Tag Archives: science fiction

“Henchman” – Randy the Tech #1A

Posted on by
Reply

Right. This is part one of a two part chapter about Randy the Tech. This is still a bit rough, but hopefully not too rough. Don’t worry, all of these stories go through an editor before being published. I just like to give away pretty much every chapter for free now before actually publishing.

*
Henchman – Author’s Note
Henchman – The Day Dave Subbed
Henchman – Randy the Tech #1A

Randy the Tech Tests Out A Mind Control Unit

 “Hey, dude,” Washington said to me from his side of the doorway.

I looked over at my co-worker, a huge, scary, pipe-hittin’ brother who towered over me by a good six inches, and could snap me in half as if I were dry spaghetti. He looked distressed, yet his voice was casual, calm. Maybe he looked distressed. When he gets all crazy, his eyes get real big, and it makes me begin to shake inside because I start getting little movies playing in my head that feature Washington on a rampage, picking me up, and literally pile-driving me through the concrete floor like we were in a cartoon. But he didn’t look like enraged Washington. He looked like he might have had an accident in his fatigues.

The fact that he sounded casual and called me “dude” made me possibly more frightened of him. Washington didn’t talk much, but when he did, it always seemed like he was a drill instructor and you were some lowly piece of shit new recruit that just caused the entire platoon to lose out on a three day weekend where they’d all planned to hit Tijuana for some female company. I’d never heard him say a single casual thing to anyone but the Vils, and that was maybe three times in the eight years I’d known him. All three times, he looked like he was strategizing just how quickly he could kill everyone in the room and escape.

Continue reading →

“Henchman” – The Day Dave Subbed

Posted on by
Reply

So… here’s some more of this ‘Henchman’ book from my uh… buddy… Mike Williams. It’s probably really rough, as I… er, I mean HE just wrote it, so if you notice errors, rest assured that HE will get around to squashing them before HE actually charges money for this nonsense. More to come!

Henchman – Author’s Note
Henchman – The Day Dave Subbed
Henchman – Randy the Tech #1A

The Day Dave Subbed

I watched Dave hustle down the hallway toward me, still tucking in his dark red shirt into his jet black fatigues. He grinned when he came to a stop on his side of the doorway. I nodded toward his crotch to let him know that he’d missed something. He looked down, back up at me with a sheepish grin, then back to his zipper, giving it a light tug.

“Why are you checking out my package, anyway?” he asked after finishing his task and turning to look straight ahead, standing at attention like me.

“It’s obvious with your tighty-whiteys and showing up half-naked,” I replied without looking at him. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?” I asked, finally glancing over at him. “This is still Washington’s gig for the next eight weeks.”

“What’s the matter, I’m not black enough for you?” he asked, doing his best to stifle a laugh.

“It’s not funny,” I said in a low voice. “The dude scares the bejesus out of me.”

Washington, that’s the only name we’ve ever gotten from him, is a fellow henchman. He’s six and a half feet tall, chiseled like that guy on the Old Spice commercial, and about ten times more frightening than when the Old Spice guy gets all crazy-looking like he’s about to rip a car door off and hurl it into the sun. If he wasn’t so scary, it would be funny how militant he is about everything, not just white people. It’s like the guy is always on, his inner amplifier cranked to eleven.

Continue reading →

“Henchman” – a new series of stories

Posted on by
Reply

Right. So. Carly and I talked about this idea, and I sort of just went with it. We hear all about the superheroes and supervillains, but we never really hear from the henchmen, the guys who make all of the magic happen (well, for anyone who doesn’t have a superpower).

Henchman – Author’s Note
Henchman – The Day Dave Subbed
Henchman – Randy the Tech #1A

Henchman – by Mike Williams
Author’s Note & Introduction

I bet you’re wondering why anyone would write a book about henchmen. Actually, I bet you’re looking at the cover of this book again and asking yourself “who the hell is ‘Mike Williams?’. There’s all kinds of books and TV shows and movies and comics and novels and action figures and pop culture when it comes to superheroes and supervillains. But let’s be honest and admit that you know nothing about how this semi-hidden culture actually operates.

For instance, did you know that superheroes have almost no henchmen? And yes, I’m counting the fact that the good guys (I call bullshit on this, by the way, but that’s for later) don’t call their helpers “henchmen.” So let’s say that Jake Donovan, the famous superhero detective, has his bombshell secretary Lila Donovan, and his two junior detective sniffers, Kyle & Donna. To you, they’re sidekicks, but to everyone in the business, they’re henchmen. Just because they work for superheros instead of supervillains doesn’t change the fact that they’re lackeys, grunts, handlers, and any number of things that all of the henchmen that work for supervillains are.

Anyway, superheroes rarely rely on henchmen to do their jobs, yet supervillains employ armies of men and women like me. Literally, in some cases, armies. Why? See? You’re already partially hooked.

 *

Continue reading →

“General Megatron: Defender of the Galaxy, Saviour of the Human Race, Hero of the Human Resistance” – Chapter 1

Posted on by
Reply

Yay! A children’s story! There are no bad words in this, and it should be suitable for all of the ornery little Calvins in the world (yes, this is a bit of an ode to Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes).

CHAPTER ONE: The Doom Lord

 General Megatron heard the gnashing of teeth and froze in the middle of his latest scheme to escape the forced labor prison camp he’d been trapped in for more than six years. The roar of rage echoing through the twists and turns of the cell block’s corridors from below made him shiver. It was a noise that was far too familiar to his ears, one that he’d unfortunately encountered far too many times before. The creature’s heavy, clawed feet scraped and crashed into the floor in a succession of minor earthquakes, punctuated by the enraged bellowing coming from the galaxy’s most feared tyrant: The Doom Lord.

“SPACEMAN!!!” howled the monster as it reached the prison deck of the ship. “I’m coming for you!”
Continue reading →

My Wife Does Not Exist (and Yours Might Not Either!)

Posted on by
Reply

My wife, Carly, is a nerd. I just read a discussion elsewhere from some ‘dude’ who claimed since he didn’t game with females and never saw them in any of the gaming stores or such, they didn’t actually exist. Apparently the ‘women’ online are just us dudes pretending to be women because it’s our fantasy or we just don’t like how it seems to be a one-sided sausage fest.

So since she doesn’t exist, then I guess she isn’t someone that will kick the %#@$@ out of you in Team Fortress 2 round after round (as a medic too, haha, you n00b).

There was never a time period of time where she would blow your ship up in Eve-Online, capture your life pod, then force you to pay a ransom because she was a feared lowsec pilot in a damn good pirate alliance. And if you didn’t pay it, you could kiss your life pod and all those precious, expensive implants goodbye. Hello clone vat!

She’s never been ruthless enough to repeatedly wreck her poor, defenseless spouse with shells or stupid stars in Mario Kart (all versions) just so she can always win. (Dr. Mario, Tetris, and Carcassonne also).

She’s not the type of enigma that knows what a ‘replicant’ is, as well as knows what cylons are, the Ark of the Covenant, Jimmy Olsen, Cortanna, wtf a ‘WAAAAAAAGH!’ banner is, what ‘chummer’ means, fell in love with Alistair, cheers Ripley on, still loves Ewoks (remember, she’s a she, so we can forgive her this one transgression), and still hates that Terry Goodkind spent almost 9 of the 12 books re-explaining the story EVERY SINGLE TIME. WE GET IT MR. GOODKIND. She, me, and three others never 5-manned Deathwing. Continue reading →

Writer’s Rant: Judging A Book By Its Cover

Posted on by
Reply

So does anyone remember that old sci-fi movie “Ice Pirates”? One of those ‘so bad it’s good’ space comedies?

I’m kinda toying with a ‘pulp’ idea along those lines. Maybe a series of short novellas written in the pulp style but with modern science fiction ideas. Heck, maybe even some horror stuff too. Street gangs.

I can call it “Dollar Fiction” and then give it a subtitle like “Dollar Fiction: Ice Pirates #1” or something. “Dollar Fiction: Some Other Crap Here #3”. Better yet, I’ll deliberately make them all have plain covers that cost me nothing, and in the blurb, it will say something like “Dollar Fiction’s goal is to give you modern pulp at affordable prices. Our secondary goal is to prove that a book should never be judged by its cover.”

Because I’m never going to stop being annoyed that people still judge the contents of a book by what’s on the cover. It’s ridiculous. How the hell did anyone read some boring shit like “A Tale of Two Cities” when the covers were made of stretched leather or whatever DIDN’T have 4-color, hand-drawn, original artwork (or stock photos pasted together with some lettering on them)?

Have you ever seen what a book looked like before some dude (probably a dude in NYC) decided that paperbacks were easy to make and easy to put all kinds of crazy drawings on the cover? Yeah. Books covers were as artistic as a painted wall.
Continue reading →

The Evolution of Custom Art #2

Posted on by
Reply

Hello again, everyone. I just received another update from Daniel Johnson, the nice gentleman doing custom art for two of my books.

Today’s update is for “Extraction,” a first-contact / alien invasion novel that I’ll be publishing sometime before the summer (hopefully).

Extraction - rough full scene 01

Extraction – rough full scene 01

 

This is a more detailed scene of the final cover, and I’ll throw up some more images in a second to give you some more idea on how the ‘victims’ on the machine evolved.

 

Continue reading →

Q&A With Science Fiction Writers – #1: Richard Tongue

Posted on by
Reply

One of my fellow SciFi authors, Edward Lake, interviewed a lot of his colleagues (including me!), and has started posted them on his blog. A lot of us authors are interested enough, and we hope you’ll be interested enough as well, to read some of them.

Who knows, you might find a new author that you’ve never heard of and begin enjoying their work!

First up: #1 – Richard Tongue

EL: What inspired you to be a writer?

RT: Wow, that’s a long story! I’ve been reading fantasy and science fiction since I was a very small child, and I think the two genres have always fascinated me; further, I’ve been a complete spaceflight nut since I was about the same age. That definitely explains the genre, but as for writing itself – I guess I just want to tell stories. I think it’s as simple as that!

EL: How did you become a science fiction writer?

RT: Lots of reading around the genre and a good grounding in actual science were the keys here, as well as an understanding of history and current events. I think those are the keys to success as a science-fiction writer specifically; as for the craft, it was a question of writing the ‘million words of crap’, I think.

(hit the link above to read the rest of the interview and more!)

Ability – Part III (Update)

Posted on by
Reply

Key kids, so I finally decided to publish Part III of “Ability.” I’ve been kinda holding it back because I had serious doubts about how readers would feel about it. It’s definitely where the story begins to take a much darker tone in preparation for the next book, which will be called “Progeny.”

After almost six weeks of waffling, my wife beat me about the neck and head with a blunt object to let me know I should publish it. Readers want to know how the first book ends, and as I was reminded by her, my major rule is to not worry about what readers will think and just write the stories I want to write.

This isn’t supposed to mean that I don’t give a damn at all what readers think. I most certainly do, but in terms of when I’m writing a story, I most certainly don’t. I always write stories that I want to read that no one else is writing. My stories are darker, grittier, harsher than the majority of self-published authors (and a majority of traditionally-published authors as well).

For some reason, I’ve spent the last six weeks worrying too much about the reaction from some readers. Part of this stems from the fact that Ability is a story I’m charging readers to read, and part of it stems from the fact that I’m only a few more days away from publishing my ‘debut’ novel (my first full-length novel, and one I will charge money for). The novel, “Alive, or Just Breathing” is a Young Adult / New Adult fiction novel, and it is pretty damn dark. I think having two books of this nature at once have messed with my psyche a little.

On a brighter note, I’ve finished one time-travel story, 60,000 words (about the length of the full “Ability” story). I’m 50,000 words into a second time-travel story, which should end up at about 100,000 words or so. I plan on combing them into a single book, giving readers two books for the price of one. The finished story is a supposed to be a bit of a light-hearted romp through time as an agent chases an ‘evil’ scientist. The Work In Progress is a bit light-hearted as well, but it has a much darker theme (notice a pattern here???). I had to stop writing last night after 3k words as I kind of depressed myself and freaked myself out a bit haha.

Anyway, that’s the update. Stay tuned for “Ability – Part III” and soon after the full “Ability” omnibus edition (in paperback!). Any day now, “Alive, or Just Breathing” will be available to read as well. I’m planning on publishing anywhere from 6-10 books in 2014, and a number of short stories and novellas. Things are picking up!

Travis