Temporary Anne and Choosing Your Own Adventure

Briane Pagel has released the much ballyhooed Temporary Anne. And he's celebrating with a blog tour. Over the course of the past week or so he has been writing an entire tale based on the recommendations of commenters. So, please, contribute ideas so the story can continue. I'm such a fan of Choose Your Own Adventure styles stories that the latest book I ordered off Amazon was Space Vampires: Choose Your Own Adventure # 71. Because, how can you not love that? So let's see where that story takes us today.

And as a side note, I did read and review Temporary Anne, check that out here if you'd like to see my thoughts, which surprisingly enough, barely mentions the book I was rating. Still, great job, Briane, it's always a huge treat to read something of yours.

Please, take it away...

This is DAY FOUR of the release tour for my newest book, Temporary Anne.

Temporary Anne is a horror story about a woman so desperate to avoid Hell -- the fate for the evil she's done during her life -- that she makes things infinitely worse after her death. To celebrate the release, I'm doing a blog tour in which I'm writing a short story, LIVE, with your help!  At each stop, I'll do an installment of the story and you can suggest where it goes next!

Below is PART FOUR of the story. PART ONE appeared on Tina Downey's Life Is Good, PART TWO on Andrew Leon's Strange Pegs, and if you didn't catch either, click here to read PART ONE and HERE to read PART TWO.  Then Part Three was on Laws Of Gravity, and now

PART FOUR of "This Is How I..."

(Special Thanks to Crystal Collier for the intro to today's installment.  She wrote the first paragraph. (Check out her blog here!)

I froze, standing stick straight as uniformed men funneled around me, fixed on the Drum Major's steely eyes. A sucking sensation tugged at my gut, curling upward, like the smoke essence of my very soul leaking through our connected stares.

I didn't want to look down.

I didn't

want

to

look

d

o

w

n

and the Drum Major held my gaze.

"Don't," she said, softly, so softly I could barely hear her.

"I..." I said.

The soldiers were rushing forward, shouts of don't move and arrest and the like ringing out. They were almost to the stage.

"... have to," I said.

And suddenly I was 

f

a

l

l

i

n

g

down

down

down

down

spinningheadover

heelsoverhead

overheelsover

down

down

down

(you

get

the

point)

at one point when I turned over I saw above me the Drum Major standing on the edge of the abyss that had sucked me down the moment I'd turned my eyes on it -- the real things of this world becoming less real in my eyesight just as the imaginary things of the other worlds could be made real by my thinking about them -- her own beautiful eyes wide and her mouth saying something as a soldier grabbed her from behind and tried to wrestle her hat out of her hands.

I saw her struggle on the edge of the abyss, in flits and flickers as I tumbled overandoverandover the dim light of the auditorium spinning away from me and the circle that represented safety -- a smashed auditorium filled with soldiers ready to shoot everything, and containing a captive, angry, ENRAGED, Beast was now safety! -- getting smaller and smaller and smaller and then I 

stopped.

I stopped falling but had no idea why, there in the darkness of the pit.  I could see nothing, hear nothing (even the gunfire and struggle above was a tiny speck of light and distant shouting), and I tried to lift up my head to look around, but couldn't move it.

Fighting, I pulled my arm up but couldn't move that, either.

I kicked with my legs but they wouldn't move, either.

"This... like some kind of..." I began

Don't say it don't say it don't even think it something in the back of my brain, the part of me that still thought I had some sort of control over this, screamed at me as loudly as it could.

"Spider web," the rest of my brain rather unhelpfully finished.

Clikkerclakk

I heard.

tikkittatikkittatiktiktisk

I heard.

I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, hoping against hope that if I didn't look it wouldn't be real.

I heard a tiny faraway shout above me.

I opened my eyes, almost inadvertently.

For just a second I saw a speck drop or be thrown or dive or something into the opening far far far above me.

Then I saw eight eyes, the smallest the size of bowling balls, the largest terrifyingly bright and shiny and close, looming over me and just below them a set of fangs as large as my legs but far far sharper.

Clikkerclakk, the fangs went.

Clikkerclakk...

_________________________________________________

What happens next? Use the comments to help Rusty decide, and follow the story on the next tour dates:

The Tour Dates: 

1. Life Is Good: Friday 9/13

2. Strange Pegs: 9/1

3. . Laws Of Gravity 9/18

TODAY; 4. The Blutonian Death Egg 9/20

5. Nigel G. Mitchell Author, Blogger, Geek 9/23

6. Jessica Bell Author/Musician 9/26

7. Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, Speculative Fiction Author 9/30

8.  Jess' Book Blog 10/3

9. Lara Schiffbauer's Motivation For Creation 10/7

10.PTDilloway.com 10/10

The FIRST REVIEWS ARE IN:  "It's fascinating. If you like horror, this is definitely a book worth reading."-- Andrew Leon

"Another chilling tale from the author of The Scariest Thing You Can't Imagine. ...Pagel's style reminds me a lot of Vonnegut's work in that while the narration seems jaunty with its humorous asides and such, there's a lot of hidden depth to that narration."-- PT Dilloway.

If you didn't already get it, "Temporary Anne" just $0.99 today, so click this link to download this excellent horror story. 

CassaStorm Arrives!

Alex J Cavanaugh has finally given us the third in his trilogy of books centering on Byron, the warrior that yearns for peace. The early draft I was privileged to read was very sharp, and gave a surprising amount of depth into the relationships of everyone involved. I'm betting this will be his best yet.

See the announcement below, you know, in case you've not been on the internet for the past few months and this is the first place you've checked to get your news.

#

Comment on Alex’s blog this week for a chance to win a Cassa mug, mousepad, magnet, and swag!

You ever think of having Byron's sister play a bigger part in any of the books?

No, because she represented Byron’s past, which wasn’t pleasant, and he wanted to escape it forever. The last time he saw her was closure for Byron and he moved on with his life.

CassaStorm

By Alex J Cavanaugh

From the Amazon Best Selling Series!

A storm gathers across the galaxy…

Commanding the Cassan base on Tgren, Byron thought he’d put the days of battle behind him. As a galaxy-wide war encroaches upon the desert planet, Byron’s ideal life is threatened and he’s caught between the Tgrens and the Cassans.

After enemy ships attack the desert planet, Byron discovers another battle within his own family. The declaration of war between all ten races triggers nightmares in his son, threatening to destroy the boy’s mind.

Meanwhile the ancient alien ship is transmitting a code that might signal the end of all life in the galaxy. And the mysterious probe that almost destroyed Tgren twenty years ago could return. As his world begins to crumble, Byron suspects a connection. The storm is about to break, and Byron is caught in the middle…

“…mesmerizing story of survival, personal sacrifice, tolerance, and compassion. It’s a rare jewel that successfully utilizes both character and plot to tell a story of such immense scope and intimate passion…” - Nancy S. Thompson, author of The Mistaken

“CassaStorM is a touching and mesmerizing space opera full of action and emotion with strong characters and a cosmic mystery.” – Edi’s Book Lighhouse

"Cavanaugh makes world building on the galactic scale look easy. The stakes affect the entire known universe and yet Cavanaugh makes it intensely personal for our hero. The final installment of this series will break your heart and put it back together."
- Charity Bradford, science fantasy author of The Magic Wakes

$16.95 USA, 6x9 Trade paperback, 268 pages, Dancing Lemur Press, L.L.C.

Science fiction/adventure and science fiction/space opera

Print ISBN 9781939844002 eBook ISBN 9781939844019

$4.99 EBook available in all formats

Find CassaStorm:

Barnes and Noble - http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1116848619?ean=9781939844002

Amazon -

http://www.amazon.com/CassaStorm-Alex-J-Cavanaugh/dp/1939844002/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378484337&sr=1-1&keywords=cassastorm

Amazon Kindle - http://www.amazon.com/CassaStorm-ebook/dp/B00F2O9QMC/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1378811366&sr=1-1&keywords=cassastorm

Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17670532-cassastorm

Book trailer -

Alex J. Cavanaugh has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and works in web design and graphics. He is experienced in technical editing and worked with an adult literacy program for several years. A fan of all things science fiction, his interests range from books and movies to music and games. Online he is the Ninja Captain and founder of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. The author of the Amazon bestsellers, CassaStar and CassaFire, he lives in the Carolinas with his wife.

Website – http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/

Twitter – http://twitter.com/AlexJCavanaugh  

Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4287922.Alex_J_Cavanaugh

FOOTBALLOCALYPSE!!

This is, if I’m not mistaken, the most I’ve posted in a very long time. Twice in one week? Honestly, blogging has become a much smaller part of my life over the past year, and I’ve scaled it back to what I feel is something I can accommodate into my life.  In other words, I REALLY appreciate every single one of you that has continued to stop by and visit over the course of the past year. I’m not always the best at reciprocating, but it’s not because I’m a jerk. It’s because I’m self-absorbed and thoughtless… Jerks are intentionally that way, for me, that just isn’t the case.

Three things today to discuss rather quickly.

I'M PLAYING IN A BLOGGERS FANTASY FOOTBALL TEAM this year, brilliantly conceived by Briane Pagel (whose newest kindle book that just came out, and contains a tale from yours truly way back in the back… just sayin, more on that below).

In said league, my ‘funsies’ league, where I risk things, gamble on risky players, and all round seem to have forgotten that I need running backs to compete, I have managed to take Calvin Johnson as my superstar… and he gave me a whopping 3 points. For comparison’s sake, that’s like purchasing a brand new Ferrari and putting a second mortgage on your house to pay for it… only to find out later in maxes out at 30 mph.

Also, I didn’t understand the scoring rules, as it is different than the league that I’ve played in for the last several years, so I took Peyton Manning and his historic performance last week as an indicator that I’m a genius, only to realize later that while still impressive, my QB’s passing stats are handicapped just a bit. In other words: I’m in big trouble.

Also, I'm saying that Fantasy Football is Dungeons and Dragons, except it's for people who don't realize they're nerds. I've come to grips with my nerdidity years ago, and since it's got some ironic coolness factor now it's not that big a deal. But still, I find the whole thing funny.

And another thing I'm saying, my son plays High School football (the real kind, not the fantasy kind) and his game was moved to Thursday for TV. It kicked off at 7 p.m. and ended at 12:08 a.m. He didn't get home from it until after 2 in the morning. Needless to say, it was a little ridiculous. Two weather delays and overtime. It was like it would never end.

But they won. So, yay?

SECONDLY, OVER LABOR DAY Weekend, there was a Hitchcock marathon on TCM. My wife loves that channel, and really loves old movies. She coerced me away from other things (i.e., the internet) in order to watch.  After the Birds, which I found a bit silly but with fx that holds up much better than I would have guessed, we ended up watching one of his earlier movies (early 40’s, I think) that I’d never heard of previously. And it blew me away.

It was called, Shadow of a Doubt, and was the story of a young woman, still living at home with her mother, father and younger siblings. Her beloved Uncle Charlie, who rolls into town early on as the jet setting businessman that’s finally returned home to the adoration of the whole town, immediately shows why he’s so beloved. Frankly, he’s the most awesome person ever.

Except, the young woman (also called Charlie (short for Charlotte), it was confusing, but it was explained that she was named after her Uncle, who is awesome) begins to suspect that her perfect uncle is a serial killer that’s come home to hide from authorities that are on a nationwide manhunt for him.

It was a movie of its time, but it was also really dark. The accidents that start happening around our young heroine and her suspicion that her Uncle is trying to kill her AND her realization that this horrible monster has everyone convinced he is a saint it brilliantly done.

Also, the nerdy coworker of her father who is obsessed with the idea of committing the perfect murder (as a thought experiment only) is awesome. I highly recommend this one.

AND FINALLY, BRIANE BAGEL's Temporary Anne is out today... and it's FREE! (today only) Click here to download. Also, his blog tour begins today. Check him out over at Tina Downey's blog for a chance at prizes and to create a true 'Choose Your Own Adventure' type of tale. It's going to be amazing!

Horsocalpyse!

So, it’s Tuesday again. Seems like Tuesdays are starting to roll around weekly nowadays. Since when did that start happening?

Anyhow, congrats to everyone that took the quiz I posted last time. It reinforces to me my pet hypothesis that writers to tend to fall on the right hand side of the bell curve of human knowledge. That isn’t to say that quiz was in any conceivable way an intelligence test, but it is a gauge of at least having some basic grasp of the world we live in and how it works.

I think that everyone who took that quiz got 12 or 13 of the 13 questions right. Well done everyone, it might have seemed really easy, but the truth is that very few American adults are capable of getting that many right.

Actually, that’s very sad.

Moving on…

The family went horseback riding recently, I won’t try to inflate my knowledge of horses by lying here, but I tend to think of them as 1000 pounds of death and destruction. My wife thinks of them as baby dolls that eat hugs and kisses and poop love and affection.

I did grow up in the country, and horses were always around. If you didn’t respect them they would kick you in the head. I never saw that happen, but I did know two people that happened to. Those can be lethal. Also, they will crap all over you if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (wait, maybe that’s cattle, I forget now). I’ve ridden before on multiple occasions, with friends mostly, especially if they owned horses – that was when I was younger. Before last weekend, it'd been 20 years at least.

So, it was with much trepidation that I approached my black horse, with its flaming red eyes and razor sharp fangs. I knelt and gave it my offering of fine grain and fruit. And begged for it to spare me.

My wife, she got the rainbow pony. They hugged for a bit and maybe talked about puppies and sugar cookies, not real sure about that.

Regardless, my prayer to the horse demon worked, as I survived the horrific ordeal. And the missus is none the wiser towards the great evil we faced together.

That kind of makes me a hero I suppose. It’s a mantle I wear reluctantly.

Me and the two Juniors... battling evil!

Seriously though, it did make me think of my grandfather, who has long since passed away, who used to travel to North Carolina (just over the mountains) to court his woman, who eventually became his wife, and my grandmother. He traveled by horseback to see her and said it would take about a week to get there. A WEEK!

That’s a lot of love. I remember thinking I was the most romantic person alive because I was willing to drive 30 minutes to see a girl.  If you’re traveling out in the elements for that long you can almost guarantee that you will, at some point, be 1) Wet 2) Cold 3) Hungry 4) Scared, and 5) Bored

My grandfather died almost 30 years ago now. Were he still alive he’d be almost 110 years old. But thinking about his day to day life is almost like looking through a time machine.

He hated rabbits more than Elmer Fudd. He had the biggest bicep I’d ever seen on a human being in person – even well into his 70’s. And he believed cornbread in milk was the single greatest treat a person could indulge in.

Funny how things like that come just from me riding a horse for an afternoon.

Why Do I Always Forget to Title My Posts?

Happy Day internet! I forget sometimes that I have a blog. I figure if I can post once weekly I'm pretty much ahead of the game. Then I look and notice that I haven't posted in two weeks. Dang.

Regardless, I found a short quiz online that I tweeted recently. It's 13 multiple choice questions meant to gauge our general knowledge of science. Afterwards, they compare you to everyone else that has taken the same quiz. So far, the results have been discouraging. Take the short (3 or 4 minute) quiz and see where you fit in.

http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/science-knowledge/

How'd you do? I put my results below.

Comet Ison... And We're Totally Doomed!

Hola,

After I posted that devastating portrayal of the state of the ‘average person’s’ knowledge of our cosmos last week. I figured I’d write a post or two regarding just what lurks out and about in our stellar neighborhood and what it actually is. That way, should you ever get stopped by Jay Leno on the street and asked what a comet is, you won’t be forced to tell him that it’s ‘A star that, due to physics, has had its barometric pressure rise and causes it to spin’.*

So, I’ve been excited for the possibility that Comet Ison will be viewable this fall, now, I don’t want to get too excited, because folks in the know aren’t sure what to expect. But the most optimistic predictions say it will be as bright as the full moon and easily viewable even in the middle of the day. It would be, without a doubt, the brightest comet as viewed from earth in over a century.

Think of it, almost no one alive would have ever had the opportunity to see a comparable celestial event.

Oh, the number of people that think that the comet will get that bright are getting smaller daily. The latest observations make folks think that if it doesn’t get so close to the sun that it breaks up, then it still won’t get as bright as those early reports indicated. Which would suck. Hard. Regardless, I’m following the story as close as I can, and the comet should still be viewable to the naked eye in December or so even if it is a bit of a dud (assuming it survives its close encounter with the sun). Its problem is that it’s too damn small.

Okay, you know how in space no one can hear you scream? That’s because there is no atmosphere to propagate the variations in air pressure that an ear drum can detect and interpret as a sound – let alone a scream. It’s called a vacuum. Another intrinsic property of a vacuum is that liquid water can’t exist in a vacuum (no one call me on that, it CAN, just not for long enough for it to be meaningful**). So way out in space, if you find water, it will be in the form of ice.

Comets tend to live waaaay out on the outskirts of the solar system. Where temperatures are close enough to absolute 0 (which is minus 459-ish Fahrenheit) that a few degrees here are there are meaningless… comets start out near the orbit of Pluto in the Kuiper Belt, where things like Halley’s comet live, and go all the way out into something called the Oort Cloud, which extends out a light-year or so from the sun.

And it’s from the Oort cloud, Comet Ison comes, it’s either a long period comet (something that has an orbital period that could be many thousands of years, where most of its time is spent on the outer reaches of the solar system), or something deep in the darkness between the stars gave it a nudge in our general direction.

And it is barreling towards the sun.*** At this point, I would point out here a couple of things, one, comets are not asteroids. Comets are made of different stuff, they’re, for all practical purposes, giant iceballs (with other stuff in them). Asteroids are rocks (which are subcategorized further, but that’s another discussion for another day). Of course, as you move out into the colder portions of the solar system, the transition from asteroids to comets is a slow one, and there are some that are rocks with Ice, and others that are Ice with rocks mixed in (called Centaurs, of course)… so, in the middle it can get fuzzy trying to categorize them, but like most things, the extremes tend to be easy to tell apart.

You really need to click and look at this pic. NASA put together this image.
It shows all the asteroids they've been tracking that have orbits intersecting earth's.
ZERO comets are pictured here. ZERO!

My second point, which relates to what I mentioned earlier about liquid water not being able to exist in space, is that once a comet gets close enough to the sun for the ice to melt, it goes straight from ice to gas. The process is called sublimation. And when a comet comes barreling towards the sun, all that ice begins to get turned straight into vapor – it forms a gassy atmosphere (called a coma) and then solar radiation starts blowing it away.

And then we get that tail of the comet that we all love to see (Actually, it’s not technically a ‘comet’ unless it has that tail, but, whatever – categorizing celestial bodies in astronomy is a very contentious thing, I’m just trying to keep it simple). Those tails can stretch out for millions of miles and become quite bright.****

Comet Ison is going to get very close to the sun. This is probably its first trip here (based on some other evidence that I won’t get into) and it may fizzle in an epic destruction that we won’t be able to see (because it would require staring at the sun… not easy to do). So I’ve been keeping my fingers crossed that it’s going to be epic AND viewable. Keep your eyes peeled.

Oh, and if you’re ever stopped by Jay Leno and he asks about comets… give him hell.

Okay, one more thing, as a final note here to the main post (not a footnote, which there are several)… like most things, I don’t actually look things up for the purposes of a post, research wise. So, there is a small chance that I’ve made some ‘technical’ errors above. So don’t cite me as a source if you’re trying to settle a bet or something. I’m just shooting from the hip here. Also, don’t give me grief because I didn’t explain this one thing you think I should have, there is a LOT of stuff I could have put in, but didn’t in an effort to make this post less than a book length.

*That’s so wrong that just calling it wrong, feels, well, wrong.  It starts wrong from the first time that man said a noun, then got increasingly wronger from there. If you didn’t see the video, it was in my post from last week. Seriously, wow.

** There was an incident at a NASA training facility and an astronaut had a suit malfunction when being put in a vacuum chamber… before he passed out he recalled that the moisture in his mouth began boiling away. Seriously, no liquid water in a vacuum.

*** Comets tend to travel much faster that asteroids btw, so the kinetic energy of one hitting the earth is much greater considering its mass. So the distinction is important to make if you hear someone say that it’s a comet heading our way, we’re probably going to be screwed. We wouldn’t have that much notice anyway (Remember? Asteroids tend to be much closer to the sun than comets are, and orbit the sun in a way we can track them much better). So any comet on a collision course with earth would be traveling 100,000 mph or so… considering how big those things can be… we’d all be dead.

****I don’t know how to make those awesome cross looking things for my footnotes, but I sure wish I could. Anyway, comet tails always, ALWAYS point away from the sun, no matter which direction it is moving, so once a comet makes its closest pass of the sun and begins moving back out to the deep parts of the solar system, that tail will still be pointing away from the sun, it can make you think it’s moving backwards.

Back on the IWSG Bandwagon!

Way back in the early days of the internet, Alex J Cavanaugh created the Insecure Writers Support Group. Since those early days, it has grown in size to nearly be as popular as Google itself. It’s also a time when I get to vent about all my issues without fear of judgment.

I took a few months off from posting this summer (and lost my coveted spot on the linky list), but it was a good time away. The best part is that I have spent tons more time with the family. So, good times all around.

Anyway, I’ve actually had a hard time articulating the cause of my most recent panic attack – whatever that may be. So instead or rewriting this post for the fifth time, I’ll lament how poorly educated my fellow Americans are with this Astronomy quiz. How well would you have done?

Galaxy 500? Was that guy serious? Sheesh.