Hi, Everyone:
I have been struggling for a couple of years on how best to use my blogs and social networking sites, and this has been an especially challenging puzzle because I have an enormously busy writing schedule and have vowed not to use my platforms for personal tirades that could offend, upturn or usurp my friends' and readers' personal, spiritual or political beliefs. I also choose not to foist my corporate writing, real estate sales, landlording or other professional experiences on everyone. Instead, I think I have finally determined how best to use this space for you:
First, I will be posting stories, ongoing novels, etc... in various stages of completion, and I will post them to the end. Yes, you can read my posted works for free, start to finish (with often segments of various pieces being posted in the same week) BUT once a new draft is ready to be posted or the publisher's final edits are back, I will have to erase the posts. In short, read whatever you like and please tell your friends to do the same. I'd love the opportunity to spread my efforts farther and farther afield. Here's a little secret I just learned recently, if you want to read these works on your ereader, you can go to Amazon and purchase a membership to the blog. It's like 99 cents a month, so would be a huge savings if you're following any of my series. Though, of course, you can come straight to the blog and read online as well. I'm also looking forward to hearing any feedback here or feel free to email me directly, Facebook message me, etc....
Second, I hereby invite ALL writers, artists-of-all-stripes and musical friends to post any how-to information that you would like to share. I'll create guest posts as often as the material warrants. Since I typically have thousands of readers each month and usually Tweet, Facebook and email 100,000 or more people with each post, it's a great chance for everyone to gain a new following. I'm really pleased to help anyone who would like to take me up on the offer. I do have two simple rules: information needs to be teen-friendly--not pure but not erotic or super-violent in nature (says the author of some pretty rough stuff...The Dislocated Man and Colonial Evil, for instance :-) ); you have to self-edit at least decently. As my other blog readers would happily attest, editing is not my forte. Thankfully, Focus House has a pretty good stable of editors who make me look a whole lot more polished than I am (except here on my personal blog). In short, you don't need to sweat it if you're not perfect but I also don't want to post something that looks like it was written by a third-grader. Let me know if you'd like a spot. It's quick, it's easy and it's FREE!
Third and finally, I have been swamped and have fallen way behind on my Tim Greaton Forum interviews. I'll soon be working on the backlog and will be posting interviews both here and there. More eyes, more notice and more publicity for all my friends :-) In short, as I mentioned a post or two ago, this little blog is about to get a lot busier. I hope you'll drop in whenever the mood strikes.
We're starting the ball rolling with "Deadly Weight Loss," an Angelica Raea/Tim Greaton sci-fi novella that is only a week or two from international release. Here's Part One of the unedited 4th draft:
Deadly Weight Loss
by
Angelica Raea & Tim Greaton
Tropical sunlight slanted through
high skylights above Samantha Collins as she pounded through her twentieth
exhausting lap on the resort's indoor track.
She noted with satisfaction that she had lapped the tall Norwegian who usually gave her a good run for her money. He may
have been relaxing, though, having achieved his contractual weight goal. He was
planning on being aboard the mainland ferry that afternoon.
Samantha did her
best to keep her jealousy in check. Only seven more pounds and she, too, would
be signing out of Caribbean Weight Control’s torture camp forever. As far as
she was concerned, CWeCo and its brutal staff could all go straight to hell.
And she would happily have sent the head researcher, Doctor Scott Hanson, down
the fiery chute first. A brief vision of his fat body being stuffed into a tiny
metal shaft made her smile.
Screw you, Dr.
Hands!
Dr. Hanson was known
throughout the facility as a middle-aged letch, and the thinner his female patients
became the more interest he seemed to take in their bodies. Most of the women
nearing the ends of their contracts avoided the infirmary altogether, anything
to escape his smug smile and wandering fingers. Samantha had already endured
several of his examinations, and regardless of whether there was a nurse there
or not, the next time his hands went anywhere near her breasts…well, it would
take more than a leering, female assistant to save him.
She only wished
she had done something the last time—
Damn drugs!
CWeCo’s thrice-daily
cocktail of pills and thick shakes screwed up her thoughts and her reflexes,
all in the name of developing new weight loss therapies. How could
Samantha have imagined ten,
five, even two years ago that she would have become a guinea pig for the likes
of Doctor Hanson? And, bizarrely, she still couldn’t piece together exactly how
it had happened. With school sports, it had
always been so easy to keep the pounds from collecting. Then as a member of adult field hockey and basketball leagues
as well as a daily swimmer, she had never counted a single calorie. Not even those
hard partying years after her divorce had taken much of a toll. Sure a pound or two but nothing that would have
warranted a place like this. It used to be so easy: just toss on a pair of
running shoes and hit the streets two or three times a week; no fat, no
problem.
It had to be shortly after Jack discovered
the alien cylinder floating outside our bedroom window!
“You really are looking great, Sam,”
came Eric’s thick Norwegian accent as he jogged off toward the men’s locker
room. Tall and wide at the shoulders, but with skinny arms and legs, he really
wasn’t her type. He had, however, proven to be a good friend over the last few
months. She especially appreciated his stories about hiking throughout Asia and
seeing hundreds of the floating alien pods that had appeared all throughout the
world less than a year before. Where the metal pods had come from or why, no
one knew.
Jack would have figured it out.
“Send a search party if you don’t
get my email by the end of the month,” she told Eric with a wave. Sadly, she
meant it. She had never wanted anything so much as to get away from CWeCo and
its brutal staff. Even her short stint working as a counselor for troubled teens
at the Saco River Youth Detention Center in Maine had been pleasant compared to
the last three and a half months in Central America.
She got a stitch in her side and
slowed to massage it.
“Collins, why are you stopping?” the
morning trainer called out through his bullhorn. A short, fit man with blunt
features and a fierce Spanish accent, he was probably Honduran and possibly
ex-military. “You have four more laps. Pick up the pace!”
“Give me a
Taser and a billy club,” she muttered, “and we’ll see how you like running ‘til
you drop.”
“Good one,” a
chunky man beside her wheezed as she passed him.
“What did you
say to me, Collins?” the trainer barked.
“Nothing,” she breathed.
She lengthened her strides.
After two more
laps, her mind settled into the familiar Mobius strip of questions about how she
could have wound up here. But no matter how many times she examined her past,
she couldn’t make the pieces fit. Disjointed scenes from her life
flitted through her mind, but none came with a recollection of eating habits
cascading out of control or of getting fat. She brushed sweat from the bridge
of her nose. A mild headache had started. Why couldn't she remember?
I remember
everything up until Jack became obsessed with that pod.
“Collins, I’m not going to warn you
again. Either speed it up or you’re getting five more laps.”
“I love you, too,” she called out
and increased her tempo.
She continued to ponder, but her memories
jumbled together like a grade school collage.
She remembered being thin at college graduation, thin when arguing for her job
as a guidance counselor at the Biddeford Middle School, and still thin when
being called before the board of overseers at the youth detention center. She
even remembered being thin when climbing atop one of the tables at her sister
Becky’s wedding a month after getting fired for breaking a teenage boy’s nose
at the youth center. So what did that leave?
Was it possible
to drink yourself fat?
As expected, her
headache had become a full-fledged, pounding migraine, but she ignored it and
forced her thoughts to churn through the past. Somehow, inexplicably, she had
packed on two hundred pounds in the few months from the time Jack got arrested to
the time she had signed the Caribbean Weight Control contract. But that would
have meant gaining twenty pounds a week! How much food could one person eat?
One donut for
every dollar I spent trying to fight the government.
No! She had to
be missing something. Maybe her weight gains had been more gradual and she just
hadn’t noticed. But she clearly remembered fitting into her college blue jeans at
Becky’s reception, right after she had fallen on the cake. It made no sense! She
slammed her eyes shut and fought the urge to stop jogging and clamp her hands around
her throbbing skull, which now felt like it was being slammed by a wrecking
ball from inside. Who ever heard of getting headaches from thinking?
Every patient at
CWeCo, that’s who.
Stubborn, she continued
examining her memories. This was important!
Regardless of
the when, she thought she understood the why. She remembered the incredible financial stress the
attorney fees had put her under—first draining her savings then forcing her to take
out two equity loans. She hadn’t fully understood how impossible the battle had
become until she had hired her third attorney firm in as many months and until
she had pulled cash advances on all three of their credit cards. All told, it had only taken four months to burn through nearly
ninety-eight thousand dollars. By then, the U.S. government had moved Jack to a
secret facility and had refused to reveal anything about its location or how
long he would be there.
As her final
attorney—a huge woman with graying hair like wire fibers—had explained,
Homeland Security was a term the government used when it wanted to break its
own laws. Though the woman did everything possible, they may as well have been
living in a despotic, third world country. The courts refused to do anything. Though
the FBI’s official letters had not actually accused Jack of being a terrorist,
they referred to him as a dissident who had intentionally placed the entire
U.S. population at risk. Those accusations might not have hurt so much if the
exact opposite had not been true. It was Jack’s concern for everyone that drove
him to ignore the certified notices that were delivered to every person within
walking distance of the body-sized cylinders that hung motionless in the
air as if dangling from invisible metal shafts. If the government could not
open any of them, nor decipher the potential danger, then it had to be up to
citizens to do it. Unfortunately, Jack few people agreed with him. Fear of
alien repercussions drove most people to give the pods a wide berth.
Part Two posting really soon! (Maybe tomorrow :-)
Let me know if you have any thoughts. Your feedback might actually find its way into the published version :-)
