Things are moving rapidly. After sitting in my files for a couple years, I finally released Satchel Pong and the Great Migration on April 5. (Satchel Pong Chronicles, book 1)
Satchel Pong and the Search for Emil Ennis (book 2) is now uploaded to Amazon and available for pre-purchase, as of yesterday. It releases May 3.
I am in the process of drafting he third book in the trilogy, which doesn’t have a title yet. Here is an excerpt from the work I did on it this morning, (April 20, 2019) presented raw and unedited (though there will be few typos if any). I enjoyed what I got today so much I wanted to share it early! If this piques your interest, scroll back up and hit the links to purchase books #1 and 2! (Note: in the manuscript this is presented in italics, to show that something is happening on a sub- or super-conscious level.
Spoiler alert: it’s worth a brief note, but I don’t think this excerpt gives much away, really. I think it’s isolated enough from the plot that about the only thing you’ll know after reading it is that I did not kill off Emil Ennis, the title character of book 2. At least not yet.
From Satchel Pong Chronicles Book 3:
Emil saw things. Someone had installed a third eye, right in his forehead, tapping through his skull. He could see backwards along the alchemical connection, which ran into the longitudinal fissure with nodes connecting to both hemispheres, then dropping through the corpus callosum and, painfully, shoving other nerves aside, raw, drilled into his medulla. Nothing, none of the nodes touched his speech; he would be able to articulate nothing of what he saw or felt with this eye. At least not initially. He would have to forge new connections, synapses.
After this brief introspection, his eye swiveled about and looked out at the world, the skin on his forehead as thin as an eyelid, light came through to the eye beneath, painting upside-down pictures of everything from people and machines to the Great Furla itself upon a retina— these were upside-down images his brain had not yet learned to invert. Those tiny leaves pointed toward the ground, roots pointed skyward. He looked down at the sky, where his third eye could see the waves on which voices carried when a Wireless set was in use. There were other waves, too, carrying things he never imagined existed. There were colors he had never seen before. And all was upside down. He would have to forge new connections to turn these scenes right-side up, and other connections to be able to verbalize anything he saw. But he knew what he saw, and saw what he knew— and things he did not know. Even those things, he felt in his core, in his chest, in his toes, in his liver— in his marrow. He felt them.
It would be alchemy that gave him this ability, he thought. An Alchemist has been at work on me again, and has embedded another mod. May that Maria Rheon be damned by the Furla— !
— Or, it is a manifestation of the Way.
Taleb O’Bandery?
— Look again, Emil Ennis. Look inside.
Emil looked into himself again. Deep in the medulla, the lizard brain… there, he found it. The chameleon, that’s a sort of lizard, isn’t it, isn’t it? It lives in some far-flung land— doesn’t matter— There it was, as a totem, an unspoken power— a wisdom he possessed, lightly, lightly, wisdom held on fingertips— a knowledge around which a tail curled— It was the insight to turn one’s skin into the color of the surroundings, to reflect light from behind you to a viewer in front of you, to wink out like a light, to be shrouded, to shroud oneself as though under an eyelid, to wink slyly and to have others find oneself invisible. Can this be taught? Or must it be discovered for oneself?
— It is neither, and both. You must be exposed to the concept, but you must find your own way to a silence beyond visibility.
What is happening now?
— Now, you should rest. You will need meat from a large beast; a donkey, a yak, or caribou. You need blood to replenish your marrow, to replenish your own loss of blood, to revive the very air in your lungs.
Am I dying?
— Look inside and see if you are or not.
The chameleon-eye swivels, looks, winks. Life winking out? No. The wizard-lizard within winking wisely.
Taleb, bring meat. Goose is greasy, it’s not ideal, but it will work in a pinch. Tuna. That is a thick beast, and food from my home. Tuna— toro nigiri would be best, I feel it, I know it— I crave that dish, the fat from a good tuna belly. But Goose will work. Fat, meat, raw flesh, liver pate. Foie gras would work— goose or duck—
— Sleep, Emil Ennis, rest and sleep. Food is coming.
Yes. I will sleep. Then I will awaken, and eat and revive a little.
— If you must preserve yourself, simply disappear for a while.
I don’t think that is needful. I just need to sleep, sleep a while, to sleep—
Adam G. Fleming 