Subgenre: Adventure Science Fiction, Humor
About Jane Bond:
Jane Bond was just a simple elementary school librarian.
But then her life got sidetracked by digging up the AI Pilot of a 140 million year old spacecraft.
Now, she's running all over the world looking for spaceship parts, falling in and out of love and trying to keep her friends from thinking she's crazy. Not only that, but the ship she's helping to recover starts sounding more like the Death Star than the Millennium Falcon.
When did life get so complicated?
A fun read with Bond-style gadgets, action, adventure, an alien intelligence for a sidekick and a little romance thrown in for good measure.
But then her life got sidetracked by digging up the AI Pilot of a 140 million year old spacecraft.
Now, she's running all over the world looking for spaceship parts, falling in and out of love and trying to keep her friends from thinking she's crazy. Not only that, but the ship she's helping to recover starts sounding more like the Death Star than the Millennium Falcon.
When did life get so complicated?
A fun read with Bond-style gadgets, action, adventure, an alien intelligence for a sidekick and a little romance thrown in for good measure.
Excerpt:
It was a perfect azure sky, one of those days when the world stretched on forever. In the distance, across the grass covered plain, you could see the trees of a great forest that stretched from edge to edge, framing the horizon with a line of green. As you swooped in closer, you could see that there was a definite delineation between the forest and the veldt - a deep cleft that looked a mile deep and a mile wide, but was probably quite a bit less. A small river runs through it, a slow lazy river with abundant vegetation and wildlife. The calm of this pastoral scene is marred by a cloud of what appears to be smoke and dust. The sound of shouts. Screams. And breaking from the treeline sprinting away from all this, a lone figure.
Engine noises, cranking over and starting, then a pair of Jeeps burst from the wooded area. Each is full to the brim with shouting, uniformed men waving automatic rifles in the air, every now and then one of them letting off a fusillade of shots. They accelerate across the gap between the forest and the cliff edge. They seem to be upset about something.
The figure comes to a stop at the edge of the cliff, appears to look over its shoulder, and then jumps to certain death hundreds of feet below.
The drop had to be at least 400 feet, and I couldn’t quite see if the green stretch below was trees, moss covered rocks or slimy water. Shouts and gunshots behind me, and one shriek of a bullet past my head made up my mind - I jumped.
As I dropped, my past life flittered through my head - had I remembered to pick up cake frosting at the store? And cat food, dammit, Jandice went through it like it was going out of style but never seemed to get fat. Speaking of fat, I remembered it was my week to drive the car pool to the gym. I glanced at my watch. Looks like I was gonna be late again. The girls were going to be pissed. Again.
My bubble activated and I grimaced as I hit the algae covered water - this was going to be messy. I bobbed back to the surface and braced myself as the bubble dissolved - leaving me standing exactly on the surface of the water. Which of course, one doesn’t stand on the surface of water. I barely had time to close my mouth and eyes before I was back underwater again, this time without benefit of the bubble.
The pool was barely deeper than I was tall, and I hit the bottom with a jarring impact, my head above the surface immediately. I shook my head to clear the water from my hair and squeegeed it from my eyes. Hearing the shouts from above, I started a fast crawl across the surface of the water, knifing through algae, reeds and whatever else might be growing here. My skinsuit would keep me free of anything that might try to bite or maim me, at least within reason, but that didn’t help the slimy feel of the debris on my neck and head. Dammit, Kit, why can’t I have a helmet!
I felt the rocks and grainy sand under my hands and jumped to my feet, then began threading my way through the rocks to the cliff wall. I’d done a good job of targeting and could see Kit’s ship only about 30 feet away. I aimed for it and began to run. Reaching the relative safety of the ship, I dove through its door and yelled “Move it!” and the ship shivered and began to rise.
I glanced at my watch again and grinned - I’d make it with time to spare.
“Home, James!”
Kit made a peeved sound and said “I wish you wouldn’t insist on calling me that. It’s demeaning. And - you’re not wet, are you? I told you leather seats are better than cloth, but do you listen to me?”
“Of course I’m wet, Kit. I got dumped into six feet of slimy water! And I don’t like leather seats, they stick to my legs in the summer.”
Engine noises, cranking over and starting, then a pair of Jeeps burst from the wooded area. Each is full to the brim with shouting, uniformed men waving automatic rifles in the air, every now and then one of them letting off a fusillade of shots. They accelerate across the gap between the forest and the cliff edge. They seem to be upset about something.
The figure comes to a stop at the edge of the cliff, appears to look over its shoulder, and then jumps to certain death hundreds of feet below.
The drop had to be at least 400 feet, and I couldn’t quite see if the green stretch below was trees, moss covered rocks or slimy water. Shouts and gunshots behind me, and one shriek of a bullet past my head made up my mind - I jumped.
As I dropped, my past life flittered through my head - had I remembered to pick up cake frosting at the store? And cat food, dammit, Jandice went through it like it was going out of style but never seemed to get fat. Speaking of fat, I remembered it was my week to drive the car pool to the gym. I glanced at my watch. Looks like I was gonna be late again. The girls were going to be pissed. Again.
My bubble activated and I grimaced as I hit the algae covered water - this was going to be messy. I bobbed back to the surface and braced myself as the bubble dissolved - leaving me standing exactly on the surface of the water. Which of course, one doesn’t stand on the surface of water. I barely had time to close my mouth and eyes before I was back underwater again, this time without benefit of the bubble.
The pool was barely deeper than I was tall, and I hit the bottom with a jarring impact, my head above the surface immediately. I shook my head to clear the water from my hair and squeegeed it from my eyes. Hearing the shouts from above, I started a fast crawl across the surface of the water, knifing through algae, reeds and whatever else might be growing here. My skinsuit would keep me free of anything that might try to bite or maim me, at least within reason, but that didn’t help the slimy feel of the debris on my neck and head. Dammit, Kit, why can’t I have a helmet!
I felt the rocks and grainy sand under my hands and jumped to my feet, then began threading my way through the rocks to the cliff wall. I’d done a good job of targeting and could see Kit’s ship only about 30 feet away. I aimed for it and began to run. Reaching the relative safety of the ship, I dove through its door and yelled “Move it!” and the ship shivered and began to rise.
I glanced at my watch again and grinned - I’d make it with time to spare.
“Home, James!”
Kit made a peeved sound and said “I wish you wouldn’t insist on calling me that. It’s demeaning. And - you’re not wet, are you? I told you leather seats are better than cloth, but do you listen to me?”
“Of course I’m wet, Kit. I got dumped into six feet of slimy water! And I don’t like leather seats, they stick to my legs in the summer.”
Amazon
About V.R. Tapscott:
It seems like I've been writing forever in some way, shape or
form.
However, most of my real experience comes from role playing in World of Warcraft. That may seem a strange place to learn how to write, but that isn't the case at all.
Visualize having to always know what to say, instantly, and be in character saying it. Now visualize doing this for 1-4 hours a day for months and years.
What it does is eliminate the need to think when writing. You instinctively know how this character will react since you've been trained over hundreds and hundreds of hours of spontaneous improvisation. I always know what she's going to say, since she is me. I am her. After all, we all know what we're going to say, or we find out immediately after having said it. Sometimes to our chagrin.
And I've found that this carries over into writing on digital paper. Or at least it appears to. I suppose my readers will decide if it's a fun read, or a boring load of tripe.
But let me know either way. :-)
However, most of my real experience comes from role playing in World of Warcraft. That may seem a strange place to learn how to write, but that isn't the case at all.
Visualize having to always know what to say, instantly, and be in character saying it. Now visualize doing this for 1-4 hours a day for months and years.
What it does is eliminate the need to think when writing. You instinctively know how this character will react since you've been trained over hundreds and hundreds of hours of spontaneous improvisation. I always know what she's going to say, since she is me. I am her. After all, we all know what we're going to say, or we find out immediately after having said it. Sometimes to our chagrin.
And I've found that this carries over into writing on digital paper. Or at least it appears to. I suppose my readers will decide if it's a fun read, or a boring load of tripe.
But let me know either way. :-)
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