I like to walk down to the Walmart, which I did today. It takes about 20 minutes, so 40 minutes round trip. This clears my head and I get some exercise. But today it was definitely a mistake to take this walk. On the way back, I thought of a great new plot for a book.
Why is this a problem, you ask? Well, because I already have three other book plots queued up in front of it. I’m writing two of them at once, just trying to clear out the queue. So now I have FOUR plots queued up. This means my queue is getting longer much faster than I can clear it out.
Maybe I need to stop thinking so much and start writing faster…
Here’s a very brief snippet from Book 3 of the Birth of RimFed series…if you go to my website philhuddleston.com/newsletter and sign up, I am sending out a much longer snippet once a week, typically on Friday. I send the snippet out to everyone on my newsletter list. I’m not going to promise you can read the whole novel that way for free, but, you’ll get a good part of it!
Be safe, and push through the darkness!
The Day It Rained Starships (from Imprint of Defiance)
Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets – General George S. Patton
Orion Spur – Perseus Transit, 6,198 Lights from Earth
5 October 2884
Cerulean was a planet named after its sky. A sky so blue, so vivid and brilliant, they said it surpassed Old Earth. On a cloudless day, it hurt to look at it, and yet you didn’t want to turn away. And today was that kind of cloudless day…a sky so blue it hurt to gaze up at it, but you did anyway.
Because behind that sky, humans were dying by the thousands. And Daneki, and Karoli, and Bats, and Barouche. All the races of the Rim, up there behind that beautiful blue mirror of heaven, between Cerulean and its moon. Every few minutes, another brood of escape pods – or pieces of a starship – would come crashing down into the atmosphere, streaking to the surface in flaring retros or flaming contrails, a gigantic sideshow of defeat and death.
Aboard the Rim Empire Navy flagship REN Victory, Admiral of the Fleet Granger Nelson Satra stared at the holo, disbelief in his eyes, as his fleet was pounded by the superior firepower of the enemy. They had been fighting a running battle with the powerful AI fleet known as the Perts for three days; ambush and retreat, ambush and retreat. They had made some good dents in the enemy line of battle; it would take the Perts weeks, possibly months to rebuild their strength. But in the end, the starships of the Perts were faster in three-space, carried more and bigger missiles, and now – after three days of battle – outnumbered the REN Third Fleet by a factor of two. It was no longer possible to oppose them with the remnant Granger had left.
Granger sighed, rubbing his hand across his face, then looked over at his Flag Captain, Samuel Vitusdotter.
“Order a general retreat, I think plan GR-4, Captain. We’re licked. Let’s preserve as many ships as we can. Notify the Admiralty.”
The Daneki nodded glumly. “Aye, sir.” He turned to the Comm Officer and repeated the order. Turning back to Granger, he shook his head.
“We just can’t hold ‘em, Admiral. They’re too strong.”
Granger nodded. “We’ll re-group at Trifid Two and see what the Admiralty wants to do next.”