The first four chapters of The Khekarian Threat are now available for reading, listed in the right hand margin and is also available from the “Preview Chapters” dropdown menu (Preview Chapters, The Khekarian Threat, Chapters 1 – 4).
The four chapters cover approximately 65 pages of the first book in the series and will let you know if it is the kind of science fiction you enjoy.
For descriptions, information and comments:
As not everyone has Kindle (including me), not everyone has the chance to see the preview Kindle offers. So today I thought I’d give you a sample taste.
Here is an excerpt from deep within The Khekarian Threat, not a repeat of the opening pages, so it’s something new to everyone who has not yet read the book. 🙂
If anyone would like to see more such snippets, or larger pieces (such as those opening chapters Kindle previewed), please let me know in comments or contact me. Of course, I may foist them upon you, anyway. 🙂 🙂 🙂
WARNING: If you are shy of expletives, please do not click “continue reading”.
I’m sure these questions have occurred to a lot of you, too.
Both tie in together very strongly as there is a tradeoff between them and so I shall answer them together in one post.
So, is this the kind of series that you need to have all the books for the story to be complete?
No it is not. Although some threads link through from one book to the next and the political backdrop shifts as it must, each book has a main story that reaches its conclusion.
Personally, I like this better than the first. 🙂
Fight scenes are tricky to write. It’s hard to pack clear description into few words and keep that sense of speed and surprise one gets in a real fight – It helps if you know what you are doing.
I really didn’t want to write: “She bounced him off the wall.” I wanted to write how she bounced him off the wall.
In order to find out, I enrolled in a self-defense class that was supposed to last ten weeks. I figured that would give me a feel for it. It not only gave me a feel for it, it gave me real hunger to learn more.
It turned out my instructor taught defense skills to several police constabularies in England and in Wales, and I ended up the only non-police officer permitted into those classes, clocking up an extra 18 months of training before returning home to Australia, where I then taught Atemi-Jutsu for five years in Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria.
I have written how letting characters perform true to their nature (Stepping Forward. Characters that take over) helps me with consistency and allows me to get some surprises out of the books I write, too.
What enables them to perform this way for me is that I take the time to get to know them. It’s all about what they do, what they want and all the little things that make them tick. Character traits pop up out of them and I use them. Anything that flows from them gets grabbed up and used.
Letting characters perform helps me in other ways, too. Sometimes even before I get to know them.
Here’s a great example, although it doesn’t feature in any book. This was an exercise I ran simply to find out which direction to send this pair.
They are Khekarian Royalty. The girl is six. Her half-brother is fifteen. The story for them both was still forming, yet I could write nothing without understand at least how they felt about each other. I knew there was some animosity between them, but not its nature.
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I’m popping this whole post over the page (only because of the language used in this excerpt).
