Writing Articles

Wake Up, Detroit on Sale Today

2/28/2015

What would happen if the Detroit bankers got their due?

What would happen if those losing their pensions weren’t the ones to pay?

What would happen if the downtrodden rose up?

It’d be a comical mess, that’s what, and that’s what Wake Up, Detroit is – a satirical look at banking, government, politics, media, and the nobody-Americans that hate it all.

Yes, Wake Up, Detroit is your kind of book. It’s short, coming in at just under 18,000 words and about 65 pages. That means you won’t get bored.

Check it out on Amazon today, and buy a copy while you’re at it. Thanks!

Excerpt of Wake Up, Detroit

“There it is,” Tommy said as he pulled the beat-up old Ford F-150 over to the curb, “number 223, Mayor Mort Finicky’s house.”

Ernie nodded. “Well, let’s go up there and ask him, huh?”

“Damn straight!”

The two truck doors slamming were the only sounds along the quiet neighborhood street. Tommy took the lead up the neatly-manicured lawn, not bothering to walk on the ornately-carved stepping stones so intricately set out for them.

“Here goes,” Tommy said once they were both standing on the small cement porch steps, his fist poised over the door.

He pounded away loudly three times, not bothering with the marble-fashioned doorknocker already there.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Tommy looked over at Ernie and smiled, but Ernie only frowned. After a few moments they could hear movement from within, and then the door locks coming unlatched.

“Yes, what can I…”

Mort trailed off when he saw the two men standing on his steps.

“Hello, sir, we’re–”

“What the fuck are you thinking?” Tommy cut off Ernie loudly, poking Mort in the chest with his finger.

“Now, wait a minute, here!” Mort said, backing up a step and getting his arms up in front of himself.

“You fucking scum!’ Tommy spat. “Stealing fucking pensions from hardworking people like my friend Ern, here!” He slapped his arm across Ernie’s shoulders, which only made Ernie frown more. “Boy, pal, you’re one sick fuck!”

“Hey, that wasn’t my decision, it was–”

“Yeah?” Tommy shouted as he pulled a gun from his back hip pocket and stuck it up in Mort’s face. “If it wasn’t you then who the fuck did this shit!”

“Oh…hell!” Mort said before his face went red.

Indulge yourself? Buy Wake Up, Detroit today!

Free Fiction Friday #51: The Rooms in the Rings

2/27/2015

Note: This is the fifty-first post in Free Fiction Fridays.

These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up. Enjoy!

The door slammed and Carolyn looked over.

“What did they say?” she said, rushing up to Jim and getting up in his face. Usually the on-edge photographer would get miffed about something like that, but tonight he barely registered it.

“What did they say?” Carolyn said again, more firm this time. Jim looked at her and noticed her arms were cross and her grin awry – in other words, she wasn’t in the mood to put up with anything.

“They said…” Jim began, looking at his wife. Her eyes widened in a ‘well’ kind of look, and he shook his head and headed for the couch, his coat and shoes still on. “Oh, God, they said a lot, let me tell you, they said a lot.” He started to laugh a bit to himself.

“But did you show them the picture?” Carolyn said, coming up to sit beside her husband.

“Yeah, yeah…I showed it to ‘em,” Jim said.

“And…did you tell them?”

Jim rubbed at his eyes and forehead like you’d do if you had a really bad headache. “Yeah,” he said at last, “I told them.”

“My God, Jim – what did they say!”

“They told me about the rings around Saturn and rooms – rooms – that are just floating in space. They told me about giants and how they were banished here long ago, to this forgotten corner of the galaxy, like some galactic Australia-like penal colony. They told me about the Atlanteans and how their flood was an attempt to get rid of them. And they told me how they failed.”

Jim trailed off and it was clear he was on the verge of tears, a complete breakdown, like his world had been completely upended. Carolyn stared at her husband, or the wretch that he’d become. It’d only been three days since the comet in the night, and then just two since he’d gotten a call and gone to investigate. Just yesterday he’d written it up on the site, about the hoax of the Chinese satellite. It was but a few hours ago that the call had come, the call to meet. And now here they were.

Carolyn shook her head and scoffed. “Saturn?”

“Ha!” Jim laughed, then reached over to his camera bag, still slung over his shoulder. “Here,” he said, handing over a photo, “they even gave me a copy of the image they showed.”

Carolyn took it and scrunched up her face. “What am I looking at…rocks?”

Jim frowned and looked over, then shook his head. “Oh no, that’s the ice crystals, as they call them, where the rooms are located.” He took out another photograph. “Here.”

Carolyn took it, and this time here eyes went wide. There before here was what looked like a bedroom, that’s all she could describe it as, like a bedroom that’d been cut off from a house and flung out into space to float. Except it wasn’t floating, and it wasn’t out in space – it was there, nestled in the rocky debris of what could only be the rings of Saturn. The yellowish planet below outlined the room well, which seemed to have been sheared off on one side. What was unmistakable were the table and chair, firmly attached to the room, part of it really. Nothing could sit at that table but a human, or at least, human-like being.

Carolyn looked to Jim. “What is–”

“That’s not what we need to be worrying about right now,” he said, cutting her off, “and I don’t think they care about what I saw near the lake – them giving me those picture shows that.” He laughed. “Can’t you see, Carolyn – they don’t care what gets out at this point, it’s too late. The holes in Siberia, the openings in Antarctica, it all points to one thing – something big is going to happen, and it’s going to happen soon.”

“You don’t know that.”

Jim frowned. “No, I don’t know for a fact, but what I was told tonight makes me believe it. Carolyn, they were talking about some of those giants still being here, about how some of them are starting to wake up. It’s not just finding old bones in burial mounds, either – it’s the military sites built up in far-off areas, covers for what lies beneath. Things are moving, and things are waking up. Far up in Canada right now–”

“Who told you all this tonight?” Carolyn shouted out so as to be heard over her husband’s rambling.

Jim smiled. “It was–”

His words were cut-off in his throat, and a moment later he was paralyzed. Looking over at Carolyn, he saw she was also immobilized. That’s when the bright light appeared shining through all the windows.

THE END

Like what you're reading? Check out Dulce Base on Amazon!

5 Social Media Marketing Gems from 2014

2/27/2015

Social media marketing is tough.

You have to spend a lot of time online, looking at cool things. Then you need to make a lot of online friends that can help you look at more cool things. And then you have to figure out how to make everyone else interested in what you’re looking at. Oh, and did I mention you have to make money too?

It might sound fun, and you’ll see that look on most new social media marketers’ faces when they start fresh on Monday morning. If they’re still around on Friday they’re dragging themselves out of the office, utterly defeated.

Yes, social media marketing is tough.

The good news is that each week new social media marketing articles go up on websites all over the world. This means you can learn the newest things.

But what if the newest things aren’t as good as some of the old things? After all, lots of people are figuring out the wonders of vinyl records for the first time…could there be something in social media marketing’s past that’s worth something to us?

Yes, and that’s why we must go back to a far and distant time, one that went by the name…2014.

Behold these bygone gems of social media marketing!

#1 Twitter Followers
On August 27, Peter Bray had an interesting post on Moz called Are Hashtags Dead? Do Tweets with Images Get More Followers? Twitter Growth Factors (and Some Excel Tips).

With a name like that you’d expect a pretty good study, and you get one. Bray’s “data set included roughly 800,000 ‘days’ for over 4,000 users, and requiring analysis of millions of tweets.”

Graphs charting Twitter followers

If that sounds interesting, and graphs that look like that thing there intrigue you, then this post is right up your alley. Me? I dropped out of a Greek language course in college after two weeks, and seeing this post reminds me why.

Still, there are some good takeaways, like the following Bray put together:

Tweets with images or hashtags get 2% more followers;
Retweets can get you 4% more followers;
Engaging with other users equals 6% more followers;
Extra URL tweets can lose you followers;
Weekends get you 23% fewer new followers;
Content trumps all.

It’s a pretty interesting article, and Bray even analyzes Rand Fishkin’s Twitter account, which could be informative or creepy depending on your own proclivities.

#2 Twitter Marketing
One very helpful post for new and experienced Twitter users appeared on More Follow on November 4. It’s called 20 of the Best Twitter Marketing Articles and all of the articles are from 2014, so you’re getting relevant information.

I’d check this article out for three reasons.

First, you’re getting quality information about Twitter and links to even more information;

Then, you’re getting an idea of a great content curation post that you can do in 2015;

Finally, you’re getting a look at what a super helpful article looks like when it’s wallowing in social obscurity. This thing has been shared little, and I can’t help but think the lack of social counters on their share icons is to blame.

You can have the best article in the world, but if it doesn’t have that social credibility, your chances of getting shared go way down. In that regard, it’s almost a Catch-22…you can’t get social shares until you have them, but you can’t have them until you get them.

Businesses and websites get around this problem each and everyday, and you need to find a way to do the same. And if you’re one of those businesses that’s benefiting from this now, I’ve got news for you – don’t get cushy at the top of that social sharing ladder, because there are many climbing up behind you and they have your tools and ones you don’t even know about, and they’ve got blood in their eye.

Yes, you can pick up a lot from this piece that appeared on More Follow, and I encourage you to do so.

#3 Social Referrals
On July 21, Danny Wong had a report on Shareaholic called In Q2, Facebook Drove 23.39% of Overall Visits to Sites [REPORT]. Now, this report is very similar to the Shareaholic report that came out on June 27, and honestly, there isn’t much new. As before, Facebook continues to cream all the competition when it comes to social referrals, with only Pinterest giving token resistance:

Which social networks give the most referrals?

Wong notes how much Facebook is in control by saying, “over the last year, its ‘share of traffic’ has skyrocketed, up 150.49% (14.05 percentage points) from 9.34% in June 2013.”

Why is Facebook doing so well? “Simply put,” Wong says, “Facebook is winning the referrals war because users can’t seem to get enough of content shared by close friends and relatable acquaintances.”

Wong goes on to say that YouTube isn’t really working for a lot of businesses, primarily because they don’t have the high-end equipment needed for quality videos. He also says that, despite it’s loyal set of users, Google+ just arrived too late in the game and can’t compete.

One takeaway for Twitter is that social referrals seem to have fallen flat, and this may be due to all posts looking the same…boring one-to-two lines of text posts. That’s why optimizing them with images and colorful characters is a good strategy for 2015.

Other social sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon are also analyzed, making this one of the best social analysis posts of 2014, in my opinion.

#4 Google+ and Local SEO
An article that appeared on Blue Fountain Media on May 1 was called 9 Ways to Use Google Plus to Help Your SEO Efforts. Written by Brendon Rowe, the article laid out one of Google+’s main problems, and that’s the fact that it has fewer users than other networks.

You hear this a lot, and you hear that the engagement trumps this. I dunno, but what I do know is that people need strategies to deal with what many know is a big problem – Google+ lags way behind the other social networks.

So try these fixes, as Rowe suggests:

Personalized Search;
Google+ Local;
Indexing;
Rank Your Social Media Posts;
Get Your Web Content Viral;
Google+ Hangouts;
Keeping Up with Best Practices;
Rich Snippet;
Author Rank.

Author Rank is no more, and Matt Cutts has said that social ranking doesn’t affect SEO. Still, there are some good points here, and as many of us know, what’s wrong today might be right tomorrow…and vice versa.

Google+ Local is one to take a moment on, and this is something all businesses should do, especially those relying on mobile and local search. The more you can have your business integrated with Google, the better – no other search engine will come close to the amount of traffic they provide.

“When someone types in the name of a service that is viewed to be geographically important to the user,” Rowe says, “Google will implement knowledge graph listings below search advertisements in the results page.”

Making local SEO work for you

Gosh, something like this could be just as beneficial as paying for advertising, and that’s why it’s such an interesting thing for you to look at. After all, don’t you want your company coming up when in your town or city searches for your industry’s products and services?

Of course you do! And remember, customer reviews can come up here as well, which can be another boost to your business. While Google reviews don’t get a lot of play and aren’t deemed as real sexy by bloggers, I have a feeling that’ll change in 2015.

This is a good article to look at for ideas, and you’ll find nine more besides this one profiled here.

#5 Boosting Shares
Jordan Kasteler had an article on Marketing Land on April 29 called 8 Brain Triggers Guaranteed To Boost Your Social Media Marketing. So what are these wonderful brain triggers?

Brain Gain;
Inspire Curiosity;
Tell Me Why;
Good News Travels Faster;
Something New;
Intuitive Lists;
Tell Tales;
Action Words.

Wow, hard to tell what any of those mean by skimming, huh? I’d add one more to this list – have headlines that make sense.

Alas, not every site can do that. Marketing Land is just a bastard child of Search Engine Land, and both sites often have amazingly thin content. Still, this article has some use. For instance, how about our brains?

“Because our brains process information spatially, when we come upon a list we appreciate the break in our visual field,” Kasteler says. “We know that sorting out data will come more easily, and that hits an emotional sweet spot.”

So, lists are good, just have them make sense so users don’t click away in that 1.7 seconds that you typically have to gain their attention.

If you like what you’re reading, get a whole lot more – more than 250 pages in fact! Yes, this was an excerpt from my book Stand Out: Your 2015 SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing Guidebook. Check it out on Amazon and iTunes today!

How I Work with Everyday People to Get Books on Amazon

2/26/2015

Each week people contact me by email and sometimes by phone.

They want to know if I can help them get a book on Amazon.

Sometimes they have something to work with.

Sometimes they just have an idea.

Sometimes they have a completed book and just need direction on what to do next.

Sometimes they’ve tried to do things themselves but found it damn near impossible.

So what can I do?

If someone has a book, this is what we can do to get your book on Amazon by the end of the week:

Take your cover drawing or idea and give it to a professional artist. Then get that image sized-up with layout into a 1563x2500 JPEG cover for Amazon.

Format your MS Word document into a standard template that will work for Amazon and look good on a Kindle eReader.

Get you a bit of eBook marketing so people actually see this book and it gets some sales on its launch date and you get onto a Top 100 chart in your genre.

If you do those things you have a chance. And while we’re at it, why not get the POD cover and get it into a Createspace template so you can have physical copies to hand out to friends and family?

Those are all things I do, and I’ve done them with my own books. It’s why people contact me.

You can contact me too – just use my contact form and tell me where you’re at. I’m certain I can help.

When it comes to that book cover, I think the cost really depends on what you want to spend on art and how you want that cover to look. Here are some ideas on that in a post called 10 Master Deviant Art Artists for Your eBook Covers.

If you don't want to do any editing then it's pretty simple after that art. But…do you want to get a print copy too with Createspace? That's a bit more because you need a different cover. But remember, then you’re in print – a real author!

What I need to do is format your book and upload it on Amazon, but you need to create the Amazon account and give Amazon your bank account info to get the book live on Amazon. Yeah, bank account info – you want to get paid, right?

Typically if I’m uploading the book for someone I’ll get their username and password and do everything but the financial information. They fill that out and hit publish and then change their username and password.

For the marketing end of things, you have to have the book live then contact some direct email marketing sites that email about 5,000 to 20,000 people that are interested in that book genre.

So costs:

Cover art and layout: $40 to $100 or more
Createspace Cover: $10 to $20
Formatting and upload: $50
Marketing: $30 to $75 or more

Total cost = $130 to $245 or more

That’s just base cost, not counting what I charge. And we didn’t even get into editing. So if you want to do that $130 range, I’d say give me $200 and we can get all that done. If you want to go more expensive, no problem – I’ll take a fee for doing all this headache-inducing stuff for you. In a few days or a week I’ll email you and say let’s do the final steps and get this book live on Amazon in 24 hours.

From there it’s simple, and then you’re done. It’s a pretty good way to get your ideas out there, and it doesn’t cost a lot.

So if you’ve been thinking of getting that book on Amazon, contact me and let’s get it done.

That way you can tell everyone you wrote a book. More importantly, you can show them where to buy it.

Free Fiction Friday #50: A Break in the Interrogation

2/20/2015

Note: This is the fiftieth post in Free Fiction Fridays.

These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up. Enjoy!

It’d been nine hours of questioning, and the suspect showed no signs of breaking. Captain Briggs changed his tactics.

“Listen Donny,” he said, taking out his .45 and holding it in front of his face. He gazed into it, as if it held the secrets he was looking for. “You know the Peligi brothers aren’t going to take to kindly to what you did to their shark. How are the bookies going to be held accountable now?”

From across the table, Donny looked up. His face was a bruised and bloodied mess, but now he finally realized why Briggs had dismissed his partner a few minutes before – he wanted to get down to the real business.

“Oh, so that’s what this is all about then, is it?” he said, looking up at the police captain in a way that put his swollen eye out first. “You’re just some hired muscle for the Peligi brothers, is that it?”

Briggs cocked the .45 and locked his eyes on Donny. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Wanna hear another,” Donny said, edging forward slightly in his chair.

“I’m all ears.”

“Then put down that gun.”

Briggs frowned, but lowered the gun down to the table. He kept his hand on it and his finger on the trigger. “Alright, talk.”

“It goes like this,” Donny began with a nod. “Mancuso over on 22nd was the one that ran Loose Mickey down. What the Peligi brothers don’t know is that Mancuso is coming for them tonight, or…is it still Friday?”

“Yeah,” Briggs said as he pulled up his hand to look at his watch, “but we’ve only got–”

Captain Briggs wasn’t able to finish the sentence. The .45 was in his right hand, and just above it was his watch. He’d reflexively pulled up his hand to look at his wrist and that’s when Donny had shot forward. His hands lunged for the gun in the captain’s hand, not to take it, but to force it. Just as Briggs was registering the suspect coming up out of the chair, Donny’s hand was pressing up against the butt of the gun just so. It fired, sending a bullet right into Brigg’s chest.

“Oh!” he yelled out. His grip loosened enough on the gun and Donny didn’t hesitate. He grabbed it and had it spun around just as the door of the small interrogation room opened. Two plainclothes policemen stood with eyes wide at what they saw – Captain Briggs bleeding from the chest, his face scrunched up in pain, and their suspect, now holding a gun.

“Take it easy, son,” the first officer said, holding one hand up while reaching for his gun with the other.

Donny didn’t hesitate.

BANG! BANG!...BANG! BANG!

He put a bullet in his head and another in his chest, then did the same for the officer behind him.

“Fuck!” Briggs said, and coughed up a bit of blood in the process. Donny turned back to look at him, just as a smile came over the police captain’s face. “You’ll never get away with this,” Briggs continued. “The Peligi brothers will–”

BANG!

“The Peligi brothers are already dead,” Donny said after ending the corrupt police captain’s misery.

Now he just had to get out of the station.

THE END

Dulce Base is On Sale Today

2/20/2015

If you haven’t checked out my novel Dulce Base, please do. It’s $0.99 today only, and that’s quite a good deal.

I’m also doing a Bargainbooksy eBook promo on it, so hopefully it can run up the Sci-Fi and Thriller charts, getting a ranking of around #30,000 so it gains that visibility boost.

Anyways, if you like blood and guts – not particularly red – then this book is for you. It has foul language, Vietnam vets, and aliens in an underground base. Things blow up and there are some cool spaceships. There’s even a jaunt up to Montana to clean out a nest of Grays!

Yes, this is adventure at its finest, and you’d be remiss to miss it.

Buy your copy of Dulce Base today!

Tarot Card Killer is On Sale Until Tomorrow

2/18/2015

1970s Hong Kong.

It was a different place, a different time.

The Triad gangs controlled much of the city, the corrupt police department the rest. Protests were happening in the streets, an atmosphere of fear and mistrust dominated.

And then the killings began.

There was one at first, just a body in a park by the waterfront. Hong Kong Island had seen worse. After all, it’d been controlled by the British for more than century. But it’d never seen anything like this.

Who would leave a Tarot card in a corpse’s hand, and what does it mean?

That’s what Inspector Jim Sharpe is tasked with finding out. The problem’s that he’s being charged with corruption, an irony since he’s the only officer not on the take.

A bigger problem, however, are the bodies. They keep coming, each with a different Tarot card.

What does it mean, and will Jim find out before the week is up and his own goose is cooked?

Find out on Amazon today.

General Mid-Month Update

2/14/2015

Let’s change some things.

I’m getting a bit bored, and the best way to get over boredom is to change things.

You can do this in your house by moving furniture around, making an old room suddenly new again. And when it comes to websites, you can change things up and really rejuvenate your whole outlook. Now is that time.

So what do I want to change? It’s a good question…and I’m not really sure. Perhaps if we take stock of things we’ll have a better understanding of where we are and where we want to go. Oh, and what we want to shake up.

For starters, I’ve managed to get a lot of followers on my social media accounts. Google+ has me at nearly 5,500 right now, and that’s a far cry from when I first started to get serious on that network.

Are you having trouble getting followers on Google+ today? Why not get my free Google+ book for authors and bloggers? Obviously it works.

I’m pretty happy with Twitter, mainly because I didn’t get onto that until 2014 and now I have around 425 followers. Most are social media and SEO folks, but I have a lot of loyal Montana followers. I’m grateful for that.

Facebook is another story for me. You might have read about my recent decision to delete my Facebook page, and now my new Facebook page is up to 4 likes. But I’m fine with that – these are people that actually wanted to like the page, and I’m trying to keep it more updated with fun things.

So that’s social media. What about my website?

The 2014 Montana Election Blog is going to be taken down at the end of this month. The reason for this is because of the name – it’s so last year. I’m working on a massive landing page for it now, one that has all the links to the blog’s 300+ posts. It’ll be presented in a useful way so future Google searchers can find what they’re looking for.

So am I done writing about politics? Maybe. I still have the Montana blog, and since I’m getting so close to modern day things, I think it’s time to just get that going full time. Plus, it’s just under 100 posts right now and easier to manage (or clean up and get working good).

I think that’s a big change, but one that won’t be noticed by too many, I don’t think. Besides that, there’s not much else to change.

I’ve been switching all my books over from Smashwords to D2D, and that’s been a bit slow, mainly because of laziness.

I’m working on combining two ESL books on PowerPoint lessons, but that’s not really interesting for many of you.

Sometime this month I’ll take a lot of old blog posts and put them into How to Write, making that 500+ page book even larger, hopefully into the 700+ page realm. Oh, and the price will go up to $3.99 on that too.

I may finally take The Jongurian Mission off perma-free, mainly because it’s just not selling many copies of Books 2 & 3. I’ve been analyzing the sales a lot, and as I make the switch to D2D, I wonder if charging $0.99 or more for it might not be a better strategy.

I want to write more about how to write fantasy novels, as a lot of my Google search traffic is coming from terms related to writing fantasy.

I have to get more of my books into print, and all I really need to do is get someone on Fiverr to make me a POD cover for $20. The reason I want to do this is because I make a lot of money on print sales now.

I should look into audio books and how I can increase my yearly earnings through this extra income channel. Like print books last year, I’m hesitant to get into it, because of laziness and ignorance.

I should really stop worrying so much about my backlist and sales from last year so I can start putting some books out this year.

Lots of “I” in those sentences. I’m not talking about you in this post, but I’m talking about things I need to do. Maybe you’ll get some tips on what you need to do. And maybe while I’m at it I’ll drag out some old blog series like “Haunted Lighthouses,” “Dead Author Interviews” and “Adventures in SEO.”

Wow, you’d have to have been an old visitor to remember any of that stuff. Anyways, like I said, changes.

I guess a big part is that I don’t want to waste so much time on politics. And it is a waste. Nothing comes from it, that I can see at least, not counting ill will, enmity and spite. But then I haven’t bought my March 7th dinner ticket yet so…

Let's face it - I don't think I will buy a ticket.

I’m feeling a little more confident than usual this month because I got my federal tax return. Now have enough money to pay the rent ahead of time, which means I can work on my fifth book of Montana history. Oh, it won’t sell that well – these books just don’t, unfortunately – but it’ll make me feel good, and I know those sales will come eventually.

But then you don’t get down the road by sitting here and talking about it.

Thanks for visiting and reading and sharing this site!

Bring Back Our Girls is Free this Weekend!

2/14/2015

Valentine’s Day got you down? Would explosions in the desert and dead terrorists be more to your liking? Good.

You see, you’re the kind of person that doesn’t care much about roses and cards.

No, to you the perfect Valentine would be those Boko Haram bastards dead, and the 276 Nigerian schoolgirls they kidnapped back in their homes. And this asshole’s head on a pike is something you’d like to see:

We’ve got better than a pike in store for him in this novel. Yep, Bring Back Our Girls is your kind of book.

I’d like to add that the main characters – an ‘elite’ Special Forces team led by Sheila Durand, and which will appear in many of my upcoming novels – make their debut appearance in this book. You don’t want to miss this!

Please download a copy this weekend, read the hell out of it, and then write a world-class review.

Thanks!

Excerpt

“Just take it easy, Virgil, just take-it-fucking-easy!”

The others looked to Virgil, and it was clear Sheila’s words weren’t getting through to him. Checkpoints weren’t anyone’s favorite thing, that was for sure, but Virgil just happened to like them less than most. He’d lost four iPhones, two iPods, a Virginia pocketknife, $327.28 and one wallet. It’d been that last that’d stung the most, not because of the money it’d contained – that one had had but $14 when it was confiscated – but because of something else, the last picture on earth that Virgil had had of Patty Lamarrs, the hottest piece of ass that Rotura Central High had ever seen, and the personification to Virgil of the ultimate ‘one that got away.’

It was with great trepidation, therefore, that the others got out of the car and watched as Virgil was brought over to the side of the road. They were watching a man ready to snap, and they all knew it. All, that is, but the guards.

“ID!” the first guard barked out in a heavy Central-African accent, something he’d said to all the others as well.

“Fuck!” Virgil shouted. “You bastards have my ID! You have it the same place you’ve got my electronics and my money and my Goddamn picture of Patty Lamarrs!”

The guard nodded over at two of his companions, men with semi-automatic weapons. They began to walk forward.

“Fuck,” Mathis said under his breath.

“Got your snub-nose?” Sheila whispered to Antoine at her side.

“Think I’m crazy? Of course I fucking have it!” the IT man said.

Sheila laughed. “No, just–”

Her words were interrupted as Virgil shouted.

“Fuck you!”

The others watched in wide-eyed horror as he pushed one of the advancing guards away, kicked the machine gun from another’s hands, then reached for his pocket.

“Fuck!” Mathis said again, this time shaking his head and rubbing at his eyes.

Ahead of them Virgil pulled out his .45 and smiled a wicked grin as he took aim and fired. He hit the guard he’d first pushed, the one with the machine gun still in his hands. The man went down with a bullet in his stomach, squealing like a pig.

Virgil turned his attention back to the man whose gun he’d kicked clean from his hands. The man’s weapon was on the ground, too far away for him to reach. Instead he grabbed the lone grenade strapped to his chest and pulled the pin.

“Virgil, no!” Sheila shouted.

It was too late. Virgil fired right as the man pulled the pin. The force of the bullet sent the man flying back a couple feet, right toward Antoine and Ben. They rushed to get out of the way at the same time the man hit the ground and the grenade went off.

BOOM!

“Aaahhh!” Antoine shouted as he was blown several feet by the blast.

“Fuck!” Virgil said as he lowered his arm from his head.

Ahead of him was a small crater, a few feet from it the torso of the guard that’d pulled the grenade. He couldn’t see the man’s lower-half anywhere. A few feet back was Antoine’s leg, again, no sight of his body either.

“Fuck!” Sheila shouted as she got up from where she’d dove to the ground. She was bleeding slightly from quite a few shrapnel wounds.

“You fucking idiot!” Mathis said, rushing up to Virgil and hitting him across the head.

“Where’s Antoine?” Sheila shouted.

“There,” Murray said from the side of the truck, pointing several feet away. The others looked and saw the uranium plant’s chief IT man lying in a heap, his eyes wide in death.

“Ben?” Mathis said.

“There,” Virgil pointed, and the others looked to see the head Areva representative, or at least the few pieces of him that were discernable.

“Well that’s just fucking great!” Murray said. “Now what the hell are we supposed to do?”

Mathis shook his head. “Get on the phone and tell Washington we’ve got problems, that’s what!”

Get this book free, this weekend only!

Free Fiction Friday #49: Activity Near the Silos

2/13/2015

Note: This is the forty-ninth post in Free Fiction Fridays.

These are short stories put up each Friday that you can read for free. By the next Friday the post will be taken down and a new one will go up. Enjoy!

This post was removed on 02/20/15

©2013 BigSkyWords.com Privacy Policy Terms of Use Contact ©2013 BigSkyWords.com