Excerpt

0 comments on "Things I’m growing; Projects and Such"

Post thumbnail

It’s gardening time again. I’m not the best at it, but I keep trying.

Things I’m growing so-far:
Jalapeño
Cherry tomatoes
Lettuce
Bell pepper
Pumpkin
Watermelon
Pet grass
Strawberries

I’ve got tons of other seeds, but I lack the space to grow them in once they’re big.

“Don’t plant where I gotta mow.”
“We don’t need a bunch of holes in the yard.”

So I’m looking at container plants, and I’ll maybe use a corner of my uncle’s garden. But small and sustainable is what I’m looking at.

I also need to look around for a safe moth spray. They come and lay their eggs on the fruit trees. If they can, they try to get their babies amongst the blossoms. It’s awful.

*

Stuff I’m working on:

ATR and Tuesday Night, of course.

Plus drawing and painting so my Ren’Py game will be awesome. People like graphics in games *shrug*.

I’mma be throwing Overwatch[1] to the public. There was some interest, and I do need to expand the details of the Kanon-verse.

*

[1] In Tuesday Night, the Teen Demis and many other superhero groups receive orders and oversight from Overwatch. Attached to the CMPF and the budding Metahuman Affairs Bureau (MAB), Overwatch is an organization setup and funded by the Tobias Foundation.

Started by Warrick Tobias upon the diagnoses of his brain tumor[2], Overwatch was founded in memorium of his long-time friend Blue Ice. Killed the year before in battle against the Hammer of Doom, Blue Ice had been one of the nation’s most beloved superheroes.

In honor of Blue Ice, many superheroes volunteered their time and expertise to the Overwatch program. It became the place where superheroes unfit for the field could still serve. Guiding, helping, and reining in the next generation.

Overwatch is a long-time organization in the Kanon-verse

*

[2] Dr. Zee had to get those brains from somewhere. And as the Kanon-verse operates at a different time-rate to the Heroes & Villains universe, Kanon-Warrick suffered some irreparable brain damage before he met Vereint. Very sad.

As such, Starburst was enrolled in so-called Charm School, where his psionic metability was studied and honed. By the time the side-effects were discovered, it was too late. Starburst had renamed himself Darkstar and half of Megacity was in his thrall.

The Wall surrounding and segregating Darkstar’s Megacity was built in record time. The Omega-class metahuman stood on the tip of the tallest rooftop spire and watched the construction. It was a relief when he didn’t intervene.

Supplies are delivered daily to the four Gates built into the Wall. As the agreement stands, as long as the Darksters never leave their walled city, they will receive all they need to survive and serve their “Dark God[3].”

a page out of Heroes & Villains, a novel by Harper Kingsley
Heroes & Villains, by Harper Kingsley
page out of Heroes & Villains, a novel by Harper Kingsley
Heroes & Villains, by Harper Kingsley

Excerpt Title: Overwatch
Author: Harper Kingsley
World: Kanon-verse
Character: Warrick Reidenger Tobias, Caspian Dukes
Genre: superhero, angst, friendship, major illness

Warrick Reidenger Tobias was packing for a business trip to Chicago when it felt as though the world suddenly whirled around him. He staggered against the bed, dropping the navy silk tie he held as his hand lost all strength. Multicolor lights flared behind his eyes.

He didn’t realize he’d dropped until his knees hit the floor. His head bounced against the carpet. His body twitched and shivered uncontrollably.

It was his first seizure.

It wasn’t his last.

~ ~ ~

The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him. Dozens of specialists and days spent in drafty paper gowns having his blood sucked out by needles and his brain scanned by machines. He felt like a lab experiment.

And at the end of it all, there were still no answers, just speculation.

He hated feeling helpless. But there was nothing he could do.

So he continued with his life and pretended that everything was all right. As though faking normal would *make* everything normal.

He did such a good job at pretending that he started believing it after awhile. As though the past few weeks had been a dream and he was finally awake.

He was free to go about his regularly scheduled life of superheroing and presiding over a large and powerful company.

And then there was another seizure and another one and another one, so rapid and close together that he didn’t recognize what was happening until after the third one, the BIG one. The one where he finally had to admit there was a problem because Caspian had seen and just wouldn’t let it go.

/EXCERPT

*

[3] Which is an irony, as I’ve been considering having the Kanon-Darkstar go on walkabout after ATR. Events progress, time gets wacky, and the God of Light comes into being.

After a timeless eternity floating through the nothingness, he. creates Sindarek, his brother and the God of Chaos, and later a sister, Goddess of the Night.

Events are explained when Rue’s Chosen enact the Play of Light in his honor. But basically Sindarek gets jealous and attacks the God of Light, destroying his physical form, and beginning his cycle of wearing human avatar bodies (like Rue). During the fight, there was a tear in spacetime, and the God of Light’s blood ended up in Universe A, creating the human gods.

Due to the humans of Universe A spreading from their now-hostile universe to neighboring realities, where they are gods in human form, there is a contamination of multiverse not just with the introduction of the human gene mutation known as the Nor-gene (resulting in metahumans) there is also the spread of the nectar bee mutation caused by the multiversal adventures of the superheroine known as Blue Devil aka Blue Fairy aka Fairy Godmother aka The Godmother of Horns.

*

Anyways, I’ve got stuff percolating in my brain, and I’m trying to get them all down on paper.

2 comments on "Excerpt: “Overwatch”-segment; Drawing; Whatever"

Title: Overwatch
Author: Harper Kingsley
Universe: Kanon-verse (alternate universe version of Heroes & Villains)

EXCERPT –

Here I am, he thought. One day older. One day closer.

He squeezed his eyes closed. Drew a deep breath in through his nose. Then he pressed the button that raised the top portion of the hospital bed to an upright position. He clenched his teeth against the pain, feeling the lines around his nose and eyes pull tight.

If he lived, he would carry reminders of this experience forever.

Finally the pain shifted, released. He could breathe. The tears weren’t threatening to squeeze their way past his eyelids.

He took a few moments to regain his composure. Then he shifted the fingers of his left hand onto the call button. Concentrated. And pressed.

Thirty seconds later a nurse appeared. “Good morning, Blue Ice. Are you ready for your pain medications now?”

Warrick thought about saying No. Thought about pretending to be strong for one more minute and continuing to suffer through this agony that had become his life. Then he thought about cool relief from the nerve pain caused by his continuous brain seizures.

“Sir?” the nurse asked. “Is that a Yes or a No on the pain medication at this time? I need a verbal reply, as per your instructions.”

Sometimes Warrick cursed his past-self. That self-assured fool that had never truly believed he could be brought so low. Who never would have imagined a time when all he’d want was for someone else to make the hard choices, because he hurt too much to even care.

“Y-y-yessss,” he hissed out through his teeth.

Then there was sweet relief at the hands of his beautiful caretaker. He didn’t know her name, but he loved her with all the fervor of someone finally released from the grasp of wretched misery.

He drifted for some timeless state of being.

A few precious moments completely free from pain.

Time was pressing in on itself. Soon these moments wouldn’t exist. He would count his blessings in seconds, not minutes. Then milliseconds. Then no relief at all. Pain would become his world.

And then he would die.

I hate this, he thought for the millionth time. Why won’t someone come save me for once?

The door slammed open hard enough to take a gouge out of the wall. Caspian didn’t pause in his entrance, coming right to the side of the bed, his grin a fierce baring of teeth. His eyes were like blue fire.

Warrick’s breath caught. He was all aquiver. He felt a desperate hope blooming in his chest.

“I found it. I found it!” Caspian reached his hand toward Warrick’s face, then ever-so-gently, careful of his friend’s propensity for pain, brushed his finger along the arch of Warrick’s cheek. “As long as you hold on, you miserable fuck, you’re going to be out of this hospital bed in a month, walking around. But you’ve gotta hold on, you hear me War? Can you hold on?”

Warrick drew in a shuddering breath. He formed the words slowly, carefully, wanting himself to be clearly heard. “Y-es. Ho-lding onn iss hw-wha-at I do b-es-t.”

/END EXCERPT

crossposted at Kimichee.com

*

I’ve been drawing a bit, which has really helped my imagination come up with storylines and characters.

I got a copy of “Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces with Jane Davenport” and I’ve been trying to make the people I draw look more attractive and less lopsided. I really like this book. I’ve been carrying it around with me, and I’ve been drawing with colored pencil so I can’t erase anything, and my people’s lips are beginning to look like lips.

*

About the Warrick thing up there ^ ^ –– Things are a bit different in the Kanon-verse, and not just where “Pulse of the City” is concerned. It’s why things are so different in “Tuesday Night.”

1 comment on "Excerpt “All That Remains” – from Chapter Five"

Title: All That Remains – excerpt Chapter Five
Author: Harper Kingsley
Genre: superhero. science fiction. action. mm.

EXCERPT-

They didn’t get to enjoy the afterglow for even five minutes before someone rang the front doorbell. Then rang it again, and again, and again, before leaving their finger on the button for a long time.

One look at Vereint’s darkening expression had Warrick climbing out of bed. “I’ve got it.”

He pulled on a pair of black sweatpants and a loose gray tee shirt.

“No underwear?” Vereint asked.

“I don’t care if whoever that is sees me free-balling,” Warrick said.

“But it might be one of Nicky’s friends. Put on your robe,” Vereint ordered. Then rolled on his stomach and burrowed his face into his pillow. “I’mma sleep now.”

Warrick rolled his eyes fondly. “If you weren’t so cute…” He picked his robe up off a chair and slipped his arms in the sleeves, tying the belt as he left the bedroom and padded barefoot down the stairs.

Whoever was on the porch rang the doorbell again.

“Okay, okay. I’m coming!” Warrick called. He could feel himself getting irritated. His evening with Vereint was being spoiled by this interruption.

He forced himself not to jerk the door open. The last thing he wanted to deal with was a broken front door. Instead he —-purposely—- turned the knob and opened the door.

“Can I help you?” he asked the delivery man in a frosty tone.

“It’s a good thing you’re here. I was about to leave.” The guy proferred a clipboard. “I need a signature, please.”

Warrick took the clipboard but didn’t sign until the delivery man showed him the package with Vereint’s assumed name on the label. Then he scrawled a signature on the digital paper and exchanged the clipboard for the loaf of bread-sized box.

“Thanks,” he growled, then slammed the door and locked it. He waited until he heard the truck start up and drive away before carrying the package upstairs to Vereint.

“Who was it?” Vereint asked when Warrick came in the room.

“A delivery for you.” Warrick set the box on the bed and began stripping back down. He wasn’t giving up a rare opportunity to lounge naked.

“Hedonist,” Vereint teased. He didn’t lift his head from his pillow, just reached out a hand to snake the box across the covers toward himself. He fumbled at the tape with one hand, eventually pulling it off the lid in one strip.

Warrick climbed into his side of the bed and sat with his back against the headboard. His pillow was somewhere on the floor. “What’d you get?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“So it could be a bomb, and you’re opening it on our bed?”

“Yes.” Vereint fumbled the box lid open and tilted it toward Warrick. “What’s in there?”

Warrick reached out to move the brown packing paper out of the way. “It looks like a creepy doll. Is someone going to try and serial kill us now?”

Vereint snorted. “I’d like to see someone try.” He lifted the doll out of the box by its head, tilting it so he could get a good look. “Hm. That is creepy. Who’s it from?”

Warrick glanced at the widely smiling bald ceramic head with the hand and foot-less white cloth body and fought a shudder. He looked at the outside of the box, then the inside. He even flipped it over to show there was nothing inside.

“There’s no name,” he said. “Someone went out of their way to send you a creepy doll anonymously. Strange and suspicious.”

Vereint rolled over and sat up, the bedcovers pooling over his bare lap. He picked up the doll with both hands and examined it closely. “Whoever made this knows how to sew, yet purposely made it look amateurish. It’s a taunt.”

“What–“

Vereint whipped the doll around by one leg and smacked the head against his night table. The head cracked apart, a small slip of paper falling out.

Vereint snatched the paper out of the air and spread it open. “‘I know who you are,'” he read aloud. “What the shit is this?”

/end excerpt

*

Wanna know who these guys are before reading “All That Remains”? Check them out first in “Heroes & Villains“, then follow it up with “Allies & Enemies.”

0 comments on "EXCERPT: some sci-fi thing"

Seiver hit the ground hard. Thankfully it was kneepads first, though it still felt as though his bones were coming apart. He immediately muscles to his feet with a mental note to watch what he was doing.

He wasn’t getting shot.

Amongst the maelstrom of returning fire, Seiver focused on his job. The reason he was paid the big bucks.

He crouched in the center of the room and began assembling the Anum Porta. His hands were steady as he slid the frame parts together. He’d practiced until he could almost match the base record.

Sweat was gathering around his neck. He could feel his bandanna getting soggy.

He willed the sweat not to form on his forehead. But he was only human. Heavy droplets gathered across his forehead and trickled like tears down to his jawline.

In his peripheral he recognized that his protection squad had dwindled from 6 to 4. It was the kind of realization that usually came to him when he was on downtime. The fact that his platoon-mates were dying for him.

He shook off the flicker of shock. He didn’t have time right now.

Part A into Part B, he thought. The portal was nearly complete. Then he could grab up his gun and guard it.

Something slammed into his back and he shouldered it aside without pausing in his work. It was the body of Private Hoskins. Seiver’s brain helpfully identified the nametag as the face was gone. A sound escaped his throat before he swallowed it back.

Not now.

Now as for bolting the last pieces in place and snapping the ring into the stand.

There was a sound like angel’s singing. A rush of melodic harmony as the circuit was completed and the miniature-Gate connected with the Intergalactic Ansible Network.

The Gate glowed red briefly and Seiver quickly got behind it.

A ringing tone was held a second longer than any other, then there was a loud GONG! Sound. And the Gate snapped open. A flare of blinding light swiftly obscured by Gatepods.

The capsules struck like bullets, smashing through walls and bodies. When they stopped, the lids burst open to release the marines inside.