Tag: 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

Yellowstone and Timeline of Events

Short science fiction by Torn MacAlester

The key back­ground event of the sto­ry­line that includes Thun­der Moon Tus­sle is the erup­tion of the Yel­low­stone super-vol­cano.  This erup­tion forms the basis for the cal­en­dar where the year of the erup­tion is des­ig­nat­ed Y+0.

The Yel­low­stone erup­tion plays into some of the moti­va­tion or emo­tion­al state of the char­ac­ters.  It serves as a focal point event where almost every­one relates to it.  It has the same affect as the attack on Pearl Har­bor or 9/11 had on their respec­tive gen­er­a­tions.  I recall a lot of the old­er gen­er­a­tions when I was young refer­ring to the attack on Pearl Har­bor as a turn­ing point in many of their lives.  I’ve also noticed that many of my peers refer to 9/11 the same way.  It may be we are liv­ing through anoth­er such event with the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this case, you can find ref­er­ences to the Yel­low­stone super-vol­cano erup­tion through­out Thun­der Moon Tus­sle.  Nils Carmike and Deputy Miller both refer to Yel­low­stone as a piv­otal event.  In his the review of Thun­der Moon Tus­sle, Nathaniel Owolabi makes note of this.

I try to set each of my sto­ries or vignettes on this time­line, though there are some excep­tions.  The vignette Cold Con­tact is not on the time­line.  The short sto­ry Mor­gan’s Road is on the time­line to indi­cate the year in which Nils Carmike tells the sto­ry for the first time.  The time­line pre­sent­ed will con­tin­u­ous­ly update with vignettes that give a taste of the back­ground with­out pro­vid­ing spoil­ers for any one story.

Time­line of Events

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.