Once again, my friend and author R.T. Kaelin has got me on another one of these chain things and this one proved too interesting to ignore. It's called 7 of 7 and it's very simple. You go to line 7 of page 7 or page 77 of your current work in progress and reveal the 7 lines that follow.
I have three unpublished books and I thought it might be fun to do this with all three of them. I figured I'd tell you a bit about each of them.
The first is 'The Serpents Head." This book is coming out in June and is an sci-fi western if with a Sergio Leone sensibility. It's about a gunslinger on the frontier of space who comes across a village massacred by a posse of creatures called Glicks. The only survivors, three young children, are taken in by the stranger, who is convinced to help them try to rescue another young girl who had been kidnapped by the murderers.
So, here's 7 lines starting with 7 lines on page 7.
A few, particularly those on the outskirts, seemed constructed of old fashioned wood. It seemed out of place because wood was so rare this far out. There were no trees here, at least not any mature enough to produce wood. Anything made of wood would have had to have been imported by starship, making it prohibitively expensive.
The stranger jumped down off his steed, grateful for the chance to stretch his legs and walk the rest of the way in. Leading his mount by the reins, he wandered closer to the building, close enough to see the wood grain was simulated on a metallic material.
Harumphing, he kept walking.
I'm in the process of revising that book, so anything could happen with this passage, up to and including total deletion. I suppose that's true of any of these excerpts.
Next up is 7 lines from the first book I ever wrote that has gone through two drastic revisions and I swear, one day, it'll get published. It's tentatively called "The Low Road to Zion," and it's about a pair of teenage boys living in Utah County in the late 90s. They sieze an opportunity to play hooky for a week and drive the midwest, learning a lot about themselves and the world in the process.
This comes from page 77:
“Is he following us? Is he there?”
He peeked through the side-view mirrors and cranked his neck, praying they weren’t being followed.
“No. He’s not chasing us. Would you relax?”
“Jesus Christ, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“That guy would have torn me apart, is why. He was a fucking gorilla. Did you see the size of him?”
Again. This book is still in revision mode and everything is subject to change, but this comes from a scene I really liked and I hope one day you'll be able to read it.
The last comes from the book I'm at the absolute end of writing. I work in a totally linear fashion and have the last chapter or two to write. At this point, it's tentatively titled "Every Night and All" or "The Aeronaut." I haven't quite decided which. The easiest way to describe it is that it's a Steampunk take on A Farewell to Arms as written by Bryan Young by way of Graham Greene.
I'll warn you, this one has had zero revision. This is straight from my brain to rough draft, but since I'm in the middle of writing it now, it's the one I like the most, so I decided to include it.
“You must have been exhausted.”
The voice to my right was thick with accent. It was the same thin-mustached fellow who’d led me to the steam shop. He sat on a bunk of his own, sipping from a tin cup of steaming coffee. He clutched the cup and a cigarette in the same hand. The tarred smoke mixed with the steam of the beverage, filling the room with a white fog.
“I hadn’t... slept. We went over the wire the day before last, were called back, then the Germans came over as soon as we were back over. We’d fought until they called a retreat and I haven’t slept.”
I hope this is a book you guys will be able to read in 2014.
Hopefully that wasn't too overwhelming. I write a lot in a lot of different genres and voices. If nothing else, I hope you guys are actually interested in reading some of these.
This is the part where I'm supposed to tag other authors, but I'd very much leave that up to you. If you're an author reading this who wants to be tagged, drop me a line with your name and your website and I'll add a link to your site on this post.
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