Thunder Moon Tussle (Excerpt)

Introduction

What fol­lows is a short excerpt from “Thun­der Moon Tus­sle” my nov­el.  It is avail­able at Amazon.com, click here.

Excerpt from Thunder Moon Tussle

Prologue

Nils Carmike glanced at his friend Mil­ton John­son across the table con­tain­ing a half emp­ty fifth and two cov­ered glass­es with straws. They took a seat in the cor­ner of the Con­rad Sta­tion Hotel Bar to avoid the oth­er patrons.

 

“It’s qui­et tonight,” said Nils.

 

“Yes, it is,” Mil­ton said. The late night meant that most had depart­ed, leav­ing only the bar­tender Alex. He was busy watch­ing the stream of the Ducks and the Avalanche bat­tling a third-peri­od two-two tie. “Even Alex seems bored with the game.”

 

“Yup.” Nils con­firmed again. The sky­light from above shined the blue beam of Earth­light onto the bar’s dance floor. The two remain­ing patrons locked in an embrace in the cen­ter of the light, as though they were more than just tourists. Nils not­ed their awk­ward movements.

 

Mil­ton picked up his glass, draw­ing anoth­er taste of the drink through the straw. Nils did so, wish­ing that he could drink out of a glass in one-sixth grav­i­ty. Some­one told him once that it had some­thing to do with the sur­face ten­sion of the liq­uid over­whelm­ing the grav­i­ty. Nils watched Mil­ton savor the liq­uid. Mil­ton set his drink aside and spoke plain­ly. “You’re still telling sto­ries to tourists for drinks?”

 

“It’s bet­ter than pay­ing my own bar tab. Have you seen these prices?”

 

“Still, it’s ridicu­lous. I hope you’ve retired that sil­ly sto­ry of me dis­cov­er­ing ice.” Mil­ton grum­bled as he drew the back of his hand over the three-day-growth of gray stub­ble cov­er­ing his face. Though Nils knew Mil­ton had gray hair, he could not recall him look­ing so haggard.

 

“It isn’t you,” remarked Nils.

 

“Yes, I know.” Mil­ton shrugged. “It’s some guy you named Mor­gan John­son. You should at least change the last names. It might con­fuse some people.”

 

“I made it up spur-of-the-moment. The peo­ple want­ed a prospector’s story.”

 

“It’s kind of stupid.”

 

“It’s one of the crowd favorites.” Nils answered, won­der­ing about his friend. Per­haps it was his imag­i­na­tion, but he nev­er remem­bered Mil­ton so disheveled or seem­ing so irri­ta­ble. Some­thing was going on.

 

“I can­not believe you’re still telling that fab­ri­ca­tion to tourists.”

 

“It’s what they enjoy,” Nils replied.

 

“Regard­less, I can’t believe you made up that non­sense.” Milt picked up his glass, “Come-on, I left you an ice sam­ple in a lunch pail?! Then you track my ice down by fol­low­ing my tracks all over the lunar surface!?”

 

Nils shrugged. “They seem to like it. Besides, Alex wants fun rather than reasonable.”

 

“It’s sil­ly! You should tell the actu­al sto­ry,” Mil­ton grinned.

 

“You’re kid­ding?”

 

“Seri­ous­ly,” Mil­ton answered. “It would make a far bet­ter story.”

The ridicu­lous sto­ry that Mil­ton is ref­er­enc­ing is called “Mor­gan’s Road”.  It is free to read and down­load, here.

Thunder Moon Tussle received a Five Star Review

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Recent­ly, Thun­der Moon Tus­sle received a five star review. Thanks to every­one who has tak­en the time to read my nov­el.  I appre­ci­ate all of you.  I have a spe­cial thanks to Russ J., who pro­vid­ed me a nice review on goodreads.com.  He called it  “a well-craft­ed sci­ence fic­tion tale,” and “well writ­ten, real­is­tic, and exit­ing” to describe the story.

I also want to thank the review­ers on amazon.com who have pro­vid­ed their thoughts:

Lon­don Mar­i­on called it “Excit­ing”,

TRA called it “Worth Reading”,

and an Ama­zon cus­tomer “real­ly enjoyed this book”.

 

 

 

 

133 AUTHORS JOIN THE FIREBIRD BOOK AWARD CIRCLE OF WINNERS

Octo­ber 2021 – Speak Up Talk Radio announced the win­ners of 2021’s third quar­ter FIREBIRD BOOK AWARDS contest. 

One of the win­ning entries was from Mon­tana author Torn MacAlester whose book titled Thun­der Moon Tus­sle won in the Sci­ence Fic­tion category.

Authors and pub­lish­ers from around the world sub­mit­ted their work to the Fire­bird Book Awards. Two judges from a select pan­el of 17 judges read each book in its entire­ty and inde­pen­dent­ly scored each entry. All judges com­mit­ted to a set of stan­dard­ized cri­te­ria that eval­u­ates the qual­i­ty of the writ­ing as well as pro­duc­tion aspects. Only entries with the high­est of scores were award­ed the cov­et­ed Firebird.

Patri­cia J. Rul­lo, founder of the Fire­bird Book Awards, says, “ we received near­ly dou­ble the amount of entries this quar­ter and we recruit­ed more qual­i­fied judges from the pub­lish­ing and writ­ing world. Our judg­ing pan­el includes a diverse group who rep­re­sent a cross sec­tion of ages, cul­tur­al her­itage, race, reli­gion, gen­der, and expe­ri­ence.  At Speak Up Talk Radio, our mis­sion is to offer authors a wel­come place to pro­mote them­selves and their books via book awards, radio inter­views, audio­book pro­duc­tion, voiceover mar­ket­ing tools, and pod­cast­ing ser­vices. We love to sup­port those who dare to share their inner­most thoughts with the world. Just one sen­tence in one book can very well make a dif­fer­ence in a reader’s life. I can’t think of any­thing bet­ter than that.”

Pat adds, “We’ve includ­ed a char­i­ta­ble com­po­nent to our awards by mak­ing all entry fees tax-deductible to the author. In return, we per­son­al­ly make and send hand­made fun and col­or­ful pil­low­cas­es to women and chil­dren in home­less shel­ters via Enchant­ed Makeovers, a 501©3 tax-exempt orga­ni­za­tion. All entry fees fund this project. In this way, authors get noto­ri­ety for their work while help­ing to trans­form home­less shel­ters into bright and hap­py homes. It is a reward­ing ven­ture for everyone.”

The Fire­bird Book Awards run quar­ter­ly con­tests so authors can receive recog­ni­tion on a time­ly basis. Authors from all gen­res, main­stream, inde­pen­dent, and self-pub­lished are wel­come. For addi­tion­al win­ning authors, titles, and entry information:

https://www.speakuptalkradio.com

Thunder Moon Tussle by Torn MacAlester

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

My nov­el Thun­der Moon Tus­sle is avail­able in kin­dle unlim­it­ed, kin­dle, and paper­back on amazon.com.

 

Nils Carmike, a fall­en from grace astro­naut turned smug­gler, forges a new life on the lunar fron­tier. Harassed by the strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and demand­ing Deputy Miller, he is faced with fines and con­flict, result­ing in a tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship and ulti­ma­tum he can’t refuse. Run­ning for their life they strug­gle against their pasts, hop­ing to out­smart the com­mon face­less ene­my and forced to focus on the only rule that mat­ters: survive!

 

Cov­er graph­ic by Shan­nan Albright

 

Check out the relat­ed sto­ries for free:

Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester

and

Golf and Out­gassing by Torn MacAlester

Science and Technology in Morgan’s Road

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Being a sci­en­tist and engi­neer, I enjoy adding as real­is­tic ele­ments as pos­si­ble to my sto­ries.  For exam­ple, I wrote this arti­cle to dis­cuss the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy that I ref­er­enced in writ­ing the sto­ry Mor­gan’s Road.

Sci­ence of Mor­gan’s Road.

There are cer­tain­ly some spoil­ers in that arti­cle. If you haven’t read Mor­gan’s Road, now is the time:

Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester.

 

The Mor­gan’s Road Cov­er Graph­ics are by Shan­nan Albright.

 

Mor­gan’s Road is relat­ed to the sci-fi nov­el Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester , avail­able at amazon.com in Kin­dle unlim­it­ed, Kin­dle, and paperback.

The science and technology of Morgan's Road

Thunder Moon Tussle and Morgan’s Road

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

 

Among oth­er things, Nils Carmike is a sto­ry teller.  This is some­thing his friend Mil­ton finds ridicu­lous. This pro­vides the back­drop for Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester

Take a look at one of Nil­s’s favorite sto­ries: Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester.

Then read the sto­ry that Nils did­n’t tell:  Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester.

 

Cov­er for Thun­der Moon Tus­sle and graph­ic for Mor­gan’s Road by Shan­nan Albright.

Free Short Science Fiction Story by Torn MacAlester

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Free short sci­ence fic­tion sto­ry: Mor­gan’s Road by Torn MacAlester

Mak­ing a liv­ing on the Moon is not for every­one, but Nel­son Carmike actu­al­ly pre­ferred the air­less basalt plains over Earth’s windy prairies.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, three years of Moon prospect­ing left him pen­ni­less, and with­out funds for sup­plies he was doomed to face a forced flight home. Out of options, Nel­son had all but giv­en up until a prospec­tor, pre­sumed dead for twen­ty years, arrives on his doorstep with a secret.

Can Nel­son fig­ure out how the man sur­vived on his own, and learn to do the same before his sup­plies out?

Check out this free short sci­ence fic­tion sto­ry. After­wards, take a look at the nov­el Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester.

 

Cov­er Design by Shan­nan Albright

From the pages of Thunder Moon Tussle: Lunadyne Corporation

When Orbit­dyne began their lunar oper­a­tions, they changed their name to Luna­dyne.  They are the prin­ci­ple own­er and oper­a­tor of Con­rad Sta­tion.  Orbit­dyne was orig­i­nal­ly found­ed by Ava and Ernie McDer­mott.  Mor­ris Mason, the for­mer CEO of Mason Indus­tries, is a third part­ner in the operation.

Con­rad Sta­tion is cen­tral in Thun­der Moon Tus­sle.  Deputy Miller hap­pens to be an employ­ee of Luna­dyne report­ing direct­ly to Mor­ris Mason.

 

Read more about Luna­dyne Cor­po­ra­tion, Con­rad Sta­tion, Mor­ris Mason, and Deputy Miller in: Thun­der Moon Tus­sle by Torn MacAlester.

See more of Deputy Miller in:

Fif­teen Percent!

Rejec­tion

 

See more of Mor­ris Mason in:

Clash of Titans

Morgan’s Road by Torn MacAlester

My short sto­ry Mor­gan’s Road acts as a pre­quel to the remain­der of my cur­rent sto­ries includ­ing my nov­el Thun­der Moon Tus­sle.  I wrote the sto­ry itself to roman­ti­cize the actu­al sci­ence results from LCROSS.  You can see the sci­ence behind the sto­ry in arti­cle The Sci­ence of Torn MacAlester’s Mor­gan’s Road.  

 

The cov­er art is by Shan­nan Albright 

 

Keep an eye on my blog posts for future releas­es, short fic­tion, and articles.

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