Wednesday, February 4, 2015

JOHN SMITH : Last Known Survivor of the #Microsoft Wars by Roland Hughes #Dystopian #Excerpt


SK:  I ask again, what was the truth according to John Smith?
JS:    Later in life, when people were counting the number of wells and starting to not buy the “dead Dino” story, scientists made an even more ludicrous claim.  They claimed the jungle and forest, which covered all of the land during the age of the dinosaur, was also decomposing and creating large pools of oil.
SK:  Why was this so ludicrous?
JS:    Admittedly, plant and animal life will share some mineral content, and all things will create some kind of goo when they reach that liquefying stage of decomposition.  However, I do find it a stretch that both would end up creating crude oil, no matter how much heat and time were applied, unless crude is a very tiny subset of minerals that survive decomposition. 
Eventually, scientists started claiming crude was caused by decaying plant and animal life.  I guess fish never played into the formula.  Scientists really had no choice.  They had to explain to an increasingly skeptical public why some crude was yellow and some black.  Some crude was fast-flowing liquid and other crude was a solid brick.
SK:  I ask again, what was the truth according to John Smith?
JS:    Crude oil is decomposing humans from earlier cycles.  Each cycle lasts an unbelievably long time, as far as human life  is concerned.  Humans, by and large, have a need to build communities.  As the cycle progresses, these communities become cities of a massive scale.  When the earth shifts and heaves its continents around, these cities are buried deep in a matter of hours, if not seconds.  They are buried deep without air or the nutrients needed for bacterial decomposition.
The steel eventually reverts back to iron and carbon; the concrete, to limestone and sand.  I’m not certain what happens to the glass other than the fact it is crushed into pieces so tiny one wouldn’t notice them coming up with the drilling mud.  The humans and their pets, though—they are crushed and eventually, the heat of the earth cooks them into crude.
SK:  That is a disgusting thing to say.  We have one of those oil sites oozing stuff out of the ground near our city! People use it for all kinds of things.
JS:    Humans are useful in a variety of forms.  Have they invented a product called petroleum jelly yet?  It’s kind of greasy, helps cuts heal and looks a lot like animal fat.
SK:  Oh!  I cannot believe I’m being forced to sit here and listen to this!
JS:    Do you think I’m the first to point something like this out?  I suppose you have never heard of cannibalism either?
SK:  Another disgusting tale to frighten children!
JS:    Oh no.  It was real and existed in various forms around the globe.  Even in large cities, where everybody claimed it never happened, you would see the occasional news report that someone had been arrested with pieces of humans in their fridge or freezer.  There was even a movie about the earth running out of food and governments taking it upon themselves to make cannibalism palatable to the masses.
SK:  I simply cannot accept the premise anybody would believe such a story.
JS:    The story became a legend.  They would simply herd people to different areas of each city.  One area would be selected for recycling.  The people would be processed and turned into little food squares of “Soylent Green.”  There were lots of different colors of food squares made from the various forms of food still available but there wasn’t enough to go around.

“John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars” is one big interview. It is a transcript of a dialogue between “John Smith” (who, as the title of the book implies is the last known survivor of the Microsoft wars) and the interviewer for a prominent news organization.
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Genre – Dystopian Fiction
Rating – PG
More details about the author

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

WHAT FREEDOM SMELLS LIKE #Excerpt by Amy Lewis @AmyLewisAuthor #AmReading #Memoir #TBR

Every single item that you buy in life, that outlives you, someone, some person, has to deal with. Has to pack, has to decide what to do with: to sell, to donate, to throw away? If you sell it you have to decide how much to sell it for, maybe even research what similar items go for; you have to advertise, you have to exchange money, maybe even make change. If you donate you have to pack up, decide what charity or friend to give it to, usually you have to bring it to them or arrange to be home when they come by. You have to make sure it works because you don’t want to donate something that is broken. If you throw it away you have to lug it, schlep it to a waste bin and if it’s a lot of things to a dumpsite. You don’t think about this when you have money in your pocket and want things.

Every item in our Vegas house had a memory connected to it. Now I had to decide what to do with them all. I rented a huge storage space close to my parent’s house. It was almost as big as our first tiny slum apartment. All of our stuff had been deposited there.

The week after he died, I had gone into our walk-in closet in Vegas and sniffed every item of his clothing, removing those pieces that still had his scent and packaging them into gallon size vacuum packed Ziploc bags. I imagined this was a new use for Ziploc bags they probably never advertised: preserving the scent of the dead. I would have taken his clothes in the dirty laundry basket, but my father had washed them. I cried when I found him in the laundry room trying to be helpful. I put the zip locked bags of clothes under my bed in my parent’s guest bedroom.

whatFreedomSmellsLike

Diagnosed with Borderline Personality disorder, Amy struggled with depression and an addiction to sharp objects. Even hospitalization didn't help to heal her destructive tendencies. It took a tumultuous relationship with a man named Truth to bring her back from the depths of her own self-made hell.Amy's marriage to dark, intriguing Truth was both passionate and stormy. She was a fair-skinned southern girl from New Orleans. He was a charming black man with tribal tattoos, piercings, and a mysterious past. They made an unlikely pair, but something clicked. During their early marriage, they pulled themselves out of abject poverty into wealth and financial security practically overnight. Then things began to fall apart.

Passionate and protective, Truth also proved violent and abusive. Amy’s own self-destructive tendencies created a powerful symmetry. His sudden death left Amy with an intense and warring set of emotions: grief for the loss of the man she loved, relief she was no longer a target for his aggression.

Conflicted and grieving, Amy found herself at a spiritual and emotional crossroads, only to receive help from an unlikely source: Truth himself. Feeling his otherworldly presence in her dreams, Amy seeks help from a famous medium.

Her spiritual encounters change Amy forever. Through Truth, she learns her soul is eternal and indestructible, a knowledge that gives Amy the courage to pursue her own dreams and transform herself both physically and emotionally. Her supernatural encounters help Amy resolve the internal anger and self-destructive tendencies standing between her and happiness, culminating in a sense of spiritual fulfillment she never dreamed possible.

An amazing true story, What Freedom Smells Like is told with courage, honesty, and a devilishly dark sense of humor.

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Genre – Memoir
Rating – PG-13
More details about the author
Connect with Amy Lewis through Twitter