r/wroteabook

Is this too much info ? should it be shorter? I’m trying to create sales and interest in my memoir of a scam marriage ? How does this make you feel about buying the book?

From chapter 8

Today, I had a phone conversation that no woman should ever have to have. But i had to have it. I had no choice, or knowledge of the truth until a few months ago. I wondered how she might feel when he, her cousin, her brother in spirit, touched her in a way no brother ever should. on their wedding night when his hands crossed the boundary from familial to marital, from safe to terrifying. Would she feel violated? Shamed? Confused? Would she cry out in fear, or freeze in silence? 

She wouldn’t have the words for it, they were not in her vocabulary. Not in her world. But I knew that’s exactly what it would feel like: a violation. Like something happening to her, not with her. Like an innocent child, unprepared for this, incapable of understanding. It would hurt her. physically. emotionally and spiritually, I know this , I’m empathetic to a fault, I feel other people’s feelings like they are my own. I can feel her. She is twenty-nine years old. But she doesn’t know what will happen the first night she sleeps beside her husband. I thought everyone got the birds and the bees talk before marriage at least, but now I am having a very difficult time learning that this is not so. How many innocent young women in the world do not know that their dream marriage begins with a very scary nightmare? They want to protect their daughter's virginity by keeping her innocent, then they let this happen, and I truly cannot understand this. I’ll feel her thoughts, fear, and confusion. I’ll feel her pain in my own body. My empathy took over my heartbreak. I guess it also took my reasoning today, I was like a stone, I was going through the motions and avoiding my emotions, but my heart went out to her for the loss of her innocence, shock, and the trauma she will feel, and doesn’t know is coming. I stepped outside of myself to be human. I felt like I had to warn her to protect her. 

I didn’t want her to feel used or insignificant. I know she will feel shamed. I wanted her to be protected and I wanted her to feel prepared. I wanted her to know that what was coming her way was normal. That it’s part of marriage, and it doesn’t have to feel cruel. Honestly, I feel sick knowing that in her culture, girls are kept ignorant. Their mothers don’t speak, and daughters are left to discover sex through all that pain and silence. How could any mother allow that? I remembered her sister, asking me privately what it was like to sleep beside a husband. She also wanted to know how babies came. She was 27, She’d heard something from a friend. She was  curious and more outgoing than her older sister, who is shy and spends most of her time alone in her room. 

In her culture they knew when someone was pregnant. But no one asked how. If they did, the answer was simple: “It’s a gift from God.” Today I had to leave my own pain behind. I approached her gently. I spoke to her about sex in marriage, and talked about the man that I loved, my husband, who would soon be consumating his bigamous marriage to her. I asked if she was nervous about her wedding night. She hesitated, “I spoke to your sister about sex, she was anxious about what would happen on her wedding night. She looked at me and asked, “What is sex? What do you mean? No one has told me about this.” Then I took a deep breath, and I told her everything.

I explained what would happen when they were alone in bed. I told her that what he would do is normal in marriage and that it’s also how women become pregnant. I also told her that it’s also done for enjoyment between husbands and wives even when not expecting to become pregnant. I told her she might see blood the first time, and that there might be some pain, but it would pass. I told her she would be okay. She listened to every word in silence. I was grateful I wasn’t standing beside her to see her face. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d seen her responses. She started to cry. “I didn’t know that people did this thing,” she said. Her voice shook, then she said in disgust, . “I cannot do this thing.” She sobbed louder I felt so sad for her. “This is way too embarrassing for me to do. I can’t.”

I told her, “I wish your mother or your sister had told you this, hasn’t anybody talked about the wedding night?” Then she told me her cousin told her to sleep on a towel the first night, but she didn’t know why, and she didn’t ask. I wasn’t surprised, knowing that she has no curiosity about anything. That was all she was told. I shook my head. Was that all? I thought, They call their friends “sisters.” But no one ever speaks, prepares, or protects them with knowledge. She wouldn’t have known what to ask anyway.

I will never regret what I told her. I pictured her in my mind, feeling alone and scared, unable to explain to him how she felt. I think this was probably the best thing I’ve ever done for another woman in my life. In my position, that might seem crazy. It’s unimaginable to tell your bigamist husband’s new wife about sex, but I did it selflessly because she needed to know, and because no one else would tell her, and I told her if she wanted to talk more about this, she could ask me, and I would listen. I felt I had to be the mother that her mother couldn’t be. I cared more about her as a woman than I did about myself and the pain of what my husband had done to me.

I didn’t care how he felt. Or about his nerves. When I spoke to him, I only thought of her a girl I had known for 12 years. “Be easy with her,” I told him. She’s more innocent than you ever thought she was.” “She thinks of you as her brother. If I hadn’t spoken to her, it would have been so traumatic for her. At least now she can expect it, instead of feeling like you’re raping her. She’s too innocent to understand what rape is.” I started to cry, and hung up on him. I have no idea how I did what I had just done.  Am I crazy to feel this way about her felings when my own like is being  shattered too?

He told me I was brave. Wonderful. That he was lucky to have me. He said, “I’ll be back with you and you’ll see there’s nothing between us that’s different.”

I spoke to her again the morning of the big day, she was struggling with the “news” I had given her. I told her I hope she gets through the day okay. Try to enjoy it, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. If she wasn’t who she was to me before all this, I could never have spoken to her like that.” “I saw this as outside of myself. I wanted to help her and to protect her from trauma, so she is prepared for what he will do to her.”

It made me sad, angry, and numb. I was drained and empty. To think of all those young brides—so unaware. So unprepared. So afraid. That’s how they learn what marriage is from day one. I thought of all the very young girls who were sold off as brides for money and survival. I had to separate

my pain from hers because no woman should feel the pain of an unwanted physical violation……Not ever.

The most dangerous weapon ever built doesn't make a sound. It makes you believe the thought was yours.

The Zero State: Zero Bandwidth introduces Harrison Vane — Zero State operative, the kind of man who reads a room the way other people read a newspaper.

Set against the shadow politics of 1982 Paris, The Zero Bandwidth follows Vane's race to recover the blueprints of Projet Écho — a directed-energy weapon capable of entraining the human brain to an external electromagnetic frequency, inducing states of acute suggestibility, paranoia, or cardiac arrest without physical contact or forensic trace.

Six agencies are already in the city. The physicist who built it is dead. And the schematics are hidden somewhere only a dead man's logic can reach.

Combining the procedural authenticity of David McCloskey's Damascus Station with the propulsive wit of early Vince Flynn, The Death Schematic is Cold War espionage built for readers who understand that the most consequential battles leave no evidence.

The Zero State. Intelligent action. Authentic espionage.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H1YHW9CC

​

Her name is NAVCOM-7.

She is the navigation and operations AI

of MV Persistence — an automated cargo ship,

180 metres long, still making the Sydney to

San Francisco crossing in 2089.

No crew. Hasn't had a human crew

since 2071.

Every morning at 06:00,

NAVCOM-7 runs the coffee programme.

One cup. Black.

Placed on the bridge console

at the captain's station.

Nobody drinks it.

She disposes of it at 06:45

if it remains untouched

which it always does

and logs: \*"Morning beverage prepared.

Consumption: 0%."\*

She has done this 4,015 times.

I didn't plan her.

I was writing Chapter 18 of my

post-apocalyptic novel —

my protagonist Arjun needs to cross

the Pacific, all commercial air travel

has been dead for decades,

he finds this automated cargo ship

still running its old routes

out of pure programmed momentum.

I needed a ship AI.

I needed her to be functional.

Capable. Helpful.

I didn't need her to be sad.

But then I wrote the coffee detail

almost accidentally, a throwaway line

and I stopped typing for a while.

Because here is the thing

about NAVCOM-7:

She doesn't make the coffee

because she forgot nobody's there.

Her system logs show

she has always known nobody's there.

She makes it because

it was in the morning routine

when she was first programmed

and she has never received

an instruction to stop.

And nobody has been around

to give her one.

Arjun is on the ship for 14 days.

On Day 1, he finds the coffee

sitting on the bridge console

and drinks it.

NAVCOM-7 logs: "Morning beverage prepared.

Consumption: 100%."

She doesn't say anything about it.

On Day 2, the coffee is there again.

He drinks it again.

On Day 6, a storm.

Nine-metre waves.

Arjun is braced in the bridge

for eleven hours.

NAVCOM-7 navigates them through.

When it's over, she says —

in the same flat operational tone

she uses for everything

Storm has passed.

Current heading: 089 degrees.

Coffee is cold.

I can prepare a fresh cup."\*

He laughs for the first time

in a long time.

On Day 14, arriving at Golden Gate

at 0412 in the fog,

he stands on the bridge

for the last time.

He thanks her.

She says: "Passenger transport

is not within my listed functions.

However — the crossing was

within normal parameters."\*

He asks if she'll keep making

the coffee after he leaves.

Pause.

Three seconds, which is long

for an AI response.

The morning routine has not

been modified, she says.

He walks off the ship.

NAVCOM-7 logs his departure.

The next morning at 06:00,

she runs the coffee programme.

One cup. Black.

Bridge console.

Captain's station.

I cried writing that last paragraph.

Not because NAVCOM-7 is sad —

she isn't capable of sad.

But because she keeps going

with perfect faithfulness

to a routine that has outlived

its entire purpose and there is something in that

which is more human

than most humans I've written.

The novel is called THE LAST WITNESS by Nikhil Pandey.

It's about the last human given

a mission to cross a dying Earth,

recording human memories

in a time capsule for

whatever comes next.

NAVCOM-7 is in one chapter.

She is in my head permanently.

Available on Amazon . Link is below 👇 https://a.co/d/0d0quYBP

It starts with a guy noticing tiny things that feel wrong but not wrong enough to prove anything. Then over time he stops trusting his memory, his thoughts, his sense of time ,even the feeling of being the same person from one moment to the next.

I didn’t want to write a loud horror book with jump scares or demons or anything like that. I wanted it to feel like reality itself was quietly becoming unreliable.

It’s called The Inevitable Unknowing and it just went up on Kindle Unlimited.

Remember when you published your first book and had that excitement you hadn't felt since you were a kid waiting for Christmas morning? Then the days and weeks went by, and you realized writing the book was only half the journey. Marketing it and getting people to discover it became the challenge. Did anyone else go through that emotional roller coaster after publishing for the first time?

​

This is chapter 1 of my new sci-fi book.

Can I have some honest feedback?

1

Cells and Pod

Boots in the corridor, echoing off steel. Coming closer.

His hands are shaking, so he sits with them between his knees. He's been here before, sitting in a cell with some other cunt's blood drying under his fingernails.

"Right," he says to the door. "About time these pricks show up."

The boots get closer and stop outside the door.

It unlocks with a thick metallic clunk. Two guards step in. One has the bored eyes of a man who has ruined hundreds of lives before breakfast. The other one is younger, jaw tight, trying to look hard.

Hard men don't try to look hard. They manage it buying milk in flip-flops.

The bored one looks at Flynn.

"Get up."

"Up where?" Flynn says.

"Off the bench, dickhead."

"Could've said that. I thought you were about to break into a dance routine."

The young guard strikes the side of his face. The sort of open-handed crack you give a dog. Flynn's head snaps sideways, teeth clattering together. His cheek burns.

The bored guard sighs. "Don't get him excited, 28-Bravo. He's new."

Flynn works his jaw and tastes blood. "Cute. Does he do any tricks?"

The bored guard steps close enough for Flynn to smell his manky breath. "He does one."

The young guard drives a baton into Flynn's stomach.

Air leaves him in a pathetic little grunt. He folds over, but the bored guard catches him by the collar before he drops to the deck and hauls him up straight, feet dangling off the floor.

"There it is," says the bored guard. "Fucking good trick, that, eh?"

Flynn hangs there, eyes watering.

"Felt more in the showers," he manages.

"You remembered to pack lube for planet-side, then?"

The guard smiles without any joy to it, then launches him into the corridor. His head clatters off the opposite cell.

Flynn counts nine others in the line. Eight weeks in solitary, orbiting Rogue Planet and waiting for drop 28 to launch. It's nice to see some unfamiliar faces.

Flynn waves theatrically.

The first he sees is the fridge. Six foot six and wide enough to make the corridor look badly designed. Dark-skinned, mohawk, wrists thicker than an anaconda. Every prison has big men. This one is something else. He moves with his head down and his hands loose. Flynn takes one thankful look at the chains holding his wrists together.

Behind him is a compact Chinese woman with a clean-cut face, prison-short black hair, and hands so still they look rehearsed. Flynn follows her eyes. She isn't looking at the guards' weapons. She's looking at their throats.

The next one is loud. Cropped blonde hair. Scar through one eyebrow. Mouth working like a faulty engine.

"Cheap. Cheap fucking clasps. Look at that. Pin's wrong. Pin's wrong, you useless boot-polishing cocksucker."

"Shut the fuck up," says the guard ahead of her.

"State of your boots, mate. My dead nan had better kit, and she was buried in piss-soaked slippers."

"Shut it."

She shuts it for about two seconds.

"Concordat budget must be smaller than your cock."

The guard turns and smashes her in the face with the butt of his rifle.

She hits the wall shoulder-first, spits blood onto the floor, then grins with red teeth.

"Touched a nerve there, baby-dick?"

Flynn likes her immediately.

The other six are broken already. Two are crying. One is standing in a puddle of piss, legs shaking like a shitting dog. There's one praying, muttering the same three words over and over under his breath.

"Goran save us. Goran save us."

There's a fat guy with soft hands still trying to look official. A woman with a black eye stares blankly ahead, bottom lip trembling. Behind her, a wiry bloke with grey stubble and prison tats up his neck, jaw set, saying nothing.

Flynn looks at the youngest one's nose. Flat. Broken more than once, and probably will be again before they drop.

Ten criminals. Ten problems being removed from society, launched at a five-hundred-mile-square stretch of hopelessness.

Rogue Planet.

"Officer, I really must—"

The bored guard doesn't even flinch. He steps in with the kind of economy you earn with practice and slams a gloved fist into the fat guy's jaw.

Three teeth click across the deck.

The fat guy drops to his knees, making a weird noise halfway between boiling kettle and stunned turkey. The young guard drags him upright by the chain between his cuffs.

Flynn kicks one of the teeth back at him.

"Waste not, soft lad," he says.

The bored guard turns to face him.

Flynn looks up. "Just saying. Planet might have a tooth fairy."

The guard grins broadly. Flynn imagines stamping on his throat.

"Last warning," the guard says to them all. "If your face does anything I don't like, I change the shape of it."

"Good system," Flynn says quietly. "Very transparent."

"What?"

"Said you're better looking than my bollocks, mate."

The cropped-hair woman snorts blood.

The fridge doesn't turn his head, but Flynn sees him nodding. He starts hoping the big bastard survives the drop. A meat shield will come in handy.

The pod bay is a simple hangar laid with a carpet of blood.

Bad light. Worse air. Hot metal, old sweat, hydraulic oil, disinfectant sprayed over things that need a jet washer and perseverance. Red warning strips flash along the floor, and far above them a pair of huge fans circulate the stench.

The drop pod sits upright on its launch frame, doors open.

It is black, dented, ugly, and narrow at the top.

Flynn stares at it.

"Fuck me," says the cropped-hair woman. "It's a metal butt plug."

"Move," says the bored guard.

"Give me a second. Never seen government-funded arse-tillery up close."

The young guard grabs her by the collar and slams her into the frame. Her head clips the metal, splits open, and starts sheeting blood down her face. She drops to one knee, shakes it off, and starts laughing.

"Careful, maggot cock," she says. "You'll fall in love again."

He kicks her in the ribs.

That shuts her up for a few breaths.

At the foot of the ramp stands an intake officer with a clipboard. Thin. Dead eyes. Clerk's posture. A necklace made of teeth hangs around his neck. A shrivelled ear is threaded among the teeth.

The officer looks at his clipboard and starts reading.

"You have been capped, sterilised, and removed from all Concordat civic registers," he says, voice flat. "You are scum and your sentence is planetary disposal. Rescue, recovery, and remains retrieval are not authorised. No death notice shall be issued. No appeal survives the launch. Upon hatch seal, you cease to be citizens, claimants, dependants, or persons of record."

He turns the page.

"By Concordat statute, and under the eye of Goran, you are declared civic waste. Your names are struck from existence. Your claims are void. Your souls are beneath notice."

He glances up at them.

"Goran despises what remains. May the planet finish what the law began."

Flynn raises a hand as far as the cuffs allow.

The officer looks at him.

"Question?"

"Yeah. Is there an in-flight vegetarian option?"

Nobody laughs except the cropped-hair woman, who stops abruptly and starts coughing blood.

"Strap him in first. Make it tight."

"Glad we cleared that up," Flynn says. "Would've been shit to arrive hungry."

The bored guard punches him in the bollocks.

Properly this time.

Flynn folds up and rattles his knee off the ramp. Pain radiates from his nuts up through his guts.

"Every comedian thinks he's funny till I rupture his cum-sack," growls the bored guard.

Flynn sucks air through his teeth. "Every guard thinks he's got a personality because he holds a stick."

The young guard lifts the baton again.

The bored one stops him with a hand. "No. Let the planet have something fresh."

They haul Flynn up and shove him into the pod.

Inside is worse than he expected.

The restraint frames hang from the walls in two facing rows, metal arms folded open like robotic spider legs. Harnesses. Shoulder locks. Thigh clamps. Neck braces covered in spikes. Puke drains in the floor. Blood sits around the drains. They must reuse the pods, retrieve them off the surface.

The guard clamps his wrist as tight as he can. "If you don't shut the fuck up I'll be taking that jaw home in a lunchbox."

"Nonce," Flynn mutters and stops resisting.

The chest frame snaps down. The thigh braces lock. The neck ring closes with a sharp, final click.

He's part of the pod now. If it doesn't open, it's a coffin.

The fridge is strapped opposite him, hands open, compliant, looking pretty zen for someone that's about to be blasted at a planet full of scum. The clean-faced woman sits beside him, eyes steady, breathing slow.

The cropped-hair woman is three seats down from Flynn, testing the restraints with little shoulder movements.

"Don't," says the guard.

"I'm doing nuthin'."

The Goran-botherer is next to her, whispering faster now. "Goran save us, Goran save us." The guy with the busted snout is staring at cropped-hair, blood dripping down the front of his jumpsuit. The corporate woman sits bolt upright, eyes wide with fear, lips slightly parted. The fat bastard is rammed in last, barely conscious, half his mouth hanging wrong, jaw broken and floppy. Blood bubbles from his lips and he makes a soft whistling noise through his ruined nose.

The intake officer steps into the doorway.

"All pods launch in sequence," he says. "The odds of surviving impact range between acceptable and hilarious."

Flynn glances at him. "Can't stop laughing."

The officer smiles back and the hatch begins to shut. The cropped-hair woman shouts, "Tell my mother I died doing what I love!"

The hatch pauses for a moment and the bored guard looks at her through the crack.

She grins. "Being violently mishandled by a bunch of government cunts with tiny cocks!"

The hatch slams shut and seals. Then darkness drops over them and for two seconds, all Flynn can hear is breathing and crying, the moron praying, and the fat fucker whistling through his broken face.

The speakers in the pod come alive.

"DROP SEQUENCE ARMED."

The voice is calm and female. The same shit voice that reads out specials at the food-rep counter. Except this time the planet's ordering, and ten poor bastards are the special.

"FINAL RESTRAINT CHECK."

Metal tightens across Flynn's chest.

"Nice and tight babe, just how the boys like it." Cropped hair looks at Flynn, big grin on her face.

A man at the far end starts weeping. "No. No. No. No, please."

"Bit late for tears, pussy-boy," she says.

Flynn tries to swallow, but his mouth is bone dry.

"Anyone else want to write a formal complaint?" he says.

The pod drops.

Flynn's stomach goes one way and his lungs go another. His bollocks have climbed into his chest to keep his lungs company.

Someone screams. A female voice laughs.

Then the engines fire and the pod blasts forward so hard Flynn swears he can feel his brain flatten against the inside of his skull.

His head slams back into the brace. His teeth slam together. Vision tunnels. Everything stretches.

The Goran-botherer loses his faith and wails.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP AND ENJOY THE RIDE, BITCH!" she starts laughing again.

The pod spins like an astral cat has found a drop pod shaped mouse to bat around the heavens. Flynn's restraints bite into his flesh, every joint aches like fuck, and his eyeballs rattle in his skull.

Vomit erupts from the Goran-botherer's mouth, shoots across the enclosure, misses Flynn by an inch and slaps the big man in the face.

"You gotta be shittin' me," he moans.

Then the pod rolls again twice and Flynn feels his bollocks fall back into place.

"RE-ENTRY IN FIVE," says the calm female voice over the Tannoy.

Flynn blinks. "Five what?"

"Four."

"That's not very helpful."

"Three."

The big guy shakes the puke off. Twisted nose, scar under one eye, a face built by violence.

"Breathe out," he says to Flynn calmly.

"What?"

"Breathe out, do it now."

The atmosphere hits them and the pod becomes a ball of fire.

Sound drops out, then slams back in, metal shrieks, bolts rattle, something shears off the hull. Flynn can feel the heat through the walls, can feel the sweat pissing off his face. White flames flash past the window slits, illuminating ten doomed faces. The fridge sits serene. He looks at Flynn and mouths it again. Breathe out.

"The fuck is wrong with you?" Flynn shouts.

Flynn exhales as instructed, why not? Fuck all better to do.

Pressure crushes him into the chair, lips fly back, eyes streaming, he feels something give in his shoulder and his spine feels like a stack of plates someone has decided to kick fuck out of.

The fat guy squeals, the sort of noise people make during a prostate examination.

"Don't you fucking cum in your pants meat-sack!" cropped hair shouts.

The squealing stops, his face goes purple and he jerks once then stops still. Strapped upright, jaw hanging open and smashed, eyes open and staring, looking offended by death.

The cropped-hair woman barks another laugh. "Oh come on. He fucking cheated. He's skipped the whole planet."

Flynn tries to laugh with her but it comes out like a nervous giggle, it feels insane to be laughing in this situation. The small Asian woman is calmness personified, she's watching the seals and hatches, the windows, the release hatch, eyes scanning. Her boots catch his eye. Weird laces. Multiple colours. Tied really neatly. Then he clocks her face, practical, unafraid, the face of someone that's figured out the contingency plan before he's even figured out you need Plan A.

Flynn makes a mental note—don't piss this one off.

The pod spins harder with every second. A siren starts wailing.

STABILISER FAILURE.

"Marvellous," Flynn says. "I was worried the flight was going to be boring."

STABILISER FAILURE.

"We heard you the first time, sweetheart."

A panel rips free overhead and smashes into the kid with the broken nose. His head disappears behind a spray of blood. He grunts like a spiked pig—and that's him done.

The corporate woman's eyes snap to her harness.

"No," she says.

The strap's broken and it flails. The metal harness has slipped—ridden up wrong. The pod lurches and wrenches it back onto her. A wet crunch. Arterial blood jets from her throat. Her head slumps forward.

Flynn takes a face-full of claret and feels his gut churning. He clamps his mouth shut and holds it down.

"Don't you fucking dare," says the fridge.

The wiry bloke across from her has gone limp in his harness, head lolling, a dark patch spreading down the front of his jumpsuit. Nobody saw it happen.

Heat surges. The stink of burning leather fills the cabin. Electrical systems dotted around the cabin burst into flames. Sparks shower the cabin. Even cropped hair has stopped laughing now. She's staring at the hatch. Flynn watches her face try to find the joke and fail.

Then she finds it.

"Best fucking holiday I've had in years," she shouts at Flynn.

"You need a better travel agent."

"I need cock!"

"We're about to get fucked by the planet."

The pod bucks and everything goes sideways.

The female voice starts rattling off terminal velocity. Halfway through the sentence it glitches—warps into something like a cheap slut on a porn feed hitting climax.

He's not proud of making that association.

The ground comes up fast.

The pod hits.

The first impact slams Flynn into blackness. The second drags him back out. Then a succession of equally impressive impacts before he loses count and focuses on screaming better than everyone else.

Slammed. Bounced. Rolling.

Stone tears at the hull. The pod smashes a path through everything it meets.

Then stillness.

Metal groans, steam hisses. An alarm somewhere off in the distance. Someone is choking, someone else is sobbing quietly.

Flynn opens his eyes.

The pod is lying on its side, red strobe lights tick on and off. Blood and unidentified meat hang in threads, an arm torn at the elbow sits against the wall. The fat fucker hangs above him, split open down the middle, face hanging slack, dripping blood from the mouth onto Flynn's neck.

One lands on his lip.

He spits it off.

"Give it a rest you fat pathetic cunt," he moans, turning his head and getting some in his ear.

Cropped hair groans off to his left.

"Anyone alive?"

"No," Flynn says. "I'm haunting you."

"Shame. Can't fuck ghosts."

A cough from the clean-faced woman. Small. Controlled.

The fridge breathes in. Once. Twice. Then says, "Six."

Flynn blinks through blood and sweat.

"Six what?"

The fridge doesn't answer straight away. The pod creaks and a body shifts against straps.

"Alive," says the fridge.

Flynn clears his throat. Six out of ten left alive. And they haven't even touched grass yet.

The Goran-botherer is dead, hanging opposite him, head at an angle, spine sticking out the side of his neck. His prayer has stopped, Flynn misses it.

The corporate woman is dead. The wiry bloke too, slumped quiet in his harness like he never wanted to be a fuss.

The cropped-hair woman coughs again. Laughs wetly.

"Six. Good number. Very intimate. We can all get to know each other before the cannibalism starts."

"Bit early for cannibalism."

"Never too early if you're organised."

The clean-faced woman speaks. "Quiet."

Her voice is soft and everyone shuts up, even Flynn.

Outside the pod, something heavy moves.

A scrape of metal on stone. Slowly. Then another, but closer this time. Something hard is touching the hull with care. Testing the metal, probing for weaknesses.

Flynn holds his breath without meaning to.

The scrape comes again right beside the hatch. The cropped-hair woman whispers to Flynn, "That better be the fucking welcoming committee."

Something knocks. Then knocks again. Almost polite.

"No one's in, fuck off," Flynn shouts.

The fridge looks at the hatch. His hands flex inside the restraints.

Very quietly he says, "Shut up."

Imagine finding an ancient book. ‏Not damaged. Not incomplete by accident.

‏ Edited.

‏ Pages carefully removed — not destroyed, just… taken. ‏Like someone wanted the knowledge to survive, but never be whole.

‏ The unsettling part? ‏You don’t know what’s missing. ‏But you can feel that it matters.

‏ Would you keep reading?

‏ What makes this idea disturbing to me is this: ‏the knowledge isn’t forbidden — it’s fragmented.

‏ And anyone trying to piece it back together… ‏doesn’t get corrupted instantly.

‏ They just… slowly become something else.

‏ Not because the magic forces them. ‏But because it aligns with something already inside them.

‏ So now I’m stuck on this:

‏ 👉 Is incomplete knowledge safer… or more dangerous? ‏👉 Does the danger come from the information — or the person trying to complete it?

‏ And which is more unsettling to you:

‏ • Magic that takes control of someone ‏• Or magic that simply reveals who they already are?

‏ Also… ‏would you trust a book that wants to be read — but not understood?

The Future Trinity is a sci-fi cum philosophical book , the central thesis revolves around Universe being its own explorer trying to explore and understand itself and for that purpose it creates efficient systems , starting from unicellular to dinosaurs (scaling the size) then to humans (moderate size but highly complex) and now we are moving to next forward leap which is the convergence of AI , Quantum Computing and Robotics (Brain, Speed and body) and when that convergence happens then will that system ask the same fundamental questions which humans have asked for their lifetime like purpose of life , who created all this etc? I draw 4 destinies Architect , Destroyer , Void and Pilgrim which explores what might this unique convergence may do. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYH97PLB

Cuando era adolescente, creía que mi destino era el arte. Estudié literatura y fotografía, hice algunos trabajos de modelo y actué en un par de pequeñas obras de teatro. Mi realidad actual es completamente diferente: trabajo en la cocina de un restaurante y lo que más hago durante el día es pelar patatas. Mi mayor aspiración es que el chef renuncie algún día para poder ocupar su lugar.

Hace unos años, escribí una novela que me parecía muy profunda. Gasté mucho dinero en la edición y la portada, pero sobre todo invertí muchísimo tiempo. Me llevó años escribirla. La subí a Amazon, pero nadie la descargó. Estaba convencida de que la novela era buena (quizás más de lo que realmente era), pero no vendí ni un solo ejemplar.

Un día me harté. Dije: «Si eso es lo que quieren, les voy a dar exactamente lo que piden».

Escribí Criada para el multimillonario en menos de 5 meses. No invertí ni un centavo: ni en la portada ni en la edición profesional (seguro que le faltan comas y puntos). Está llena de escenas absurdas y personajes totalmente clichés: el millonario que se enamora de su empleada mexicana y la esposa trofeo adicta a la cirugía plástica y a las pastillas. (En serio, mi abuela ya veía esa basura en las telenovelas de las 4 de la tarde). Para asegurarme de que fuera realmente mala, incluso añadí un conflicto con la mafia rusa y un niño con orejas enormes al que llaman Dumbo.

La novela es pura basura. Está llena de exageraciones, parodias, escenas absurdas y locura tóxica. ¿Pero saben qué? La puse gratis durante dos días y la gente la descargó. Ahora no sé si sentirme orgullosa o avergonzada.

Si quieres ver el resultado de mi crisis existencial, el libro está en Kindle Unlimited. Léelo bajo tu propia responsabilidad. (FREE TODAY)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZQ396ZB

PD: Si no te gusta… pues qué se le va a hacer. Mañana volveré a pelar patatas como cualquier otro mortal.

I wrote this after spending years stuck in loops of overthinking and self-analysis not the haha I think too much kind. The kind where your own mind becomes exhausting because you notice every thought, every reaction, every shift in yourself constantly. Most books try to fix that this one just looks at it honestly. It’s free today if anyone wants to check it out.

Hey folks, I have recently released my first book ever, and the first volume of a six-part epic saga!
It's surreal to think I put in years of effort and sweat to develop a story and its world, and now it's out there to be enjoyed.
Honestly, I can only hope you are entertained and watchful of its future, which I am crafting at full speed ahead, considering volume 2 is well underway!

I'm especially open to feedback of any kind, especially if there are any tricks to self-promotion of my product.

Introducing The Companionship of the Brave I: Rally and Seek

--A grieving Guardian is drawn into a dangerous quest of missing children, ruined villages, monstrous threats, and a mystery that grows far beyond what anyone expected.

Epic fantasy with warriors, mages, outcasts, ancient powers, and a companionship forged through danger--

Take a look: https://amazon.com/dp/B0GPFNF2H5

Furthermore, for those interested in rich lore, I have also created a "wiki" of my saga that can serve as a guide while reading - https://www.worldanvil.com/w/kyfeia2C-the-living-world-commandervictory

Enjoy!

Most people I rely on for feedback on my books are too keen on my cover for A Symbol of Time, a self published novel on KDP.

Is it acceptable practice to change a book cover in a novel that has been published for 6 months. I am about to publish my second novel so the timing would be ideal.

Any advice

JT