Karda: Adalta Vol. I Chapter Two

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Mid-morning the next day Bren left Marta in a small market town, and she walked on toward Rashiba Prime. Traffic crowded the road—wagons, riders, walkers like her with packs and bulging sacks. This world was a mix of ancient and crude with elements salvaged from pre-collapse Earth as were the other diaspora planets she'd worked on. But here there was no high technology. A man pedaled by on a three-wheeled cycle, an enormous pack in the basket on the back. A family rode in an open carriage with an ornate brass bound metal box behind the driver’s seat, a thin wisp of steam rising from a small pipe and no horses harnessed to it.

She didn't trust herself to talk to anyone. As the road grew busier, it was as if her vision were layered, and messages from everything and everyone around her echoed and bounced in her head. She had to step to the side of the narrow road and prop herself against a tree when a man and a woman in a buggy drove past. They sat silent and upright next to each other. His anger and her fear threatened to send Marta to her knees. And the bit in the mule's mouth pinched. It was too much.

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On Writing October 17, 2017

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I spent most of this last week at my sister, Alice’s. (Alice V Brock, author of prize-winning mid-grade novel River of Cattle) We worked the whole time.

I spent most of one day with Kim Davis and her daughter, Jackie, my web gurus, so I could finally figure out how to post here, and the rest of the time on my book 2 and Alice’s book 2. I screwed up trying to post this, and it will have to wait until Kim can walk me through it. AGAIN.

Alice got most of the chapter that is the mid-point crisis of her second novel in her Will and Buck series. And she jerked and tugged and pulled a rough and sketchy plot outline out of me for my third novel in the Adalta Series, Falling. It was tough. I don’t plot. Or rather, I use the I Shot an Arrow into the Air, It Fell to Ground I Know Not Where Plot Method. 

It remains to be seen how long I can stick to it. When I tried to plot Hunter, vol. 2, I ended up not even using one of the main characters I’d worked so hard to develop. 

While you are here, check out the new cover (by Kurt Nilson) for Hunter on the Books page. It would be great if you commented to tell me what you think of it.

Chapter One in the Karda serial follows. I’ll post Chapter Two in two weeks. If you sign up for my newsletter, I'll let you know when I post it.