Welcome to weekend writing warriors. Many fine authors, and me, contribute short snippets for your delectation. This is the start of a new work, Illegal Aliens. It is something of a cross between a horror story, a science fiction tale, and a romance.
Roland awoke after bringing an attractive young woman home, alone. Something of a surprise, and in some ways a shock. His mobile chirruped into life and the works manager – where he’d been called to examine a mysterious block of Roman concrete – told him the “bloody German bomb, it went.” A knock on the door interrupts their conversation just after Mr Shah explains that one of his workers couldn’t even stand the firecrackers on Guy Fawkes.
One of a somewhat menacing pair of visitors finished last week with “that is irrelevant.” Maybe for them. The visitors found a mysterious note in what looks vaguely like Arabic, in a somewhat illegal search. Roland, in a mixture of embarrassment and pride read it (or at least its summary) last week. Another element from Roland’s past gets introduced this week.
A cat scratching at the outside door interrupted them; the woman rose, “I’ll get it,” and let an animal in; a sleek, dark black animal, with glossy clean fur shot in and jumped into Roland’s lap; she, for it wasn’t a tom, purred; after inspecting the room as if she owned it, she turned and hissed at his two visitors.
“Did you own a cat … it’s not in your files, and I don’t see any cat dishes.”
“I guess I do now,” Roland stroked the cat, which had resumed purring and nuzzling him; he asked his uninvited guests “Are you done with me?”
The woman said, “Not yet;” then her mobile chittered away, playing ‘Rule Britannia’ as a ringtone.
“Not exactly subtle,” Roland said.
The man replied, “We’re not undercover.”
Roland and the man both listened to half of the conversation.
“So it really is Demotic.”
“A love note … that’s what he said too; read it to us.”
“No … it’s to Roland Stevens, he’s a lecturer at the local,” She handed the phone to Roland, “I’d sent a copy to our specialist, at Oxford. Professor Welchmann.”
My sincere apologies for abusing semi-colons.
Illegal aliens is up for order on Amazon. I tried using kindle creator on it to control dividers and formatting, and worked from a pdf file. The results are not as good as I’d hoped, but Amazon – in its wisdom won’t let me change it now that the kindle create program actually works from word files. It has, as usual, laid an egg.
You can get a copy of the first four chapters on instafreebie.
You can find my, well our, works here.
The Art of Deception, first in a series of late Georgian/early Regency spy novels is available for preorder. You can get the first part here.
A black cat adds hints of sorcery to an already edgy tale.
Nice job, Amelia. I always enjoy the inclusion of ‘critters’ into stories. I suspect, however, that is not some random stray.
I have a feeling this cat is not who she appears to be.
I love the new character – i.e. the rather slinky black cat. Like others, I have the feeling there is more to this feline than meets the eye!
Ah, nice kitty? Great snippet.
I wonder how much she is going to cramp their style.