Pareidolia: Chapter Two

Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

LEAH

Northwest Philadelphia | July, 1999

The long walks started in June. I was sick of sitting around at home, pretending to read or staring at the cat. I’d disappear behind the wall of trees across the street from our house almost daily, losing myself for hours. Dad asked about this over dinner one night, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Where was I off to? Just getting some exercise? Yes, that was it. Not that it was a secret.

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Pareidolia: Deleted Chapter (SETI Student Group)

Enjoy this deleted chapter from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

Taking place just before the final version of the book begins, this deleted chapter finds Zeke fumbling his way towards Kenneth Holcomb’s secretive inner circle by way of a college SETI student group. (SETI is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a real thing.) The connections Zeke makes in this group eventually lead him to attend an out-of-town astrophysics conference where he befriends some members of Holcomb’s inner circle who agree to take him in as one of their own. Some of these characters are mentioned by name in the book’s current opening chapter, at the “birthday party”.

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Pareidolia: Deleted Chapter (Balero’s Journal)

Enjoy this deleted chapter from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

This is an excerpt from Balero’s journal that had for quite a long time served as the book’s opener (it was one of the very first sections I wrote). It was later moved to near the end of the book in the form of a physical journal entry that Marcus stumbles upon while holed up at Willow’s extravagant condo around the time Balero demonstrates his newfound powers to Zeke by forcing Leah’s father to materialize from the past and then vanish again.

The 2nd and 3rd sections of this intro (“urge loop” is an anagram of prologue — I was quite obsessed with anagrams while writing this book) serve as background pieces to get the reader comfortable with the world they are about to enter.

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Pareidolia: Deleted Chapter (Holcomb’s Interview)

Enjoy this deleted chapter from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

Here we find Zeke and Marcus discussing the astrophysics conference that Zeke lately attended (outlined in this deleted chapter), and Marcus shows Zeke a taped TV show episode that he suspects must contain an anonymous interview with Kenneth Holcomb.

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Pareidolia: Deleted Chapter (Van Zorn’s Interview)

Enjoy this deleted chapter from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

This chapter was written to flesh out the Ford Van Zorn character and explore some of the stranger philosophical and scientific themes introduced early on in the book.

I wound up deleting the chapter because Ford Van Zorn later evolved into a character who was, shall we say, less thoughtful than the person interviewed below. Also he was originally written as Dutch, and later changed to a charlatan masquerading as a Dutchman.

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Pareidolia: Chapter One

Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

(PART ONE)

ZEKE

Rosedale, MD | September, 1998

Cory’s coded message brings me to a cinderblock apartment on the edge of a Baltimore suburb. I dial 011 for the Miller birthday party. Arrows on signs guide me through a pale maze to a long low room where balloons gather in corners and look down on people in various states of milling under lights turned up too high.

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Pareidolia: Part One

Enjoy this excerpt from my first novel, Pareidolia. The premise is available here, and the table of contents can be found here.

PART ONE

In your mind you have capacities, you know;

To telepath messages through the vast unknown;

Please close your eyes and concentrate with every thought you think;

Upon the recitation we’re about to sing:

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft;

Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft.

– Klaatu

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Kill Your Children: Candle Cove & The Void

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(Spoilers below.)

We can thank Rosemary’s Baby and Alien for dragging childbirth into modern horror. “I know your secret,” mutters The Void’s bad guy Dr. Powell as he teases the protagonist for his relief at his wife’s recent miscarriage. The instinct to resist impregnation (or even multiplication) is at the heart of Ripley’s first encounter with a xenomorph. Hell, eggs themselves were used to warn audiences in 1979 that it was probably already too late, that the reproductive wheels had been turning since before they were in line for popcorn.

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Artificially Powered

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Aside from the necessary business of revealing character, I’ve come to believe that power is central to great storytelling. It’s more than just a means to an end; specifically in science fiction and fantasy, power and influence become explicit gravitational centers of a narrative. They are externalized and, more importantly, artificial.

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