This might be a bad idea, but hey, it wouldn’t be the first and won’t be the last. Anywho, for my blog post today I’m blessing you fine readers with an example of what the unrefined fiction goo looks like while it is still fresh on the digital page. Why? You might ask?

• Reason One: It might be fun to see another step of the process.
• Reason Two: Maybe it will prick your curiosity.
• Reason Three: I’m behind schedule on writing blog posts.

Just this last week I’ve started on the first draft of my next novel. Without any set-up or background, here is a snippet (context is overrated):

The second figure I had tried to shoot held me by my belt at eye level. He revealed the palm of his hand, holding it open inches in front of me. A 9mm bullet lie there, glistening. He choked, struggling to breath before huffing a clot of phlegm into my face.

Where was I? Who? I fumbled between realities. In one world a blistering, hot wind scoured my face with sand. In the other an isopropanol solution stung my eyes. The man starring at me blurred between a craggy-faced red-eyed demon and a bland cubical-drone performing his duties without emotion. “Do I know you?”

The red-eyed man laughed. “We’ve met, once.”

I blinked droplets of isopropanol and detergent from my eyes. Thirty-two seconds. Tossing me upward, the drone spun. Instantaneously he caught me with a roundhouse kick to the chest. I felt every aspect of the kick, experienced the expenditure of every ounce of energy required to generate it… and more. I saw its color as light bent around the moving foot. I heard the red-eyed man’s laughter, tasted what he had for breakfast—salted fish and black coffee, arabica.

I floated, ascending slowly toward the ceiling. The drone followed through the kick with angry efficiency. Then transferring the shiny bullet from left hand to right he propelled it forward like a pitcher toward home plate.

Droplets of solution shattered and spiraled clear of the bullet’s path before collapsing in its wake. Marisol.

I smashed into the ceiling as her taught body jerked, her finger twitching on the trigger. She resisted the reality, forcing her mind to reject the misfiring signals from the region around the bullet wound.

“Marisol!”

I felt the river rising. I felt the torrent stealing me away.

“Marisol.”

My mind’s screen blanked, all of me now subsumed in the background. Jim Buckner dead, gone, disappeared. Blackness.

That about sums it up. Now you won’t even need to read the book! (Just kidding.)