Works In Progress

Evelyn of the sea

Evelyn of the Sea - a steampunk, pirate adventure.
Taste:

On the morn of July the twenty third we came upon an eerie sight.  The sea was dead calm and smothered in fog. The wooden skiff was floating low in the water and tilted back and forth as a rocking chair soothing a baby to sleep in the morbid silence.  The deck was empty, sails torn by some wild beast of the Gods.

“If the passengers abandoned ship during a storm, surely they will perish much faster than if they had remained on board.  The ship is not so badly damaged that it would sink; surely the captain would have known this.” I spoke out, giving words the thoughts I’m sure we all had.

“Could be the plague Cap’n.”  Bristle’s widened his eyes.

Donnelly rolled his eyes. “Brissel, you have such an extravagant imagination.  Longboats are missing, even though the ship is salvageable.”

“Perhaps it was a mutiny.”  Brissel beamed with scandalous ideas.

Captain rolled his eyes. “I need men to give this rig a thorough inspection.  Any volunteers?”

I curled my lips and caught the eye of Donnelly.

“Ah, my fearless explorer.  Take the giant with you.”

I rolled my eyes in annoyance, but Donnelly caught my hint.

“I send him with you, not because you need the protection, but so he can carry the mounds of treasure you are going to bring back.”
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Shifters Two - I can't tell you anything about this one yet except that it's in Yusef's point of view.

Dev Patil - my fav actor that I want to play Yusef

Simbiote I've finished a new scif i/ paranormal YA novel looking for representation.  This one also began as a dream. You will find this story a bit messy.

Taste:

Chapter One - Surgery

“Kal, stay with me son.”

 A silhouette loomed in front of me, partially blocking the intense lights of the makeshift operating room.  I felt the surgeon slapping my face, trying to keep me awake.  He’d have to slap me much harder if he was trying to compete with the pain inside me.

“Almost got it.  Won’t be long now.”  He had a firm grip of the handle of a clamp that was shoved down my mouth.  He had the steel apparatus all the way down my second esaphagus, secured it tightly, and began pulling it back out. 

Tears drained into my ears.  I grasped the bottom of my surgical chair, scraping my nails on the metal.

Simbiote

Doc.  --- had been my black-market surgeon since I went into the trade.   Every year when harvest time approached, I sought out his expertise.  I wasn’t his only supplier.  I’m sure there were Bengen all over the planet that came to him.  He had the connections.  He usually had a list of buyers waiting and ready for their precious therapy.  That’s what he called it.  Therapy.  I voluntarily went through this torture to provide the human colonists with their much needed dose of hormonal meds.

Even with Doc’s enhanced physique it took a fair amount of exertion to pull out the bulb.  Manual extraction was the only way to remove the bulb without crushing it.  The Simboitic Bengen Bulb could fetch me a million dollars if it was still intact.  It was unfortunate that selling it was totally illegal.

I gagged on the clamp.  One of Doc’s assistants held my head in a vice grip, straining my neck towards the ceiling.  If I was able to scream I would have.  It would have done little good.  I’d learned over the years that holding still was best.

He raised his foot onto the chair.  With a firm twist he cracked the bulb off of the mother plant.   Deep inside my body I felt the tug on my organs.  The plant stem sent a painful pinch all the way up my backbone to my skull.  I swear, if I could see the plant’s markings in my skin they would have moved with the force of the break.

This was the first time I finished the procedure without passing out.  I saw the onion shaped bulb cluched in the tongs of the clamp when it came out of my mouth.  Doc quickly wrapped it into a moist cloth, in a dark container and sealed it shut.  His Assistant relaxed his grip on my head and offered me a drink.  I swallowed it into my second esophagus.  The plant would need it just as much as I did.   It burned as it went down.

“Get this to Lucy’s.” Doc handed the container to Turak - one of his Bigs.

“I can take it.”  I croaked.  I knew I couldn’t.  I could barely hold my head up, but I didn’t want the bulb leaving my sight.

“Don’t even try it, Kal.”  Doc pinned my shoulder to the chair with two of his fingers.  “Turak will guard it with his life.”

Turak tilted his chin up at me.   My lack of confidence in him must have been insulting.  Was it normal for him to walk around in the middle of the night carrying a million dollars worth of bulb?

Blurbs:
"Honestly – this sounds like a really cool idea! I definitely want to know more!   I’m guessing we want to be discreet because you don’t want to reveal all of the secrets quite yet. That is awesome – it creates suspense." - Abby Fowers

Monster's Maze is a complete mid-grade manuscript looking for representation

Taste:  Petra and Shane entered the maze. The walls were covered in what looked like the bark of a rubber tree.  Not dead tree bark, but alive, like the walls were wide, flat, smooth trees.  They wrapped around over their heads and back down the other wall, enclosing the siblings in a tree tunnel.   There were roots dangling around them like  streamers at a party. Maybe they were inside hollow trees that connected to each other creating interlocking passage ways.  There were tunnels heading in every direction, some sloped up and some down.  This maze was not just one horizontal layer, but many stories and split levels piled on top of each other.