Pre-release excerpt from Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!
Summary:
The sci-fi thriller Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in your Hand! completes “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” a vision of the future that is troubling, inspiring, and astounding. Survivors of the Chaos, the first book in the series, starts in dystopia and ends with hope for a new future on a planet in the 82 Eridani system. In Sing a Samba Galactica, the second book, humans find friendly ETs there and battle unfriendly ones on another colony and Earth, but if you thought they and their ET friends would live happily in the Galaxy’s near-Earth space after the Singer saved the Swarm, you were wrong.
This novel shows why we always have to be vigilant against those whose thirst for power becomes an obsession. The protagonists—the tough, brilliant, and beautiful Silvia Kensington, the old warrior Brent Mueller, bent but not broken, and others—serve as Steve Moore’s Second Foundation; the villain—Dimitri Negrini, an evil genius—his Mule. They become forged in fire by the events portrayed in the first two novels and their struggles in this one. Action, suspense, and intrigue are found in this star-hopping modern sci-fi saga that combines elements of space opera with new perspectives on today’s problems.
(Steven M. Moore, Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, Carrick Publishing eBook, 2012—third novel in “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy”—cover art, 2012, by Sara Carrick—available October, 2012)
Excerpt:
The bar—the physical room, not the robotic dispenser of liquid and other refreshment— was like many others in Libertyville, government center of the planet Sanctuary. Nostalgic city planners had tucked it into one of the more central commercial zones of the well-to-do Residential Dome 17 and tried to capture the warm and woody ambience of 20th century meeting places.
A low-level conversation ebbed and flowed with the background music, stylized Latin American dance melodies. Both songs and dances, these were from the 20th and 21st century. They were the current rage among Sanctuary’s upper crust. As Jenny Wong observed the bar’s customers, she spotted many feet tapping out the rhythms. I doubt anyone here besides me ever danced this music on Earth.
A woman entered, her face ashen. She glanced around at the other customers and back toward the entrance. Her eyes locked a moment on Wong’s. The doctor saw the rapid blinking of the woman’s bright, green eyes. Her dark red hair and porcelain skin were not common on Sanctuary. The majority of the planet’s first settlers were Spacers—Wong herself was born in the Chinese Mars colony. She smiled. That seemed to calm the new customer.
The woman sat at the carved dark wood counter that surrounded the bar, the robotic dispenser of liquid and other refreshment. She attracted attention because it was unusual for anyone to be in a hurry inside this particular bar. She demanded the evening special in a breathless and tremulous contralto voice and glowered at everyone, Wong excluded, until the robot served her.
She ate slowly as if she savored every morsel. When most people stopped paying attention to her—unattached males were still considering their chances of making her acquaintance—everyone was astounded when she rose from her stool, grabbed her stomach with both hands, vomited green slime all over the counter and the floor around her, and fell in her vomit. The soft music and conversation did little to cover up the loud splat of her body as it hit the wet and odiferous puddle.
The bar also happened to be one of Jenny Wong’s favorites. It was near to both her home and her paying practice, so it was often a rendezvous spot with her husband, Brent Mueller. Even when she worked at her charity clinic in the Dark Domes, which she did every other day, she often made her way back to this spot. It was cozy and warm, something constant in her life, like her husband.
When the newcomer landed in her own vomit, she interrupted Wong’s reminiscing about the colony’s history, a long one in which she and her husband had played a variety of roles….
[Note to reviewers: First come, first serve, if you want to review the entire “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” which contains Survivors of the Chaos, Sing a Samba Galactica, and the book above. This is a $20 value. As always, drop me a line if you’re interested, whether for the full trilogy or for its individual eBooks. Due to mailing costs, I can only gift these as eBooks through Amazon.]
[This post begins a new category in my blog, “Pre-Release Excerpts.” Every reader knows you can go to the webpage on Amazon corresponding to one of my eBooks and “peek inside”—after it’s released! I have a hunch readers don’t do that even then, unless they’re already interested in the eBook, for whatever reason. Consequently, you will find in this category a pre-release excerpt to whet your appetite, but the blog category will also serve as an archive of excerpts for your future use.]
In libris libertas….
