Monday, January 19, 2009

Glimpse into Missing

Okay, here's a treat for you.

In just a couple short weeks, Echelon Press will introduce the anthology Missing at the Love is Murder Conference in Chicagoland. I'm all excited because it will include a story of mine with the characters from my Adventures of Guy series.

All of the stories are about missing people, and all profits will benefit a missing persons organization.

If you're like that kid before Christmas and you just can't wait, I'm gonna let you take a peek under the wrapping at my story.

And check back here soon - I'm going to post the beginning of Fang Face, humor and vampire and teens and all that.

Here goes:

The MisAdventures of Guy
By Norm Cowie

Thurman sipped his beer and tried to watch the blur of Umberto’s fingers on the frets. After a moment, he gave up and turned his attention back to the television. Umberto had exactly three talents. He was a physics whiz, he could wiggle his ears and he could play Guitar Hero like no one else.

Umberto’s fingers flew with the speed of gas stations raising prices through the twin power guitar solos of DragonForce’s Through the Fire and Flames. Though his fingers were going at warp speed, his face was serene and blissful.

“Know what, man?”

Okay, Umberto had a fourth talent. He could have a regular conversation even while shredding his way through some of the most insane guitar riffs in music history.

“No, what?” Thurman asked, taking another sip of his brewski. His eyes widened as Umberto frazzled his way through a particularly insane twist of chords. The extremely well endowed female demon on the screen pumped her fist in animatronic exultation.

“I was playing around with some stuff in the lab the last few weeks.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I think I made a breakthrough.”

“Uh, huh.” Thurman wasn’t really interested. Boring science stuff. He was way more interested in the female demon.

“Really, it was like we overlooked the absolute easiest way. I’m surprised no one thought of it before.”

“What’s that?” Thurman asked disinterestedly.

“Alternate fuel.”

“Alternate fuel?”

“Yeah. I discovered a solution that would totally enable us to replace fossil fuel. And the supply would be cheap, clean, environmentally friendly and work with an internal combustion engine.”
“What are you talking about?” Thurman said, finally interested. Even someone as marginally aware of events as Thurman knew how much a gallon of gas cost.

“Oil, man. We can get rid of oil.”

“Get rid of oil? But, but … how would the people at Exxon get by without their thirty nine billion dollars of annual profit?”

“Oh, poor Exxon,” Umberto snickered.

“Are you serious about all this?” Thurman asked.

“Yeah. It’s all in the transfer agent. All we had to do was find a plentiful energy supply and a way to transfer the energy.”

“So what’s the energy supply?”

“Cortisol.”

“Cortisol?”

“Yeah. Stress hormones.”

“What the heck are you talking about?!” Thurman asked, exasperated.

Umberto took his hand off his guitar and pointed triumphantly at Thurman.

“That!”

(All kinds of great authors in this anthology. Don't miss out! Order at www.echelonpress.com!)


Norm

www.normcowie.com
www.fangface.homestead.com

The Adventures of Guy
The Next Adventures of Guy
The Heat of the Moment
Missing (coming Feb 09)
Fang Face (humor vampire stuff, coming Aug 09!)

1 comment:

Dani said...

More, we want more! Great excerpt and two of my fave topics. You guess. Make people from Twitter go read this.

Dani
http://twitter.com/QuakeBooks