Week 4

Remember that weekly project I talked about? "The Youngest Guardian" ? Well week 4 is up here: http://penguinsandninjas.wordpress.com/first-draft/29122013-2/

It would mean a lot to me if you could check it out, read it and tell me what you think of it. And if you and, pass it on.

Happy Writing.

Have a sneak peek

I may have mentioned that I've been re-writing Aries (of course I've mentioned this) but also that a lot of it has changed from the first draft. With that in mind I'm going to give you a scene or two that did not exist up until now.

Tell me what you think:

Her gaze was fixed on the holo-picture that hung on the wall. A group of young fresh faced recruits grinned at the camera with naïve innocence. A faint smile pulled on the corners of Charlie’s mouth and she let green eyes take in every joyous grin and the twinkle in every pair of eyes. A little over fifteen years ago that picture had been taken. Dixon’s face was young, clean of any blemishes the Third War had left. All of those faces she could put a name to and had even made an effort to search out after the fallout of the war. Not including herself and Dixon there was only another two, out of the fifteen in the holo-picture, that made it out alive. One of those survivors hadn’t made it past the Psych ward in UNC’s medical ward.

            The lighting flickered and Charlie pulled her gaze away from the holo-picture to stare at the single red light in the room. It pulsed twice and shut down, encompassing the Captain in a swill of dark. She sighed. Losing power completely had been inevitable. She had hoped that they had a little longer, perhaps a day or two, before it ran out. For a moment she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again they found the holo-picture once more. Third from the right, one arm slung over Dixon’s yet to be defined shoulders, with a full toothed grin was her. They’d met in training, had been shoved into the same group. Then the war came, they were separated and it took years for them to reconnect.

She pushed herself to her feet, grabbed her rifle and let it hang in her fingers by her side, the torch on, as she moved to Medical. Rhodes would scold her but she needed to catch up. If her watch was accurate she’d been alone in the Captain’s room, Dixon’s room, for a good ninety minutes. That was more than enough time by her books. When she entered Rhodes and Nelson were busy checking on Murphy and Dixon and Charlie noted Hunter stood nearby with the torch of her rifle lighting up the working space for the two Doctors. “You okay Hunter?”

The woman turned and nodded. “Yeah, they’re just keeping an eye on me.”

Charlie nodded once and stepped through the room until she came to the side of Dixon’s bed. Nelson was overlooking him and offered the Captain a glance. “He’ll live. At least he won’t be needing the machines.”

She turned her eyes onto the other Captain and sighed. “Thanks. Mind if I talk to him?”

“Give me a minute to wake him up.” Nelson turned to a tray of equipment, including some vials and he selected one, thanks to the light coming off Hunter’s rifle, and turned back to the bed. “Rhodes mentioned you’d want to talk to him at some point.”

“Yeah.”

The needle, once filled from the small vial, was pushed into Dixon’s arm. “Okay, give it a short while and he should be awake.”

Charlie nodded, drew the curtains and sat the rifle on the end of the bed. It illuminated the small space just enough for her to catch the bruises and cuts that dotted the bare skin of Dixon that she could see. She winced at the thought of what was underneath. She settled her hands on the edge of the bed, eyes fixed on the closed lids.

She tried to recall the last time they’d spoken, or met. Drinks, seven months ago. In a bar in the back streets of the city, where nobody cared where anybody came from or what they did. Everybody to their own. His crew had finished a patrol and were taking a few months leave before they were pushed into another job for the long haul. Command pointed you jumped. That was the way the UNC worked. “What about you?” he said.

“Ah,” she put her glass of beer back onto the table and nodded. “We’ve got a few courier jobs to do before we go out for patrol. Bit of a break then patrol once more.”

“Double booked?”

She smirked. “We may have missed our last patrol. Hunter and Nelson may have had an accident and our engine may have stopped working mysteriously.”

Dixon laughed bright blue eyes, the corners creasing with humour. “Of course. And you wonder why Command demoted you.”

“I never questioned that.”

“Bullshit. Three times they did that and each time you became cranky and a hard ass.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, the smirk giving away to the tone. “Three times. Nobody gets demoted three times.”

He gave a single laugh and finished off the last dregs of his beer. “You do. It’s a miracle you’re still in the UNC.”

A loud smack attracted their attention and Charlie found the source, two men were starting a fist fight. She picked up her glass and leaned back in her seat. Dixon did the same and the guy who had instigated the fight fell onto their table. “Some days I ask myself the same question.”

He frowned at her then. “You want to get kicked out?”

The men struggled on top of the table for a few moments before the two Captains looked at each other, rolled their eyes and grabbed the side of their table, forcing it away from themselves. The two men rolled onto the floor with a  thump and they pulled themselves back into place. “You haven’t noticed?”

His frown didn’t leave. “Noticed what?”

She sighed. “Hunter has these theories.”

“She’s the one who nobody wanted right?”

Charlie nodded. Hunter was a lot to handle and she could handle the other woman. “And now, I’m starting to wonder about those theories too.”

There was a pause and the only sounds to fill the room were idle conversations from other patrons and the bawling couple. Those two had managed to get themselves kicked out of the door at that point. “What’s Hunter doing in UNC if she thinks all of this?”

“She’s a good soldier. Would put a lot of the older men to shame.”

Blue eyes flickered precariously open and Charlie shoved that conversation out of her mind. She missed that bar. Nobody from the UNC ever made it that far into the city’s underbelly, leaving it free to talk about whatever one wanted. It had been their recluse when the job had pissed them off. “Am I seeing things?”

She laughed. “No. It’s me. How you doing Mark?”

He groaned and pinched his eyes shut. “What do you think?” She couldn’t help the chuckle she released and let it subside into nothing but a smile. “Where’s the lights?”

The smile disappeared and Charlie ducked her eyes. “We performed an emergency docking with Aries. We did the standard sweeps and next thing I know somebody’s on Valhalla ripping it away from Aries and I’ve got three unconscious crew dumped in a pile.”

Dixon snapped his eyes open. She waited, letting the quiet voices of Rhodes, Nelson and Hunter fill in for them. “They ripped it away?”

“Docking with another ship is going to be a problem.”

“Fuck,” he moved to sit up, winces following his every movement and Charlie stepped back as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Murphy. How’s Murphy?”

“She’s fine. I’ve got Rhodes taking good care of her.” He simply nodded, his eyes staring off into the dark. “Dixon?”

“Yeah?” he moved his head but his eyes were fixed on their spot on the curtain.

“What happened?”

Charlie opened her mouth to speak when Hunter’s voice called, “He did what?”

            The Captain sighed, turned away from Dixon and drew back the curtain. Eliot stood in the doorway to Medical, the light on his rifle pointed at the floor. The engineer spotted her and nodded his head. “Captain.”

            “Who’s done what?”

            It was Hunter who spoke, “Torres went and used the last of our power to hack UNC. Not fix the ship but hack Command. That idiot!”

            “Calm down,” Charlie said and she turned to Eliot, “is he still in engineering?”

            Eliot nodded. “McCallister is with him. Told me to scram.”

            She frowned and started to move around the Kenyan. Rhodes voice stopped her two feet from the door and Charlie turned to see Dixon and Rhodes standing off. “Doc?”

            Rhodes turned with a glare, “Tell him to get back to bed.”

            Charlie lifted her eyes to Dixon. He just raised his brows and Charlie sighed. “Dixon’s with me, Rhodes come with us. The rest of you stay here.” She moved down the corridor and ducked her head into engineering.

            “All you had to do was get us moving!” McCallister.

            “I know that!” Torres.

            Charlie narrowed her eyes and stepped into the room to see the taller Lieutenant towering over the smaller Sergeant and neither were going to back off. She waited as they stood off against the other. When they refused to notice her she cleared her throat. McCallister turned his head first, uttering a single, “Captain,” which made Torres turn and take a step back.

            “Why’d you do it Torres?”

            The shorter man set a firm expression on his features and stepped forward, an electronic tablet held out in front of him. “Because I hoped that we could let them know our situation. Turns out we’re not in any situation.” She frowned and Torres sighed. “According to any official reports we’re still on patrol. There is no distress beacon and we haven’t contacted Command. Hunter was right. Something is up.”

            “That can’t be right,” Dixon said.

            “Did you read it right?” Rhodes said.

            “I know how to read Rhodes! Fact remains Command have no idea about what we were ordered to do. There’s no record of us going off track to investigate Aries and no record of us contacting Command. As far as everybody is concerned we’re still on patrol.”

            “Alright,” Charlie said and she snatched the tablet out of Torres’ hands. Her eyes fell to the tablet. “Is this what you found?”

            “Every bit of it. It’s all there.”

            She nodded and took three slow, idle steps about the room, her eyes turning down the tablet in the dim light of the torch on her rifle. The more she read the more she frowned and felt the worry turn her stomach. “Charlie?” Dixon’s voice lifted her head to face him, “Is he serious?”

            Charlie sagged and held out the small tablet to the other Captain. He took it, brought his own torch up and started reading. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but Command have no knowledge of Aries being in trouble and us being ordered to assist you.”

            McCallister said, “Admiral Matthias?”

            She shrugged, thoughts itching at the back of her mind. “I don’t know. Maybe he knows something, maybe he doesn’t. Perhaps the information hasn’t entered the system yet or maybe it’s a glitch. For now,” she turned to Torres, “let’s work on getting some power back online.”

            Torres shook his head. “I can’t."

Happy Writing.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas!

Seasons Greetings!

I hope all of you have a fantastic day! And remember, you are all amazing!

Happy Writing!

It's another Sunday

Which means another weekly update on 'The Youngest Guardian'. Go here: http://penguinsandninjas.wordpress.com/22122013-2/

In other news, today is like a whole other Christmas for me. Me and my friends like to do a secret Santa thing and have Christmas dinner with each other. So, today we're all gathering to cook foods, clean plates and give out presents.

And I found time to write my third week.

I hope you guys are having a good holiday.

Happy Writing.

Back to Editing...

It's been a while since I looked at Aries, having to deal with life, University, assignments and whatnot. Anyway, I came back to it and started re-reading the start of the second draft. There is a lot of work to go and I asked myself, "What was I thinking when I liked this second draft?"

But, I am persevering. I know (I think) how the next few scenes are going to play out. Right now, for anybody who cares, the power has completely gone from Aries and Torres is to blame for using the last of their power to hack the UNC.

And stuff is going to happen.

Stuff.

Happy Writing.

10 days since...

... since my last post. I apologise. But in those ten days I've been writing about 11,000 words worth of assignments for Uni. Now that I've written my last assignment I can begin to get on with other things in life, like drinking, this blog, writing, drinking *cough* I mean editing, more writing, life and relaxing. 

So yeah, I shall be back with regular posts hopefully. I know Christmas is a busy time for everyone, then New Year's day but, between all of the madness, I will be here. 

For those who do or don't know about my weekly writing project, you can find everything here: http://penguinsandninjas.wordpress.com/

And the second week, for those who've read the first week is here: http://penguinsandninjas.wordpress.com/first-draft/15122013-2/ 

Please take a look. It would mean a lot to me. It only takes ten minutes. 

Happy Writing. 

And the First week is up

So yeah, that project I talked about, I've started it. The first installment is here: http://penguinsandninjas.wordpress.com/first-draft/week-1/

Remember, all comments are much appreciated and loved be them criticism or positivism. Just enjoy and next week the story shall continue on.

In the mean time, a thirty second poem on butterflies.

Butterfly

Neither a fly

or buttery

Yet it has wings 

and soars.

An array of colours

each one more unique

than the last.

Like humans

they have their own

language.

Like humans

they are

individuals.

Stripes or spots.

Faces or eyes.

Patterns or solids.

They wave their wings

to entice a smile,

to share some joy.

Start of something new

Okay, so, from the 15th of December I am going to be making a weekly writing update for my story The Youngest Guardian. Yeah, I know, nobody will know what it is...

Unless you go here: http://penguinsandninjas.wordpress.com/ This website has all of the details about what TYG is and what my aim for it is.

Happy writing.

Sigh

So it looks like I'm going to have to make some investments into a brand new laptop.

Or at least I'm going to have to soon.

This one is on it's way out apparently so, sucks to be me with all of my essays due finally in 10 days time.

Sigh.

This is all.

I hope everybody else is having better days.

Happy Writing.

In the meantime

Whilst I let my last NaNo piece just sit and gather dust for a few months, probably over the Christmas holidays, and in the meantime I will work on Aries. Once coursework is out of the way of course.

Which means I'll have another view and opinion on that which means it shall be fun and great.

Happy Writing.

Finished le first draft

So, although I said I would hit 70,000 words...

I didn't.

Why? Because I could if I spent the next few weeks looking at a few odd spots here and there and pondering what to do and what to write. A lot of thinking would be needed and I've decided to leave these changes and thoughts until the second draft.

FINAL WORD COUNT IS...

63,055

Which isn't bad considering I wrote 62,211 words in 30 days. It was only an extra 844 words on top of that.

I hope everything went well for you guys and, as always:

Happy Writing.