Tag: Torn MacAlester

Robot Friend: A New Vignette by Torn MacAlester

Chris and Doug smiled hap­pi­ly as I held on to them for the pic­ture. I tried my best to smile too, but I had found that my smile fright­ens most peo­ple, so I always tone it down for pic­tures. Doug’s mom snapped the pho­to with her phone, then Doug ran off to the left. In an instant, Chris fol­lowed. I eyed Doug’s mom for a moment before I turned in time to hear.

“Hur­ry Sam­my,” Doug yelled.

“Yeah!” yelled Chris.

“Here I come,” I yelled, run­ning fast enough to catch up with Chris, who ran a few meters behind Doug.

“I’m going to win,” screamed Doug.

“You’re a cheat,” answered Chris.

“Where are we rac­ing to?” I asked as I eas­i­ly followed.

“It’s a secret,” Doug gasped as he slowed.

“You’re still a cheat,” Chris stat­ed as he caught up and stopped just as Doug stopped. I fol­lowed suit.

“I win,” gasped Doug.

“You did not,” said Chris. “You just gave up before I could pass you.”

“Yeah,” I added, know­ing that Doug had stopped just as Chris neared pass­ing him.

“Says you, slow­poke,” Doug snapped back. “Sam­my the slowpoke.”

“Awe,” I feigned a slight­ly hurt tone.

“He can’t help it,” Chris answered. “He’s sup­posed to play fair with us.”

“Yeah,” I said, know­ing that I could out race any human by bet­ter than twice as fast.

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Fifteen Percent! A Vignette by Torn MacAlester

Fif­teen Percent!
By Torn MacAlester Pho­to by Anna Nekra­she­vich from Pex­els Deputy Miller smiled. It was that smile of hers, Nils real­ized, the one that led to cer­tain dis­as­ter. “Okay Miller,” Nils attempt­ed to gain the ini­tia­tive. “What do you want?” “What makes you think I want any­thing?” “Dammit, Miller!” Why do you answer a ques­tion with a ques­tion? “You’ve […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Rejection: A Vignette by Torn MacAlester

Rejec­tion
By Torn MacAlester Pho­to by Life Of Pix from Pex­els “Deputy Miller, a seri­ous sit­u­a­tion has risen.” Alex said, clean­ing a lunar beer mug as he spoke. “Like what?” Miller answered, clear­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed in the Con­rad Sta­tion barkeep’s cur­rent cri­sis.  She checked her watch. Miller knew Nils Carmike’s sched­ule like the back of her hand. He would soon […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Lunadyne Incident: A Short Story by Torn MacAlester

Luna­dyne Incident
Y+28, Day 1: “You, in the jail,” the voice said over the inter­com. Sher­iff Del Ander­son stood and switched on the voice chan­nel. Del watched the warped video of the shady fig­ure in the hall­way out­side the Sheriff’s office. The facial recog­ni­tion soft­ware failed to place the indi­vid­ual. Either the man wasn’t in the system, […]

Directors and Malcontents: A New Vignette by Torn MacAlester

“I’ll say it one more time. John­son and Carmike are not com­ing back!” the Direc­tor said. “They left the space agency. It’s over. Why are we even hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion about them? I can’t believe I will spend my Sat­ur­day mak­ing a case for us to try lur­ing back two mal­con­tents that have no desire to be part of our mis­sion. What con­ceiv­able use do we have for them?”

The Assis­tant Direc­tor said, “They have flight expe­ri­ence and are qual­i­fied. They’ve both been to the Moon and done all the things we asked of them.”

“The deci­sion is out of our hands. They left.”

“We need to get them back.”

“I don’t see how,” said the Director.

“Yeah, I know it’s impossible.”

“How does that impact us?”

“To get the crews ready after Mis­sion 7, we must slow down our pace.”

“How slow?” The Direc­tor asked.

“We must extend our sched­ule for Mis­sion 7 by a year.”

“That’s not pos­si­ble. We must keep flying.”

“I have a solution.”

“What?” asked the Director.

“Change Mis­sion 7 to the Tycho crater, with Jel­li­son and Conner.”

“What about the next mis­sion at the Lunar south pole?”

“We have Annie and Cy Mac­In­turn­er fly it,” said the Assis­tant Director.

“You’re sug­gest­ing that we put a hus­band-and-wife team as crew for a Lunar mission?”

“Yeah. They’re the only ones with the expe­ri­ence need­ed to han­dle that tough mission.”

“The Assis­tant Sec­re­tary will kill us,” the Direc­tor said.

“Then we need John­son and Carmike back.”

“They’re not com­ing back.”

Morgan’s Road: A Short Story by Torn MacAlester

Mor­gan’s Road a short sto­ry by Torn MacAlester
Morgan’s Road, a short sto­ry by Torn MacAlester Graph­ic by Shan­nan Albright 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 […]

Commander: A Vignette by Torn MacAlester

science fiction vignette from Torn's timeline of events: Commander by Torn MacAlester
Com­man­der
Image by Torn MacAlester using Open­Sim By Torn MacAlester   The events in the crater weighed heav­i­ly on Nils Carmike. He near­ly killed his com­man­der, Mose. It was an acci­dent. Though, he felt defeat­ed as he stared out the Moon-ship win­dow, look­ing at the crater where it occurred. “I need to put you on this […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

Y+1: A Vignette by Torn MacAlester

science fiction vignette
Y+1
by Torn MacAlester This morn­ing on the Night Watch Live AM, we are speak­ing with Nick in Mon­tana, who’s been liv­ing inside of the blast zone of Yel­low­stone since the explo­sion last year. Nick, we have a caller on line two, are you ready for ques­tions from the audi­ence? “Go ahead Sam,” I said, pouring […]
Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester
 Torn MacAlester Fire­bird Book Award Winner

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