Tidbit Tuesdays: The trilogy begins!

I'm really excited to offer this first glimpse into Contributor today.  This book was born during NaNoWriMo 2011, when I thought, "Hey, why don't I try writing a YA dystopian/post-apocalyptic novel?"  I had a lot more fun writing it than I would have imagined! 

*****

Dara swallowed hard, trying to fight the nausea that threatened her concentration.  As she stared at the monitor, the numbers and symbols seemed to swim through her vision, and she blinked several times, forcing herself to focus.  Though she was only seventeen, her training as an engineer had begun at the age of three, so she was more than capable of handling the task before her. 

This, however, was no exercise.  If she failed this evaluation, none of her years of hard work and dedication would matter.  She would lose her position amongst the Ballasts and would have to take up one of the menial occupations of the Cores.  If she did well, a prosperous future would be well within her grasp.

With one last deep breath, Dara looked at the screen. As she exhaled, she cleared her mind.  To her immense relief, as soon as she started to pick apart the problem, she lost all sense of her surroundings, her mind completely focused on unraveling it and implementing a solution.
At first glance, the problem appeared to be simple, but Dara knew the engineers wouldn’t lob anything quite so easy at her.  Because she had been first in her class, they would want to test the limits of her abilities, so she continued examining the schematics in front of her, her mind working rapidly to diagnose and analyze the problem.  She ran through a couple of scenarios, rejecting several possible solutions until, finally, everything clicked into place.  She broke into a wide grin as her fingers flew over the interface.  It was tempting to pump her fist in the air when the machinery resumed its smooth operation, but she managed to restrain herself—barely.

Almost instantly, a door opened and a tall, imposing man entered, followed by two women and one other man.  

“Ms. Morrow, I’m Head of Engineering Andersen, and these are my subordinates, Senior Engineers D’Angelo, Walters, and Chen,” the tall man said.

Stunned, Dara hoped she wasn’t gaping.  She’d had no idea the Head of Engineering would be supervising her evaluation, which was a good thing.  Had she known, she’d have been even sicker with apprehension. 

“P-pleased to meet you,” Dara said, cringing internally at her stutter.  She offered her hand first to Andersen, who shook it with a bruising grip.  Each of the others shook her hand in turn, and Dara tried her best not to squirm as they studied her.

“Due to the high level of aptitude shown by your evaluation results, you have been selected for a specialized apprenticeship program.  You and two other candidates will spend a year under the tutelage of the senior engineers.  The highest performer may earn the opportunity to become my assistant,” Andersen announced.  His eerie blue eyes were very keen, and it was clear to Dara that this was a man who missed nothing.

“Oh, thank you, Head of Engineering Andersen.  This is truly an honor, and I’ll work very hard to prove myself worthy,” Dara said.  She fought to remain composed as a giddy combination of relief and excitement washed over her.

“I will expect you tomorrow morning at six-thirty sharp, when you will begin your training with Senior Engineer D’Angelo.  A word of caution to you, Ms. Morrow: you must operate at your peak each and every day.  I expect nothing less than a stellar performance from you.”  Andersen’s eyes met hers, and Dara had the disconcerting sensation that his gaze was boring straight through her, stripping away skin and bone, muscle and sinew until all that was left was her very essence, her innermost thoughts.  She tried hard to suppress a shudder and thought she saw Andersen’s mouth quirk, as if he had noticed her discomfiture.

“I assure you, sir, I will not disappoint you,” Dara vowed.  The thought of working with this towering, blond, imperious man was dismaying, but she wouldn’t allow this to show—she couldn’t.  She knew full well that becoming the assistant to the Head of Engineering would mean big things for her.  If she had to work herself half to death in order to impress him, so be it.  Nothing mattered more than securing her future with Magnum.

“I will see you in the morning.”  He examined her for one excruciating moment before turning smartly and leaving the room. 

“Congratulations, Contributor Morrow,” Walters said, smiling warmly.

“We’ll see what you can do tomorrow,” Chen told her, a muscle in his cheek twitching.  The two shook her hand and left the room.

“I’ll escort you to the exit,” D’Angelo offered.  Her face betrayed nothing, and Dara’s stomach quaked.  The Senior Engineer was taller than Dara, her dark hair pulled back in an immaculate twist.  Her face would have been devastatingly beautiful were it not for the cold expression in her eyes.  As D’Angelo turned, Dara shivered.

They wound their way through the corridors of headquarters, Dara peeking into every window as inconspicuously as possible.  Though apprehensive about her severe master, she was barely able to contain the excitement that made her feel as if she wanted to fly apart.  She couldn’t believe that she was actually here, in Magnum’s headquarters, and that she was going to become a part of its team.  Her head spun as she thought about her acceptance into the elite apprenticeship.  She couldn’t imagine a more perfect beginning to her career.

They finally reached the exit, which led into the thoroughfares ringing the dome.  D’Angelo closed the door gently behind her.

“Be prompt tomorrow,” D’Angelo instructed, smiling and nodding at a man with a Magnum badge who was passing by, before turning back to Dara, all trace of the smile gone.  It was disconcerting.

“I will,” Dara promised.

“Head of Engineering Andersen is a man of many talents and one of Magnum’s most valued Contributors.  He has high expectations and misses little,” D’Angelo said, emphasizing the last two words.  “You must be meticulous.”  Each syllable was like a hammer blow, and Dara forced herself to stand up straighter.

“Of course.” 

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Tidbit Tuesdays: The beginning of the end of life as they knew it

Creators is making its last appearance in the Tidbits Tuesday feature, because it is no longer the work in progress.  Next week, I'll be offering up a taste of Contributor, the first novel in my postapocalyptic/dystopian trilogy.  I hope you enjoy this opening scene from Creators!


They were losing the war, this much was obvious.  Standing and surveying the fields, Zhang Liang swallowed against the lump in his throat.  As far as the eye could see, the crops were dying.  Liang crouched and grabbed a handful of earth, feeling his own impotence as it trickled through his fingers.  It was so depleted it could no longer sustain life, as evidenced by the dessicated plant stalks waving forlornly in the hot breeze.  No matter how much they tinkered with the soil, Zhang Agritech Systems was unable to successfully replace nutrients in the soil.

Wiping his hand on his thighs, Liang stumbled over to a vivid green patch.  In a blind rage, he began yanking plants out, feeling a vicious sense of satisfaction as he tore their roots from the earth.  Even so, he knew it was an empty gesture.  No matter how valiantly the corn and soybeans fought, they were helpless against the onslaught of the virulent pigweed, horseweed, and countless other so-called superweeds.

A sudden pressure on his shoulder reminded Liang that he wasn’t alone, and he looked up into the sober gaze of Anya Ragulski, his second-in-command.

“The collectives are no longer viable,” she told him, her voice so soft it was almost lost in the drone of machinery trying desperately to provide enough water, enough of a precise chemical cocktail to support the crops needed to feed millions.

“But without the collectives…” Liang began, but the thought was too horrible to contemplate, and the words died in his throat.

“There will be widespread famine,” Anya finished, her voice so collected that Liang stared up at her, caught between horror and admiration that she could remain so calm.  However, as he studied her face, he realized there were tears in her eyes, that her expression was rigid.

“Maybe we just need more hands.  We could institute another selection process, bring more field workers into the collectives.  There are more than enough candidates,” Liang suggested, the words falling out of his mouth faster and faster, as he tried to cling to this one last surge of hope. 

Just this morning, throngs of people had stood outside the secure, electrified, razor-wire topped gates of the collective, their starved faces staring avidly at his armored motorcade as it glided by on nearly silent electric motors.  Though life in the collectives involved a great deal of grueling, back-breaking labor, its workers went to bed with a full belly every night, something about which many people could only dream.  The first ten years after the launch of the collectives had been rough because it had been so difficult to find people willing to spend hour after hour toiling in the blazing sun, but conditions on the outside had deteriorated to the point that there were now more people desperate to work the collectives than there were jobs.

“If we increase the number of hands, we won’t be able to provide them with food in exchange for work, let alone supply those who don’t work the collective,” Anya reminded him, her patient tone cracking around the edges.  She’d told him this already, but the knowledge refused to enter his head.  The more he tried to accept reality, the more his brain fought to reject it.

“Then why did you bring me here?”  Liang was unable to keep the bitterness from his voice as he pulled himself up from the ground.

“Because I knew you had to see it.”  Anya studied him with an unwavering gaze until he turned from her, yanking his protective goggles from his face and pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.  She was right; he wouldn’t have believed numbers on a report, would have rejected the graphs and projections. 

After several moments during which Liang stared unseeingly at the hands toiling at their fruitless labors, Anya finally spoke.  “We knew this day was coming.  You know we’ve done all we can, Liang.  Our scientists have been working around the clock—but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.  You’ve seen the data.  You know how many of them have collapsed from exhaustion, how many have had cardiac episodes due to the stress.”

Unable to speak, he simply nodded in acknowledgment of her words.  Yes, he’d seen the data, but how could anyone be expected to process the beginning of the end of life as they knew it?

Tidbit Tuesdays: Making difficult choices

It's now time for Tidbit Tuesdays, a weekly feature in which I post an excerpt from my current work in progress and discuss some of my thoughts about that particular section.

I hit a milestone this week by finishing the rough draft of Creators, so that was a very good feeling.  I'm taking a short breather because I always need some space between me and my work, and then it will be time for the dreaded editing process.  (Did you hear that ominous music in the background?)  So, without further ado, here is this week's excerpt:

*****

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was led to believe that the dome technology was still untested on anything larger than a prototype scale,” one of the smaller Creators spoke up, looking around meekly as if waiting for the major Creators to pounce all over him. “What are the risks of enacting this technology now without running a few more scaled tests?”

“We don’t have time to do more scaled testing,” Sylvie said, bluntly. The other Creator’s face blanched, and Liang could see he was not the only one who looked uncomfortable. Despite Sylvie’s formidable presence, murmurs began to sweep through the room.

“I’m sorry, I think my numbers may be off,” interjected one of the other small Creators. “During our last meeting, we were told a total of thirty of the domes were being built, and that each dome could support a maximum population of 250,000 people. The current population of the Midwestern region is…”

“We are aware of the current population of the Midwestern region,” Sylvie interrupted. Her voice was calm and her gaze was steely as she surveyed every other person in the room. “When we met last, we talked a great deal about maximizing our resources, if you’ll recall. I called you all here today so we could begin laying out plans for how we will go about evaluating our resources over the course of the next several months.”

“Wait, maximizing resources… You don’t mean that we’re going to have some sort of a…what…selection process?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”  

*****

Thorny moral questions like this always interest me.  I think it's a good idea to sometimes pose a morally difficult question to yourself and think, "What would I do in this situation?"  The more difficult the question, the better, because it really forces you to analyze your stance on an issue, and I think that kind of self-evaluation is always a good thing.

Much of my writing comes about because of thoughts like these.  More than anything, I tend to be interested in characters, in how they think, feel, what they like, etc.  When I write, I try to really inhabit them and think, "How would this particular character react to this situation?"  

There was a lot of that going on throughout the writing of Creators.  Because so much of Contributor deals with the thoughts and feelings of characters who are caught up in the system the Creators devised, I wanted to explore why that system had been created, and what effects creating the system had on those who had to establish it.

End-of-the-world scenarios like the one in Creators are interesting precisely because they represent such an enormous test to our morality as human beings.  In no situation is a person put more to the test, and at no time do their true colors come shining through than in a moment of calamity.  I think this is especially true of the characters in Creators.

Tidbit Tuesdays: Fun with agriculture

Today, I am debuting my new feature, Tidbit Tuesdays.  On Tuesday of each week, I'll post an excerpt from my current work-in-progress, along with some of my thoughts about the excerpt.

So, without further ado, may I present to you an excerpt from Creators, my prequel novella to the upcoming Contributor trilogy:

They were losing the war; this much was obvious.  As he stood and surveyed the fields, Zhang Liang swallowed against the lump in his throat.  As far as the eye could see, the crops were dying.  Crouching, he grabbed a handful of earth, feeling his own impotence as it trickled through his fingers.  It was so depleted it could no longer sustain life, as evidenced by the dessicated plant stalks waving forlornly in the hot breeze.  No matter how much they tinkered with the soil, Zhang Agritech Systems had been unable to successfully replace nutrients in the soil.

Wiping his hand on his thighs, Liang stumbled over to a vivid green patch.  In a blind rage, he began yanking plants out, feeling a vicious sense of satisfaction as he tore their roots from the earth.  Still, he knew it was an empty gesture.  Though the corn and soybeans fought valiantly, they were helpless against the onslaught of the virulent pigweed, horseweed, and countless other so-called superweeds.

*****

My thoughts: When I began working on Contributor during NaNoWriMo 2011, I thought a lot about what kind of dystopia I was creating.  Why did it exist?  What did it look like?  How did the society function?  These are all questions I tried to answer in Contributor without doing it in info dumps--which can be quite challenging.  Still, I'm happy with the end result and feel that lots of writing and editing have led to a Contributor that creates a good sense of the society it examines.

Still, I couldn't find a way of exploring the origins of the dystopia without doing some sort of info dump or faux history lesson within Contributor, and I didn't want to do that.  Then, it hit me: write a novella.  Just like that, Creators was born.

The first question I needed to answer in creating the dystopia was why did it exist in the first place.  I'm a big fan of speculative fiction, and I've read many great authors who root their dystopia in a current truth, which makes it feel all the more ominously possible.  I wanted to do the same thing, so I asked myself what might make a society grow so dependent on a certain structure and the answer I kept coming back to was food.

I'm not shy about stating right up front that food safety and security is an issue of particular importance to me.  I read everything I can about food production, and I've watched many documentaries on the subject, and all of these things have led me to this ultimate conclusion: if we don't carefully examine our current system and fix its flaws, we may back ourselves into a corner.  The population on this planet continues to grow, but this planet only has finite resources.  How can we best utilize them?

The real trick in writing Creators is writing it in a compelling way.  Though I often find reading articles about farming practices and GMO crops fascinating, I know that not everyone feels the same way.  I wanted to create a face-paced story without making readers feel like they were sitting through Crop Sciences 101.  Hopefully, with Creators, I've reached that goal.

If you're interested in the topic, here are a couple of articles I found particularly interesting:

NY Times op-ed about Congress's revamping of the farm bill 
Mother Jones article about the rise of so-called superweeds

I also suggest reading and watching the work of people such as Jamie Oliver and Michael Pollan.  Though this is by no means a complete list of people who are instrumental in driving the conversation about food safety and quality, they are a good starting point.