Of Things to Come

So when I started this blog thing I'm pretty sure I made references to the fact that I would be writing it when the urge to write something overtook me but I didn't want to actually put any real thought of effort into what I was writing. Hence the title, right? So writing this blog became a way for me basically to procrastinate from working on things that I actually wanted to be writing.

Despite this I am pleased to say that I have finished what I was writing when not wasting time on this blog--all the stories for the first book I'm ever going to actually publish (self published, yes, but so what) are done and 90% edited. Not only that, but a very talented, awesome, lovely, and generally fantastic human being named Re has been kind (or foolish) enough to actually take time out of her life to draw me a cover for the book. Earlier today Re sent me a very rough sketch of the book's main character, Christopher Prometheus. I was so taken by her work that I asked her to let me put it up here so that 1) people could see how cool it looked and 2) maybe a few people might start to get as excited to get the book as I am to finally, finally get it out where people can purchase it.

So, for your viewing pleasure, here is the very first ever drawing of Christopher Prometheus!

I don't know about you, but I have seriously been staring at that little sketch all god damn day. I can't get enough of it. Re got his face so right that even I wouldn't have been able to tell her how to draw it before I saw that. If you dig what you see here from Re, which you should even if you have no intention of ever reading anything I ever write again, then she can be see and followed and whatever else people do these days on Instagram here. Also I need to admit that before this very moment I have never, even once, been to the Instagram website in my entire life and going there made me feel very old and out of touch.

But wait, there's more!

In case you were not excited by the mere prospect of having your imagination set aflame by the visual representation of my book's hero, I have decided in my infinite wisdom to actually post a small sample from one of the stories here in an EXCLUSIVE look at Christopher Prometheus and the Dead City which has never been seen before ever anywhere! (unless you're a friend of mine who I've sent the story to and begged you to tell me what you think of it, then you're probably sick of it)

So! TWO EXCLUSIVES! The picture above, and this story excerpt below. Enjoy, and I hope to see you all when the book uh, launches? Is released? Whatever books do, when it does that.

“What are we waiting for?” Emily asked, he could hear fear scratching at her words.

“I'm thinking,” Chris said. These 'Gunners' were not just some random gang. He was starting to doubt Emily's story about them coming after her for a shotgun—even one from Before—but this was no time to interrogate her. It seemed they were checking each floor, and he had seen enough of them outside to think there were more than the two or three he could see in the elevator shaft.

“We can't go this way,” he said.

“So we'll take the stairs or something!” Emily was grabbing at his sleeve.

Chris shook his head, “I don't think that would work.”

“What do you mean?” Emily was almost shouting now, “We can't go down here, we have to take the stairs, there's no other way out! Let's just run down the stairs, shoot the ones in the way, and get out of here!”

“We're fewer, we should be able to evade them, and we're weaker, so we need to be able to evade them.”

“What? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Sun Tzu.”

“Sun who?”

“Nothing, this way.”

Christopher jogged back down the hall they had come from. Emily's panic was starting to infect him, and the sounds of the men in the lower floors were getting louder. His mind was racing for a solution. Things seemed very dire, but there was always a solution. He just needed to figure it out.

Chris stopped, staring at one of the maps that were attached to the inside of each room's door. Without much thought he yanked the plastic holder out of the door, it came easily from the rotted wood, and slid the map out.

“Now what are you doing?” Emily asked as he studied the map in the dying sunlight.

“Looking for a way out.”

“Paper is going to tell you how to get out?”

“No it's a map. I'm—” he looked up at her as he spoke, her face seemed almost as blank as Cat's, who was standing next to her.

“Yeah, it's going to show me the way out.”

The map showed that there were four stairways, and the elevator shaft. Chris was willing to bet that the Gunners had men in all of the stairwells, probably one standing guard while others searched the rooms, moving up methodically. They might not, but he was not willing to risk running in to three or four armed men alone.

There was a covered driveway at the bottom of the map, on the opposite side of the hotel that Chris had come in through, a valet area. Chris thought valets were servants or something, but whatever the map meant, it looked like there was something there that he might be able to run along without being seen by people beneath it.

Now he just needed to get down to it.