Quick Facts
Release Date: November 30, 2012.
Genre: Dystopian Fiction (Science Fiction / Techno-Thriller / Suspense / African-American Fiction)
Formats: Paperback, Kindle.
A number of unacquainted adults, from various walks of life, routinely enjoy the benefits of residing in a nation where liberty and justice are among its chief luxuries. Having different statuses of education, income, and ethnicity, all are suddenly forced to cope firsthand with the "domino effect" of America's vitriolic reaction to the assassination of an auspicious female presidential nominee, Gov. Ceinwen Jarvis. In a day and time where the advancement of technology allows one's voting status, banking information, and even medical history to be accessed by microchip scan, they quickly realize that America - as well as their own lives - will never be the same.
Excerpt
“Conspiracy!” she yelled at the top of her lungs and used all of her might to swing the weapon at a nearby car, shattering the driver’s side window.
The officer continued to step backward, gingerly almost.
Another yell came from my right. “Ol’ racist ass cop!”
The crowd closed in and began to slowly advance toward the officer. I stood on the perimeter, not sure if I wanted to get involved.
“Fall back,” the officer ordered, pointing his gun into the crowd now, aiming in the general direction from where the slur came.
Various shouts rang out in response, more people getting agitated now and too many of them yelling at once to clearly decipher any one phrase.
“I will not hesitate to discharge my weapon,” he warned.
We see that, I thought. Obviously he was ready to pull the trigger yet again.
The closer the crowd got, the more the officer seemed to be losing his aura of authority, his confidence getting smothered by fear, his eyes now showing uncertainty where before there was boldness. Not a soul had responded to his call for backup. The city’s police force was sorely understaffed and everyone knew that in this chaos there weren’t nearly enough officers to go around. The gun trembled slightly in his hand as he pointed it at the closest target, a young black man in his early twenties advancing to the front of the crowd. He was shirtless, wearing nothing above the waist but several large black tattoos, his athletic body coiled with intent.
“Crooked cops,” the young man stated passionately, as a matter of fact. “I fucking hate the police.” He glanced back at the others and raised his voice with that last statement.
They thundered their hearty agreement.
“So what we gonna do about this racist motha fucka?” the young man snarled, having assumed leadership of the crowd by their earlier assent.
“Don’t try me,” the officer shrieked. He made another useless call for backup, panicked and on edge. The crowd had backed him into a wall and like any cornered animal he was ready to attack.
“Grab him!” The suggestion came in the form of a growl.
The young man sprang forward, all that tension uncoiling from his chiseled muscles in a single smooth leap. With a wild look in his eye, the officer pulled the trigger. In his agitation, he actually missed the young leader and instead his bullet found someone else who screamed out in agony as their flesh was torn. This indiscriminate shooting incited the crowd even more, and in the time it took the cop to fire another shot into the group, he was completely buried under a pile of angry bodies, swarming around him like bees to the hive.
“Stand down,” ordered the nearest police officer in a booming voice, as he and countless others surveyed the entire riot scene unfolding before us.
“Never. We want justice,” the lady screamed, successfully breaking out the rear passenger’s side window this time. The officer made a move toward the woman and she turned to him, struggling for purchase as she raised the lug wrench over her head. A crazed expression morphed her face into a vacant wasteland, so that she appeared to be gazing at and through the officer at the same time, eyes and mouth sloping downward, gaping. She looked to be coming straight from the office, dressed conservatively in a pencil skirt and high heels, which I noticed because they were so inappropriate. Skinny as the tool in her hands, she posed little to no physical threat and could have easily been subdued by some other method, so I was surprised when the police officer drew his gun.
“I’m warning you. Stand down,” the officer growled, his eyes two hard pebbles of flint, sparking as he aimed the gun squarely at the woman’s heart.
She moved with no forewarning and surprising quickness. Like a lioness, she pounced, and got close enough to the officer to be able to see the color of his eyes before he fired his weapon. It was nothing like in the movies. His gun made more of a popping sound rather than a loud bang. In all the noise it could have been mistaken for something else, like a car backfiring or a tire exploding. She collapsed instantly, freefalling, slamming to the pavement with so much force her body seemed to bounce once before landing in a final thud, facedown, her fist still clutching a tool used for changing flat tires. Her entire back was a mass of gore from the exit wound, blood so dark it looked black in the low light, soaking her smart silk blouse and pooling around her body in an ever expanding puddle.
Even in the midst of the mayhem, there seemed to be an almost pure silence that descended over the immediate circle of people surrounding the woman’s corpse. Their stillness attracted even more attention than the gunshot and the crowd around the fallen woman grew. The officer began to slowly back up, a look of dread on his face. He spoke into his shoulder radio, “Two-forty-eight requesting backup at Sixth and Watson. Code thirty. I repeat: I need units at Sixth and Watson, immediately.”
The officer’s call for backup shifted the crowd’s focus from the dead woman to him.
“He did it,” someone spoke clearly from the group. “The cop.”“Never. We want justice,” the lady screamed, successfully breaking out the rear passenger’s side window this time. The officer made a move toward the woman and she turned to him, struggling for purchase as she raised the lug wrench over her head. A crazed expression morphed her face into a vacant wasteland, so that she appeared to be gazing at and through the officer at the same time, eyes and mouth sloping downward, gaping. She looked to be coming straight from the office, dressed conservatively in a pencil skirt and high heels, which I noticed because they were so inappropriate. Skinny as the tool in her hands, she posed little to no physical threat and could have easily been subdued by some other method, so I was surprised when the police officer drew his gun.
“I’m warning you. Stand down,” the officer growled, his eyes two hard pebbles of flint, sparking as he aimed the gun squarely at the woman’s heart.
She moved with no forewarning and surprising quickness. Like a lioness, she pounced, and got close enough to the officer to be able to see the color of his eyes before he fired his weapon. It was nothing like in the movies. His gun made more of a popping sound rather than a loud bang. In all the noise it could have been mistaken for something else, like a car backfiring or a tire exploding. She collapsed instantly, freefalling, slamming to the pavement with so much force her body seemed to bounce once before landing in a final thud, facedown, her fist still clutching a tool used for changing flat tires. Her entire back was a mass of gore from the exit wound, blood so dark it looked black in the low light, soaking her smart silk blouse and pooling around her body in an ever expanding puddle.
Even in the midst of the mayhem, there seemed to be an almost pure silence that descended over the immediate circle of people surrounding the woman’s corpse. Their stillness attracted even more attention than the gunshot and the crowd around the fallen woman grew. The officer began to slowly back up, a look of dread on his face. He spoke into his shoulder radio, “Two-forty-eight requesting backup at Sixth and Watson. Code thirty. I repeat: I need units at Sixth and Watson, immediately.”
The officer’s call for backup shifted the crowd’s focus from the dead woman to him.
The officer continued to step backward, gingerly almost.
Another yell came from my right. “Ol’ racist ass cop!”
The crowd closed in and began to slowly advance toward the officer. I stood on the perimeter, not sure if I wanted to get involved.
“Fall back,” the officer ordered, pointing his gun into the crowd now, aiming in the general direction from where the slur came.
Various shouts rang out in response, more people getting agitated now and too many of them yelling at once to clearly decipher any one phrase.
“I will not hesitate to discharge my weapon,” he warned.
We see that, I thought. Obviously he was ready to pull the trigger yet again.
The closer the crowd got, the more the officer seemed to be losing his aura of authority, his confidence getting smothered by fear, his eyes now showing uncertainty where before there was boldness. Not a soul had responded to his call for backup. The city’s police force was sorely understaffed and everyone knew that in this chaos there weren’t nearly enough officers to go around. The gun trembled slightly in his hand as he pointed it at the closest target, a young black man in his early twenties advancing to the front of the crowd. He was shirtless, wearing nothing above the waist but several large black tattoos, his athletic body coiled with intent.
“Crooked cops,” the young man stated passionately, as a matter of fact. “I fucking hate the police.” He glanced back at the others and raised his voice with that last statement.
They thundered their hearty agreement.
“So what we gonna do about this racist motha fucka?” the young man snarled, having assumed leadership of the crowd by their earlier assent.
“Don’t try me,” the officer shrieked. He made another useless call for backup, panicked and on edge. The crowd had backed him into a wall and like any cornered animal he was ready to attack.
“Grab him!” The suggestion came in the form of a growl.
The young man sprang forward, all that tension uncoiling from his chiseled muscles in a single smooth leap. With a wild look in his eye, the officer pulled the trigger. In his agitation, he actually missed the young leader and instead his bullet found someone else who screamed out in agony as their flesh was torn. This indiscriminate shooting incited the crowd even more, and in the time it took the cop to fire another shot into the group, he was completely buried under a pile of angry bodies, swarming around him like bees to the hive.
Guest Post
The Worst Mistake when Writing a Book
I’m guilty. I wrote No Greater Illusion in a looming, gigantic silo. The massive double doors could only be opened by a rusty, antique key with a beautiful scroll design; and I was the only one who had possession of the key. All alone, I went into that silo with my laptop and my outline, I bolted those double doors from the inside, and I swallowed that old brass key. During my self-imposed captivity, I did not even tell anyone that I was writing a book. Yet, on occasion someone would find out anyway, and come knocking on the doors of the silo, asking me what I was doing in there and pleading with me to come out and share my story. I would just yell through the doors to leave me alone, and hustle back to my usual spot in the middle of the floor.
It wasn’t until the entire manuscript was done, that I retrieved the key and emerged from the silo, blinking rapidly at the harsh light of day and noting with wonder how the world had changed while I was locked away. When at last I was ready to offer my “completed” novel to the world, it had the perspective and influence of only one individual: Me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that posed a bit of a problem.
You see, I was much too close to the work. I was pouring my entire heart and soul into No Greater Illusion. I did not ask for any feedback or advice from others throughout the process, and I entertained no suggestions until the end. Which meant I was left with 3 things:
1) A bruised ego. I expected my first readers to praise No Greater Illusion, heralding it as the Next Great American Novel, a classic in the making, superbly written and absolutely perfect with no room for improvement at all. Ha! When people found mechanical errors and pointed out holes in the plot, I was shocked that the end result was not considered to be sheer perfection. I suspect I may not be the only author in the world who suffers from this same syndrome, but my condition was made all the worse by the musty air from inside that silo.
2) Conflicting emotions. It was hard to hear negative feedback about my work. I poured so much of myself into the novel that somehow criticism of the book felt like a direct rejection of me. Furthermore, I did not want to take all the suggestions that were given to me. On the one hand, I wanted NGI to be the best that it could be, but at the same time I wanted it to remain all mine. If someone said something that didn’t feel right to me, I had to make a tough decision on whether their suggestion had enough merit to incorporate into the story. Sometimes it did, and other times it didn’t. I struggled most with whether I should add the Epilogue. I know now that without it, the novel would have just ended too abruptly and perhaps disappointed some readers. However, when I was trying to decide whether to include an Epilogue, I struggled. After rewriting it and removing it three (yes, three!) separate times, I finally landed on something that felt right to me; and I was sure that it ultimately enhanced the novel. It was tough getting to that point though. In fact, it was nearly impossible.
3) A lot of work to do. Let’s face it. I am not perfect -- and neither is my book. Once my bruised ego healed and my emotions settled down, I realized there were many ways in which NGI could be improved and that my first readers had valuable input to help me along the journey. Feedback enabled me to eliminate some areas with stilted dialogue, unnecessary repetition, ineffective foreshadowing, and (perhaps most importantly) prompted me to the give the embedded microchips a brand name of SmartTag. Until that point, I had just been calling it a “MICROCHIP SCAN” throughout the novel - how generic!
The bottom line is that feedback from others is imperative. As the author, I am just too close to the work and there are so many things I simply did not see. Things that were hurting the story. If I had been sharing my progress with others from the start, I would not have had so much rework to do in the end, nor would I have taken their constructive criticism as a personal affront. While I am in no way obligated to take all the suggestions that are given to me, I do have a responsibility to at least be open to hearing them. I owe that much to my readers if I am serious about giving them the absolute best work I am capable of. And I am serious about that.
Therefore, I will not make the same mistake twice. I have already started my second novel, The Red Envelope - a story about an engaging, likable young man who is facing some large obstacles in his life and chooses an unconventional way to solve his problems. During his journey, he will be forced to make tough decisions while his integrity and moral code is tried at every turn. What he ends up doing may surprise you, but as the reader you will be with him from the start. And this time, my readers will be with me from the start.
I went back to that old silo to leave the rusty, brass key in the lock of those double doors. That way, someone else will be able to gain entry without having to look for the key; and anyone is free to use that big, lonely silo for their project. But it won’t be me.
Giveaway
Win a Paperback or e-copy of "No Greater lllusion".a Rafflecopter giveaway
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About the Author
Jack of all trades, master of none - save for the art of procrastination - K. Baskett lives by the motto, "Never do today what can be put off until tomorrow." K. firmly believes that you aren't really interested in the author's hometown, spouse, children or pets, and has therefore decided to spare you the details. No Greater Illusion is the author's debut novel.
Learn more about the author at:
Feb 5th: Bookshelves of Dreams: Review and Guest Post.
Feb 6th: Love in a Book: Top Ten List.
Feb 7th: BK Walker Books: Interview.
Feb 8th: Laurie's Thoughts and Reviews: Interview.
Feb 10th: My Devotional Thoughts: Review and Guest Post.
A Novel Idea Live: Interview.
Feb 12th: 2nd Book to the Right: Review.
Feb 13th: Bookworm Lisa: Guest Post
Feb 14th: Black Lion Tour Blog: Wrap- up.
My fave is Seelie Fae.
ReplyDeleteelizabeth @ bookattict.com
Chrys - thanks for hosting me on your blog and introducing your followers to No Greater Illusion. Good luck to everyone who entered the Giveaway!
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by! It was a pleasure!
DeleteMy FAV paranormal creature is vampires. They're the most human that still has significant super powers.
ReplyDeletemestith@gmail.com