Worlds Apart Excerpt: Garbage In

Up ahead, a patch of the yellowish sky turned gray and mean. The mild temperatures suddenly grew downright cold and the wind started picking up.
“Get down,” shouted Manny, as he hopped off his ride and took cover behind it. Roger and Jill did the same. Overhead, the storm appeared to be confined to that one gray patch in the sky. The yellow sky all around it was mild and undisturbed. It was probably a mile away, but it looked much closer as they could actually see the lightning bolts and what looked like a funnel forming in the sky. It was like a little tornado that wasn’t moving. Yet, from their bunker they could even feel the wind blowing from this angry little spot in the sky. Roger had never seen such a bizarre weather pattern in his life, or had he? Was this what happened to the sky up off the coast of Maine those many years ago? Was this what Jill’s airplane got sucked into?
Then they saw something fall out of the sky followed by a loud crash that echoed across the tundra. Just like that, that little nasty storm was gone and the sky was all yellow again.
“What the…?”
Roger pulled out his high-powered binoculars and peered up ahead to see what had made that crashing sound. It sounded like a car accident and as Roger surveyed the wreckage, he saw that it indeed was two large steel objects, but they weren’t cars. They looked like containers of some sort. And there were several of them strewn about the area.
They hopped back on their rides and galloped up to the spot, where they saw the containers, which actually looked like dumpsters. There were dozens of them all over the area.
The travelers dismounted and warily poked around. Some of the dumpsters were toppled over and they could see that they were indeed filled with garbage. It wasn’t anything like used Hungry Man dinner trays or Styrofoam cups, stuff that you might find in his garbage can. These dumpsters were filled with mostly metal and synthetic objects. There were things that looked like old furniture, tons of little discs, things that sort of looked like handheld communication devices with screens on the front. There were also things made of wood and fabric, but none of it looked familiar.
There was also sealed containers of what looked like liquid waste and food waste.
But as he pawed through one of the containers, he came across something that did look familiar, a book! It was a hardcover book with pages made out of some kind of synthetic material that was very thin, but stronger than paper. The writing on them was unintelligible to him, written in some script and language that he had never seen before. As he thumbed through the pages he came to a section with pictures of people. But they were certainly not human. They were all very slim and tall with a small head and long arms. One was dressed in very tight clothes, and posing on a stage, with other beings behind it, looking up at it. Roger flipped through the pages and came across more pictures of these slim Jims doing various things, sitting on furniture, holding strange things, casually conversing with one another. They all wore clothes, too. In one photo, it actually looked like one of the Slim Jims was smoking something. In another, one was shoving food into a little round hole that must have been his mouth.
“This is garbage, interstellar garbage,” barked Jill, perusing her own pile of junk not too far from Roger.
Manny was not interested in rummaging through some other races trash. He just kept looking up at the sky.
“Someone is dumping their trash on this planet through some kind of portal,” Manny declared. Judging by all the dumpsters, it’s been kind of a regular thing for a while.
Roger didn’t even acknowledge Manny, he couldn’t stop looking through the book.

Worlds Apart Gets 4.5 Star Review

Worlds Apart got a great review, 4.5 out of 5 stars, from book review site, Living, Learning, and Loving Life (www.livinglearninglovinglife.com).

here’s an excerpt:

It doesn’t take the author long to get to all the action in Worlds Apart, and it doesn’t stop moving until the end. The story switches back and forth from Roger’s time on Planet Wherever (it takes him a while to find someone who can tell him where he is) and Bill’s life on Earth. Roger is dealing with strange creatures and warring factions. Bill is also running for his life, but all his creatures have two legs.

Kay is a fabulous story teller and I didn’t want to put my Kindle down until I finished the book. I don’t mind a little foreshadowing, but I prefer a story to be unpredictable. This one is completely unpredictable. Roger and Bill have to figure out what to do and who to trust when it seems like every one is out to get them.

Here’s a link to the review on Amazon.

Senator Paine

Elizabeth Paine sits in the dark in the living room of her sprawling mansion on Ocracoke Island on the North Carolina coast, the home she earned as a result of her “sentence” of marriage to the lewd and adulterous Jordie Paine for way too many years. But the mansion is a dubious prize as she longs to return to her native Germany and away from the boorish American “hillbillies,” as she calls them, that she is forced to interact with here.
The only light in the room comes flickering off the blaring television and from the end of her long cigarette. Will, the 24-year old son of Jordie and Elizabeth sits on the couch on the other side of the room on the edge of his seat, watching the latest news update about his dad. Elizabeth is sitting back, annoyed by all the media attention her ex is getting.
“Sources say the office of the missing Senator was trashed just before he disappeared,” said Will, repeating what the newscaster was saying. “You think the old man was kidnapped?”
“Puh-lease,” said Elizabeth, sitting up to light another cigarette. She puts the new cigarette in her mouth, not realizing at first that she already was smoking one. She takes both cigarettes out of her mouth momentarily, looks at them as they rest between her index and middle fingers, and then puts them both back in her mouth and takes a long drag. “The media is just looking for some juicy details. He wrecked that office himself. If he had even the slightest setback—like lose a game of computer solitaire or fail to complete the TV Guide crossword puzzle—he’d trash his office. I know, I heard the clod up wailing and ranting on a regular basis,” she said. “The odds that he was kidnapped are about as high as the odds that I’ll be struck dead by lightning.”
Will covers his head with both arms, as if shielding himself from a lightning bolt.

Worlds Apart Now on Nook

Here is the latest update on Worlds Apart. It is now available on the Barnes and Noble Nook. Click the link to go to the Woirlds Apart page in the Nook store.
Now, Worlds Apart can be purchased on all the major e-readers, including the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, and Barnes and Noble Nook.

Worlds Apart Now Available on Sony Reader

Here’s the latest place that Worlds Apart has turned up, the Sony Reader Store, where it can be downloaded and read on a Sony Reader. Click the link or go to http://ebookstore.sony.com/ and search for Worlds Apart.

Excerpt.: Worlds Apart

Worlds Apart Now on Smashwords

Just an update that Worlds Apart is now available for purchase at Smashwords. Soon it will be accessible on the Sony Reader and on the Barnes and Noble Nook.
It is also available at Amazon in the Kindle Bookstore.

Worlds Apart on Kindle

Check it out. You can now get Worlds Apart on the Amazon Kindle. Click the link to go to the Kindle Store.

Rockin’ on Smartphones

This is pretty neat. A band Atomic Tom performs their song on a subway without instruments but with smartphones. Here is the link.

Excerpt, Worlds Apart: “Funeral” for a friend

“When I first met him at Berkeley, I thought he was odd, and for a scientist, that’s a good thing,” said Bannister. “I was odd too.” But the two men came from completely different backgrounds. Bannister was the wealthy scion of Irving Bannister, the former Illinois senator. The Bannister family made its fortune in the railroads, and then turned their wealth into political power. Alan was the odd duck in the family who eschewed the family business for science, studying physics at Berkeley. He was a genius in his own right, studying molecular cloning and rearrangement, stuff straight out of Star Trek. Of course, he used his family fortune to start a scientific research company, which eventually veered off into rocket science and manufacturing engines for NASA.
Roger, on the other hand, came from Nebraska, born the second son of a farmer. His mom and dad, long since passed, wouldn’t have been able to afford tuition to Hayseed Community College, let alone Berkeley, if he didn’t get a full scholarship. Not that he minded working on the farm, in fact, if he wasn’t so gifted, he would have been perfectly happy there. He didn’t exactly fit in with his Big City classmates. “He looked like he stepped out of a John Steinbeck novel,” said Bannister.
What bonded this odd couple was an interest in trying to unlock the mysteries of space. “I was fascinated by his theories on wormholes, how they already existed, here on Earth, and how they could be created.” He told about how he joined Roger on an expedition to find these wormholes, places around the world where certain atmospheric anomalies existed.
Bannister told about an expedition that Roger dragged him on just after they graduated college. “He was certain that these handful of places were portals and he took us around the world to find them,” explained Bannister. “They weren’t, of course, but Roger was on to something that would chart the course of his career.” He explained how Roger went on to publish his famous paper in the Scientific Journal of America about how wormholes could be created in a controlled environment.
“The notion consumed his career and ultimately died with him,” said Bannister at the funeral. “But it is my hope that his spirit, and his research, lives on and is one day proven true so that Roger Daly can take his rightful seat among the giants of science.”
After the eulogy, the empty casket was lowered into the ground. Everyone paid their last respects and the crowd quietly dispersed. Bill stood over it, impassive and detached from everyone else. Bannister had offered to give him a ride home, but Bill declined.
He thought that standing there might let him make sense of his father’s life and his relationship with him, but nothing came to him, no great revelations revealed themselves. He thought maybe the pent up emotions would flow seeing the finality of it all, but it didn’t. He thought maybe he would have some last words for his father and achieve some closure, but he didn’t. He just stood there.
Across the street from the cemetery, Dan Shields sat in his parked car waiting for Bill long after everyone else had left. He had something he thought he might want to see.