I don’t know how it escaped my attention that this month is Velociraptor Awareness Month. Read about all the details here at http://www.velociraptors.info/. Thank God there is an American Society for Velociraptor Attack Prevention.
I guess I can’t help myself. I went to the computer to write chapter six of Women of Power and the first two paragraphs of Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 4 just came out. I don’t usually post excepts of work in progress, but I’m going to today because it ties into this week’s theme. This is a very first draft of the first two paragraphs.
Birmisia was full of life the spring. Wildflowers seemed to suddenly appear just about everywhere. The days were warm and wet, with frequent fog and almost daily rain showers. The giant maples grew new leaves, adding their lustrous green to the ever-present deep emerald of the tremendous pines. Ferns opened up their fronds in the dappled light beneath the mighty trees and in those places with no light, large and varied mushrooms showed their rounded heads. Plants were not the only life forms present though. The land was alive with both birds and beasts. Once could easily spot cormorants, snipes, rails, and wrens hopping through the trees along with the strange four-winged microraptors. A few godwits, grebes, puffins, and pelicans occasionally strayed inland from the shore. On the ground caudipteryx, buitreraptors, bambiraptors, meilong, and mahakala ran among the ferns looking for small lizards and snakes and large insects which were everywhere. They didn’t bother the opossums, which stayed sung in their dens until nightfall. In the open areas huge iguanodon grazed, sometimes accompanied by triceratops and ankylosaurs. Most of the large predators like the tyrannosaurs and the utahraptors had become scarce due to the presence of man, though the velociraptors and deinonychus were still thick, as happy to scavenge human trash as to hunt the other Birmisian creatures.
A flock of seven velociraptors made their way down the road. They went in fits and starts, pausing to snatch a lizard or small rodent from among the ferns and squawking at each other. They were like all of their species covered with hairy feathers, yellow near their small arms, green everywhere else. Most of this particular group had a black band across what in any other bird would have been called the wings. They were only about two and a half feet tall, but their long tails stretched straight out almost five feet. The most famous features of the velociraptors were their feet, each of which had a five inch claw curving upward, and their long many-toothed snouts, more like something one would expect to see on a crocodile than on a bird. The leader of the flock raised its head as it spotted a human walking toward them from down the lane.
It was the second day of Hamonth, the first day of winter, and a chilly breeze blew across the bay and into the bustling colony of Port Dechantagne. A ship, the S.S. Mistress of Brechbay had docked at the recently upgraded port and a row of happy immigrants were descending down the gangplank. They stared with fascination, mixed with a small amount of fear at the dockworkers below them. Dozens of lizardmen served at the port. Sluggish now that the cooler weather had arrived, they used heavy winches to lift cargo from the deck of the ship and deposit it on the gravel road beside the dock. Other lizardmen then scooped up the crates, boxes, and barrels with hand-trucks and ferried them to the nearby warehouses. Both groups of lizardmen were supervised by human foremen.
People all along the dock stopped and stared as Senta walked by. Hundreds of passengers leaned over the railing of the ship and others on the gangplank pointed and gaped with open mouths. Senta carried herself with a bounce that made her long blond hair sail behind her like a proud banner in the wind. She dreadfully skinny, though the bustle beneath her yellow dress gave her a little bit of a figure. She was a child soon to become a young woman, and she was brimming with confidence. She was well known in the colony and she thought that she was quite pretty too. She had to admit though, that the people were probably not gawking at her, but at the dragon which walked along next to her. It was the size of a small pony, covered in scales the color of polished steel. Every step it took was a study in grace, and from the tip of its whiskered snout, past its folded wings, to the tip of its barbed tail, it seemed to just flow along.
“They look as though they’ve never seen a dragon before,” said the dragon. Had someone heard his voice without seeing him, they would have thought it was a young gentleman speaking. It was a rich voice, but still young.
“They probably haven’t,” replied Senta. “Dragons are pretty rare.”
“Rare and very beautiful…”
“Oh do shut up,” said the girl, and then. “There he is. Hey Graham!”
A boy about the same age as the girl and about twice as heavy even though he was almost a head shorter, ran toward them. He had on the dungarees and heavy shirt of a dock worker, and both were stained here and there, no doubt from just such a form of labor. His unkempt brown hair and freckled face made his smile seem all the more genuine.
“Hey Senta. Hey Bessemer.”
“Hello Graham,” said the dragon.
“You look a mess,” said Senta. “You did remember that we were supposed to go for lunch?”
“Sorry, I can’t go. I gotta work. I can’t leave my crew alone.” He gestured over his shoulder at the group of five lizardmen awaiting his return. Looking like a cross between an upright alligator and an iguana, with skin ranging in color from a mottled olive to a deep forest green, the reptilians was two feet taller than the boy. They stood waiting, scarcely moving, and giving the dragon and his companion surreptitious looks.
“I don’t care for those reptiles,” said Bessemer.
Graham snorted.
“What?”
“It cracks me up every time you say that,” Graham told the dragon. “Besides, you know they think you’re a god or something?”
“I didn’t say they didn’t have taste.”
“Come on,” said Senta. “I’ve heard this entire conversation already twenty times. If you can’t come with us, we’ll just go get lunch ourselves.”
One of the lizardmen hissed something, and then two others began replying in the local reptilian dialect.
“Up your trolley!” yelled Graham at them, and then he too began to hiss in the native tongue.
The lizardmen turned and walked back over to a pallet full of cargo, which they had evidently been in the process of carrying to the warehouse. With what seemed to be a great deal of unhappiness, but not a great deal of speed, they returned to work. One of them hissed again.
“That’s right you! You keep your pecker on!” yelled Graham. He looked at Senta and flushed slightly. “Sorry. Ma says I shouldn’t use the language from the dock around the young ladies.” He said the words ‘young ladies’ in a strained falsetto imitation of his mother. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go. I didn’t know the Mistress was going to be docking today.”
“Fine,” said Senta. “I’ll just dine with Hero and Hertzel.”
“Hertzal’s working too. I just saw him take his crew up on the crane. It’s probably going to be a late night and we’ll probably be working this schedule for the next four days. Look, I’m sorry. But I’ll make it up to you next week, Okay?”
“Fine,” said Senta, unhappily, and Graham set off back toward his cold-blooded staff members.
“Don’t be so sad,” said the dragon. “You can have a ladies’ luncheon. You can be all hoity-toity and proper. You know how much you love that.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going hunting for my own lunch.”
“Just be careful. Watch out for predators that are bigger and scarier than you.”
“There may be bigger, but there are none scarier!” He emphasized his last four words for the crowd of immigrants fresh off the ship who were forming around for their first look at a living dragon. Bessemer took a deep breath and blew three small smoke rings in their direction. The crowd, moving as one, took a step backwards, even though none of them had approached within a twenty foot radius of him anyway. Then, with one swift motion, the steel dragon shot into the sky like an artillery shell and disappeared.
Oops! Here it is well into October and I forgot to start a new contest for the month. Well, this month’s prize will be….an ebook of your choice. When you send in your name, tell me which book you would like. You can have The Voyage of the Minotaur, The Dark and Forbidding Land, The Drache Girl, Princess of Amathar, or Tesla’s Stepdaughters. All the others are always free.
“You shouldn’t be out alone,” said a heavily accented voice. She didn’t need to turn around to recognize its owner, but turn around she did.
“I thought you were hiding in your apartment,” she told Streck. “I heard you got quite a scare on your hunting trip.”
“This place is a hell-hole. It’s not fit for a civilized man, and it won’t be until the monsters and the Eidechse are wiped out.”
“The Eidechse? You mean the lizzies? You can’t wipe all of them out. There are millions, not just the lot around here. They have some big cities to the south and west. I’ve seen one.”
“You would be surprised what can be done.”
“What do you want anyway? You want to finish our duel?”
“Oh, I have seen your shield spell and I am suitably impressed. It is clear you are a gifted, if boastful, child.”
“I think I asked already… what is it you want?”
“I’m just here to say goodbye, little bit.” Streck smiled. “My ship is here and I’ll be leaving soon.”
“Good riddance then,” said Senta.
Steck’s face turned even more sour. “I am inviting you to come with me. Not only will you learn to respect your elders, you will learn the true magic—far more than you will ever learn with your Zurfina.”
“What is it with you exactly?” asked the girl. “Do you want to open up my brain and scoop out the magic, or are you one of those weirdoes that like little girls?”
“I want to join the Reine Zauberei.”
“I thought you were one already.”
“I was, but I didn’t advance as fast as I should have… as fast as I could have. They suspended my studies and I was left to work as a solicitor. But now I have a chance to return, you see. The Reine Zauberei will appreciate you. They appreciate power, and you have more power than I at first thought. Even if you can’t do all that you say you can, a shield spell from one so young will be impressive enough. And in return for my bringing you to them, I will be reinstated.”
“So, you want to use me for your own benefits.”
“Oh, it will be good for you too, little bit. In the Reine Zauberei, you will…”
Steck’s voice trailed off and his mouth went slack. All the color drained from his face. At the moment Senta realized that he was looking at something behind her, she heard the tremendous bellow. Turning around, she saw not one, but two tyrannosaurs striding quickly toward them. One was smaller, perhaps only ten feet tall and thirty five feet long. The other was a huge fifty-footer, and judging by the scarred and uglier-than-usual face, it had to be the one that she had hit with the fireball a month earlier. It opened its mouth wide and roared, its teeth looking like a hundred daggers.
“Run, you wanker!” shouted Senta, rushing past Streck and making a diagonal path toward the edge of the road.
After a brief hiatus, Princess of Amathar is back in the Kindle Store at Amazon. You can download it right ot your Kindle or Kindle App for $1.59.
Senta closed the door behind her and stomped the damp snow off of her overs. It was getting near dusk and the lower room of the tower was filled with shadows. Pointing at the lamp beside the chair, she brought it to life with a word. Several other lamps followed. The room, now bathed in warm light revealed its contents, including the steel dragon lying in the corner.
“Hey,” Senta called. “You’ve been asleep for two days. Wake up.”
Bessemer opened his eyes and yawned. “What?”
“You sleep too much, that’s all.”
“I am a dragon.”
Senta plopped down in the chair and kicked her overs off, followed by her shoes and her socks. Tucking her legs up under her, she wrapped her coat tightly around her.
“It’s too cold.”
The dragon rose from his spot by the stove and climbed up onto the chair. He draped his body over the chair back and wrapped his tail around her. Curling his long neck around so that he could look her in the face, he asked. “What is the matter?”
“I worked all day making those potions.” She pointed to several small vials on the kitchen table. “So when I finally get a chance to go out and play, everyone has gone home for the night. What am I supposed to do now?”
“Your lessons?”
“Oh, you’re a big help. Why don’t you do my lessons if they’re so great?”
“I do.”
Senta stuck out her tongue. Bessemer mirrored her action. She frowned at him for a moment, but then grabbed him around the neck and pulled his scaly face to hers.
“I’m sorry. I’m just bored and tired, and I’m really ready for winter to be over. It’s too damn cold. By the way, where is Zurfina? She’s supposed to tell me whether my dionoserin is any good.”
“Upstairs.”
“Where upstairs?”
“Her room.”
“Is she alone?”
“No.”
“Is Jex with her?”
The dragon nodded.
“Again?”
He nodded again. Then he climbed down from the chair and headed for the door.
“Happy hunting,” said Senta, though she herself seemed anything but happy.
“Toodle pip,” said Bessemer, and then he was gone.
Senta made her way up the stairs, past the rooms designated for Bessemer but almost never used, up to her own room. She peeled off her clothes and ran a hot bath for herself. Once she was clean and warm, she put on her warmest night clothes and headed back down to the kitchen for something to eat. She stoked the fire in the stove and added two logs before heading for the froredor. But something stopped her.
Sitting there on the kitchen table, just where she had left in that afternoon, was the small clear vial filled with silvery liquid. Dionoserin. A bottle just that big sold for thousands of marks. Of course it was illegal in Brechalon, but they weren’t in Brechalon anymore. Did it work? Did she grind the walnuts up enough? Did she maintain her aura? Taking two quick steps to the table, she snatched up the bottle, pulled off the cork stopper, and drank it down. What’s the worst that could happen?
“Well, I could die,” she said aloud.
She didn’t wait to see if she would die though. She ran up the two flights of stairs to her room, and then crept up one more flight stopping just before she reached the level. She slowly peered over the top step and into Zurfina’s room. She had a good idea what to expect. Senta had lived with the sorceress almost two years now. During that time Zurfina had entertained a number of male admirers.
The first thing that Senta saw was Mr. Jex, standing in the middle of the room. She was happy to see that he was fully clothed. The second thing Senta saw was Zurfina, and she was not. She was posed upon her bed, her head hanging over the edge, so that she was looking at Mr. Jex and everything else upside down. Her blond hair draped down almost to the floor, hiding her little bald spot. Her crossed legs were sticking straight up in the air. Mr. Jex stared at her for a moment before turning back to a large canvas and poking at it with the paint brush. He was standing between Senta and the painting, but she didn’t need to see it to know what it was. Zurfina was having another nude painting done of herself.
Senta slowly climbed the last four steps and walked around Mr. Jex so that she could see the painting. He really was quite good.
“What do you think Pet?” asked Zurfina, without moving from her pose.
Startled, Jex turned around to look at her. He had a small paint pallet in his right hand.
“I think it’s time for you to go,” said Senta.
Jex looked like he was going to say something, but then stopped and setting his pallet and brush on the floor, turned and went swiftly down the stairs. Just as the sound of the front door closing echoed back up, Zurfina sat upright and in a fluid cat-like motion got up from the bed.
“Put on some clothes, Fina.”
The sorceress made the smallest of gestures with her right hand and suddenly she was clad in a long, silky, black dressing gown.
“Are you ready for something to eat, Pet?”
“Yes,” replied Senta, a sly smile creeping onto her face. “I don’t think you should magic it though. I think it would be nice if you made me supper with your own hands.”
Zurfina walked slowly across the room and then bent down so that their noses were just inches apart.
“It seems to me like the Drache Girl is getting a bit big for her knickers,” she said without a hint of a smile.
“Um… my dionoserin didn’t work?”
“It worked. Did you not see Mr. Jex scurry out of the room like a frightened buitreraptor?”
“But you’re not going to make me supper, are you?”
“Did you actually believe that you could dominate me with a potion? Me? ME!”
“No supper then?”
As reported all over the web: http://geeksofdoom.com/2010/10/02/warner-brothers-now-developing-wonder-woman-as-a-tv-series/
I’ve been cruising through Women of Power– finished chapter four and am well into five, as I write this. I may end up submitting this instead of The Jungle Girl to the ABNC. In any case, I worked up a new cover for the book. Here it is.
City of Amathar 