Another CHIMERA excerpt and even more prizes
To underscore the seriousness of this, I'm posting another CHIMERA excerpt *and* giving away pretty much any prize I can scrounge up. If you buy CHIMERA from ***June 1st - June 7th (so NYT will count it....they will *not* count it before June 1st), I'm giving away *****5 signed Roadkills, 5 packs of postcards/bookmarks, three cartoon Cal comic T-Shirts w/cartoon of Cal and his Half Human, Half Monster, All Attitude motto (drawing by Kaysha), a Cal T-shirt with the Nightlife print on it (it is small, a small small), and a Cal Leandros calendar (it has all the Cal and Trixa book covers in it.)*****
This is about surviving as a writer. Period. I lost my job when everyone else did. Bad economic times came and the company lost their government contract and folded--taking my healthcare with it. If I don't sell books, I don't eat. You don't watch your favorite TV show, it gets cancelled. People, I do not want to be *completely* cancelled. Z/G and T and L will be gone after September because some people just don't get that. And when you buy a book and let ten of your friends borrow it....11 people read something it took me 9 mos to write and I *still* only received 48 cents. I really hate begging for that 48 cents per book. It's pathetic and humiliating, but if I can keep my other guys alive, I'll do it. And for the people who don't like my snarky attitude, *but* like my books and proclaim they'll only buy them in used stores so I don't get a dime out of them--good luck, because if I don't write them, they won't be there.
Now the fun part: 2 more CHIMERA excerpts (a fun one as I need some fun. I desperately do.) The first shows how life in an Institute can make the outside world an odd place and the second shows a bit of Godzilla the ferret (we loves him, yes, we do.)
Chapter 14 excerpt
The parking lot of the drugstore was nearly full, clogged with cars, and the store itself was full of people. Good signs, both of them. It had taken a few exits to find the just the place I had in mind. Shoving my gun into the back waistband of my pants, I got out of the car and made sure my shirt concealed the weapon. “Come on, kiddo. Be good and I might buy you an ice cream cone.”
He was torn between being outrage and desperation for a sugar fix. Settling on mildly disgruntled, he trailed after me. After walking through the automated door he looked around curiously. It was one of the super drugstores that carried enough merchandise to cure the diseases of a small Third World country then throw a party to celebrate, complete with wine, balloons, and barbecued weenies. Colors and noise, it was a lot of stimulation for a kid who was shuttled to the mall once a year to ‘act normal.’
I nudged him as he stalled by the doors to stare at a woman pushing a stroller loaded with squalling twins. Accustomed to the sound, she absently reached down to smooth two nearly bald heads and kept moving. “Weird,” Michael murmured, more to himself than me. “Seeing where they come from.”
They, not we. Moving us both into an aisle, I lightly bumped his shoulder with mine. “I have pictures, tons of them. I’ll show you where you came from. It’s pretty much the same.”
With a defensive folding of his arms, he studied the shelves with a scrutiny more suited to emotionally moving art or really good porn than the feminine hygiene products that were actually there. “What are we looking for anyway?” he asked with the avoidance of a pro.
We walked on leaving the aisle of No-Man’s Land until we reached hair care products. “Anything your little heart desires.” I picked up two boxes at random and shook them in his direction. “And dye. Red or blond?”
He caught the implication instantly. “You must be joking.”
“Blond it is.” I put the red back with the rueful realization of why I’d picked the other color. It was more familiar to me than the brown hair Michael had now. Swiftly checking one way then the other, I stuffed the small box into the wad of jacket I’d carried in over my arm for just that purpose. Belatedly, I glanced at the smaller figure beside me. “By the way, stealing is bad, okay? Don’t steal.” Considering, I added, “Or smoke. And don’t drink and drive.” Wait, he was seventeen. “Scratch that last one. Don’t drink at all.” It wasn’t the entire summary of knowledge required for teens, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
He gave me a dubious look. “Are you sure you’re a mobster?”
“Ex-mobster.” It bore repeating, so I repeated it. “Ex.”
"You’re….” He shook his head. Apparently there were no words for what I was, and he let it go to pursue another subject. “Why are you stealing it? You have money.”
“If anyone trails us here, I don’t want them to know we’ve changed our looks.” How I was going to change my appearance was more problematic. I had thought of cutting my hair but that would only make my scar more noticeable. In the cosmetic department I found the answer: make up specially constructed to cover scars. That combined with a haircut should change me enough to escape anything but a good, hard stare.
“Snack cake aisle is just down there, Misha.” I pointed with one hand while tucking away the glass jar with the other. “That we’ll pay for. Short of pretending one of us is pregnant, there’s no way we can smuggle what you can eat out of here.”
He gave me a look, one far too haughty for a seventeen-year old, but he went. He always had been smart as hell, far too much so to bite off his nose to spite his face. I watched as he loaded up with box after box of empty calories. “I’ve created a monster,” I groaned under my breath, deciding to pick up some vitamins before we hit the cash register. Kids took vitamins, didn’t they? I remembered our housekeeper buying them for Lukas and me after our mom died. I hadn’t taken them, but I vaguely remembered a bottle of colorful characters on the bathroom counter.
We waited in line for nearly ten minutes. Sandwiched between a harassed lady with three sociopathic children and a teenage couple working desperately on making one of their own, I noticed Michael moving his weight from foot to foot. It was a minute motion, barely detectable, but it allowed me to pick up his discomfort. In the past two days with me he’d been exposed to more of the outside world than in two years at the Institute. He and the other kids may have studied it until their eyes watered; it wasn’t the same. This was direct, unrelenting contact with a basically alien existence. It was enough to shake up even the coolest customer.
Chapter 20 excerpt
.
Tokyo might’ve been half a world away but I was right here to terrorize, and that was more than good enough for Godzilla.
“Okay, that’s it,” I snarled. “This time that half digested hair ball took my gun.” The bedspread twitched at the bottom and I saw a toothy grin bared at me. Somewhere under there in no man’s land was my Steyr, unloaded thankfully, four socks, a pair of underwear, and my comb.
“I think I saw a public service announcement about gun safety just this morning.” Sprawled on the bed, Michael turned a page. “Carelessness and tiny paws, they just don’t mix.” And that was the sum total of his sympathy as he continued making his way through one of the science books that we’d bought yesterday. This one was about the thickness of a phonebook, but he’d devoured the majority of it, taking in every single word like a human sponge. Lukas had been a bright kid, bright as hell, but this….
Smarter, faster, stronger.
I hadn’t seen any signs of the faster yet, but as for the rest…. I felt an uneasy ripple tickle the base of my brain. Saving Michael was first and foremost in my mind always, but when he was safe, what then? There were many Jerichoes in the world, in intent if not talent. If any one of them sniffed out Michael’s capabilities, we would be on the run all over again. Perhaps for the rest of our lives. It wasn’t what I wanted for my brother.
But that was another worry for another time and premature at best. We might not survive long enough to see an existence beyond Jericho. Or beyond the damned ferret for that matter, a distinctly evil squeak had me adding to the thought.
I slid my foot under the bed to feel around for my gun. In retrospect it wasn’t the most intelligent move to be made. The sensation of a miniature bear trap clamping on my big toe had me hopping backwards and swearing loudly. If the lamp hadn’t been bolted to the nightstand, it’s hard to say what I might have been tempted to do. Two dots of scarlet bloomed on my sock as a length of charcoal fur flowed past me to perch on Michael’s head. Under a black mask a wet, pink nose wrinkled derisively at me.
Damned rat.
As I used the opportunity to retrieve my belongings, Michael lifted up a finger and scratched the chin of his new best friend. “You should be more understanding, Stefan. Hoarding is probably a natural instinct for the ferret. Isn’t that right, Zilla?” The polecat made a contented sound, a cross between an eep and a purr, before draping bonelessly over Michael’s skull for a nap. “I really do need to get a book on ferret care and their habits. Maybe we could stop tomorrow?” He’d lowered his voice in deference to the snoozing spawn of Satan.
I didn’t know which was more annoying: that he whispered for his pet but stomped around like a drunken lumberjack in the morning when I tried to sleep or that he wanted to take time out of fleeing for our lives to get a how-to book on his carpet shark. “Yeah,” I said with blatant insincerity. “I’ll put it right at the top of my to do list.” Securing my weapon against thieving paws, I zipped up the duffel bag and jerked my chin at his book. “You find out anything interesting yet?”
He scooped the ferret into his hands and sat up to place it carefully on a pillow. Stretching, he then traced fingers across the glossy pages and said, “Everything in here is interesting…in its way.” As if the thought unsettled him, he closed the book firmly and pushed it away.
“A little too close to home?”
“A little,” he admitted reluctantly only after I started to reach for the book. “No, it’s all right.” The volume was swiftly retrieved before I could get a grip on it. “This is me. A huge chunk of my history. I want to do this.” That he embraced, but my part in it he refused point blank.
“I’m a chunk of that history, too, Misha. Believe it or not.”
Before he could deny or give me a sympathy that was unwanted and unneeded, I sat down beside him and pulled off my sock to examine the puncture wounds in my toe. “You used to drive me crazy, you know? Typical little brother stuff.” I brushed a thumb across my skin and wiped the drop of blood away. “You stuck to me like I had velcro on my ass. When I first kissed a girl, you were there, hiding in the bushes. I think your exact words were ‘eww, cooties.’ Funny, how thirteen-year old girls don’t appreciate that. Or thirteen-year old big brothers for that matter.” Balling up the stained material, I tossed it over onto my bed. “Then there was the time you thought my bike wasn’t snazzy enough, boring navy blue not being your favorite color. So you painted it purple…with a couple of yellow stripes. And I yelled at you.” I sent my other sock the way of the first. “Not much of a surprise, considering. But you were hurt. You’d done something to make me happy, and I yelled at you for it.”
I still had that bike. It was in my condo storage unit. It was one of those things that you simply couldn’t look at, yet couldn’t throw away.
“Did you ride it that way?”
Surprised, I laughed, “Um…yeah, I did. For a while.”
I’d forgotten about that. We’d lived in an actual neighborhood at that time, with sidewalks and huge houses on postage stamp sized lots. I’d tooled up and down our street on that clown cycle to universal howls of laughter. Mom had been alive then and she’d gently coerced me into it, saying it was the only way to cheer up Lukas. “It was pretty humiliating, but I guess I don’t have any right to complain.” As understatements went, it was a doozy, but Michael didn’t challenge it.
This is about surviving as a writer. Period. I lost my job when everyone else did. Bad economic times came and the company lost their government contract and folded--taking my healthcare with it. If I don't sell books, I don't eat. You don't watch your favorite TV show, it gets cancelled. People, I do not want to be *completely* cancelled. Z/G and T and L will be gone after September because some people just don't get that. And when you buy a book and let ten of your friends borrow it....11 people read something it took me 9 mos to write and I *still* only received 48 cents. I really hate begging for that 48 cents per book. It's pathetic and humiliating, but if I can keep my other guys alive, I'll do it. And for the people who don't like my snarky attitude, *but* like my books and proclaim they'll only buy them in used stores so I don't get a dime out of them--good luck, because if I don't write them, they won't be there.
Now the fun part: 2 more CHIMERA excerpts (a fun one as I need some fun. I desperately do.) The first shows how life in an Institute can make the outside world an odd place and the second shows a bit of Godzilla the ferret (we loves him, yes, we do.)
Chapter 14 excerpt
The parking lot of the drugstore was nearly full, clogged with cars, and the store itself was full of people. Good signs, both of them. It had taken a few exits to find the just the place I had in mind. Shoving my gun into the back waistband of my pants, I got out of the car and made sure my shirt concealed the weapon. “Come on, kiddo. Be good and I might buy you an ice cream cone.”
He was torn between being outrage and desperation for a sugar fix. Settling on mildly disgruntled, he trailed after me. After walking through the automated door he looked around curiously. It was one of the super drugstores that carried enough merchandise to cure the diseases of a small Third World country then throw a party to celebrate, complete with wine, balloons, and barbecued weenies. Colors and noise, it was a lot of stimulation for a kid who was shuttled to the mall once a year to ‘act normal.’
I nudged him as he stalled by the doors to stare at a woman pushing a stroller loaded with squalling twins. Accustomed to the sound, she absently reached down to smooth two nearly bald heads and kept moving. “Weird,” Michael murmured, more to himself than me. “Seeing where they come from.”
They, not we. Moving us both into an aisle, I lightly bumped his shoulder with mine. “I have pictures, tons of them. I’ll show you where you came from. It’s pretty much the same.”
With a defensive folding of his arms, he studied the shelves with a scrutiny more suited to emotionally moving art or really good porn than the feminine hygiene products that were actually there. “What are we looking for anyway?” he asked with the avoidance of a pro.
We walked on leaving the aisle of No-Man’s Land until we reached hair care products. “Anything your little heart desires.” I picked up two boxes at random and shook them in his direction. “And dye. Red or blond?”
He caught the implication instantly. “You must be joking.”
“Blond it is.” I put the red back with the rueful realization of why I’d picked the other color. It was more familiar to me than the brown hair Michael had now. Swiftly checking one way then the other, I stuffed the small box into the wad of jacket I’d carried in over my arm for just that purpose. Belatedly, I glanced at the smaller figure beside me. “By the way, stealing is bad, okay? Don’t steal.” Considering, I added, “Or smoke. And don’t drink and drive.” Wait, he was seventeen. “Scratch that last one. Don’t drink at all.” It wasn’t the entire summary of knowledge required for teens, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
He gave me a dubious look. “Are you sure you’re a mobster?”
“Ex-mobster.” It bore repeating, so I repeated it. “Ex.”
"You’re….” He shook his head. Apparently there were no words for what I was, and he let it go to pursue another subject. “Why are you stealing it? You have money.”
“If anyone trails us here, I don’t want them to know we’ve changed our looks.” How I was going to change my appearance was more problematic. I had thought of cutting my hair but that would only make my scar more noticeable. In the cosmetic department I found the answer: make up specially constructed to cover scars. That combined with a haircut should change me enough to escape anything but a good, hard stare.
“Snack cake aisle is just down there, Misha.” I pointed with one hand while tucking away the glass jar with the other. “That we’ll pay for. Short of pretending one of us is pregnant, there’s no way we can smuggle what you can eat out of here.”
He gave me a look, one far too haughty for a seventeen-year old, but he went. He always had been smart as hell, far too much so to bite off his nose to spite his face. I watched as he loaded up with box after box of empty calories. “I’ve created a monster,” I groaned under my breath, deciding to pick up some vitamins before we hit the cash register. Kids took vitamins, didn’t they? I remembered our housekeeper buying them for Lukas and me after our mom died. I hadn’t taken them, but I vaguely remembered a bottle of colorful characters on the bathroom counter.
We waited in line for nearly ten minutes. Sandwiched between a harassed lady with three sociopathic children and a teenage couple working desperately on making one of their own, I noticed Michael moving his weight from foot to foot. It was a minute motion, barely detectable, but it allowed me to pick up his discomfort. In the past two days with me he’d been exposed to more of the outside world than in two years at the Institute. He and the other kids may have studied it until their eyes watered; it wasn’t the same. This was direct, unrelenting contact with a basically alien existence. It was enough to shake up even the coolest customer.
Chapter 20 excerpt
.
Tokyo might’ve been half a world away but I was right here to terrorize, and that was more than good enough for Godzilla.
“Okay, that’s it,” I snarled. “This time that half digested hair ball took my gun.” The bedspread twitched at the bottom and I saw a toothy grin bared at me. Somewhere under there in no man’s land was my Steyr, unloaded thankfully, four socks, a pair of underwear, and my comb.
“I think I saw a public service announcement about gun safety just this morning.” Sprawled on the bed, Michael turned a page. “Carelessness and tiny paws, they just don’t mix.” And that was the sum total of his sympathy as he continued making his way through one of the science books that we’d bought yesterday. This one was about the thickness of a phonebook, but he’d devoured the majority of it, taking in every single word like a human sponge. Lukas had been a bright kid, bright as hell, but this….
Smarter, faster, stronger.
I hadn’t seen any signs of the faster yet, but as for the rest…. I felt an uneasy ripple tickle the base of my brain. Saving Michael was first and foremost in my mind always, but when he was safe, what then? There were many Jerichoes in the world, in intent if not talent. If any one of them sniffed out Michael’s capabilities, we would be on the run all over again. Perhaps for the rest of our lives. It wasn’t what I wanted for my brother.
But that was another worry for another time and premature at best. We might not survive long enough to see an existence beyond Jericho. Or beyond the damned ferret for that matter, a distinctly evil squeak had me adding to the thought.
I slid my foot under the bed to feel around for my gun. In retrospect it wasn’t the most intelligent move to be made. The sensation of a miniature bear trap clamping on my big toe had me hopping backwards and swearing loudly. If the lamp hadn’t been bolted to the nightstand, it’s hard to say what I might have been tempted to do. Two dots of scarlet bloomed on my sock as a length of charcoal fur flowed past me to perch on Michael’s head. Under a black mask a wet, pink nose wrinkled derisively at me.
Damned rat.
As I used the opportunity to retrieve my belongings, Michael lifted up a finger and scratched the chin of his new best friend. “You should be more understanding, Stefan. Hoarding is probably a natural instinct for the ferret. Isn’t that right, Zilla?” The polecat made a contented sound, a cross between an eep and a purr, before draping bonelessly over Michael’s skull for a nap. “I really do need to get a book on ferret care and their habits. Maybe we could stop tomorrow?” He’d lowered his voice in deference to the snoozing spawn of Satan.
I didn’t know which was more annoying: that he whispered for his pet but stomped around like a drunken lumberjack in the morning when I tried to sleep or that he wanted to take time out of fleeing for our lives to get a how-to book on his carpet shark. “Yeah,” I said with blatant insincerity. “I’ll put it right at the top of my to do list.” Securing my weapon against thieving paws, I zipped up the duffel bag and jerked my chin at his book. “You find out anything interesting yet?”
He scooped the ferret into his hands and sat up to place it carefully on a pillow. Stretching, he then traced fingers across the glossy pages and said, “Everything in here is interesting…in its way.” As if the thought unsettled him, he closed the book firmly and pushed it away.
“A little too close to home?”
“A little,” he admitted reluctantly only after I started to reach for the book. “No, it’s all right.” The volume was swiftly retrieved before I could get a grip on it. “This is me. A huge chunk of my history. I want to do this.” That he embraced, but my part in it he refused point blank.
“I’m a chunk of that history, too, Misha. Believe it or not.”
Before he could deny or give me a sympathy that was unwanted and unneeded, I sat down beside him and pulled off my sock to examine the puncture wounds in my toe. “You used to drive me crazy, you know? Typical little brother stuff.” I brushed a thumb across my skin and wiped the drop of blood away. “You stuck to me like I had velcro on my ass. When I first kissed a girl, you were there, hiding in the bushes. I think your exact words were ‘eww, cooties.’ Funny, how thirteen-year old girls don’t appreciate that. Or thirteen-year old big brothers for that matter.” Balling up the stained material, I tossed it over onto my bed. “Then there was the time you thought my bike wasn’t snazzy enough, boring navy blue not being your favorite color. So you painted it purple…with a couple of yellow stripes. And I yelled at you.” I sent my other sock the way of the first. “Not much of a surprise, considering. But you were hurt. You’d done something to make me happy, and I yelled at you for it.”
I still had that bike. It was in my condo storage unit. It was one of those things that you simply couldn’t look at, yet couldn’t throw away.
“Did you ride it that way?”
Surprised, I laughed, “Um…yeah, I did. For a while.”
I’d forgotten about that. We’d lived in an actual neighborhood at that time, with sidewalks and huge houses on postage stamp sized lots. I’d tooled up and down our street on that clown cycle to universal howls of laughter. Mom had been alive then and she’d gently coerced me into it, saying it was the only way to cheer up Lukas. “It was pretty humiliating, but I guess I don’t have any right to complain.” As understatements went, it was a doozy, but Michael didn’t challenge it.