Out of curiosity I am slowly looking around to see what it would cost to have a 16K word short story edited. Its probably going to need 2 or 4 edits with the way I drool with words. I'm also working on a 200ish page book project. The prologue and first two chapters are 20K words, chap 3 has hit 9K words today. Mainly I am looking for cost effective editing for self publishing. I will put up a few pages worth of it. Its okay at best but the grammar is horrid. Run on's are my worst enemy with grammar being damn near the second. LOL This is number two the newest of the edits. ================================ Chronicles of the Lord of Power Lost and abandoned on the dark lonely road of the stars. Being found is worse than being lost. As being lost you are free from all but self. Being found you have to constantly worry about others. :Lord of Power -------------- Notes: This story is more of what I had in mind around the time of the Lord of Powers creation. It's further along time line wise than Book one. --------------- part 1 Off in the hazy emptiness beyond time and space, rows of two chairs, a table, and random chess games are at play. Amongst the endless table and chairs, two old humanoid figures sit. One is mostly white and gray, faded and battered by time, his face old wise and sorrowful, his figure thin and tall. Napping in his chair he lays to one side with a bit of drool running down his chin. By his hand on the table is a black bowl with straight white lines for stripes. On the other side of the table is a dark, strong figure of an old, harsh man stalking things in violent dreams. Frothy foam peeks its head just beyond the dark one's sharp teeth, the figure writhing in his slumber from time to time. He is dressed in dark tattered robes that vine out in the air, along the ground, and on the table, but never upon the chess board. His bowl is white with dark lines that zigzag. The chess board is mostly barren; on it a knight and a queen of white, and a couple pawns of dark can be seen... it seems this game has just begun. Somewhere, sometime, out in the furthest reaches of space is a floating homage to abandonment. A spaceship floats along the dark road, seemingly ravaged by time and space. With a curious panel on its hind end, unhinged on one side, it sits crooked. Shapes and letters can be seen - they are human and crude. It reads "LOP- 1." But within this dead coal, an ember of life still burns. While looking into the vessel past the ruins and wreck, carbon dioxide molecules are being produced and viciously consumed by an endlessly hungry plant life form that produces enough energy to power the rackety, loud machine that it's trapped within. The machine sputters out oxygen and moisture into unfrozen sections of the inner sanctum of the vessel. A curiosity since no one on board needs it to live; it's more of a comfort for these two weary travelers. A floating orb smaller than a human head floats over a grumbling man, dressed in jeans, a torn shirt, tattered fedora and trench coat. The orb starts talking in a feminine yet humorous tone. "You better hope that damn mold monster doesn't pop out of this piece of crap life support unit you were up all week hammering together." The orb is quiet for a moment, then continues, "On second thought, since I had to use my last repair drones to fish you off that planet and clean you up, I don't want to talk about it." The man works on some sort of large looking circuit panel. He links dim pathways of light as if he is drawing. He says in a lightly stressed voice "Yes, yes I know, but it relaxes me." The orb comes back with a snarky reply, "What? Being covered in green poo that wants to turn you into plant poo?" The man returns, "Why yes, I like my balls being eroded away... but I prefer the smell of a crappy LSU to a colorless and quiet void." He continues as he places a panel over the circuit board. "This one is good, only 10 thousand or so to go. Then again, we should hunt down what powers it and try to get the engines online again." The orb rotates in place while blinking a bland, uninterested smiley face while thinking, and then stops after a minute. "So we are going to try the Light Force energy array, since we obviously don't have any decent power source on my poor precious ship..." The orb displays a crying face with a hint of happiness while looking at the tattered man. He stands up and looks to be about six feet tall and a bit plump and homely looking. Giving the orb a double take he said, "No... you're not making me into a human battery... besides, the ship couldn't handle being plugged into my nipples the last time we tried!" The orb makes another sad face and says, "So the array?" He replies with a half hopeful smile, "Yeah, even if we run afoul of the powers that be, it's better than trying to repair the ship with blood and sweat alone." He then gets up as they approach a door, it jerks itself open and they find themselves in a corridor that leads to a maze of pathways, filled with disorganized cabling of all sizes branching off in different directions. As they walk down the maze, the orb leads the tattered man through the dimly lit corridors. The orb gives off some light, creating menacing shadows that bob and sway as they venture forth. The man stares at the cabling coming from the ceiling and follows it with his eyes as he recalls troubling past experiences with cables. He remembers falling through a ceiling panel while being tied up in super energized cables, dangling like a marionette, jerking ever so slightly as the energy coursed through him randomly. He covers his face and grasps his forehead, remembering the worst part of it: the repair drone was cutting the wires and missed, cutting off a couple limbs. He sighs just before he stumbles and falls over a large stack of cabling, hitting his head as his hat tumbles forward. The orb keeps going forward saying, "Keep up slow poke, or I will leave you down here." "Do that and there will be many more holes in your precious ship," he replies, grabbing his hat and staggering to catch up with the orb. "Tsk tsk tsk, do you always have to resort to brute force?" The orb then stops at a battered door that says hanger bay 13. The man stops and looks at the slightly faded number 13, "So out of the 40 something hanger bays we have, this is the one we have to go through?" The orb retorts, "Well, it's the only one not wrecked and totally exposed to space. Want to go on another space trip skipping across asteroids like last time?" He replies, "Er no, no more wasting time... and I was not skipping damn it! Unless you can skip using your head..." "True. At least you came back whole that time... Mmmmm!?" The man looks at the orb puzzled, "What's wrong now?" The orb scans the door and says, "It's been beaten in so much that it's warped, buckling in on this side." The man pushes against the door grunting, "That... ugh... much is obvious. Ugh. Do you sense anything on the other side?" "No." The man replies quickly with an evil grin. "Then can I blow it up?" The orb scurries behind him. "Ugh, fine. Just keep the damage to a minimum." He smiles and gives the buckled in door an evil look and steps back. He whips his tattered trench coat off his hip and pulls out a long object that's covered in bandages. He then waves the object to the right, then up and down; the bandages fall around him in a circular motion. As the bandages fall to the floor, they reveal a golden brown shirasaya katana type sword. His eyes radiate a glowing blue mist, and energy lines start pulsating forward on the sword. The tip points at the door as energy starts compressing into a ball; a moment of silence covers the area as a bead of sweat runs down his check. As the final bandage hits the floor, a blurring beam of concentrated energy hits the door and fills the area with intense blue light. The door moves for a second, then stops. As he continues, the door withstands the assault. He glares at the door through the hazy, rebounding energy and pushes himself forward, forcing the energy into every crevice and molecule of the door's recesses and archway. Crackling sounds can be heard as cracks start forming along the areas touched by the door. The door and its whole archway go blasting off across the hanger bay floor with a great WOOSHING sound as it slams into several different fighters, coming to a rest far off in the distance. Amongst the rubble and a few random untouched fighters lay, the hunk of ejected metal glows far off within the darkness as they enter the gaping, yet still glowing hole. The tattered man and his floating orb companion soon realize something is amiss.
did anybody reply to you Zip??.. I'm going in hospital in 2 weeks.. won't have anything to do except recover for a few weeks afterwards.. Time?.. I'll have loads because I have no internet at my house.. you can send me an email if you want me to have a pick through.. I HAVE done a few publicatons professionally in the past.
I utterly fail at grammar(yes I have tried reading about it but I never did read well) I think I have scarred enough people with my writing for now. I've come to the conclusion that grammarly's online service is probably my best bet to fix my grammar problems. Tho you are welcomed to take a look at it if you want, do you want the 15K short story or the 30K plus one I am still writing? You can try and tackle both if you got plenty of aspirin handy LOL. What format would you like it in? I think I can do it as doc and keep some of the highlighting I use word 10.
