D’Cardi’s was an upscale women’s clothing store with an Italian flair. The store featured signs in Italian and English, murals of the countryside and ancient churches and villas along the walls, and of course, the strands of opera at a gentle volume; mingled together with the fashionable leather coats, bags, belts, and earth-toned jewelry, the store exuded a sophisticated class that made it perfectly at home as a mall highlight. Jennifer Tabarone worked there, one of the junior members of the DMIC. Tuesday nights were slow nights and she was idly scanning the CD rack for something interesting. She had just come across a tenor described as the Pavarotti of Gregorian chant when Tristiana walked into the store.
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The Complexitor sat at home in his favorite lounge chair before a wide-screen TV, drinking a perfectly chilled microbrew beer. The camera followed a tiny white ball as various golfers tried to hit it into a hole impossibly far away. He wasn’t watching. He was sulking.
Saturday began as an unexpectedly boring day. It turned out that Cutler and his family were taking a day trip to Akron. “It’s better than it sounds,” he had said, “because there’s this awesome gaming store in the mall. I won’t be here. I’ll be there.” He had spun around and pointed off to the northeast. Kirandra had the day shift at the antique store, so she wasn’t around, and Uncle Kevin had left for errands before I woke up.
I am still writing. Looks like that chapter every week thing didn’t pan out. Sigh. The latest installment of SEIA (Summer Ends in August) is taking a long time, mostly because a lot happens, and so I have to do a lot of imaginative work to do.
I’m going to keep plowing through and get things back to a more reasonable schedule. It will be worth your wait — I promise.
Seven colonies scattered along the shipping lanes to a distant star.
Seven colonies alone in the cold lightless void of space.
Seven colonies connected only by holograms and voices.
The final frontier as it will be and as it must be.
Lonely Planets.
Winter 2010.
O-Man stood against the door leading out of the concession stand, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other spinning a socket wrench the wrong way by the socket end. Wenchy sat behind a laptop with a large screen with headphones tossed to one side and a microphone on the other. Her outfit — an elegant off-white dress — seemed strangely out of place amid all the communications equipment. In the back, HIM stretched out in a nice leather chair, looking distinctively bored.
Wenchy looked around the room. “Let’s go through our roles one more time, shall we?” Her voice struck a characteristic semi-serious tone.
Would You Like to Live among the Stars? If you answered yes, then the League needs you! Many planets belong to our alliance and every exploratory mission discovers new worlds. As a result, we need people to inhabit colonies along all of the trade routes to these new planets.
Why Colonies? The Stradford Act, passed in 2400 AD, requires constant human habitation for every sector of space. If the shipping lanes to these new planets are not protected, then trade can be disrupted, and we could all lose the valuable resources, goods, and services. Worse yet, other alliances could claim the shipping routes and even threaten these new member planets. Let’s not let that happen!
What Do I Need? A desire to live among the stars, the desire to make a colony your permanent home, and the ability to pass a basic psychological screening. In short, not much! Plus, you can bring almost anything with you. Families and groups of five or more will be given special consideration.
Where Do I Sign up? Stop by your League Colony Office today!
I realized that I’ve put out two chapters in a month. Just two. That’s sad. I’ve also noticed that they are 3000 + words, which I guess when you look at from that perspective, isn’t terrible. 6000 words a month? What’s that, 20 pages? Ok, now we’re back down to sad land. Ack. I guess there’s no camouflaging the fact that I need to ramp up the output, especially if I’m ever going to get around to the other series that are in the pipe. So what’s the goal? One chapter a week. We’ll see if I can do it.
It was Friday. I took a deep breath and basked in that fact before realizing that it was summer and so Friday wasn’t the end of the school week. Still, it was summer, and I felt like anything could happen.
So far, just about anything had happened. In three days, I had gone to see my uncle, halfway across the country, found out that I’d be working most of the summer, met Kirandra, her mom, Shira, Culter and Steve, gone to see TOGAC, and had taken tons of pictures. I ate some cereal, a little overwhelmed by it all.
Just for fun, here’s a poll.
What Series Do You Follow?
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