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Seismic Semester Q&A

 Ask away.  Might take a day or two for me to respond when real life gets in the way, but I'll try to be quicker than that.  Obviously I...

Showing posts with label Sample. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sample. Show all posts

Friday, September 30, 2011

Anne Boleyn, Vampire Baroness

In the words of the annoying mancer giving her problems:


Anne’s head tilted from one side of her shoulders to the other, long neck bending with it. Like she’s trying to see if the view changed my appearance. The ‘B’ on her neck shined with a flash, a damned beacon trying to get through to me.

“King Henry Price?” she asked again.

“I already answered you.”

“I’m sorry.” She shrugged, hands on her hips, rings rubbing against rough denim. “You’re just so ugly, aren’t you? Broken nose…so many scars. There’s nothing perfect about you. I thought with all the rumors about you being a hound that you’d be better looking. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised since we live in a time where every woman will stick a toaster in herself if it vibrates quickly enough.

“Women have no standards at all anymore. They don’t want to work for the complete experience. Seduction takes too much time, better to make a blog post about wanting to ‘get to know people’ I think the phrase is.”

“Rumors…” I said.

I locked on the word, ignored the rest. Yup, she wasn’t there for the teapots. Good to know. Asylum toady? Guild spy? Another mancer testing me before she bought a commission? Could have worked for the government…but then maybe not with the clothes she was wearing. She might have been related to Welf too. All possibilities, none the correct answer.

“Look at his little brain go click,” Anne said. “So cute.”

I glanced at the ‘B’ one more time. “If I’m King Henry and you are really Annie B, then doesn’t that mean I get to cut your head off?” I asked, lips pulling back along my teeth.

Something shifted in her. The second gear that Asylum women have when they’re about you put you in place. “You’re going to close down your shop and then you’re going to come with me for a few days,” Annie B told me in plain terms suffering no argument. “I need someone with the skill-set for an Artificer kind of problem that isn’t prisoner to the Guild bylaws and you’ve been volunteered for it. If you try to cut my head off, I’ll kick your little ***. Understand, King Henry?”

Volunteered? Who would volunteer me? Who could volunteer me? Short list. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the Lady. “I don’t hire out or build or design without a contract and unless I say so and last I checked—you didn’t offer me payment.” My hands couldn’t take it anymore—they curled into fists. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the Lady. Which one would get a kick out of volunteering me without mentioning it to me? All of them. That didn’t help…

“Get out of my store before I build up the anima to smash you across the street, you pushy psycho *****.”

That’s when she punched me in the face so hard I tumbled backwards five feet and slammed into my shelf filled with glassware.



Read more on Annie B in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords and Nook.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know what you're talking about.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Meet Tyson Bonnie, Electromancer

In the words of the only other Ultra in town:

“Yeah, yeah.” I put the box back under the counter. “Takes about two hours to full charge using static electricity, quicker if you find a piece of carpet and start rubbing your arm against it. Theoretically you could attach it to a power-pad but I wouldn’t recommend it—too much power too quick might blow the containment field.”

“Wow, King Henry,” Tyson said, his face all lit up as he swung a lazy punch across his chest that was far too much arm and not enough body torque. “This is awesome. It’s just how I imagined it.”

“Speaking of that, satisfy some curiosity on this…how did you imagine it?”

A brief bit of embarrassment crossed his lit up face, his forehead crinkling. “Stole it from a fantasy novel.”

“****…”

“I know, you hate the things.”

I shook my head. Hated them? Nope, I was jealous that they had it so easy with their ‘magic’. The Mancy’s a long way from some wand flipping and twirling. “Next, you’ll want me to make you a lightsaber.”

His eyes got bright with crazy dreams. “Could you?”



Read more on Tyson in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords and Nook.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know what you're talking about.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Meet Ceinwyn Dale, Aeromancer

In the words of her favorite student:
“I ain’t going to your school, lady.” 
“Why not?” She was genuinely curious. Ceinwyn Dale, always the interested observer. 
“I’m not a freak. I get by. I got a life. So I fight, who gives a rat’s ***?” 
She picked up my iPod and browsed through the playlist. She had beautiful hands. Not a body part most guys notice, and Ceinwyn Dale had some others that were pretty noticeable, but her delicate fingers and sapphire fingernails drew the eye when she used them in front of you. Nimble manipulation, just like the rest of her, turning those fleshy stubs into the finest tool, skinny and elegant. “Is this the entirety of your reasons? 
“I got a girl.” 
“And you love her?” The smile quirked extra. 
“Sure. I guess.” Love wasn’t a big emotion in the Price household. We had trouble managing giving a ****
“Or do you just like what you get to do with her?” 
“That too.” 
One part about Ceinwyn Dale I started figuring out during that first conversation is she mocks everyone but she treats her kids the same as she does adults. Which I wasn’t seeing much of back then. It was inclusive and part of the reason she’s such a good recruiter. 
“You’ll have to give her up.”



Read more on Ceinwyn Dale in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords and Nook.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know what you're talking about.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Meet King Henry Price, Geomancer

In his own words:
I was screwed up beyond all repair by then.  Only reason I hadn’t been to Juvie was that I had an extra something the other delinquents didn’t have, not that I realized it at the time of my crimes.  All I knew was that I was lucky.  Yeah, cursed more like it.  But back then, it sure was nice to be sitting in the shopping mart contemplating stealing some magazines or candy bars or Chinese-assembled electronics when a display magically fell apart to be a distraction I desperately needed. 
Cigarettes and electronics had been my steals of choice right before I was co-opted into another life and if it wasn’t for the Asylum, I’d be well on my way to lung cancer by now, or dead twenty times over.  Not from hard stuff like you’re thinking—worse I can admit to is bumming some weed when I could—but from fighting.  I loved to get into a fight.  Still do. 
Here I am twenty-one years old and I’m lucky to hit five-foot-eight on some very generous tape-measures.  Back then, middle school and elementary ****holes with babysitting teachers and cruel lunch-ladies, it was even worse.  Some district counselor got all doctor on me and diagnosed it as a Napoleon Complex; that I was trying to prove I was tough despite my size.  But it wasn’t that. 
I liked to fight.


Read more on King Henry in The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley: available on Amazon and Smashwords.  Or just type "Foul Mouth" into your Kindle...they'll know who you're talking about...

Friday, August 12, 2011

The King Henry Tapes: The Asylum

School stories are everywhere. Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ender’s Game, Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller, and Veronica Mars to name a few I liked. Talk about popularity. Even X-Men, Star Trek went back to school in the last couple years and Spider-Man is joining them next summer.  There’s something about the high school situation that draws us back to do it all over again and again and again in fiction, and again and again and again we eat it right up.

For my school I created the Asylum and an Asylum needs patientst ...here is a first look at the Asylum:

Child’s Name (Mancy Type)
King Henry Price (Geomancer)
Heinrich Welf (Necromancer)
Valentine “Boomworm” Ward (Pyromancer)
Asa Kayode (Hydromancer)
Miranda Daniels (Aeromancer)
Estefan Ramirez (Electromancer)
Debra Diaz (Electromancer)
Curt Chambers (Spectromancer)
Malaya Mabanaagan (Spectromancer)
Quinn Walden (Spectromancer)
Ronaldo Silva (Cryomancer)
Raj Malik (Cryomancer)
Hope Hunting (Cryomancer)
Miles Hun Pak (Sciomancer)
Eva Reti (Sciomancer)
Naomi Gullick (Floromancer)
Preston “Pocket” Landry (Floromancer)
Timeeko Lewis (Floromancer)
Nicholas Hanson (Floromancer)
Sandra Kemp (Floromancer)
Patrick “Rick” Brown (Faunamancer)
Jesus Valencia (Faunamancer)
Jessica Edwards (Faunamancer)
Robin White (Faunamancer)
Athir Al-Qasimi (Mentimancer)
Isabel Soto (Corpusmancer)
Samuel Bird (Corpusmancer)
Yvette Reynolds (Corpusmancer)
Jason Jackson (Corpusmancer)
Nizhoni Sherman (Corpusmancer)

To find out more about the Asylum, get ready for THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY on September 1st!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

The King Henry Tapes: The Mancy

I used elemental magic for THE KING HENRY TAPES. It’s very common, pops up again and again in fantasy and provides a good base.  Only I didn’t want to just be lazy about it, I wanted to add my twist to it just like I did the all the rest in THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY.

I ended up with this, something very much in the Magic System school of thought...here is a first look at the Mancy:

Mancy Type – Element (Ultra Title) 
Necromancy – Death (Bonegrinder)
Pyromancy – Fire (Firestarter)
Geomancy – Earth (Artificer)
Aeromancy – Air (Winddancer)
Hydromancy – Water (Riftwalker)
Electromancy – Lightning (Stormcaller)
Cryomancy – Ice (Winterwarden)
Sciomancy – Shadow (Shadeshifter)
Spectromancy – Light (Beaconkeeper)
Floromancy – Plant (Forestplanter)
Faunamancy – Animal (Beasttalker)
Mentimancy – Mind (Mindmaster)
Corpusmancy – Body (Facechanger) 

To find out more about the Mancy, get ready for THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY on September 1st!

Friday, July 29, 2011

The Betrothal: The Three Types of Zoo

A BETROTHAL excerpt on Zoos, yes, Zoos:

There are three different types of zoo entrance:  the Wilderness Type, the Prison Type, and the Kong type. 
The Wilderness Type is employed by a committee of public trust shareholders that have never actually been camping much less in the Outback/Anaconda River/African Savannah, yet they know what the wild is supposed to look like, so all is well.  This is why the Wilderness Type of zoo ends up with heaps of big fake logs, plastic looking rocks, and a roof that mimics a hut with lots of dead straw and twigs.  It looks good at the opening of the zoo but after a few years gets really messy:  the logs need to be chopped down, the vines die, the rocks rust, the straw blows all over the place, and the janitors are always being called out to clean it up.  The Wilderness Type says, “We’re wild and crazy and you can be wild and crazy too!  Growl!” 
The Prison Type is contrasting with the Wilderness Type.  Its modern, it gets the job done, and it doesn’t take hostages.  Walking to a Prison Type of entrance you are greeted with queues—metal railings bracketing you in on each side, forcing you to transverse the twisting line of steel and boredom—while bland elevator music is pumped into overhead speakers, quelling your rising frustrations.  Once you escape from the queue you are led to a factory-like line of ticket booths, the workers encased in steel and glass with that small hole to trade money for tickets and the even smaller hole for you to talk to the cashier.  When you finally have the ticket you are buzzed through an electronically locked door and on the other side your safety is in your own hands.  The Prison Type says, “We have tried our best to keep you from getting killed, we don’t want to have to clean up your remains.” 
The Kong Type is created for the sole purpose of creating a sense of awe, both in the attendee and in the designers who think quite a lot of themselves.  The Kong Type has a giant front door opened wide; the space between hinting at what awaits you inside.  Maybe there is a colossal arch towering over your head, and statues, lots of statues:  brass, bronze, stone, all kinds of statues of elephants, tigers, and other dangerous predators.  And animal shaped bushes, can’t forget that.  Maybe someone even gets the bright idea to have the animals dragged outside and walk through the concrete when it is settling so there are giant paw and hoof marks under your feet.  The Kong Type says, “You are not prepared for my wonder!” 
I am sorry to disappoint after all that, but the zoo we went to wasn’t a Kong Type. A Kong Type in Utah? Come on people. Set up your expectations about things. Has anything really been Kong Type in this entire novel? Except for Tad…

THE BETROTHAL: OR HOW I SAVED ALAN EDWARDS FROM 40 YEARS OF HELL by Richard Raley, available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

A Betrothal Breakfast

A BETROTHAL excerpt for a common morning breakfast:

By six of the next morning, I was up and about, showered then changed into my trusty khakis and t-shirt. Sam had headed off my ability to enter their room for access to my clothes at the pass and instead made me share closet space with Tad, so getting them wasn’t a problem, though seeing Tad in his little g-string again was. 
By seven, breakfast for four was well on its way. When Hannah and Sam made their appearance it was to the smells of sausage, bacon, pancakes, and toast. “And he cooks, why am I not surprised?” 
“Be nice, Sam,” Hannah scolded her sister. 
“I didn’t know what you two like so I made a bit of everything,” I told them, putting the plates of food out on the table before I headed back into the Den of the Cheetah G-Strings once more. 
Opening the door, I was greeted by Tad’s butt cheeks as they saluted the ceiling. It’s something I know I’m going to have nightmares about for the rest of my life. I’ll never be able to look at spotted cats the same way again, to say nothing of reading National Geographic. 
“Tad, wake up and put on some clothes!” This got no reaction, so I smacked him on the shoulder, which only earned me a groan and that weirded me out even more. Desperate measures: “Hannah and Sam are making out in the other room.” 
Tad snapped up like I’d dunked him in cold water. “Wha’ was that?” 
“Hannah and Sam are going to eat all the food,” I lied. 
“Oh…I thought you said something else.” 
“Must have been dreaming something.” 
“Yeah,” Tad grinned, “Good dream though.” 
The four of us sat down and had breakfast. I learned rather quickly that Sam is one of those people that just doesn’t like the morning hours of the day. She said little, glared often, and the only communication she seemed capable of was grunts and growls. “I need coffee,” she finally confessed. 
“Tad and I can get some when we’re out with Alan,” I offered her. 
“I suppose my cousin has everything planned out and we all have to follow the queen’s will?” Sam snarled 
“You’re in a bad place today,” Hannah stated the obvious, but did it in such a sweet way that you immediately forgave her for it. 
Looking down at a glass of orange juice I had taken to time to freshly squeeze, Sam sobbed. “I need coffee!”

THE BETROTHAL: OR HOW I SAVED ALAN EDWARDS FROM 40 YEARS OF HELL by Richard Raley, like "The Sun Also Rises" without all the excessive drinking, available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Monday, July 11, 2011

The Betrothal: Arch-Burgers

A BETROTHAL excerpt on the types of fast-food joint you might find yourself in.


A lot of people falsely believe that every fast-food burger place is the same, but this is far from the truth. Like most things in the universe there are three distinct types of Arch-Burgers and its cousins. It’s a rule. 
The most common kind is the Zombie Arch-Burgers. You walk into these all the time and it’s the general view of what people think of when they think fast-food. Workers that are barely awake with grease stains on their clothes, stale fries, microwaved burgers, and five day old nuggets—or tenders or strips or whatever the corporation has trademarked—that taste like cardboard, that type of thing. The whole place has this feeling like it has lost its brains and is looking for another one, maybe yours. With secret sauce on top. Or maybe the secret sauce is made out of brains…oh my Earth Goddess, I cracked the code! I feel like Robert Langdon… 
The next rarest form is the Uber Arch-Burgers. Merely stepping inside will tell you if you are inside of an Uber Arch-Burgers. First, it will be clean. But, there will also be expensive decorations, usually something somber yet inspiring an artistic heady flair, like model ships or cast-iron animals. Somewhere in an Uber Arch-Burgers you will also find a television, and probably a brand new one, with the news turned on and a few yuppies drinking coffee around it while they use the Uber WiFi to update their social networking sites about the fact they are eating at an Arch-Burgers…because people really care. Optional is a section just for children, with a ball pit and jungle gym that you might even find at a Zombie Arch-Burgers, but also with added video game stands that usually ended up drawing Tad and I like a bee to honey and eventually getting us kicked out once enough parents complain about us hogging the toys. 
Rarest of all fast-food, is the Crazy Arch-Burgers. If you’ve been in one, you know what I’m talking about. The Crazy Arch-Burgers literally sits on top of some kind of mystical fairy magic field and draws every crazy person within five miles to it, and those that aren’t crazy are made crazy just by walking in the door. I once walked into a Crazy Arch-Burgers and in the course of one meal happened to have one guy sit across from me out of nowhere and act like I wasn’t even there, another lady walk in with her own homemade sammich and not order a single thing, another guy walk in and order breakfast at two in the afternoon before throwing a hissy fit on his way out about ‘You can’t even get burger in this place!’, and the finale before I ran outside screaming to try to warn people away was a kid cutting his arm on the ball slide, and blood fountaining out like he was in a Tarantino movie. Beware the Crazy Arch-Burgers, it will change you…and not for the better.

You can read more Arch-Burger adventures in THE BETROTHAL: OR HOW I SAVED ALAN EDWARDS FROM 40 YEARS OF HELL by Richard Raley, available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The Betrothal: Meet Tad

I decided it wasn't fair that THE BETROTHAL was getting absolutely zero pimping from me, so here's the first of a series of excepts to come out this month.

Meet Tad

“Got any new ones?” I asked and instantly regretted the good manners my mother had whipped into me. 
“Nah, man.  I got too many, and they’re kind of breeding now, so I don’t want to introduce a new species that will start eating the little ones.”  See my point about how gruesome fish are? 
“Does that happen often?” 
“Well, it’s not like you’re standing here and suddenly there’s a feeding frenzy with sharks gnawing on tuna heads,” Tad defended. 
I followed him into his bedroom.  “Basically you go to bed at night and when you wake up some of the smaller fish have gone off to see the Big-Fishie-in-the-Sky?” 
“Exactly.  I mean, there isn’t even any blood.  Just the occasional floating fin…they don’t like eating the fins.  And you got the mini pool-scooper for that, don’t even have to touch it.” 
“Why couldn’t you have gotten a dog?” 
“You find me a dog that glows in the dark and I’ll buy one,” Tad said as he started packing his duffle-bag like suitcase with clothes and bathroom supplies. 
“With the miracles of science, you never know,” I continued, looking at the silver shag-carpet like I was worried I was going to step on something squishy.  “…you know they made pigs glow?” 
“Really?” 
“Yeah…green…like nuked bacon...or like those green tube-lights you crack at raves or in caves.” 
“That’s awesome…you know you rhymed, been writing any poems?” 
I ignored him.  We both knew from several badly written love poems in high school that couplets were not my thing.  “I don’t know why they did it, but yeah, interesting stuff.  The pigs, not the poetry.” 
“Would be useful is bed, could turn the lights off and still see what you need to see.” 
I chuckled…only Tad.  “Why do I have the feeling you use glowing condoms?” 
“That’s for the reminder, man.” Tad snapped his fingers and threw a jumbo-size box of condoms into his suitcase. 
“You really need the whole thing?” I asked. 
“Yes, I really do.  Just in case…” 
“Expecting many buses of cheerleaders in Utah?” 
“You can never be too careful, man.  Them cheerleaders will sneak up on you.”  He grinned at me.  Tad’s good at grinning.

You can read more about Tad's wisdom in THE BETROTHAL: OR HOW I SAVED ALAN EDWARDS FROM 40 YEARS OF HELL by Richard Raley, available at Amazon and Smashwords.