Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Cosmogonic Marbles

FREE until midnight tonight comedy-fantasy Novel Cosmogonic Marbles on Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmogonic-Marbles-Botolf-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00E2SB1P4

Audio sample from book ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpOdBlxuh8U

Monday, December 30, 2013

Novel Snippet



Cosmogonic Marbles FREE until Jan 1st on Amazon …

From chapter 20 …   

When a bullet passes close to you, it creates a shock wave that can overload an eardrum. An untrained person would reach for their ears and usually get shot in the head by a second round.  Liz was well trained; she hit the floor of the hotel room and spread out so as to lower her profile as much as possible.  Around her the glass from the shattered window pane was strewn like snowflakes and across the room she could see a large hole in the room door where the bullet had exited into the corridor beyond; anyone who happened to be passing there at the time was dead.
Liz knew that if the sniper was worth anything at all he’d know he’d missed and be patient. He only had to wait for her nerves to crack to get a second shot.  She lay flat counting the seconds slowly going by in her head like a grandfather clock.  Desperately she looked around the room for something that could aid her.  Her handbag was sitting on a wingback chair in the corner with her gun in it; it was the first thing she’d checked when she’d gotten up from the bed.

            Liz’s mind went from, ‘there’s someone shooting at me’ to ‘who’s shooting at me’ very rapidly; after all her mind had nothing else on at the moment.           
The dark stranger, whoever he was, had left her here alive, he’d left her gun in working order and he had all the information he needed. If he’d wanted to kill her he could have picked an easier way than this.  The loonies at Botolf sprung to mind, but she doubted that one of them could be sober enough to hold a rifle.  However, they might be sober enough to write a cheque and the CIA had many enemies willing to take a pot-shot at an agent.
James also sprung to mind. He wouldn’t shoot her with a rifle! No, never. He might beat her to death with a copy of Herodotus, but he would never shoot her.  Besides, even if James found out the truth, would he really be that angry? Would he not just still love her? After all, he does love her? My mind’s wandering she thought and returned to focus on her life being in mortal danger.

            She decided to ignore the handbag and the gun. It was too much of an easy target for a good marksman and from this range her pistol would be of no real use.  To look out the unbroken window would be an amateur mistake. The hitman would invariable aim for it as she raised her head to appraise the situation but, then again, if he knew she was a CIA trained operative he would know she knew that and aim for the broken window. Or he could anticipate her double guess and aim for the unbroken one.  As part of her mind circled like this for a while another part continued the count of seconds. It had just reached five hundred and was thinking of having a party when she remembered she had a hand mirror in her bag; perhaps it was worth the risk after all.
Crawling over the shards of glass, she imagined what was going through the mind of her would-be assassin. Was he the type to wait or was he the type that would take a shot and leave while the going was good? Did he hold his scope on one target or was he panning the room hoping for movement? She reached the bag and flicked at the dangling strap with a long fingernail. The bag made a slight motion and with another flick it tumbled to the floor and emptied itself.

            A second bullet ripped through the wingback chair as if it were tissue paper and bashed about the bathroom behind in a series of noisy ricochets.  How is nobody in the hotel hearing this? She thought. Whatever panic is happening out on the street it must have spread into this place.  She pulled the bag away from its spilled contents and found the mirror.  After crawling back to the unbroken window, she lay half propped up against the solid wall. ‘Thank heavens for good old English well made hotels’, she mused. ‘If this was a motel in Texas, I’d have a dozen rounds in the back; he could kill me with a BB gun’. 
Liz took a deep breath and considered that all-in-all it had been a bit of an odd day, even for a deep cover agent from the CIA.  She quickly raised the frameless mirror over the ledge, fully expecting another high velocity shot to tear the mirror from her grasp, but nothing happened. 

            Across the street was a fairly ordinary above-shops office building.  Liz started at the top window and got down one floor when she saw him.  Her eyes were 20-20 but she didn’t need extraordinary vision to see him; he was fat, bald and amateurishly had the window fully open with his rifle muzzle sticking out.  She would have thought he was ‘no pro’ if she hadn’t recognised him immediately as her recruiter, handler and adopted Uncle, Bill.
“Bastard!” she said loudly.

WarWorld



Part 3/Chapter 2 of Shadows & Dominions is available to read now on Wattpad

http://www.wattpad.com/33882994-shadows-%26-dominions-warworld-warworld-shadows-%26

Saturday, December 28, 2013

FREE BOOK



Extract from Cosmogonic Marbles available FREE until the 31st Dec. at


Across Slough alarms were sounding off in a chain reaction.  The police sent every response vehicle available to them into the housing estates which had erupted suddenly in a series of house break-ins, assaults and mindless rioting.  The Sergeant in the station was at a loss as to what to do; the phone lines were down, the internet (which he never trusted anyway) was not accessible, even the police radio system had failed; he had no way of contacting his officers in the field and no way of calling for help.
“Do we have any cars left?” he asked the obscenely pretty desk constable.  He mentally bit his lip. He really shouldn’t think of Constable Brian like that.
“Only unmarked sir,” said Brian.
“Ok,” said the Sergeant trying to keep his mind on the crisis at hand.  “Get what men we can down to those cars and send one round for the Super, one up to the military barracks and the rest to the nearest stations.”
He looked at the dead lights of the map in the incident room.
“We need help,” he said.
“Yes sir,” said Brian, who obediently went off to find what officers were left in the station.
God he’s got a cute bum when he walks, thought the Sergeant. Stop that, must think on the situation at hand.
“Brian,” he called after him.
“Yes sir?” said Brian spinning on his heels.
“I’m going out there to have a look for myself,” spoke the Sergeant solemnly.
“Are you sure sir?” asked Brian.
Perhaps he does care, thought the Sergeant, maybe he needs me as much as I need him. “Yes, I need to see for myself what we’re up against here,” he stated.
“Okay sir,” said Brian turning back to complete his errand.
“And Brian?”
“Yes sir?” another cute spin; disco music was playing in the Sergeant’s head.
“I love you.”
“Sir?”
“In case I don’t come back,” added the Sergeant.
“I see sir,” said Brian his voice hardly altering from the norm.
“That’s what I want you to tell my wife,” further added the Sergeant.  Damn damn damn! He screamed in his head.
“I see sir, would you like me to make a note of that?” asked Brian.
“No need.”
Brian disappeared from the room.  It was eerily silent without the phones constantly ringing and the radio constantly chattering.  The Sergeant put on his helmet and checked that his trusty truncheon was at his side.
“Right then … let’s be hav’n you!” he said to the world in particular and marched out into the streets.

Friday, December 27, 2013

xmas freebie



FREE fantasy/comedy novel Cosmogonic Marbles (now with less whinny vampires and more sarcastic oak trees)

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

FREE NOVEL




from the 27th Dec to 31st Cosmogonic Marbles will be FREE to download on your new (or old) Kindle/e-reader, enjoy this cracking comedy over the festive season and kindly share this info with friends.