Why do I do NANOWIRMO?

 Hello!

Another November has arrived. This means, another year of NANOWRIMO has begun. This is the 20^th year, I believe.

For those who don’t know, NANOWRIMO (or more officially NaNoWriMo for those who want to take the time to type the acronym out correctly) stands for National Novel Writing Month. This is a month where writers are encouraged to write a novel (or a novella) of 50k or more words in 30 days.  The goal of NANOWRIMO is to encourage aspiring writers to produce a complete work, get in the habit of writing every day, and to give them a community of other like-minded individuals for encouragement and support.

I know there has been some controversy around this event. I’ve heard career writers say they do not participate because they are writing all the time anyway, so why would November be any different? I’ve also heard from new, self-published, or yet-aspiring authors that it has helped them produce content and/or get into a writing habit.  NANOWRIMO as a non-profit organization has set up various resources to help writers of all ages (including creating a teen/young writers track) and provides information and tools to help guide you through the whole novel creation process. And yet, they also partner with a lot of products, sell merchandise, and probably profit a bit from some of that.

While I have participated in 8 NANOWRIMOs, I haven’t really paid attention to the other events they hold. This post, specifically, will be about the rules for winning and why I do it. Let’s start with the rules.

1.       Writing starts at 12:00: a.m. on November 1 and ends 11:59:59 p.m. on November 30, local time.

2.       No one is allowed to start early and the challenge finishes exactly 30 days from that start point.

3.       Novels must reach a minimum of 50,000 words before the end of November in order to win. These words can either be a complete novel of 50,000 words or the first 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later.

4.       Planning and extensive notes are permitted, but no material written before the November 1 start date can go into the body of the novel.

5.       Participants' novels can be on any theme, genre of fiction, and language. Everything from fanfiction, which uses trademarked characters, to novels in poem format, and metafiction is allowed; according to the website's FAQ, "If you believe you're writing a novel, we believe you're writing a novel too."

This seems like a lot of work. Why on earth would anyone want to do it?!

Well…

Someone told me this year that a former participant of NANOWRIMO said that “it doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you win.” While I will be the first to say that the goal should not be to write just a bunch of garbage, hitting that 50k word finish line is exhilarating. During the first year of NANOWRIMO, the organizer actually asked to verify that participants actually met their word goal (7 of the 21 entrants actually finished by the way). Nowadays, the “winning” is more honor-based (yes, there’s a tracker, but you can lie to it).  However, the word count “win” is really just the visual representation of what you, the writer, is trying to accomplish.

Of the rules above, I have broken a number of them; whether it’s not starting a NEW project on day 1, or counting other writing projects done in November as part of my “word count”, or using the month for final editing etc. But for me, of the NANOs that I have participated in, I have won 7 of 8. Did I write my 50k words each time? More or less…but the main point was that I did what I told myself I’d do:

-          Finish the novel, even if that’s after November end

-          Edit the novel even though the “new words” I wrote fell under 50k…).

-          Write 50k+ words and get some of those unpleasant asshole scenes on paper (which is harder than it sounds)

The most important thing about NANOWRIMO for me is that I was able to use the combined energy of the event and the participants to motivate myself to *do the work*.  

Let’s break it down a little…

To successfully complete NANOWRIMO, unless you are a writing machine, you really need to write a little every day. Because the standard 1667 words/day is a lot easier than 10000 words each weekend day plus and extra 10k on the final day of the month. This “writing every day” thing, as I have heard from many professional authors, is the only way to really be successful as a writer. NANWRIMO is pushing that. For me, in doing NANOWRIMO, I’ve been successful at writing *mostly* every day. However, while I have proven to myself that I *can* do it, NANOWRIMO has also showed me that I don’t want to do it all the time.

You see, writing every day is tough already. It becomes infinitely tougher when you have a day job where you are on a computer every day. Or when, in your off time, you’d rather do anything other than sit on a computer more. Or when you crave social interaction after a day of burying yourself in headphones and music, emails and Word files.  Or when, you realize you’re in your mid-30s now and need to go to the gym occasionally or your clothes stop fitting. Or when you have a family or a partner or a pet that also needs attention.  Or when…

TLDR version: It’s hard.

It’s just as hard as getting to the gym every day. Yes you can do it, but you may be doing it at the expense of something else. Sometimes that expense is other hobbies like video games or sewing or fencing, but other times that expense is your partner, health, or sleep. This is a common struggle for a lot of us who have not yet made a career of writing, but who desperately want to. And until my partner can support me while I “work for money” 10-20 hours/week, this is going to be my reality. 

But back to NANOWRIMO. It definitely has helped me with some of these issues. It gives me social interaction, even if it is just writing near other people and saying, “Hey, how’s it going?”. It gives me a reason to get out of my house. It puts the fire and that little edge of competition under me which helps guilt me into keeping it up. It gives me solidarity with other writers, sharing frustrations and triumphs. It gives me inspiration, excitement and pride at being a writer.

It gives me an excuse. For one month, I CAN do it. I can make arrangements to write a crap-ton and (hopefully) finish a project. (Then I can use the next 11 months to refine and promote that project and work on other projects sporadically at my own pace…).

I know some people may turn their nose up at this approach and say that I am not a serious writer, but I will disagree. If I weren’t a serious writer, would I still be writing after 25 years? For a while, I allowed those naysayers to get the best of me. You will see that in my NANOWRIMO participation years: 2002, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2018, & 2019. Those big gaps were when I stopped believing in myself (most notably 2002-2008. I was in college and while I knew of NANOWRIMO groups getting together on campus, I tried to pretend that I didn’t care).  I stopped believing in myself because I did not have the resources and connections to convince me to keep it up. If I was not doing it “the serious way”, what business did I have even trying?

The last 3 NANOWRIMOS I’ve participated in have changed all that. I decided to seek out “write-ins” (where writers get together at a coffee shop or library and write together for a few hours). I joined writer communities, giving the NANO forums, Scribophile, CIPA (Colorado Independent Publishers Association), Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Toastmasters and other online groups a try. I had mixed success sticking with these communities but what it did show me, was that there were a lot of people out there writing. Some were snobby, and some were encouraging. Some were driven toward publication and some were just doing it “for fun”. Some were like me. 

I didn’t find my current writer “group” specifically from NANO, but NANO has helped bring out all those writers that I already know (many of whom I didn’t know wrote!). The relationships I’ve built have carried on after NANOWRIMO was over. NANOWRIMO gave me access to a community that was already in my world and to a world that I had no idea how to break into otherwise. These groups, these individuals, encourage and push me to do better. They help me up when I am falling. Because of them I am still moving forward. Still making progress.  Because of them, I have been pushed to attend more conventions, writers’ groups, and writing workshops.  

So for me, whether I make the word count or not, it doesn’t matter. My participation in this event is one of the big ways I will work (sometimes slowly) toward my ultimate, grander, goal: to get published.

And to all of you writers, my advice for you is to definitely participate in NANOWRIMO. Even if you don’t think you’ll make the 50k. What is important, is for you to think about what you really want to do, set an achievable goal, and then run with it. Even if that goal is just to reconnect you with this love you’ve had for as long as you’ve owned pencils.

Here is my 2018 NANOWRIMO "winner" certificate. If I can do it, you can too!

♥

Lyndsie

On Beta Readers Who Are Your Friends – My Honest Thoughts

First of let me put in a disclaimer: as a writer and an aspiring author who dreams of getting published, I want you to read my book. And I want her to read my book. And him. And those five people over there.I want my friends, family, coworkers, and strangers to read my book.  I want you to read my book if you love sci-fi. I want you to read my book if you hate sci-fi. I want positive feedback. Negative feedback. Questions. Concerns. I write, not just for myself, but for you all…my audience.

That being said, one of the most disheartening things you can do to an unpublished writer is promise you’ll read their WIP and then never do it. It is crushing.

There. I said it.  

Recently, (and for most of my adult life) I have been struggling to get beta readers to actually read my finalized, author-edited manuscript and provide feedback. In April 2019, I put out a post on Facebook saying “Hey, I am looking for 3-5 beta readers who want to read my YA, near-future dystopian manuscript.” I made a point to note that I had a few specific questions and I only wanted interested people who would be able to deliver feedback by August.   I was blown away by the number of responses I got - all told, it was around 20 email addresses. So I thought, “Hell, why not?” And I sent them all the manuscript along with some questions that I wanted them to look for as they read.

To date (November 1, 2019) I have gotten ONE response, which includes all the “Thank you, I’m looking forward to reading it” emails (which, in all honesty, was 0). That one response was feedback and a request to meet and discuss it (yay!). However, think about this for a second. One response out of over 20. Frankly, that super sucks. (Later on, I did get one apology of life being crazy and the person not being able to get to it.  That’s fine. I understand stuff gets insane in life and some people will have life intervene. And yes, I also understand that I was not offering to pay people. Still though, I would expect more people to communicate…).

Here is why this 1 of 20 response thing sucks:

1.       Between April and August, I was sitting on my hands…waiting. I had stopped submitting Anamnesis to publishers. I had stopped looking for beta readers or editors.  I stopped trying to figure out how I’d pay a beta-reader. I essentially wasted a quarter year of potential progress waiting for people to come through on their word.

2.       Now, I had just given my novel out for free to a bunch of people. Maybe somewhere down the line, they’ll read it. But if I get published, would they buy it? This goes along the lines of asking an artist for free artwork. Or a physical therapist for free adjustments. Yes, some freebies are expected when you want to go into business for yourself, but if you want this to be a career or at least a profitable side-gig, you can’t be giving stuff away for free all the time.

3.       You offer to read it the novel because you want to get into my good graces…or my pants. I absolutely hate it when the following scenario occurs: Person A: “Oh you’re a writer?” Me: “Yeah I’m working on wrapping up a novel.” A: “OH! I’d love to read it sometime.” I mean, Person A doesn’t even know what I write or what my story is about. How can you, in good conscience, volunteer to read something you know nothing about? This type of enthusiasm is the carrot-dangling behavior that really crushes my spirit because the moment we break up or Person A gets busy with something else, all that promise goes out the window. And I am left, yet again, with no feedback, sitting on my hands, wondering what I’m going to do with the manuscript now.

4.       It causes me to think the worst and then descend into a spiral of self-doubt and loathing. Did my betas start my novel and find it just. That. Bad? So bad that they couldn’t get through it, but were too embarrassed to tell me? Was it offensive? Or awkward? How can it be improved? This has caused me to put a novel away for good before. And yet, I still don’t know if that novel was garbage or not…..

I’m sure right now some of you are thinking, “wow, she sounds so ungrateful to her friends. These people are volunteering their time and their energy to help.” Except they aren’t. They wrote words to me stating their intention, but that was it.* They provided me with hope, that was then let down. As writers, it’s already hard enough to get noticed. Your work falls into piles and piles of similar projects – filled with all the hope, fear, triumph and regret of their authors. When you submit something to a publisher or Agent, you’re lucky to get an auto-generated confirmation of receipt and better yet, a rejection. However, I don’t want to feel that same let down with friends.

Maybe I’m doing something wrong in my search for betas. Do need to pay them? Find strangers on websites (though this has never worked for me either)? Create an application process? Make them pay me? :P Join a writers’ group? What do other broke non-career authors do when they need a second set of eyes on their work?  

So…What did I do? I jumped in for one more try of 3 beta readers. One, I promised a bottle of scotch. One, I read his novella so now have guilting powers. And one read my first draft and knows I have no qualms hounding him until he completes it.  So we’ll see…

I will now conclude this post with a PSA: Please, please, please…don’t feel like you *have* to read my stuff if we’re friends. If it’s not your genre, or if you just don’t have time, that’s OK! I will still love you. However, if you do volunteer, make sure you can reasonably predict having the time and energy to follow through. And if you have questions, or problems, or can’t finish it, please…just let me know! Don’t make me turn a post about beta-readers into a post about communication…

(And for those who have helped me out in the past and who are currently putting in effort for me, I am grateful [and hopeful] for the feedback you will deliver).

♥

Lyndsie

Welcome to Anamnesis (a.k.a. the title change) - Anamnesis The Novel

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

- Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

As some of you may already know, I have had to make a minor (monumental) change to my completed cyberpunk novel, "Insignia". I had to change the name.

Back in 2012 when I had started writing this novel, I searched the name to make sure there wasn't a similar novel with the same one. At that point in time, there was not. However, the problem with sitting on a novel for six years means that the world of literature changes and someone steals your title....Yes, I'm looking at you, S.J. Kincaid. (Ok, ok, I also bought your book).

https://sjkincaid.com/book/insignia/ 

Insignia by S.J. Kincaid was released as the 1st in a series, in 2013. Nice going Lyndsie, way to get on that. :-\

Needless to say, not to be overshadowed by an already prolific author, I needed to find a new title. It's sad, too, because Insignia is very pertinent to my book, easy to say, and most people can figure it out. I wanted to stick to the one-word title because it captured the feel of my story - the spartan, dark world. Unfortunately, all the other more common key words just didn't have as much oomph as "Insignia". Or they were taken.

 Memory
Timeseer (already a book with that name anyway)
Humanity
Savant (already a book here too)

And then there were multi-word titles that I debated on though they seemed to be a stretch:

The Memory Code
The Mech Wars (I didn't even bother looking this one up because I'm sure there's already something out there)
Being Human
Bright Star

Finally, I turned to synonyms of the two words I like the most: Insignia & Memory. I didn't find anything good for insignia except "colophon"which is a bookmakers symbol. Specifically,

a statement at the end of a book, typically with a printer's emblem, giving information about its authorship and printing.

However, there are a lot of great words for "Memory": Remembrance, Flashback, Reminiscence, Retrospection, Cognizance, Mindfulness, Anamnesis....

That's when I fell upon that last one and said to myself, "That seems like sci-fi." When I looked it up, it hit home even further:

Anamnesis [an-am-nee-sis] (n): the recollection of the Ideas, which the soul had known in a previous existence, especially by means of reasoning.

- Platonism 

Honestly, there's no more perfect title for this novel. 

So now I just need to get it published before someone else steals it.....

Anamnesis - Chapter 1 - Consider It Done

Ok. I have edited, re-edited, re-re-edited, & re-re-re-edited this chapter but I need to stop because this process could be never ending. SO...Here it is. Any final feedback is good, though unless it's show-stopping, might not be heeded :-)

***************************************

- 1 -

Three hundred years ago, human bodies were merely functional. Adequate. They were just as nature designed them. Boring. Then we came in with technology and made them remarkable.

Memoirs of A. St. Claire

The man with the handlebar moustache and plush burgundy waistcoat stood in the doorway of the cyber cafe.

What does he want? Samson thought, cocking an eyebrow in half-hearted interest, his mind more focused on the man’s fast-food bag. He was so hungry.

Life on the dirt-smeared streets of the slum city had been more difficult than the teenager had anticipated. While he was free from his mother’s heavy hand, this freedom was accompanied by the sharp knife of hunger that constantly sliced beneath his ribs. Newly-found independence tasted like the squalor of the abandoned warehouse where he sheltered with other homeless children. In the midst of these disenfranchised youths, no sense of solidarity arose, no kindred spirits. The bitter winter left them shivering, fighting over the meager scraps of food or combustible material.

He never imagined that hunger would stalk him like a predator. The upset of a grumbling stomach was an all-too-familiar feeling.

A year on his own had made him lean, gaunt, and desperate. His meals mostly came from dumpsters: greasy, overcooked protein from the one-star Asian restaurant, soggy sandwiches that were barely edible when fresh, and half-rotten fruit crawling with insects he couldn’t even identify; it was nourishment that stank with the rancid fumes of yesterday’s garbage.

Some days, no matter how hungry he was, he just couldn’t stomach it. Sadly, begging for the mildly stale remnants of a stranger’s half-eaten hoagie or the occasional mystery-meat kabob was barely better than the refuse. At least that stuff didn’t smell rotten…

No. You are smart, he told himself, You are better than garbage.

Sam had always had a talent with data: computer navigation was like a sixth sense to him. Most of his free time had been spent in dingy cyber cafés. A haven where he escaped the world: crouched over an ancient typepad, hunched in a cheap fiberglass chair, with eyes straining at a dimly lit LED.

He was slowly filling a fraudulent banking shell with real money – money that could only be spent outside of the city walls. Traveling in the security networks of big corporations, he stalked through the underground tunnels of their cybernet space. Worming his way into firewalls and secure shields like a cockroach made of bytes, he scrounged for scraps of cred that he put into in the virtual market. Win. Lose. Win. The CORPs never caught him. He couldn’t risk getting caught.

He snagged only bytes at a time. A little here. A little there. Keep a low profile. Don’t get noticed. Can’t get caught. The teenager didn’t fancy spending the rest of his short life on the inside of a CORP prison, serving time for a severely punished transgression.

He had too much to lose. Had to make money, not for food, or clothing, or mech mods. It wasn’t for him but for Charley; to get his sister out of this hate-filled shitthole of a city. To a real city. East, west, north – he didn’t care. All of them had promises, potential. A real life.

The man, who had, in their first encounters only observed him, began to speak. The cybercafé was empty, even the proprietor had gone for a smoke break. “You are not an easy kid to track down,” he said.

“What do you want from me?” The teen asked, tones of curiosity vying with hostility.

The man took a drag of a long, mud-colored cigarette and handed Sam a data chip. “I need you to hack a shopping mall’s security system and snatch the locked files. Payment is ten-thou.”

“Hack a system?” The teen asked incredulously, eyes bulging at the offer, “That’s it? You followed me around for months just to ask me to hack something?”

“I needed to see if you could do it. It’s not as easy as you might think, kid. And trust me, you weren’t my first choice for the job…” The man trailed off. His business-like demeanor returned quickly. He explained, “It’s an AI security system. Makes what you’ve been crawling through look like a toddler’s game. This takes Skill.”

“Oh, I got skills,” the boy responded arrogantly, a strong desire to comply with this man’s request suddenly smoldering in the hollow of his abdomen even though he only had the vaguest idea what an AI system was.

The man barely smirked and cocked his head. Nonetheless, he tapped a metal plate on the chip. There was one line of text:

JR. Avenue 5. Independence Plaza.

“This is where you can find me to deliver the goods. Payment upon delivery,” he said, nodding.

“I haven’t given you an answer yet!” The teenager called after the gentleman who was striding purposefully away.

He paused, looked over his shoulder and said, “You didn’t have to.” His smile was arrogant. Knowing. “Your face said enough.”

* * * * *

The mall’s computer was ancient. The teenager made a face. If the ones in the Internet café were 2220 models, this one must be from the mid-2000s. The server room hummed gently, the warm air heavy with sonic vibrations carrying waves of data. Colored LEDs blinked ominously, like so many eyes, watching him.

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

Skills indeed, the teenager thought angrily, still fuming at the man’s smug smile from a few days ago, This bastard’s complicated as shit. He scowled at the screen.

Maybe he had gotten in over his head. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his t-shirt was becoming damp under his arms. No, he thought, it didn’t really matter. The money was too good, enough to get him and Charley out of the slums. To get to freedom.

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

The lines of code taunted him. Flashing their glaring green deep into his strained retinas. His stomach growled. It’s just a shopping mall! He railed to himself silently. What could be on here?

*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*

An AI system, the man had said. What was an AI system? It couldn’t be a new software because the boy knew all the security systems. However, he’d never heard the term before. Maybe it was an old word? An antiquated security system? Maybe that’s why it was so hard to crack?

*tap* *tap* *ta—

He was in, he stared wide-eyed. The files suddenly were zipping themselves onto the storage device. Bits flashed by in a whirr: zeroes and ones. Replicating with the precision of high-speed data, submitting to his hand, no longer taunting him, but almost screaming.

Screaming... Red lights flashing. Something had triggered an alarm. How, though? He had been so careful!

Shooting to his feet, he yanked the chip out of the mainframe just as a boring-looking man strode almost casually into the office. The man’s eyes, however, were not boring. They were dark, and angry. And they were looking straight at him.

Fuck! He ran like hell.

* * * * *

The mall was a hub of activity at this time of night. In the center of it all, sat a woman in her early thirties, with the chestnut brown hair and olive skin of a mediteranneo, nursing a dark brown beer. She was wrapped in black leather pants the shade of an octogenarian’s favorite easy chair, worn in just the right places, and a dingy white tank top under an equally loved leather vest.

The electrical humming of cold fluorescent lights could almost make her forget that the sun had long since set and all sensible people were in their homes, their Virtua-visions blaring some obnoxious live broadcast. Garishly colored storefronts looked out into the atrium, silently hawking their wares of manufactured diamonds and cheap plastic toys. On one side, nothing but top-of-the-line sex toys, the cylindrical outlines of countless male members shivering a welcome to all who were brave enough to cross the threshold of their inhibitions. And on the other, a front of a more sinister nature, where tatted rat boys hunched over too-white operating tables offering up the newest in body mod trends.

Here, some juiceheads sat at a table bristling with folds of muscle so large that they barely looked human. And over there, fashion sisters, their frozen smiles and stretch-tight skin the result of too many trips to the laser salon. A schizo trolled the floor in faded hospital gowns, begging for credits or junk or whatever you had on you, deftly weaving between the tables too fluidly. A pair of security guards rolled slowly back and forth on one-wheeled scooters, their lurid uniforms thinly disguising the mods encompassing their limbs that pulsed with the synthetic rhythm of black motor oil.

The woman carried no weapons here, as was the rule of all serious establishments. Not that it would matter, she thought, moving her dark glasses over to the juiceheads. Many were themselves weapons these days. However, it still felt strange, Mara thought, to be away for so long from her anlace – a rapier that was part robot and rarely ever left her side, though she carried it more for comfort than safety. She glanced coolly around the room, trying to project the demeanor of the stoic calm that she could barely hold on to.

The twins had told her that he would be here, on this night, getting into more trouble than he’d ever bargained for. She trusted the twins, they weren’t programmed to lie and even if they’d tried, she had other ways of keeping an honest cyborg honest. They lived in the alleys and had enough street cred to be in the know for just about every interesting pair of feet that crossed their patch of asphalt. But Mara had more street cred, and she’d pulled some strings and flexed a few muscles – the right muscles – to lead her to this frozen heart of commerce in the Sink.

The boy was only fourteen and much too young to be pulling off a heist of this magnitude. Mara could only guess how he’d planned it, how long it had taken him to devise a strategy that would actually lead him to this very spot on this very night. And she wondered even harder how he had expected to escape...unless he wasn’t aware of the danger he was in. That’s where she would come in. Clenching her teeth, she forced herself to trust that the right opportunity would present itself.

A commotion arose on the second floor balcony. Mara looked up through the tacky indoor skylight to see an achromatized pipe banister quiver in response to the sound of slapping feet. Her vantage point was such that, across the cafeteria, she could only see a corner of the long hallway with its custard-yellow walls scratched and faded from years of apathy. An adolescent with shaggy hair the color of sand was barreling toward the banister, heedless of bodily harm, eyes wild and breath pounding in and out like a bass drum. Following behind, almost unhurriedly, was a rotund, balding man in an obnoxious band T-Shirt from a decades-forgotten rock group. He wore an expression of boredom as if to indicate that he had already seen the attraction and had found it lacking.

Mara stood up and downed the last of her lukewarm ale in one frenzied swig, gagging as the grainy dregs slid down her throat. She looked up and froze. The kid had made it to the banister and reached out to it with one desperate hand, vaulting over as if he were at a track and field event. Scuffed boots with frayed laces kicked wildly. He seemed to hang in midair, his left leg tucked under him, his right thrust out, grabbing at an ethereal purchase that only he could see. The man held out his hand where Mara could see a shiny metallic square on the inside of his wrist. He flipped that wrist toward the sandy haired acrobat and one rectangle broke off and flew with unnerving speed.

* * * * *

Samson was frozen, literally frozen. No, he hastily corrected himself, not frozen. He was in the air, floating…or falling incredibly slow. His boot had scraped off a layer of paint from the banister and it puffed out behind him in a small cloud. Below was a glass “skylight” – one of those tacky creations that had been popular during the decade before he was born. Even though it had never been subjected to the elements, years of smoke, dust, and dead insects had crusted its edges, giving Sam a blurred, cinematic view of the first floor cafeteria.

The patrons paid little attention to him, too wrapped up in their coffees, booze, or the undoubtedly witty conversation with their modded-up, super model dates. There was one exception, dressed in all black, she stared openly at him with a startled frown, lifting her dark glasses away from her eyes. A heavy beer stein was clutched in her white-knuckled fist. Sam’s confused expression met hers and held her within the trance.

Sharp stinging on his knee was the only indication that he had crashed through the bug-smeared skylight. He barely felt even that pain as glass fragments gently twirled around his face, falling like weightless snowflakes toward the yellowing linoleum. A hair-like wire glittered at the corner of his vision, lazily undulating like a serpent. What was that thing?

The dark woman had moved. Arm arched behind her back, she launched the mug in his direction. It gracefully slid past his ear as the aroma of spoiled barley assaulted his nose. Closer to the ground now, he felt his left leg tucked sharply into his chest, and his right leg…he wasn’t sure.

Something was on the floor below him, it looked like a limb. A leg. His leg? He shook his head. He was in shock, he told himself, gazing at the eerily-familiar boot toe, resting in a pool of blood. His blood?

Everything is too clear, he rationalized, I’m fine. Red droplets surrounded him, mimicking large jewels or small marbles. He could see the surface of each one dimple and shift as the circular shapes became amorphous. There was too much red around him, he thought, as the metallic tang shot through his taste buds. His chest fluttered as he forced himself to breathe.

His left leg was tucked underneath him, but his right…the floor reached him.

* * * * *

The boy’s face changed from an impetuous grimace of rebellion to a frantic O of surprise as his right leg plummeted to the floor. The rest of him followed in a pallid heap of shock and fear. The silver rectangle recoiled into itself and a faint iridescent thread shimmered in the artificial light. Razorwire. Mara had chucked her mug at the assassin with a force disproportionate to her size. It crossed the linoleum desert of the food court, and shot straight through the broken window into the man’s face, shattering into a hundred unforgiving shards of glass. The assassin clutched at his eyes, but slowed only a little.

Digging into her pocket, Mara pulled out another item. It was the size of a strawberry and gunmetal grey. Rolling it between her fingers, she held her hand out flat and the little ball floated imperceptibly over her palm. Pulling her arm back, she whipped it at the assassin with blinding speed. It flew true, past the falling boy, through the hole in the shattered skylight, and directly into the assassin’s chest.

An explosion followed: noxious green-yellow gas blossoming from the rift between the two halves. The gas enveloped the assassin in a clinging, stinking cloud more tangible than ethereal. He roared out in rage, his flailing, ducking figure obscured by the squall. That should keep him busy for a while…She thought.

She rushed over to Samson, who was curled up on the floor in a convulsing heap, blood pooling around him. Ripping off a piece of her shirt, she tied a tourniquet around Samson’s leg, the crimson spreading over it so quickly you’d think it animate. Then she flung the now-unconscious adolescent over her shoulder, and barreled out of the modish jungle. Juiceheads, fashion sisters, rats, schizos and security guards looked on with only mild curiosity as if a young vagabond being maimed by a highly trained, but innocuous-looking, assassin happened every day.

Mara pounded through the streets, carrying the teenager as if he were a sack of rice, before flinging him into the back of a low-flying, rusted transport.

“Where to?” A slight voice echoed quietly from the front.

“Back,” Mara replied tersely, climbing into the passenger seat.

The young pilot’s eyes grew wide as he saw Mara’s blood-spattered appearance.

“That bad, huh?” He grimaced and began to turn around.

“Don’t…” Mara put a hand on his shoulder, “Don’t turn around. Just fly.”

As the transport rose into the air, the pilot’s voice was heavy, “Back it is.”

Mara really hated violence.