. They danced, skittered, half
in and out of reality, black wraiths imploring her to see them, to grasp their totality. But stare as she might, Pennymae found it
impossible. When her eyes locked onto a
Skeeter, the image slid from her mind, to ooze away like a bad dream, leaving behind
a cold unwelcome touch. Deep within the
recesses of her mind, Pennymae shuddered.
The grey harbour waters
churned in a stiff offshore wind, sad white caps collected and reflected what
little light escaped the leaden sky.
Initialising a small
program, Pennymae’s optics zoomed out as she gazed further up the coast; past
fractured cliffs and jagged faults, eventually settling on the nugget. Such an ineffectual word, thought Pennymae.
Rising like a small
mountain about its impact crater, the nugget looked smoky and dull, a pewter
sheen pocked with holes and dimples.
Dark specks moved here too.
Low cloud scuttled over
the tallest peaks and local bird-analogues toyed with limp thermals. The nugget’s body lay across the divide
between land and sea, like a beached behemoth straddling two worlds. Indeed it was.
But not of water and land.
“How long?”
Bains sounded far
away. Her chronometer said fifty
seconds. “Get ready.”
Bains gasped. Not wanting to miss the culmination of their
efforts Pennymae refrained from glancing at her comrades.
Forty seconds.
But Rendle cried out,
“No, no...”
Pulling her head around
and into the gully, Pennymae froze.
Thirty seconds.
Something dark and
wavering stood above her friends. Fading
in and out of the wan daylight, if looked like fabric wafting in the wind, the
damp air held a faint aroma of cinnamon.
Twenty seconds...
It reached for Bains
and Rendle, slicing through, and snatching them away. Their screams torn from world. Pennymae thought of gull’s cries.
Ten.
It towered over her,
billowing darkness and fear.
Five.
Blue skies.
Three.
Sunlight.
Two.
And laughter. She wouldn’t forget.
One.
A star burst on the
world, brightness bleeding over the edge of the gully like hard light pushing
the gloom away. Above darkness
churned. Pennymae smiled.
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