I'm looking for a reader or two for a real-world science fiction novel. It's been through revisions, a couple of good betas, and a professional editor, so it's pretty polished. I'd like whatever I can get (anything from a one-paragraph overall to line-by-line). Mostly, I'm looking for someone to tell me what's wrong with it. If part is boring or hard to believe or just dumb, say it. It's pretty hard to hurt my feelings.
I have a little time, so I would swap with somebody else as long as yours is relatively polished and ready to go (not a first draft). I would read mystery, suspense/thriller, sci-fi, or fantasy (although I'm not very well-read in fantasy). No romance. I put the first chapter below so you can see if it sounds like something that trips your trigger. Message me with your email and I'll send the whole thing as a Word doc. It is 107k words, but you can just read as much as you want. If you want to swap, send me the first chapter or two of yours. If it isn't up my alley, I'll let you know.
Thanks,
Eric
Leon, Spain, October 5, 2011
John Waters stopped at a narrow, battered door set in the stucco wall. Live heavy metal music rolled out of the bar across the street with palpable force. He knocked softly three times. The door opened a crack. A dim, sickly light spilled out onto the sidewalk and a voice said, “¿Sí?”
“¿Es Ricardo allí?” Waters asked.
A hand came out of the crack between the door and jamb, palm up. Waters reached into an inside pocket of his brown jacket and pulled out an envelope. The envelope was stuffed with three thousand Euros. He put it into the disembodied hand without speaking. The hand withdrew and the door closed.
Less than a minute later, the hand re-appeared holding a small brown paper sack. As soon as he took the sack, the hand disappeared and the door clicked shut. Waters stuck the small bag in the same inside jacket pocket the money had come out of and turned back the way he came. He glanced left and right as he got to the main street. John Waters knew his gray brush cut hair and weathered and creased face were out of place in the youthful crowd, but nobody seemed to care.
The main street of the Barrio Humédo, the “wet district” pulsed with the noise of the nightly party crowd. The amount of alcohol that was consumed in the tapas bars, pubs, clubs, and restaurants gave the district its name and on this Wednesday night the parties were just getting started. Live heavy metal, jazz and techno mingled in a cacophony of sound.
Waters stayed on the main road for two blocks, then turned down a quiet side street. He pulled the brown bag of heroin back out of the pocket of his rumpled brown corduroy jacket and tossed it in a trashcan. He dialed his cell phone. After a pause, he said, “It’s in play. I’m headed to the airport.”
He clicked the phone off, hailed a cab, and turned up his collar against the night air.
The lilting cadence of Spanish wafted to him from all sides on this more subdued street where couples walked arm-in-arm. He suspected that the immersion in the Spanish language would bring back the nightmares when he slept on the plane to China, but tried not to think about it. He focused instead on the job before him. For three years, he had been waiting to set these events in motion. John Waters was an exceptionally patient man, but three years was a long time.
Atlanta, GA
“Ghosts,” said the woman showing every one of her fluorescent white teeth in what she obviously believed to be a winning smile. “That’s really what we’re talking about, here, right?”
Ellie tried to match the woman’s smile, very aware of the microphone clipped to her shirt and the camera in her face. She wasn’t supposed to look at the camera, but the prohibition made it almost impossible not to steal a glance. “The word ‘ghost’ is sort of…loaded…” Ellie answered. “We prefer to call them ‘paranormal phenomenon’ to keep the connotations and baggage associated with ‘ghosts’ or ‘spirits’ or something like that out. What we are dealing with are physical things. We’re not out looking for some other world. We’re fixed firmly in the science of this one.”
The news woman - “Sandra O’Neill Channel 5” was how she introduced herself, as if it were all one word – simply smiled and blinked. Her eyes encouraged Ellie to continue.
Hoping I’ll dig my own grave and get you a nice juicy story? Ellie couldn’t help but wonder.
Instead, she smiled sweetly back and continued. “What if I told you that all around us, passing through the air between us and even through our bodies were invisible waves? These waves contain encoded information – messages from people you’ve never met. You can’t feel them or sense them in any way, but they pass through even solid walls. Not only that, but with the proper technology you can receive these messages. Would you think I was crazy?”
Ellie held up her cell phone. “Someone from a hundred and fifty years ago would think there was something supernatural going on if we tried to explain the way a cell phone works. That’s what we’re really talking about here. Modern science talks about things much stranger than fiction. Things like ‘action at a distance’ where there is instantaneous communication across vast distances at an atomic level. For every answer we uncover, there is another question. Even the questions get stranger, the deeper we go.”
“So, what is the question that all of this is supposed to answer?” Sandra O’Neill Channel 5 asked, gesturing at the array of equipment behind Ellie. “What happens after death? What’s really ‘out there’?”
“No,” Ellie replied with conviction. “Science doesn’t allow for an ‘out there’. This world of seeing and touching and tasting is the totality of scientific reality.”
Aware of the way this last sentence might be taken by some of the public, she attempted to soften the blow. “I’m not saying that life after death is impossible or untrue, only that it’s unscientific. We must stay firmly grounded in the world of phenomena, that is things that happen here and now, if we are going to answer any meaningful questions. We have to keep religious and philosophical concerns separate from scientific questions.”
“So, you investigate paranormal – what was it again? – for a living. But you don’t actually believe in ghosts?”
There’s that word again.
“Do I believe that spirits of dead people come back from the netherworld to slam doors and terrify pets? No. I do, however, believe that the people that have paranormal experiences are sane and rational. I believe that paranormal phenomena are real. I believe that something is happening that science, as it exists today, is ignoring. I believe that these things can be studied in a scientific manner. That’s why my firm is called Paranormal Science, or Para-Sci for short.”
The newswoman cranked up that smile wattage again.
Ellie couldn’t help but wonder, How in the world does she get her teeth that white? It’s not natural.
“Speaking of technology, would you show us what you’re using in your…umm…investigations?”
Ryan, Para-Sci’s college intern, grinned at her from safely out of the camera’s view. He was enjoying himself way too much. She ignored him and walked back to the first piece of equipment on the table.
Over the next several minutes, she explained the function of the high-res thermal imager, the EMF meter, the various cameras, and the digital audio recorders. When she came to the last piece of equipment, she wished she had listened to Ryan and left it out.
Too late.
“This piece of equipment is new and exclusive to us. It’s a little complicated to explain, but its purpose is to investigate the so-called orbs that we photograph.” She tried to move on, but the newswoman smelled blood in the water.
“What is it called?”
Great.
“We call it the ecto-graph, although that name is a bit of a joke from the inventor who has a strange sense of humor.” Ellie tried to move on again. Unsuccessfully.
“Ecto-graph? Like ectoplasm or something?”
“Like I said, the name is more of a joke. It maps an area for the magnitude and direction of something called muon particles.”
“Can you show us how it works?” asked Sandra O’Neill Channel 5.
“Sure. Ryan?” said Ellie, nodding to him. It was gratifying to see the smugness replaced by horror. Ryan was a good kid, though, and wouldn’t let her down.
His smile as he approached the makeshift stage was friendly enough, but his eyes said clearly that he would get her for this. He would rather eat glass than be on camera. Despite his slightly shaky hands, he managed to pick up the briefcase-sized body to the ecto-graph and plug in the cable for the wand, which looked suspiciously like a ping pong paddle, without difficulty.
Ellie explained to the newswoman, “It takes the chiller a few second to warm up. When it’s ready, you simply move the wand through space. The particles we are looking for are called muons. They normally come from the sun and pass through everything, even solid objects. The inventor has a theory that these particles will also be produced during a paranormal event, however in greater number than the normal background distribution and directed outward from the center of the event. The goal, then, is to map the space with the detector wand. It detects both the number and direction of the muons and overlays the gamma profile in the region.”
Ryan was slowly and methodically waving the wand through space starting high and working his way down. He looked ridiculous and knew it, his glare at Ellie said. Even the glare had a smile lurking behind it. She smiled playfully back.
“So how do you know if you’ve found something?”
“This is still a prototype so the analysis has to be done separately on an external computer.” The cameraman, a long-haired guy who seemed to be having much more fun than the situation called for, filmed Ryan from different angles for a bit before turning back to his boss.
“Ghost hunting, twenty first century style. I’m Sandra O’Neill Channel 5.” She froze for a few seconds, then dimmed the smile. To the cameraman, with much less sweetness, she said “OK, Roy, get some filler footage. We need to be packed and ready in fifteen minutes.”
To, Ellie, she said, “Thanks for your time. I think we’ll use this spot tonight.” She turned and began rummaging in the camera equipment, leaving Ellie to remove her own mic.
“I’m going to kill you,” a voice said from behind Ellie. She smiled and turned to Ryan.
“I knew I could count on you. Besides, it’s your first TV appearance. I hear Russell Crowe got started exactly like this.”
“Somehow I doubt that looking like an idiot on the local news landed him his first big role. Even if that were true, though, there’s a difference between him and me. Russell Crowe is hot.”
Ellie raised her eyebrows.
“What? Even incredibly secure, straight men like me know it’s true. Anybody who says different is hiding something. Told you we shouldn’t have put the ecto-graph with the rest of the stuff. When are you going to start listening to me?”
“Smooth change of subject. Anyway, so the intern got one right. Congrats. From now on, you get to do the interviews.” She handed him the lapel mic.
“I don’t think you want this,” he said, pointing to his face, “to be the new face of Para-Sci.”
“Oh, it’s an adorable face,” Ellie replied and pinched his cheek playfully. Ryan blushed and avoided her eyes.
“So, the news lady said we’d be on tonight…” he said. There was an awkward pause. “I’ll check the equipment.”
Ellie smiled. “Thanks.”
Ellie and Ryan’s investigation that night was a bust. The family of four that lived in the house claimed to see regular paranormal events. They had contacted Ellie a week earlier for a complete investigation, hoping to prove to their friends and neighbors that they weren’t crazy. She was always eager to find an active site, and had agreed to come and observe, hoping to at least snag some good pictures.
The couple’s two kids were bouncing-off-the-walls hyper when Ellie and Ryan had started setting up the equipment at nine in the evening. The older child, a boy of about eleven had pestered them with endless questions. Ryan quickly grew tired of the boy’s curiosity, but Ellie patiently showed him how everything worked. He was especially fond of the thermal camera and would have played with it all night if his parents hadn’t made him go to bed.
“I love kids,” Ellie said to no one in particular as the boy’s mother led him off brush his teeth.
“Why don’t you have a couple dozen by now, then?” asked Ryan while setting up a tripod.
“First, I’m only 25,” Ellie reminded him. “Second, Paul’s not completely sold on the idea. Someday. Just not yet.”
The truth was that she wasn’t about to bring it up to Paul at this point. Marriage, always a series of ups and downs, had been on a long slide down lately. Ellie was sure that it would bounce back once the firm was stabilized. The firm was like a baby, though. In its infancy, it required lots of love and care. Someday it would feed itself and be more independent. Until then, she just had to rely on Paul to be patient with her. It was true, his patience was a little stretched lately, but someday it would be rewarded. Someday, she would get her breakthrough, and all the sacrifice would be worth it. Then, maybe, she would bring up the subject of a real, live baby.
"Baseline readings first?" asked Ryan.
Ellie nodded absently. "Sure. The EVP will be invalid since there will be other people in the house, but we can collect the thermal, visual, and EMF."
EVP, or "electronic voice phenomena" readings required total silence so knowing that there were other people in the house possibly mumbling in their sleep would only be inviting questions. Ellie was a firm believer in only taking data that would stand up to scientific rigor. It was an odd feeling to be working in a stranger's house while they slept, but Ellie always wanted as normal a night as possible to increase the chances of a paranormal event.
Five hours later, the pair gave up and packed up the equipment. Ryan was disappointed. He had joined Para-Sci four months ago as an intern and wanted to see some "action". So far, all he had to show for his time was a little spending money and a seriously screwed-up sleep cycle. Ellie was more upbeat as she drove him to his apartment. She was a night owl and strangely energized by the deserted streets and mist swirling under the streetlamps.
Besides, she told herself, there’s breakthrough coming.
She could feel it.
I have a little time, so I would swap with somebody else as long as yours is relatively polished and ready to go (not a first draft). I would read mystery, suspense/thriller, sci-fi, or fantasy (although I'm not very well-read in fantasy). No romance. I put the first chapter below so you can see if it sounds like something that trips your trigger. Message me with your email and I'll send the whole thing as a Word doc. It is 107k words, but you can just read as much as you want. If you want to swap, send me the first chapter or two of yours. If it isn't up my alley, I'll let you know.
Thanks,
Eric
Chapter 1
Leon, Spain, October 5, 2011
John Waters stopped at a narrow, battered door set in the stucco wall. Live heavy metal music rolled out of the bar across the street with palpable force. He knocked softly three times. The door opened a crack. A dim, sickly light spilled out onto the sidewalk and a voice said, “¿Sí?”
“¿Es Ricardo allí?” Waters asked.
A hand came out of the crack between the door and jamb, palm up. Waters reached into an inside pocket of his brown jacket and pulled out an envelope. The envelope was stuffed with three thousand Euros. He put it into the disembodied hand without speaking. The hand withdrew and the door closed.
Less than a minute later, the hand re-appeared holding a small brown paper sack. As soon as he took the sack, the hand disappeared and the door clicked shut. Waters stuck the small bag in the same inside jacket pocket the money had come out of and turned back the way he came. He glanced left and right as he got to the main street. John Waters knew his gray brush cut hair and weathered and creased face were out of place in the youthful crowd, but nobody seemed to care.
The main street of the Barrio Humédo, the “wet district” pulsed with the noise of the nightly party crowd. The amount of alcohol that was consumed in the tapas bars, pubs, clubs, and restaurants gave the district its name and on this Wednesday night the parties were just getting started. Live heavy metal, jazz and techno mingled in a cacophony of sound.
Waters stayed on the main road for two blocks, then turned down a quiet side street. He pulled the brown bag of heroin back out of the pocket of his rumpled brown corduroy jacket and tossed it in a trashcan. He dialed his cell phone. After a pause, he said, “It’s in play. I’m headed to the airport.”
He clicked the phone off, hailed a cab, and turned up his collar against the night air.
The lilting cadence of Spanish wafted to him from all sides on this more subdued street where couples walked arm-in-arm. He suspected that the immersion in the Spanish language would bring back the nightmares when he slept on the plane to China, but tried not to think about it. He focused instead on the job before him. For three years, he had been waiting to set these events in motion. John Waters was an exceptionally patient man, but three years was a long time.
Atlanta, GA
“Ghosts,” said the woman showing every one of her fluorescent white teeth in what she obviously believed to be a winning smile. “That’s really what we’re talking about, here, right?”
Ellie tried to match the woman’s smile, very aware of the microphone clipped to her shirt and the camera in her face. She wasn’t supposed to look at the camera, but the prohibition made it almost impossible not to steal a glance. “The word ‘ghost’ is sort of…loaded…” Ellie answered. “We prefer to call them ‘paranormal phenomenon’ to keep the connotations and baggage associated with ‘ghosts’ or ‘spirits’ or something like that out. What we are dealing with are physical things. We’re not out looking for some other world. We’re fixed firmly in the science of this one.”
The news woman - “Sandra O’Neill Channel 5” was how she introduced herself, as if it were all one word – simply smiled and blinked. Her eyes encouraged Ellie to continue.
Hoping I’ll dig my own grave and get you a nice juicy story? Ellie couldn’t help but wonder.
Instead, she smiled sweetly back and continued. “What if I told you that all around us, passing through the air between us and even through our bodies were invisible waves? These waves contain encoded information – messages from people you’ve never met. You can’t feel them or sense them in any way, but they pass through even solid walls. Not only that, but with the proper technology you can receive these messages. Would you think I was crazy?”
Ellie held up her cell phone. “Someone from a hundred and fifty years ago would think there was something supernatural going on if we tried to explain the way a cell phone works. That’s what we’re really talking about here. Modern science talks about things much stranger than fiction. Things like ‘action at a distance’ where there is instantaneous communication across vast distances at an atomic level. For every answer we uncover, there is another question. Even the questions get stranger, the deeper we go.”
“So, what is the question that all of this is supposed to answer?” Sandra O’Neill Channel 5 asked, gesturing at the array of equipment behind Ellie. “What happens after death? What’s really ‘out there’?”
“No,” Ellie replied with conviction. “Science doesn’t allow for an ‘out there’. This world of seeing and touching and tasting is the totality of scientific reality.”
Aware of the way this last sentence might be taken by some of the public, she attempted to soften the blow. “I’m not saying that life after death is impossible or untrue, only that it’s unscientific. We must stay firmly grounded in the world of phenomena, that is things that happen here and now, if we are going to answer any meaningful questions. We have to keep religious and philosophical concerns separate from scientific questions.”
“So, you investigate paranormal – what was it again? – for a living. But you don’t actually believe in ghosts?”
There’s that word again.
“Do I believe that spirits of dead people come back from the netherworld to slam doors and terrify pets? No. I do, however, believe that the people that have paranormal experiences are sane and rational. I believe that paranormal phenomena are real. I believe that something is happening that science, as it exists today, is ignoring. I believe that these things can be studied in a scientific manner. That’s why my firm is called Paranormal Science, or Para-Sci for short.”
The newswoman cranked up that smile wattage again.
Ellie couldn’t help but wonder, How in the world does she get her teeth that white? It’s not natural.
“Speaking of technology, would you show us what you’re using in your…umm…investigations?”
Ryan, Para-Sci’s college intern, grinned at her from safely out of the camera’s view. He was enjoying himself way too much. She ignored him and walked back to the first piece of equipment on the table.
Over the next several minutes, she explained the function of the high-res thermal imager, the EMF meter, the various cameras, and the digital audio recorders. When she came to the last piece of equipment, she wished she had listened to Ryan and left it out.
Too late.
“This piece of equipment is new and exclusive to us. It’s a little complicated to explain, but its purpose is to investigate the so-called orbs that we photograph.” She tried to move on, but the newswoman smelled blood in the water.
“What is it called?”
Great.
“We call it the ecto-graph, although that name is a bit of a joke from the inventor who has a strange sense of humor.” Ellie tried to move on again. Unsuccessfully.
“Ecto-graph? Like ectoplasm or something?”
“Like I said, the name is more of a joke. It maps an area for the magnitude and direction of something called muon particles.”
“Can you show us how it works?” asked Sandra O’Neill Channel 5.
“Sure. Ryan?” said Ellie, nodding to him. It was gratifying to see the smugness replaced by horror. Ryan was a good kid, though, and wouldn’t let her down.
His smile as he approached the makeshift stage was friendly enough, but his eyes said clearly that he would get her for this. He would rather eat glass than be on camera. Despite his slightly shaky hands, he managed to pick up the briefcase-sized body to the ecto-graph and plug in the cable for the wand, which looked suspiciously like a ping pong paddle, without difficulty.
Ellie explained to the newswoman, “It takes the chiller a few second to warm up. When it’s ready, you simply move the wand through space. The particles we are looking for are called muons. They normally come from the sun and pass through everything, even solid objects. The inventor has a theory that these particles will also be produced during a paranormal event, however in greater number than the normal background distribution and directed outward from the center of the event. The goal, then, is to map the space with the detector wand. It detects both the number and direction of the muons and overlays the gamma profile in the region.”
Ryan was slowly and methodically waving the wand through space starting high and working his way down. He looked ridiculous and knew it, his glare at Ellie said. Even the glare had a smile lurking behind it. She smiled playfully back.
“So how do you know if you’ve found something?”
“This is still a prototype so the analysis has to be done separately on an external computer.” The cameraman, a long-haired guy who seemed to be having much more fun than the situation called for, filmed Ryan from different angles for a bit before turning back to his boss.
“Ghost hunting, twenty first century style. I’m Sandra O’Neill Channel 5.” She froze for a few seconds, then dimmed the smile. To the cameraman, with much less sweetness, she said “OK, Roy, get some filler footage. We need to be packed and ready in fifteen minutes.”
To, Ellie, she said, “Thanks for your time. I think we’ll use this spot tonight.” She turned and began rummaging in the camera equipment, leaving Ellie to remove her own mic.
“I’m going to kill you,” a voice said from behind Ellie. She smiled and turned to Ryan.
“I knew I could count on you. Besides, it’s your first TV appearance. I hear Russell Crowe got started exactly like this.”
“Somehow I doubt that looking like an idiot on the local news landed him his first big role. Even if that were true, though, there’s a difference between him and me. Russell Crowe is hot.”
Ellie raised her eyebrows.
“What? Even incredibly secure, straight men like me know it’s true. Anybody who says different is hiding something. Told you we shouldn’t have put the ecto-graph with the rest of the stuff. When are you going to start listening to me?”
“Smooth change of subject. Anyway, so the intern got one right. Congrats. From now on, you get to do the interviews.” She handed him the lapel mic.
“I don’t think you want this,” he said, pointing to his face, “to be the new face of Para-Sci.”
“Oh, it’s an adorable face,” Ellie replied and pinched his cheek playfully. Ryan blushed and avoided her eyes.
“So, the news lady said we’d be on tonight…” he said. There was an awkward pause. “I’ll check the equipment.”
Ellie smiled. “Thanks.”
Ellie and Ryan’s investigation that night was a bust. The family of four that lived in the house claimed to see regular paranormal events. They had contacted Ellie a week earlier for a complete investigation, hoping to prove to their friends and neighbors that they weren’t crazy. She was always eager to find an active site, and had agreed to come and observe, hoping to at least snag some good pictures.
The couple’s two kids were bouncing-off-the-walls hyper when Ellie and Ryan had started setting up the equipment at nine in the evening. The older child, a boy of about eleven had pestered them with endless questions. Ryan quickly grew tired of the boy’s curiosity, but Ellie patiently showed him how everything worked. He was especially fond of the thermal camera and would have played with it all night if his parents hadn’t made him go to bed.
“I love kids,” Ellie said to no one in particular as the boy’s mother led him off brush his teeth.
“Why don’t you have a couple dozen by now, then?” asked Ryan while setting up a tripod.
“First, I’m only 25,” Ellie reminded him. “Second, Paul’s not completely sold on the idea. Someday. Just not yet.”
The truth was that she wasn’t about to bring it up to Paul at this point. Marriage, always a series of ups and downs, had been on a long slide down lately. Ellie was sure that it would bounce back once the firm was stabilized. The firm was like a baby, though. In its infancy, it required lots of love and care. Someday it would feed itself and be more independent. Until then, she just had to rely on Paul to be patient with her. It was true, his patience was a little stretched lately, but someday it would be rewarded. Someday, she would get her breakthrough, and all the sacrifice would be worth it. Then, maybe, she would bring up the subject of a real, live baby.
"Baseline readings first?" asked Ryan.
Ellie nodded absently. "Sure. The EVP will be invalid since there will be other people in the house, but we can collect the thermal, visual, and EMF."
EVP, or "electronic voice phenomena" readings required total silence so knowing that there were other people in the house possibly mumbling in their sleep would only be inviting questions. Ellie was a firm believer in only taking data that would stand up to scientific rigor. It was an odd feeling to be working in a stranger's house while they slept, but Ellie always wanted as normal a night as possible to increase the chances of a paranormal event.
Five hours later, the pair gave up and packed up the equipment. Ryan was disappointed. He had joined Para-Sci four months ago as an intern and wanted to see some "action". So far, all he had to show for his time was a little spending money and a seriously screwed-up sleep cycle. Ellie was more upbeat as she drove him to his apartment. She was a night owl and strangely energized by the deserted streets and mist swirling under the streetlamps.
Besides, she told herself, there’s breakthrough coming.
She could feel it.