It's been a few weeks since I last posted. I had hoped that Impcatcher would be due for release shortly, but unfortunately I've had some issues with my intended publishers, and unless things change in the next few weeks I suspect I shall be parting company from them and self-publishing the book instead.
Until I can confirm what's happening with Impcatcher, I'm going to put up something different. This is a sequence from a novel I worked on for a time, but never managed to get it to work. The structure is steampunk meets lost world, and might well have ended up as a continuation of the story I presented a couple of months ago.
Our heroes are in a lost city. With them is an unpleasant villain, Stalhmor, who until now has been unable to make trouble...
The city
was screaming, an impossible shriek like old metal being ripped
asunder. The Geharnei were angry ants, thronging the marbled streets
in confusion, heads turning as they sought the source of the
cacophony.
Talenne stared at Stahlmor. He was leaning on the balcony,
looking out over the city, his evident laugh drowned by the sound
throbbing through the crystal towers. Allory was on his feet,
pointing towards the arena, his own protests and anger overlaid by
the growing roar. Something was churning the ground, the worked
stones of the amphitheatre's seating moving like waves in thick oil.
Stahlmor was nodding, expectantly, as the tortured stones finally
broke apart and a blackened iron and brass screwhead, spinning
manically, surged into the bowl of the arena. It thrust further
forward, drawing after it a gigantic, heavy torso, two sets of
studded tracks glittering in the brilliant sunlight as they churned
on each side. The round, heavy, iron-scaled body had to be twelve
feet across, segmented like a tapeworm, and already more than twenty
feet had hauled itself out of the ground. Steam was venting from
brass pipes behind the drillhead.
The sound had dropped to almost
bearable dimensions as the spinning drill no longer savaged the rock
beneath Geharne. Talenne could finally hear Stahlmor's harsh
laughter. She had preferred the deafening crescendo of the mole
machine's arrival.
"You
see, Allory?" Stahlmor rasped. "I am no longer powerless."
As always, comments welcomed!
