Saturday, August 5, 2023

Just a bit of a flashfic ... spicy! AND NO CHICK!

I just had a lil idea after dinner the other night, and popped out 500 words...

omfg. AI art is SOFA KING STUPID. I asked for a dozen variations of spicy pepper, hot pepper, and it always gave me a hot chick. This was "Jalapeno monster". She has nothing to do with the story. I wanted a literal anthro pepper. I'm including this just to bitch about it. I know if I found the right tool, and had the right keywords, I could maybe get something that isn't tryign SO DEPERATELY to be a hot chick, but is it worth it? No. Screw that. On with the story-
- - -


        The chemist carried heavy black tongs with heavily gloved hands. He wore welding goggles, which I found myself envious of. If one squinted, you could see that the tongs were carrying a container. A metal cylinder, with flat sides, making it more hexagonal from above.

Mounting the tongs to one edge of the table, the container was suspended over his week’s food supply.  Bringing out a wrench, he called to me, “Make sure you’re secure. Somewhere you’re not liable to trip and fall or something.”


“Is it going to… push me?”


“Nah, it’ll just be hard to see for a bit. Hang on.”


“What?” It was already so bright! The chemist clamped the wrench onto what I now saw was a lid. He heaved and strained. As the lid began to loosen, the brightness in the room became omnipresent. 


I heard the loud clunk of the lid landing on the floor.


The brightness was such a shock, it took a while to realise it had come with sound, like a hurricane was escaping from the container, now resonating all about. I heard the light fixtures shatter, but this made no impact on visibility.


I hollered over the cacophony, “You should have lent me welding goggles like yours!”


“With it open now, the goggles… they do nothing!” His goggles landed on my hand - not for me to wear - just as proof that he wasn’t wearing them anymore. It didn’t stop me from trying them on. It was true. The goggles, my eyelids, nothing was impeding the light. If you’d told me it was bypassing my retinas, and just stimulating my brain’s optic centres directly, I would have believed you.


I heard metal move, and where I knew the container to be, I saw a single drop fall. It was somehow brighter than the surrounding light. I couldn't call it a different colour. I couldn’t only reason that it was a different frequency somehow- but that was almost assuredly too simple of an explanation.


The drop fell onto the supply of food. I assume that’s what happened, but only because it stopped falling, and I knew that’s where the food was.


I heard the chemist grunt, and the drop was broken. Smeared apart in one direction, then the other.


“Here!” the chemist called out as I felt a tool press against my hand, “Help me bury it!”


As we both attacked the food, trying to mix and bury the liquid, then mix and bury again and again, I eventually realised that the horrendous sound was dying down, and the brightness was subsiding, slowly.


“Almost,” the chemist said in a soothing tone. When he decided we were done, the food glowed silently in the otherwise dark room. “Hang on, I’m going to go get my eating calipers.”


He actually planned on eating it. I knew that was the plan, but it still seemed like madness. “I think I saw the time knife.”


He chuckled. “Yeah. That’ll happen.”


“Most people are fine with sriracha.”



As always, go by my site Ozero.ca, or right to my amazon author page to check out my novels... which have nothing to do with all of this.


Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Kindle Unlimited, and

As of this moment, all of my books are BACK in the Kindle Unlimited library. 

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Joseph-Picard/author/B002LPT7VA

This includes:

The Lifeack series -
1- Lifehack
2- Watching Yute
   2.5- Cassidy's Ladder (Short bonus epilogye story for Watching Yute)
3- Echoes of Erebus

The Rubberman series -
1- Rubberman's Cage
2- Rubberman's Citizens
3- Rubberman's Exodus

- Daring Dragon Davey's Dastardly Deeds
- The Many Grape

Those of you with a Kindle Unlimited membership can now borrow them to read them for free, and I'm able to run the occasional freebie promos for everyone else! 

Does anyone have any requests for what I should run a promo on first?

---

In other news, work on the next series pushes on. The Daughter or Erebus series book 1 has had a working title of "The Hungry Spark", but this is not necessarily the final title.

It will be my first book since the multiple sclerosis ramps itself up, so the brain juice is flowing kinda slow. Semi-ralated to the slow MS-brain thing, the book may be significantly shorter than the books in my previous trilogies- I'm considering trying to get smaller books out more often.

The seires continues Sarah's life after Echoes of Erebus, and several pathways lie open to Sarah for future books... so stay tuned...!


Ohhhh, by the way, I've made new covers for my first series.... these were long overdue:


Grab em here!




Sunday, January 22, 2023

 As usual, I've been neglecting this blog. I've been doing tik toc vids, and the main topic is my books, I just put out a talk about Watching Yute.

Other vids have been my old art, or a talk about my disabilities. There might be more about those going forward, we'll see...

Sunday, September 18, 2022

 Here, have a slightly spoilerey map for the Rubberman series! The books tell of the biggest events to happen to this post-apocalypse multi-generational bomb shelter. A hope-from-the-dark scifi series on kindle paperback or hardcover

https://amazon.com/dp/B079VR3MY5?binding=kindle_edition



Book 1: Rubberman's Cage

Subject Lenth discovers there's more than 4 people in the world when he escapes his Unit, explores the facility, meets other sub-cultures in the facility, meets a SECOND GENDER (fascinating!) encounters a room with a wall that opens and put him in another area, (elevator?? what??) doorknobs, papaya. and faces a Subject with a very different outlook, who discovers how to murder.


Book 2: Rubberman's Citizens

Leena is a Citizen, and KNOWS her quarantined section is better than any other. All the Citizens agree. Given the regimented abuse Citizns suffer under whoever the current leader of Citizenry is, those other areas must be horrifying, right? What? Citizens are locker in for the safety of everyone else?? Looks like Leena and her friends will have to take some initiative... 


Book 3: Rubberman's Exodus

Tara and Sasha and the 2 chiefs in Engineering, and maintain the generator. Routine stuff until the uranium unexpectedly runs out. The lives of everyone in the facility are turned upside down, when a call for a little extra help from outside the facility brings devastating truths.

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

RUBBERMAN'S EXODUS IS OUT!!!

At the time of this writing, just the paperback, but hardcover and kindle are being processed by team Bezos at we speak. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981396054/

This is readable on its own, but nicely caps off the Rubberman Series. It's a biggie, at nearly 300 pages.

I recently was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, (yeah, on top of my 20-years-plus of paraplegia, yaaay!) so my concentration is kind of a mess these days. Thankfully, Exodus was in late editing when the MS hit hard. It's nice to finish off the series the way I wanted, but it does likely mean it's my last novel. I have plans to eventually redesign all my covers, and maybe do new editions of my older stuff with a bit of re-writing. But that's later.



133 years. Time is up.

Lead Engineer Tara and her partner Sasha face the coming end of the facility generator. For generations It has served thousands of people who have been hiding underground from the ravages of the war, and the lingering Enemy above.

Up and down the Grand Elevator, though the entire facility, every resident's life will be shaken when the generator sparks its last amp. The Great Actual, the anarchistic Citizens, and all of the regressed sub-societies in between will have to face the unknowns of the surface.

Old fears will pale against new circumstances beyond their imagination, and new attention brings judgment upon all.

So the initial intent was for Tara and Sasha (sweeties 4 ever!) to be the main focus of the book for most of it, but the events were so big that other parties had to have focus for notable chunks, most notably Messenger, who's the fella in charge of running the Grand Elevator that connects the different sections of the 40-story deep bomb shelter.

Other characters get their moment in the sun, from Lenth of Rubberman's Cage, and Leena of Rubberman's Citizens. This story affects every resident of the facility. Other per-established characters play important roles too, many of which (and some new ones) are named after real-life (and/or FB) friends. I gave them every chance to object to how I was having them behave!

It's launch day, and many things are nuts... but I'll get some nice excerpts posted here soon...

Eeeeheeheee... so many new things brought up that I think will surprise my long-time readers...

Sunday, July 24, 2022

Rubberman that hill

I was listening to "Master of Puppets" in the background (not my typical kind of editing music) as I was editing Rubberman's Exodus, but by the end of the following section, I was required by law to switch to "Running up that hill". Sasha recently discovered that she was very agoraphobic.... and yet...
-------

Tara had little time to absorb the idea before Sasha's grip on her hand tightened. “Us?” Sasha asked meekly, “going into that? And going out into all that to get there?” Her eyes were locked on the outside, wide, and darting around all that 'empty' out there.

Messenger cast a sympathetic eye on Sasha. “I suppose just Tara would be - ”

Sasha made a sharp whimpering noise. “N-no...” A mix of not having Tara with her, or worrying about Tara out there alone was terrible enough. But there was one final factor that she could address with less embarrassment. “I can do it. I'm going to do what needs to be done. I can do it.”

Tara took Sasha's hands in hers. “Are you sure?”

Sasha blinked with a nod, and did her best to reset herself. “I can. It's just right over there. I can see it, I'll be back inside in no time.”

“That's right,” Tara said, looking closely into Sasha's eyes.

“If you're ready...” Messenger said quietly. He turned to one of the nearby Providers. “I don't know how long this will take. Maybe an hour? I'll call if it looks like it will go longer.”

“We can do this together.” Tara said, holding Sasha as if it were a dance. They began slowly towards the void, but Sasha's breathing wasn't calming down.

They got ever closer to that looming void, and Sasha's confidence crumbled. “I appreciate what you're trying to do hon, but it's not.. it's not...” Sasha's steps broke any rhythm of dance, becoming smaller and less frequent.

Tara leaned in with a kiss, and turned the dance more intimate. She held Tara and did most of the work of moving into the light. “We can.” she whispered into Tara's ear, “We're together.”

Tears came from Sasha with a gasp that turned into a gentle sob. “And you're in just as much danger out here as I am. We have to go back.” Sasha gently, but forcibly moved against Tara's body, to try to push them back inside.

Surprised at the strength Sasha was using, Tara couldn't bring herself to fight with enough force to correct their course. Instead, she simply stopped, and grabbed Sasha tight. “It... it's okay. I... you win.” Holding her so close, Sasha's trembling breath seemed to overtake them both.

Messenger quietly stepped closer, and held out the comm device Tavish had given him. “Hang onto this,” he said softly to Tara, “I can probably get the Colonel to call you on it if we need to talk.” After Tara took it, Messenger began walking back to the AirLimb.

“Neil,” Tara called to him, with apologetic eyes.

“I understand.” Messenger replied before continuing on, leaving Tara holding Sasha.

Sasha began to buckle, but caught herself. “I'm failing at my duty.”

“Hush.”

“And I'm causing you to fail because you need to take care of my weak ass.”

“Hush.”

“No hush, Tara,” Sasha said, pulling away. Before Tara could react, Sasha bolted out into the void towards the AirLimb, head low, as fast as she could. 

Friday, January 7, 2022

Big update, big changes...!

 Want the good news first or the bad news?

Good: 

-My 10-year-old son and I put out a silly little 24-page book. He ran the show, made all the final decisions and general plot. He also did about half the work of the cover.

-The third and final book in the Rubberman Series, Rubberman's Cage, is about 2 months from release. It rocks.

Bad:

-I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after going into the hospital with what I thought was a mild stroke. The diagnosis is only about a month old, but looking back, I have a feeling it had been affecting me for a long time. As most of you know, I'm already a paraplegic, and I've recently passed 10 years of that, so... yay... double disabled now. SO FUN.

-I can't justify paying for my old webhost... frankly, it had a lot of capability I was paying for that I would never be using. SO, I'm in the middle of moving everything here. Including the ozero.ca domain.