Tag: Aliens

Flash: D is for Distances and Detonations

Erin Penn 8 Comments

Image Credit: NASA/Jessica Meir

The aliens, Josh and Kennedy (not their names but the translation of vibe and meaning from their original tongue … again, not tongue but they did have a speaking diaphragm and ligament contraption producing language through pressure waves) watched the nanoprobes return the visuals from a Florida explosion. Humans were throwing themselves off the planet … again.

Did they need to tell Karen or not? She didn’t like getting woken from her cryogenic sleep for nothing, but she also would hate to miss the main event. The very reason their monitoring station took over from the general scientific observation station three hundred years ago when humans got their balloons above the required distance from their natural environment.

But the humans were always sending debris into space, so it could be a false alarm. And Karen, their boss, progenitor, and neurological hub, made it very, very clear about her displeasure the last time they woke her.

Would this one rocket meet up with one of the various space stations the humans had around their planet, or would they make it to the moon? Or would they (vibration of dramatic disbelief) make it beyond the moon?

Kenndy reviewed the incoming transmissions and cross-verified, “Humans are on the rocket this time. It isn’t just a satellite.”

“Or a car,” Josh ran an appendage over his sensory organs. “Why did they send a ground vehicle into space-space and not to a planet?”

“The social scientists said it was a musical prophecy being fulfilled.”

“I think it was a drunk bet. Like every one of these.” He adjusted his position to an input-output station. “’Hold my intoxicating beverage while I see how much dinosaur fuel I need distilled to be blown upwards faster than gravity without dying?’”

“Not everyone lives in a gas giant and can glide into escape velocity over a two-year cycle.”

“They are crazy.”

“They are, the rocket is, aiming toward an elliptical. Running stimulated orbits now.” Looking over the results closely, Kennedy muttered, “So close. So, so close.”

“Really, how close?” Hope tinged Josh’s vibrations.

“Depending on the exact placement, we might be within a digital appendage of the regulation Distance. It certainly will be the furthest they have ever gone before.”

“Do you want to wake Karen or shall I?” Josh asked.

“I woke her the last time.”

“Ugh.” Josh set his stations to artificial monitoring. “Is this the same country initiating conflict in the delta region this year or it is the one in the icy area four years ago or is it one of the others?”

“The one that started the irreplaceable dinosaur remains burning this year.”

“Okay then. While I start cycling the cryogenic chambers, you prepare the ‘we come in peace’ propaganda for them to join the Galactic Union in the … how many languages are still active on the planet?”

“Over seven thousand,” Kennedy let her diaphragm collapse in exhaustion just thinking about it.

“At least there won’t be much change since we last updated them fifty years ago.” Working his way to where the scientists and administration slept, Josh reassured Kennedy, “And don’t worry about locking targets if they react poorly to our outreach program. I rework them every time they start a shooting war using equipment in the upper atmosphere. They are completely up-to-date.”

“Wait a moment.” Kennedy set the elliptical equation running through two additional models. “The computer reports they will be at least half a digit short of regulation in four out of the five predictive models.”

“Centimeters shy?” Josh glanced over the threshold where their boss slept. “Do we or don’t we? How long before they reach the furthest they have ever gone before?”

“Five Earth days.”

“Wake processing is only fifteen hours.”

“Let’s wait.” The two youthful monitors said simultaneously.

“I’m still updating the WCIP messages.” Kennedy said.

“And I will work the resolutions to removing their threat matrix should they be dangerous.”

“They throw themselves off planet via explosions, and” Kennedy waved where their system still recorded the ongoing detonations worldwide even as the humans brushed the greatness to qualify for galactic inclusion, ”that. They are going to be dangerous.”

“After monitoring them for three hundred years, I really would like them to be a little more mature.” Josh said while returning to his station.

“Same.”

“At least the final decision isn’t ours.”

“Thank prosperity for the Karens in the universe.”

(words 734; first published 4/5/2026)

Book Review (SERIES): The MidSolar Murders

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Amazon Cover

The Midsolar Mysteries series by Mur Lafferty

Book 1: Station Eternity
Book 2: Chaos Terminal
Book 3: Infinite Archive

Amazon Cover

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for STATION ETERNITY

Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes.

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board….

MY REVIEW for STATION ETERNITY

If Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher was Meta aware of the murders occurring around her were Unusual while being a 20-something woman and having the option to flee humanity to prevent being a murder magnet, we get the Midsolar Murders.

Aliens which are aliens. Humans worthy of a kind-of closed room Murder Mystery (when on a space station, no one can step outside easily). A sentient space station Going-Through-Things-At-The-Moment. And a protagonist aware she makes murders happen.

The threads of the mystery are so complicated that halfway through I lost everything. It felt like the plot completely evaporated into chaos and I nearly gave up on the book. I skipped to read the Epilogue before going to sleep (some of the issue of tracking everything could be the 3am hour), but that didn’t really answer anything other than give me some idea of who all makes it through the craziness.

I came back to the read after a couple days, since I bought both books one and two together (I loved previous books by the author; Mur Lafferty is an amazing writer and I was willing to take the financial risk on the series) and, dang it, I was going to read both of them even if Station Eternity was a failure! Then the impossible happens – the tangled knot of everything – like three kittens playing with a yarn project – smoothed out. Does everything get neatly tied off – well, no, there is more to this series – but the mystery gets an ending, all the characters get development (and I mean ALL of them), the world shifts and the foundation worldbuilding proves solid.

Wow.

I did mention Mur Lafferty is an amazing writer, right?

 

Amazon Cover

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for CHAOS TERMINAL

Mallory Viridian would rather not be an amateur detective, and fled to outer space to avoid it…but when one of the new human arrivals on a space shuttle is murdered, she’s back in the game.

Mallory Viridian would rather not be an amateur detective, thank you very much. But no matter what she does, people persist in dying around her—and only she seems to be able to solve the crime. After fleeing to an alien space station in hopes that the lack of humans would stop the murders, a serial killer had the nerve to follow her to Station Eternity. (Mallory deduced who the true culprit was that time, too.)

Now the law enforcement agent who hounded Mallory on Earth has come to Station Eternity, along with her teenage crush and his sister, Mallory’s best friend from high school. Mallory doesn’t believe in coincidences, and so she’s not at all surprised when someone in the latest shuttle from Earth is murdered. It’s the story of her life, after all.

Only this time she has more than a killer to deal with. Between her fugitive friends, a new threat arising from the Sundry hivemind, and the alarmingly peculiar behavior of the sentient space station they all call home, even Mallory’s deductive abilities are strained. If she can’t find out what’s going on (and fast), a disaster of intergalactic proportions may occur.…

MY REVIEW for CHAOS TERMINAL

I don’t know about this one, if it was me or the book that wasn’t engaging properly but I didn’t fall into this book. Maybe it was the murder victim was so unlikeable the general response by everyone was “well, better off dead.” It’s hard to root for a murder to be solved when the question isn’t “who did it” but “why wasn’t it done sooner?” I’ve had run into that sort of victim before, it helps the mystery when everyone has a reason to want the person dead, but this time, for me at least, figuring out the murder was second to everything else in the story. And there is a lot of other things happening!

The Midsolar Murders has another locked room mystery in that on a space station, there is no where to run. The aliens are very alien. The politics has humans still fumbling through first contact add complications. And talk about complications, our heroine’s first love shows up on the station with her only best friend to survive Mallory being a murder magnet.

Mallory is still linked to her wasp-bugs hivemind, so trying to link up with a potential boyfriend is problematic. Added to the fact Mrs. Brown has left the sentient station under Mallory’s care while she goes learn what it means to be the shepherd for an intelligent machine. (BTW Mallory is horrible as a babysitter.) And a new bunch of humans including a new ambassador to replace Adrian. Well, of course her murder magnet will activate.

Lots of things happening in this science fiction story. Which made the murder mystery suffer a breath (hard to breathe in the vacuum of space – or scream, just ask Tina). Good heading towards great but swerved before hitting it.

Amazon Cover

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for INFINITE ARCHIVE

Amateur sleuth Mallory Viridian has just about got her bearings aboard the space station she calls home, but now the physical embodiment of the Internet is on its way, and it’s bringing murder with it.

Mallory Viridian has had a quiet few months. Even with the increased influx of humans visiting Station Eternity, she hasn’t seen so much as a bar brawl. Used to people dying left and right around her, the lack of murders to solve has left her unexpectedly . . . bored.

But humanity’s favorite way to waste time is on its way to her sector of the galaxy. A giant, one-of-a-kind data ship called Metis is bringing the entire Internet from Earth—as well as a mystery fan convention. On top of that, Mallory’s literary agent is aboard, and he tells Mallory that she’s the keynote speaker.

It’s almost a relief when a killer decides to strike at the convention. When Mallory finds her agent dead, she knows she has to work fast to find the murderer. With a strange new alien with unknown motives, a ship with impossible abilities, a lonely living, comprehensive Internet, and a deadly crime to solve, Mallory has her work cut out for her . . . .

MY REVIEW for INFINITE ARCHIVE

This book feels more like fan service than a science fiction murder mystery. I mean the whole series has had a little “wink, wink” to it with Mallory being a self-aware murder-magnet, but this takes it a step further, making the Easter eggs be more powerful than the actual plot. That line is thin and hard to spot, but I think we landed on the wrong side of it for making this book the BEST it could have been. It still is pretty darn good.

The in-book reading of another book – the detective noir sci-fi story starring plants as the main characters – both adds and distracts. (and this is like the third time in the last two years I’ve read books with this device) Part of the time my brain was comparing the Murder Mystery Convention on the space ship with the Murder Mystery Convention on a train in the “Everybody on This Train is a Suspect” by Benjamin Stevenson. Also comparing the con to attending conventions now even though this is taking place about twenty years in the future. Then the ship, Metis, is not only a convention but also a physical representation of the internet down to the cat room/videos.

Meanwhile, we continue to have the politics of the aliens, the politics of Earth, human interactions, the addition of the baby Mobius from the last book  and all that entails (remember how in book 2 I said Mallory is an awful babysitter???), and, you know, the actual plot.

A lot is packed in between the pages. Of the three Midsolar Murders, book one was the best. If I didn’t have books one and two for comparison, I would have enjoyed book 3 as a farce – but I wanted more. Oh, and I read the book in one sitting – going to bed at 6:30 am because “one more chapter” syndrome is strong in this book. I wanted more, I wanted the book to be better, and I still couldn’t put it down.

Flash: Rain Rain, Go Away

Erin Penn

Photo by Nikolas Noonan on Unsplash

Torrential rains kept ahead of the windshield wipers, obscuring the road to the point staying on it was more a product of guesswork and the straight arrow nature of roads in middle America than my ability to see the reflective paint. Fortunately, the likelihood of anyone else being on the road was close enough to nil, I managed the sixty miles-per-hours my passengers required without feeling like I was endangering an innocent soul. Five quick lightning flashes, one bolt I swear crossed right in front of the SUV, followed by thunder hid the final beep I’ve been waiting for.

The oversized vehicle slowed, and finally putted to a stop.

“Have we arrived?” The Alien with the least bumps on his shoulders asked as I pulled over to the rumble strip just in case someone else had been required to play guide to our unwanted planetary guests. “I do not see facility.”

“No sir, I’m sorry sir.” I tried really hard to keep a smile from cracking my face. Reminding myself that these were Aliens, with a capital A, and I had no clue how they would actually react to anything, and normal humans in the tyranny style have shot the messenger, helped a lot. “We ran out of gas.”

“Gas.” It repeated through the translation matrix on its wrist, cutting and pasting my word complete with my inflection.

“Gasoline?” I responded, trying to find the word they had in the T-max. “Petrol? Go-juice? Petroleum? Hydrocarbon Propellent?”

It shifted in the passenger seat. “Hydrocarbon Propellent – yes, we are out of?”

Oh cripes, someone compelled to help create the language matrix really hated these guys. Kudos for getting away with it. If that someone got away with it. If not, may they be in good company upstairs.

“Yes. The car consumed all the hydrocarbon propellent in the storage tank.”

The lowest of the six I was escorting to the secured base they set up in Kansas turned to the rest of its cohort in the back and explained the situation. The one I nicknamed ScienceGuy since I picked them up yesterday interrupted the Lowman, turning on his own T-max. “We have enough propellent to make it to the base.”

“No sir, I’m sorry sir. That is not the case.” I learned ScienceGuy started by stating his theories as facts. I’m guessing because of issues with translation; I would be disappointed if a space-faring species capable of destroying sixteen major cities on Earth, and half our population with them, was so piss-poor at scientific thought they stated their initial investigation as though they were working from facts and laws instead of the unknown and theories.

Evidence says otherwise though.

Still, he hadn’t killed me yet for disputing his statements. Something I would wager would go otherwise if I talked back to those higher in the cohort structure.

Three booms kept speech from happening for a few moments. Once the storm quieted down a little, ScienceGuy rebutted, “The specifications for the vehicle indicated enough hydrocarbon propellent to cover the distance at the speed we required to meet our time of arrival.”

He had said the same exact thing, nearly word-for-word when I asked if they wanted gas before we left the last food stop. The cohort barely took two hours to eat, scarfing it down for the Aliens. They been pushing it since they arrived in Dallas, wanting to be at the Kansas base where their ships could return them to orbit.

“Sometimes vehicles do not meet specifications.”

“Poor technical design of a subpar species. When do vehicles not meet specifications?”

“Um. Speed, faster and slower than optimal, changes gas mileage – propellent usage. But you already took that into account.” I mulled it over. I hadn’t deliberately sabotaged anything. I was waiting for a really, really good moment. “Repair. Something wrong with the engine, but, no, this baby has been great.”

“It is a young vehicle?” ScienceGuy asked.

“Young ve-hic …oh, Baby. No sir, I’m sorry sir, slang. Vocabulary degeneration usage.” I shook my head to myself before tensing as the storm cleared enough for me to make out the color of the clouds. Green. My eyes started darting as much as I could politely do so, looking for downdrift on the storm clouds. “I mean the vehicle is in good repair and it shouldn’t affect propellent usage. Road surface also had impact, but the road has been great.”

“Has the vehicle been sabotaged?”

“No sir. It would not have done as good as it had in this storm if anyone had deliberately injured the vehicle.” I snapped my fingers, figuring it out. “Storm! It was the rain, sir.”

“The rain?” ScienceGuy asked, leaning forward, getting excited with an answer he wasn’t expecting.

“Yes sir, the rain.” I waved at the outside, clearing as the eye of the storm passed overhead. Bless flat Kansas, I could see the lights of the Alien compound about five miles away. “Individual impact of the water droplets increases the propellent usage, as the rain is harder to push through than empty air. Each hit, as we move forward, slowed us a little, so we needed more propellent to maintain the speed you required.”

“Rain does this?” ScienceGuy’s coloring along his lower plates shifted two shades of green darker. “It is just water, hardly different than air.”

“Yes sir, no insult, but you spend a lot of time in space. Water has a lot of unique properties on planet, and its interaction with weather can be … momentous.” Several clouds along the coming second half of the storm, likely hurricane – don’t know for certain since they shot down all our satellites, were doing the swirl thing. It could just be a normal cycle of thunderstorms and we were between bands. “Rain impacted the propellent usage and we have run out of the hydrocarbon propellent.” Cursing myself for needing to make the offer, but knowing it was the moment I’ve been waiting for.  “Do you want me to go to base and get some?”

“No. We do not keep propellent at the base. It has been used in sabotage.”

ScienceGuy and Lowman bounced ideas back and forth in their click language until the Alien with the most bumps on his plates declared something. It didn’t bother with having a T-max. At its order, everyone opened the doors and started getting out as the first of the drops restarted as the back half of the storm arrived. The side with the funnel clouds.

The one I called Nervous Nellie, the only other guy with a T-max asked, “Kangaroos, do you have kangaroos?”

“Oh, shit, you guys were in Australia?” The stories that we were getting from the Land from Down Under about our Aliens dealing the Earth’s death continent were nothing short of delightful to us survivors of the First Strike, “No sir, I’m sorry sir. No kangaroos here.”

“Emus? Any deadly spiders?”

No wonder Nervous Nellie was so twitchy. “Kansas has few deadly creatures, and most of them will be hiding from the storm.” I started walking toward the far-off shelter, pulling down the brim of my hat. “All we got to worry about is the wind and rain. And maybe lightning.”

“Water and air.” I could see Nervous Nellie deflate as he said the words. Literally, his plates lowered closer to his body. “No biological threats.”

“No sir, I’m sorry sir. No biological threats.” I smiled as we walked, watching the darkening clouds hide the funnel touching down between us and the base we were walking toward. The wall of swirling wind took off away from us, toward our destination. As the heavens opened up another deluge, I saw another funnel twist over, closer to the base. I could barely make out how wide it was, but I could pick out the roar against the thunder and striking rain. I held back a chuckle.

One of the bumpy guys without a T-max was already limping in the rain, a couple of plates on one of his legs looked cracked. About the shape of a kangaroo kick. The now pouring rain flowed over the cracks weird. I wonder if the wind blew into those cracks.

“Nothing to consider combatant.” Nervous Nellie sounded completely relieved.

ScienceGuy agreed.

Nope sir, I’m sorry sir, nothing to worry about, consider combatant, at all, I thought to myself as I pressed against the low-level hurricane winds smiling wide.

(words 1,403; first published 7/10/2022)

Flash: Bowman

Erin Penn

Rating: Mature

Bowman reviewed the duty assignment screen wistfully. His unit-individual number was followed by a blinking active, in-port code, and after that was a duty code he was beginning to know far too well. No change from yesterday. Meaning he got to mop floors in the Mess … again. He grabbed his undress yellow blouse and made his way to the Port Kitchen, arranging the securing sashes before stepping out of the empty barracks.

His severed hand, a minor injury by modern standards, had held him up just long enough to miss the 94th Infantry Division’s deployment. The tattooed private inhaled as he walked into the cooking area. He had to admit after all the times he had been on brick rations, being around live food was nearly worth the monotony.

It did not make up for the loneliness.

He wondered who was left to cook for. The last remaining divisions using Squamata Port mustered out yesterday for the Orion Theatre. All the support staff except for a few old-timers went with them. He never did get to adequately thank the doctor who screwed up his nerve reattachment badly enough that even after the second and more successful surgery was completed, he had to go through physical therapy.

Stripping out of as much of his uniform as one could tweak regulations, Bowman tied an apron over his already kitchen stained trousers and made his way to the ticking sounds of rapidly moving knives. “So Fatso, what are we mutilating today?”

Rounding the corner, Bowman saw a perfect heart-shaped butt snugged in mustard yellow weave. His eyes made their way up a back bare of everything but two apron loops. His fingers twitched for a second as he contemplated untying the loops. A blond by the military fuzz adorning her scalp. Damn, he loved blonds.

“That would be Colonel Fatso.” Replied a heavenly contralto, with an unmistakable undertone of command. “And breakfast will be vegetable omelet.”

Served him right for forgetting Faraday had been on one of the outgoing ships yesterday. “I am so sorry, Sir. What do you want me to do, Sir?”

“Apology accepted; been in kitchens before.” Watching her julienne the potatoes, Bowman had no doubt about that claim. “Second, it’s Dame. Air Force not Army – civilized people have genders. Third get the food. Net closest to the entrance. Put all three meals there when got vegetables last night.”

Bowman looked at the officer’s profile out of the corner of his eye while pulling on the environmental suit. Her small breasts popped over the top of the apron, tangerine nipples puckered tight. Her face was young; she could pass for his age. Her golden-hued eyes gave away her home sector of Orion, pushing up Bowman’s age estimate from nineteen to twice that. His eyes dropped to verify her origin, sure enough, a Rigelian parasite had replaced the pinky and ring fingers on her left hand.

After a second staring at the red veins pulsing with human blood visible through the translucent green skin, Bowman discovered he was caught staring. Cold gold chips met his blue eyes, “Do you have a problem, Private?”

“No, Sir … Dame.” Normally he wouldn’t add more, the Army did not like explanations – either getting them or giving them, but he had heard Air Force was a little different. “I just haven’t seen one before. Not in person, Dame.”

She sighed, “Get the food and we will let you closer look. Can’t have you making an accident staring.”

Wanting to break the tension and trying to gauge the officer. “Does that count for the boobs too, Dame?”

A laugh escaped her. A surprised look crossed her face like she didn’t laugh much. “Get in the airlock Private. … And no. Men having accidents over knockers is inevitable. Nothing can be done to help there.”

“Getting in the airlock, Dame.” He sealed the door and starting doing what his superiors constantly grumbled was his defining characteristic. He started thinking.

While moving the food to from the cold storage nets located on the skin of the port habitat, he went over the puzzle represented by the new person in charge of the Mess. An Orion in a Sol uniform, Air Force in an Army Port, Colonel cooking in a kitchen where the highest officer since before today was a lost second lieutenant, a new person after the base has been emptied, – and most importantly – the sexiest woman he had ever seen. Whatever was about to happen in the Snake Rut was big and very, very secret.

The big question: Could he avoid the shit fan about to hit, while also getting a chance to hit on her? Rhetorical really, he admitted as he started the airlock cycle to return inside. No way would a mud pounder be able to avoid any shit fan, let alone the size that this one seemed to be. And no way would he be able to jump that high of a grade let alone fuck another military branch.

(words 837 – originally appearing at Sunday Fun on Breathless Press 3/25/2013 – See the picture that inspired the story! – As I do not know the copyright permissions, I have not copied it here; republished new blog format 8/12/2018)

Writing Exercise: Driven by Wants

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Theeradech Sanin at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

People don’t move out of their comfort zone unless they have a Want. Neither do characters. Maybe it’s just to get away from the pain, but in those cases, usually the character doesn’t move further than the next room – away from the pain. Close door, forget the trouble, like they are a baby who hasn’t master the permanency of object. 

To get a character to move and keep moving, they need to have a deep Want. In romances, it could be finding and then being with that special person. In Urban Fantasy, they may Want to save the world – more likely, they Want to save their favorite pizza joint who delivers, saving the world as a by-product.

If a story has stalled out, if the characters are just looking and talking and not doing much, maybe a huge glass of Want needs to be added.

Edmund Schubert went into this in the magical word post “The Importance of Wanting in Fiction”, and a huge light bulb went off in my head. Next time my story stalls out, instead of just blowing something up (which a lot of writers recommend), I’m going to see what my characters want. What is driving them. More details can be found here (and be sure to read the comments): (11/3/2023 – They have finally taken down the magicalwords.net.)

Want is also agency, or, more accurately, the ability to pursue and make choices to get what one wants. Want is very important to a character.

WRITING EXERCISE: For your current work-in-progress (WIP), write down what all the characters want by the end of the story. For a scene giving you trouble, write down what each character wants (1) in the next 10 years – their driving life plan; (2) by the end of the book – about a week out; (3) right now – by the end of the scene. Is the scene Want going to met (ending the scene) or change (also ending the scene, but now the character has a different driving Want)?

WRITING EXERCISE 2: Let’s play mad-libs for a moment. Think of a “noun”. Now a “person”. Okay, this is a person and their Want. Write a flash on it.

***

(my example added 11/15/2019) “Three” and “Editor”. 

An Editor Counts to Three

One, two … One, two … No matter how many times Janey counted, she couldn’t make it three manuscripts. She had put out a discount call on her website and Facebook. Three manuscripts would pay for her week’s bills, even if the final one was discounted by 20%. Only two would mean something would have to give.

Food most likely. She wasn’t sure about giving up dinner for a week again. Last time she started getting dizzy about Wednesday.

Maybe she should email blast her publisher friends to see if they have things, but most of them pay when the product gets published, not on delivery of an edit. Small presses suck for income; people who work for small presses are in an even bigger bind.

Nothing doing, except by the doing. Janey winged off the blast hoping against hope and sat down to complete the edits on the second manuscript. She had already sent the first one back hoping a third would come in while she worked on the first. When she started the second, she had done her “flash sale” to no effect.

Style sheet, cover sheet, and annotated manuscript number two appended to an email. Clicking sent, Janey moved to close Outlook when a ping sounded. In the lower left corner of her screen a little blurb of an incoming email flashed, “Greenman@EarthColony.US – manuscript available – Dear Janey Curtpatrick, I saw your flash sale. I have a four-book epic fantasy in need of …”

She quickly clicked on the black box before it went away and it opened to the full message. “…editing, but before I make such a large investment, I would like to meet in person and get a feel. I notice your website says you operate out of Riverside. By lucky coincidence, I flew in from the West for a conference this week. I’m available tonight at the Hilton, could you drop by? I’m sorry for any inconvenience and will pay for dinner. Would seven work? – Sincerally, Mr. John Greenman.”

A four-book epic fantasy!?! That is some serious cash. 

While she usually bumped into new clients at cons, Janey didn’t see much danger in meeting a new client at a hotel. Especially if he would feed her. Lunch had been skipped getting the last edit out. Hopefully he would be on a expense account, and she could pick up enough food to get a couple days worth of doggie bags. Even if things don’t work out for the fantasy series, and she hoped it did, she could still end up with enough food for this week.

She typed out a quick reply before rushing to get ready. (words 450, first published 11/15/2019)