***WARNING***   ***Kids keep out***

Over the next week I am going to be posting something that is not at all like the things you are used to seeing here. I am posting a short story… well, it is a long short story… or a very short novel… but there is going to be violence and swearing and sex… as in perhaps the weirdest lesbian love scene ever written…

So keep the kids away. I know I pride myself on being more or less family friendly here. And I will let you in on a little secret… that might even classify as a *spoiler alert*… but in my action/adventure/comedy science fiction novels, nobody ever dies… well, one guy might, off where we can’t see it… even though there are battles with space pirates, unarmed combat duels with alien mercenaries, space ships shooting missiles over the Golden Gate Bridge, a huge alien invasion from another dimension and assassins galore.

Ha! I managed to plug my books while plugging this story.

The story I am getting ready to share with you is a special project that I did with Jason, my older daughter’s boyfriend. He does some wicked awesome 3-D animation and art. He likes to do high-tech stuff. We came up with the idea of doing a story where each chapter was highlighted by one awesome work of art of some fancy killing machine.

But we threw in some twists. In some of these, he did the picture of some futuristic piece of military hardware and then I wrote the story around the picture. And in some, I came up with the next part of the story, based on some cool weapon, and then he had to create the weapon in 3-D. A few we just came up with a good idea and we each worked on our parts separately, but that did sort of make it hard for me to describe the piece of tech accurately.

So buckle up. This is a story that covers a lot of ground. It is set in the near future… maybe on this planet in this dimension, or maybe not, it doesn’t really matter. But this story has warfare, high-tech weapons, graphic violence and death, bravery, terror and cowardice, love, betrayal, good and evil, and a twist that you have to figure out as you go along.

The story throws you right into the deep end and makes you figure out what is happening.

Oh, and I haven’t really decided what to name the whole story yet, so you can help with that if you want. So far, each chapter is just named after the piece of technology the story sort of centers around. And feel free to edit… if you spot any errors, just put them in a comment. I am going to try to send this story to some science fiction magazines and writing contests. I feel like my writing is beginning to spread around the world. Thanks to all of you.

Since I am posting the whole story… and not leaving the end out like I did with the murder mystery, I will put this in a category to make it easier to read all at once. But I might just be doing this until it is all posted… no annoying breaks for funny pictures of me… sigh…

Stay tuned for the first chapter later today.