Invaders from Beyond the Sky - Flash Fiction Challenge

I wrote this for a flash fiction challenge on Terrible Minds.  The idea is to combine two sub-genres in 1000 words.  I decided to combine three, Dieselpunk, Alien Invasion and BDSM erotica.... which means, NSFW.  Reviews welcome.

The dashboard had five dials in it. Five dials and 16 toggle switches. It seemed like more than enough, but what did I know about motorcycles? How to fix them, but not how they should look. 

Anyway, Ace Savage was impressed with himself and I wanted to be polite.

“She's a beaut,” I told him. “Looks just like a jewel or something.”

“Like a bullet,” he corrected me. I didn't argue, even though a bullet like that would never get out of the chamber.

Ace was a nice enough kid. He was a couple years older than me, blonde, handsome. Not my type. We'd known each other growing up and he always wanted to wear the pants. He'd boss me and I'd let him, but if I'd ever wanted to, I'd have had him grovelling in a heartbeat. I didn't like that. Inconsistent.

I batted my eyelashes at him. “Can I go in front?”

He shook his head. He wasn't about to let a girl drive his new toy.

My baby blues were losing their charm. I sighed. “OK. I guess I'll just get behind you and hold on real tight.”

Ace smiled and handed me a pair of goggles.

The road was empty, but the sky was full of zeppelins. I closed my eyes, smelled the cedar and squeezed Ace tighter. It was too quiet. The calm before the shit storm.

When we got to the base, my hair was mussed, so I pretended to worry over it while Ace went to talk to the guard. I didn't catch much, but I heard Ace refer to me as his girl twice. Their talk ended with him turning to me and saying, “You don't mind waiting with the bike, Millie? There's a good girl.”

I nodded and sat side-saddle on his bike. “Aye-aye, Captain.”

Ace went through the gate. I looked at the trees.

After about a half-hour, the guard got a call on the radio, put his gun over his shoulder and high-tailed it down the road.

I waited until he was out of sight, walked along the fence a little ways and slipped under it into the forest. I didn't always snoop around the base; I'd planned on waiting right where Ace told me to – but it was strange for the guard to abandon his post like that, and I was curious.

I walked parallel to the road, right up to the marble building and in through a side door. Usually this is where my heart would start pumping so hard I could hear it, where I'd have to duck into a doorway to avoid being caught – but the halls were empty, just like the road.

There was a faint buzzing sound, and I followed that. Everybody was gathered in one room, silent.

I crept in through the open door. The sound was coming from the projector. The screen was full of tiny discs, nothing too impressive, just blobs of dark grey on white. There was a big blob that was lighter than the rest. It took a second for me to see it was a zeppelin – which meant that all those black blobs were filling up the sky.

I covered my mouth to keep from gasping and backed through the door. I hit something, and before I could turn around, I felt a giant hand pinning my arms together at the wrist. I tried to turn my head, but another hand pushed my face forward. I felt lips against my ear and heard, “Don't bother, just walk,” and was pushed down the hallway.

I'd been around the base enough to know I was lost. I hadn't even known there were elevators until he shoved me into one.

I hit the wall hard, too fast to get my hands up. I turned around in time to see the doors close.

“Want to tell me what you're doing here? Who are you spying for?”

Tears stung my eyes. This was the problem; I'd get roughed up and I'd be such a mix of turned on and spitting mad that I wouldn't know what to say. “No one. I was just—” I thought about mentioning Ace's name. It would have been the fastest way out of the mess I was in. “I was just snooping. You know, in general.”

“Which General?” the man demanded.

I blinked at him, disappointed that a man like this should be so stupid. “Sorry, bad joke.” He cracked a smile. Gorgeous white teeth. I thought I might provoke him, see if I could get him to bite.

His uniform wasn't one I recognized. Some special division, maybe. Definitely not in Ace's unit.

“I'm Millie.”

“Vale.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Basement.”

“Why?”

He crossed the elevator in half a second, backing me into the corner he'd thrown me into. “Questioning.”

My heart thudded in my ears. I pressed myself into the railing to keep from pressing into Vale. The elevator bell dinged and the doors slid open.

At first Vale didn't say much, just asked me questions and tightened my restraints when he didn't like the answers. He finally worked out that I got off on it and gave up on interrogation. Every time he came down, he looked a little grayer, a little weaker, sometimes beat up pretty bad.

One day he came in, looking rough and told me, “This is the safest place for you,” chained my arms above my head and fucked me against the bars of my cell. That was the closest to a heart-to-heart we ever had.

The aliens have taken all the big cities. Not just here, worldwide. This base is one of the only ones left and I have to wonder who's holding it together.

I don't know what's happened to Ace. Vale still comes to see me sometimes, but we don't do much talking.

I Know, I Know

I get that this is pretty much the opposite of shutting up about NaNoWriMo, but being as the site officially re-launched yesterday and I finally got to update my author info and post my synopsis today (without cover art, sadly), I thought I would share with you the completed* synopsis.  I'm pretty happy with the cover, though there are one or two minor adjustments I'll make before publishing (I know I'm putting the cart seven or eight months ahead of the horse here).  Now all that's really left is to write the damn book.

Someone wants Minty dead. She can't remember why. Actually, she can't remember anything. The mysterious event that caused her amnesia has left her horribly disfigured and she finds herself lost and alone during a tumultuous time.

The dreamworld is in chaos. Social media has started people dreaming about places they've never been and with nearly seven billion people sleeping through the night, there's barely enough space to contain their misconceptions. Nod is at full capacity.

Unrest and instability have left the way open for Raiders, power-hungry maniacs bent on taking control of everything and everyone in their paths. And now underground rings of big game hunters are inducing comas to get into Nod – and turn its inhabitants into their prey.

Behind everything is the Dust, the life-force of the soul, a source of great power and the most potent drug in existence. Everyone has some but many want more - and will stop of nothing to get it.

Of course, nothing's set in stone, so if you notice anything that could use a bit of tweaking, I won't be offended if you mention it.

*current, likely temporary

A Book Review, of Sorts

As I am occasionally wont to do (generally for the laughs), I browse the paperback section at whatever passes for a grocery store/drug store and pick out something that catches my fancy. In this case, I grabbed Crave, by J.R. Ward, an author I'd never heard of, so I picked it on the basis of the cover alone.

I also, in all truth, have completely exhausted my supply of books at home (which numbers about five, currently).

Halfway in, I've decided that I actually kinda like it. It's the second book of its series, which I didn't know when I got it, but since I wasn't going for brilliance in writing, I don't much care. It's certainly not the best piece of fiction out there, but it's decent. The universe sticks to its own rules, and there's hot men who have wings and fighting and general manliness.

On the other hand, the author used 'symbology' as a word. I just about died. Plus, there's a demon called 'Devina', which just makes me think of that bit in Rabb Nesbit when David Tennant guest starred as a soon-to-be woman. And Devina goes to a mortal therapist for actual therapy, which seems a bit odd, for a demon who's trying to take over heaven and earth. She also won't kill kids, but isn't above sacrificing virgins. Seems a bit inconsistent, but then, there's no reason why a demon wouldn't have foibles like being squeemish about killing kids, but not adult virgins.

In terms of writing style itself, it's an easy enough read, though there are waaaay too any sentences with strung-together-phrases-like-this-one, which I would have pounced on had I been editing. And most of the men are actually just the same man in different clothes and with slightly different backstories, except for a couple of the side characters, one of whom is actually interesting, which is a little annoying, but then again - I wasn't reading it in the hopes of finding loveable characters so much as hot men who could fly.

Still - over all, it's performing its function admirably, and entertaining me enough that I don't mind falling asleep while reading, or go stir-crazy with nothing to do when crocheting socks doesn't hold any interest for me. The universe is intreiguing enough to hold my interest (but not my ability to spell, it seems), despite the character flaws, the smut didn't devolve into the 'throbbing member' nonsense that most romance novels go for, and if it wasn't for a...brusqueness and a bit too much modern-world-name-dropping that always ends up dating a book (like tossing in a reference to eHarmony), it'd move out of the 'decently tolerable' category and into the lesser levels of indifference.

That said, 'symbology' was almost a deal breaker - all I could hear is Willem Defoe saying "Ssssssymbolism."

I kinda want to watch Boondock Saints, now...

EDIT: Fixed sentences, cleared up thoughts, and generally mopped up the mess I made when I wrote this while half asleep yesternight. Jan 10, 2011

I've found another article that everyone might find interesting. This one's about an apparently pretty strong gender bias in the publishing world when it comes to book covers.


I Write A Nasty Book. And They Want A Girly Cover On It.

Discuss!

>:D