Much as I miss the Six Sentence Sunday weekly blog hop, I’m happy to report there are several new possibilities going on for posting and reading weekly excerpts in an organized fashion!
This week I’m going to post 8 sentences from WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM, my science fiction adventure with romantic elements, which received an SFR Galaxy Award this past week for “Best Disaster Rewrite”! (I’m still beaming, can you tell?)
The ship has suffered an unknown accident in the middle of the night and Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick Jameson, traveling aboard the Dream as a passenger, is trying to get panicked civilians aboard the lifeboats on Level Three, all the while worrying about Mara Lyrae, the businesswoman he’s very much attracted to. She arrives in the corridor, asking for help. The excerpt starts after she’s explained about the two children trapped in a cabin near hers. I did a tiny bit of condensing to make the excerpt work as eight sentences:
He’d been prepared to search the entire ship for her if necessary, but now here she was.
After hearing about trapped children, Nick knew he’d stay on board as long as it took to free them. “Tell me exactly where on the Second Level and I’ll go. You get in this LB.” Nick reached out to take her by the arm, intending to guide her through the portal.
“No,” she said, taking a hasty step away, shaking her head vehemently. “I promised that little boy I’d come for them myself, as soon as I found their father, or someone. If you’re going to help me with this, then we have to hurry.”
The story:
Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he’ll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets.
All his plans vaporize when the ship suffers a wreck of Titanic proportions. Captain and crew abandon ship, leaving the 8000 passengers stranded without enough lifeboats and drifting unarmed in enemy territory. Aided by Mara, Nick must find a way off the doomed ship for himself and several other innocent people before deadly enemy forces reach them or the ship’s malfunctioning engines finish ticking down to self destruction.
But can Nick conquer the demons from his past that tell him he’ll fail these innocent people just as he failed to save his Special Forces team? Will he outpace his own doubts to win this vital race against time?
I love and appreciate your comments and feedback! Go here to find all the other Weekend Writing Warriors and read a variety of excerpts…