SFFSat 26/10/2013

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. 
A steamcar has chugged up the hill towards her, containing two men in uniform.

The man in front scrambled down. His uniform was as smart and clean as a tramp's. That didn't bode well, either. 'All right,’ he grumbled through an unruly moustache. ‘'and over yer papers.’

Papers? Volging squum! I hadn't taken my papers with me on the raid of Wrack's mansion. So I had nothing I could proffer to this thug. 

 

To my surprise, my interrogator didn't instantly tell me I was under arrest. 

 What will the officers do? We will find out next week.

As always, comments gratefully received! 

SFFSat 19/10/2013

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound, and carries on from last week's extract. Sorrel has reached the surface. A steamcar has chugged up the hill towards her...

The two men sitting uncomfortably in the leather chairs were both in some kind of blue-grey uniform. As the chugging monstrosity drew towards me, I stood to one side to let it past.

It didn't, of course. The man in front hauled on a lever, and bellowed something at his colleague. Said colleague also yanked at a lever and twisted a large wheel, and the trike slowed. The high-pitched screech of metal binding on metal that put my teeth on edge confirmed my assumptions about the quality of its engineering. Brakes didn't need to make that sort of noise. It did grind to a halt, though, and engulfed me with foul-smelling smoke and fumes. I watched it, wondering if it would start to roll backwards down the hill again. To my surprise, it didn't.

Next time we will find out what befalls our heroine at the hands of these dubious newcomers...

As always, all comments will be gratefully received!

SFFS 12/10/2013

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound. Sorrel has reached the surface and confidently decided she can cope with whatever she meets. The first such encounter is chugging towards her...

The contraption that chugged up the hill towards me, struggling to achieve the speed a good runner could manage without breaking a sweat, was belching an unpleasant mixture of grey-green smoke and dirty steam. The three wheels were wide and heavily-treaded brass, each five feet across, with no visible suspension. The thing had to be hell to ride. 

The central chassis was brass and iron, studded and unnecessarily heavy, with a large tank over the single rear wheel for its liquid coal, and two seats, one above and behind the other, between the front wheels. In the middle of the trike was a vertical boiler like a bottle topped with two black funnels, surrounded by the churning gear wheels of the engine. Strapped onto the side were more cylinders and leather pipes, their purpose not immediately apparent. 

I could recognise a work of fine engineering when I saw one. This wasn't it.

 

As always, comments gratefully welcomed!

SFFS 5-10-13

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


This week's snippet is again from Sorrel Snowbound (with a slight tweak to add the cue-word for the week). Sorrel survived her short flight on a boulder (see last week's snippet) and has reached the surface. She now has to decide what to do next.

I had to go north, to get moving and find out where I was. With a little luck, I could hitch a lift on a cart or a steamcar. Get into familiar surroundings, and get myself to Werintar, and go from there to the aerodrome. What could possibly go wrong? 

My twisted, evil subconscious instantly came up with a detailed list, complete with graphic illustrations and even some sound effects. Sunstroke, robbers, starvation, dragons, fevers, runaway traction engines, broken bridges, snowdrifts, fires, crashing aeroplanes, earthquakes, lightning strikes, hallucinations... 

I began to chuckle, my mood lifting as my imagination came up with increasingly improbable perils. I had faced everything the Chasm could throw at me. Down there, they had real monsters – ruzdrool, graalur, lloruk, scortuliqs. If I could handle them, I could put the boot to the surface threats, no trouble. 

    Overconfident? Sorrel? Never...

    Comments, as always, are very welcome! 

 

SFFS 28-9-2013

This is my snippet this week for SFFSat. SFFSat is a place where a number of authors post snippets from their written works, and give the opportunity for comments, support and encouragement. Please also explore the other blogs that are part of this set - you can find the information here.


I've not taken part in SFFS for some time - blame real life for getting in the way. This week my snippet is from Sorrel Snowbound, which is the recently-released sequel to Sorrel in Scarlet. Sorrel, my pilot heroine, is climbing the edge of the Chasm to reach the surface. 

The climb was going pretty well.

I'd come across a dozen chunks that I decided not to trust my weight to, but the vast majority of the rock-face felt as solid as the stuff between my ears.

Until now. A large outcrop of grey-green granite, a perfect handhold at the top – how was I supposed to know it was only attached to the cliff by a couple of blobs of fungi? I gripped it firmly, hauled myself up... and I felt it lurch, folding out from the cliff and carrying me out into the void, to begin a half-mile fall to destruction.

I was screaming - the rock was perhaps eight feet high, twelve feet wide, and I was clutching it with both hands. Not a chance of grabbing any other piece of the cliff-face. I can fly most things, but boulders aren't in my repertoire. 

 Comments gratefully received!

Who is Wrack?

Wrack is a dragon. No, the picture isn't wrong. Wrack can transform into a human shape – it is by no means clear whether the dragons are humans who can take draconic form or vice versa. Wrack's response is to say that he is a dragon, which means he can be either form.

Wrack is one of the dragonlords who rule Sendaal. There are very few dragons in the land – they breed rarely, despite their efforts – but each one is a powerful figure. Wrack is one of the most significant of their number.

Wrack oversaw Sorrel when she was training to be a sorceress. There is no doubt that he found the young woman very attractive. Her views of the dragonlord were a different matter. When the humans rebelled against draconic rule, Sorrel was a major figure in the human air force, and she blew one dragonlord, Kabal, out of the sky. She had a number of aerial duels with Wrack, and he eventually brought her plane down. He snatched her from the wreckage and enslaved her. Despite eventually escaping his clutches, Sorrel never forgave Wrack for his treatment of her. Which is why, at the beginning of Sorrel in Scarlet, it was Wrack's mansion that Sorrel had raided.

Wrack is a laconic, sometimes grim figure, typically never speaking a full sentence. He is a strong and vigorous figure, and even Sorrel would have to admit that he is attractive in a dark, saturnine way. He also has a dangerously short temper and, like Sorrel, has a tendency to resort to physical action when he grows angry.

He is probably the most important person in the books aside from Sorrel herself – and Sorrel will tell you regularly and frequently how much she hates him.

Who is Sorrel?

Aside from being the protagonist of the novels that bear her name, Sorrel Cheldaniss is a pilot and a sorceress. In Sorrel's world the two were (until recently) synonymous – pilots needed sorcery to power the engines that enabled them to fly. Sorrel learned to fly in the year before her people began a revolt against the dragons who ruled her lands; during the struggle, she flew a fighter plane in aerial battles against the dragons, and downed Kabal, one of the most powerful (and nastiest) of the dragonlords. Sorrel is hot-tempered and has strong feelings – she knew how badly the humans were treated by some of the dragons, and strove to do everything she could do to defeat them.

Wrack, another of the dragonlords (who will get his own blog entry in a week or so) finally blew her out of the sky. She survived the crash, and he took her prisoner.

The revolt was crushed. The dragons decreed that humans could no longer have magic, and set about ensuring the humans could not rise up again.

Sorrel was released from Wrack's clutches, but her fire had not been quenched – she again set about trying to fight the dragons, albeit more circumspectly.

This is where the novel Sorrel in Scarlet begins.

Sorrel is in her mid-twenties. She's attractive, intelligent and in good physical shape. She can handle a sword (another skill she had to learn during the revolt) and she is an excellent pilot. On the other hand, she is also hot-headed and unwise, and tends to jump in where wiser heads would fear to tread. She is also prone to opening her mouth and saying things she might later regret. She is not averse to romantic dalliances, but is unattached when the novel opens.

She is the narrator for the books. Don't assume that she is always right about what she says...