Sci-Fi
Date
Published: Jan
2016 (paperback Dec 2016)
Sam,
an ex-soldier who is trying to rediscover himself after twenty years of
service, unwittingly stumbles upon a mysterious alien presence in rural Wales.
He is drawn into a tangled web of intrigue, pitting him against forces bent on
destruction and putting his life in peril. Feeling mentally eroded by his time
in the army and having worked hard to overcome this, he is thrust upon an alien
journey that will change his life and beliefs in a profound way.
Claims
of benevolence are only the beginning of the mysteries he'll have to unravel as
doubt and mistrust haunt him. He will have to form unlikely alliances in order
to fathom the mysteries at the secret Mineran enclave, where intrigue,
deception and imminent danger reside.
His
journey for answers will introduce him to pernicious enemies with hidden
agendas, as a heinous plot to kill him unravels. Can he defeat his personal
demons to secure justice and discover the truth of who or what is behind the
nefarious machinations and why?
Excerpt:
CHAPTER
12
Sam could feel the air move around him
as bullets whisked past. He knew Reb was covering his retreat and that he must
be taking hits. Pumped up on adrenalin, Sam raced up the gantry towards the Dia
Kuklos. Part of his mind found it funny that he was running nude towards an
alien Dia Kuklos to another world full of aliens and he was making his debut
with his manhood swinging about and a 16-inch arrow in his shoulder. ‘You don’t
see this in the movies,’ Sam groaned to himself as the jostling shaft sent a cascading
wave of pain from his shoulder down throughout his body.
He was at the top and facing the angled
surface of the Dia Kuklos. He certainly couldn’t jump through feet first, as
the metal pins would burn up his body. It would have been better to come at it
from the other side where the angle would work in his favour, but there was no
time for that. He leant forward and tried to hit the surface of the Dia Kuklos
in a falling walk, turning his head at the last second to look back to see Reb.
Reb’s face was grim but had a look of determination. Suddenly Reb’s head
violently jerked forward as if he was performing a violent Glasgow Kiss and Sam
realised he had just taken a shot to the back of his head. Not having seen Reb
apply the hood he thought him surely dead. At that instant, Sam’s face
exploded!
He had utterly overlooked a forgotten
amalgamation of mercury, silver, tin and copper, which instantly heated up to a
liquid state. The sudden increase in size shattered the bottom molar that it
had previously protected. The superheated liquid destroyed and cauterised flesh
at the same time. Here was where Sam’s luck ran out as the molten metal had to
pass through from right to left. If only he had looked the other way! Heat
seared and burnt his mouth and throat, and the super-heated air made its way
into his lungs, seriously charring the interior surface and making it
impossible for him to breathe. The molten metal burnt its way through Sam’s
tongue and lower jaw until it finally escaped through the left check. A fraction
of a second later, seven micro pins burnt through his fibula, tibia and calf
muscle.
Sam fell into a pair of outstretched arms. He
couldn’t breathe as the nerves in his lungs screamed that they were on fire. It
felt like most of his face was missing and in the haze of pain he was sure he
saw part of his tongue fall to the floor. For some reason, the last thought
that ran through his mind was ‘mind the porcupine.’ Then blackness enveloped
him and the pain went away.
About the Author:
Born
in England and raised in Wales, I started my working life on a farm in the
glorious rural Welsh countryside. I retrained to become an IT Consultant
and having spent thousands on Microsoft, CompTIA and Cisco qualifications; I
also obtained a contract to run and teach at a Cisco Academy in England.
After this, I became a small business IT Advisor for WCBC and the Welsh
Government. As this funding dried up, I retrained as a Business Advisor
and have since helped thousands of people start up their own businesses.
In
my leisure time, I work my way through a comprehensive bucket list with my
Fiancée, Cath. This has caused us great delight as we have attended various
courses and fun days out, such as beekeeping, pottery making, stained glass
making, painting course, cooking courses, hawk walks, animal experiences, quad
biking, gorge walking and much more. Our favourite one is learning to dance.
This activity has remained with us and will hopefully do so for the rest of our
lives. We can do a reasonable Waltz, collapse in laughter trying the Viennese
Waltz, but it is the 1920’s Lindy Hop that we have fallen in love with. After
three years of dancing, we still attend regular dance classes and events.
Strangely,
for an ex-geek, my favourite gadget is my Italian Marcato pasta machine. I love
real, unprocessed food and my freshly made pasta with a home cooked sauce is
amazing.
I
have always enjoyed reading, and in my early teenage years, I read authors
ranging from Harry Harrison to HG Wells. Later in life, I turned to thriller
writers such as the 3 C’s; Clancy, Cussler and Child. Also, I will always have
a Pratchett book on my phone for light reading. His imagination was and always
will be, inspiring. I have wanted to write the Mineran Series for several years
prior to actually starting and with the encouragement from Cath, who has
suffered my many varied, imaginative pranks over the years, I have begun.
Contact Information
Twitter: @pnburows
Purchase Links
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