Title: Nomad
Publication date: July 26th 2013
Genre: NA time travel dystopian novel
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Synopsis
A new dystopian novel from the author of Jenny Pox - coming July 26.
They took everything: her family, her home, her childhood.
By the age of nineteen, Raven has spent most of her life in the sprawling slums of America, fighting as a rebel against the dictatorship. When the rebellion steals an experimental time-travel device, she travels back five decades to the year 2013. Her plan: assassinate the future dictator when he is still young and vulnerable, long before he comes to power. She must move fast to reshape history, because agents from her own time are on her trail, ready to execute her on sight.
Excerpt
Her hands were red with blood, but the cold rain washed it away. Whose blood? She couldn’t remember.
She
became aware of pain throughout her body.
Freezing water and tiny hailstones lashed her face as she stumbled
through a storm. Dying thunder echoed in
her ears, and crackles of lightning faded in the night around her.
A pair of
lights rushed toward her through the darkness, but her brain couldn’t interpret
what her eyes saw. A long screech ripped
through her ears, followed by shrill bleats.
Car horns, she realized as
the lights loomed closer. Through her
thick, fuzzy brain, it dawned on her that she was staggering along a multi-lane
road, seconds away from getting splattered across the oncoming grill of an
eighteen-wheeled truck.
She
discerned a dark space off to her left and moved into it, stepping from hard
pavement into squishy wet earth. The
truck that had nearly killed her squealed past as the driver braked, dousing
her with a wave of cold mud. Horns blew
at the stopped truck blocking up the left lane.
She
rubbed her eyes and tried to grasp her surroundings—a grass median dividing an
interstate highway, up to her ankles in frigid mud.
She
couldn’t remember where she was, or how she’d come to be there. After a moment’s reflection, she realized she
wasn’t entirely sure who she was, either.
Raven, she
remembered. She clung to that word like
a lifeline. My name is Raven. It is now, anyway. She’d once had a different name, but that
original, scribbled-on-the-birth-certificate name no longer mattered.
She wore
black boots and a long black jacket. A
backpack weighed down her shoulders, but she didn’t know what it
contained. She trudged on weak,
trembling legs toward an overpass bridge ahead.
Once she was out of the downpour, she could gather her brains and figure
things out. She didn’t seem to be
bleeding, so the blood on her hands must not have been her own.
“Hey! Hey there, girl! You all right?” shouted the truck driver who
had almost flattened her. More cars
honked and swerved to avoid crashing into the back of his trailer, which was
decorated with puffy pink sheep.
Raven squinted
up at him. The man was in his forties,
severely overweight, with a handlebar mustache and scratchy, graying beard
stubble. His blue and white cap read: MoonPie:
The Original Marshmallow Sandwich!
“I’m
fine!” she shouted through the downpour. “Keep going!”
“You got
a car?” he asked.
“No,” she
told him. “I don’t think so.”
“Where
you headed?”
“I don’t
know.”
“The
troopers gonna lock you up if they see you!
You drunk or what?”
“I don’t
think so.” She raised a hand to her mouth to check her breath. Not drunk.
The
trucker eyed her up and down, a soaking wet girl stumbling along the interstate
alone at night, and then he swung open the passenger door.
“Best
climb on up in here with me,” he said. “Gonna freeze your pants off out there.”
Raven
looked at the gruff, obese man and the warm, sheltered transport he was
offering, and then at the overpass bridge in the distance. Her legs were rubbery. She might not make it to the overpass before
she collapsed.
“Lady, I
got to get moving,” he said. “You want a ride to the exit or what?”
“Yeah,”
Raven said. She had no reason to trust
him, but he seemed soft-bodied and slow.
If he tried to get rough, she would break his wrists. Even in her current state, she knew she
could take him if he pushed her to it.
Raven
stumbled around to the passenger side and struggled to climb with her weakened
limbs until he took her arms and pulled her up.
“Thanks,”
she whispered, still shivering. She was
almost too weak to pull the door closed.
“Just
glad you ain’t tore in half.” He settled back into the driver’s seat, and it
groaned under his weight. “You musta been one, two, three, four inches from
me. Or less. Just popped up outta nowhere when that
lightning hit.” He drove cautiously through the storm. “Didn’t seem like no normal
lightning, you ask me. What was you
doing out there? That big flash hit the
road, then you come stumbling out....Did the lightning get you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. The interior of the cab smelled like
cigarette smoke and old hamburgers. A
collage of small objects was glued to the dashboard—action figures, an old
watch face, postcards, salt and pepper shakers.
Hail clattered on the cab’s roof.
“You don’t know?” he asked.
“Sorry.” Raven shrugged off her backpack
and set it on the floor between her wet boots.
She wanted to see what was inside it, but not while he was watching.
“It’s Jebbie, by the way.” He offered his
calloused hand, and she hesitated a moment before taking it. “Jebbie
Walters. From Yazoo City,
Mississippi. You got a name, darling?”
“Angela.
That’s my name,” Raven said. She
knew not to trust a stranger with data about herself. He might be the enemy, and she felt informants
and spies were everywhere, looking to report those who resisted.
“Huh.
Where you from, Angela?”
She tried to remember, but finally
shrugged.
“You ain’t gotta tell me,” he said. “You
going north? Cause that’s where I’m
going, way up north of here. You might
want to hop out quick if that ain’t your plan.”
“I’m not sure.”
“You ain’t sure about much of nothing, are
you?”
“Not
right now,” Raven said.
“I guess
I ought to drop you up at the exit.”
“You
can.” Raven shrugged. “I think I’m lost.”
He looked
her over again. “Tell you what. About
three, four, five miles from here’s a good spot, the Big Porcupine Travel
Plaza. Got showers, motel rooms, an
all-night-you-can-eat place. We could
stop there, get you a place to sleep.
Maybe in the morning you’ll start to remembering things. I figure you just need to sleep it off. You’re on drugs or something, ain’t you?”
“Maybe,”
Raven said.
He
laughed. “It’s okay by me. I don’t do
drugs, myself. Just pills and
booze. Well, you think about what you
want to do.”
He turned
up the radio, where a woman sang a slow, gentle song that Raven gradually
recognized. Someone—her mother?—had once
played it on the piano. It was an old
song called “The Rose.”
“Uh,
sorry.” Jebbie blushed pink and spun the radio knob. “I, uh, usually find a
good honky-tonk or country gold station.
Don’t know how my radio ended up on that soft-rock junk, or whatever
that was. Yeah, here we go.” He found a
song with a steel guitar and a man singing about his wife leaving him for his
boss.
Raven
looked at herself in the rain-streaked side mirror. She was about twenty years old, maybe
nineteen. That felt right. Her black hair was pulled into a short
ponytail with a rubber band. She wore
all black: boots, fatigues, blouse, backpack, jacket. The knee-length jacket was made of a stretchy
artificial material with a texture like a crocodile’s back. She felt a web of metallic fibers between the
layers of leathery fabric. That’s armor,
she realized, and she wondered why she might need armor. Her only jewelry was on her left wrist, a
thin silver bracelet with a large moonstone.
She tried
to reach back in time with her mind.
She’d been stumbling along the highway.
The moment before that: what? It
was a solid blank slate, as though a giant magnet had wiped her brain
clean. Perhaps the trucker was right,
and she’d been struck by lightning.
Raven, she reminded
herself. I know my name.
What
Not to Wear When Traveling Through Time
Guest
post by J.L. Bryan
When the conversation turns to time travel,
as it so often does, you’ll hear a lot of blather about the risks and
dangers. Everyone talks about the risk
of universe-destroying paradoxes, but little attention is giving to the risk of
universe-destroying fashion decisions.
Don’t fear!
We’ve put together this handy guide to what to wear (and not wear!) on
your next time-travel escapade.
DON’T wear
high heels. If you’re traveling into the
past, you may have to escape Nazis or rabid cavemen. In the future, watch out for killer cyborgs
and radioactive mutants! Whatever your
destination, be prepared to run for your life.
We recommend comfortable, well-worn running shoes, with combat boots as
a useful second option. If you’re
attending a formal event in another century, simply pack those high heels in
your carry-on luggage. If you must have
high heels, pick the stilettos, as they can double as a handy weapon.
DON’T dress
in a silver bodysuit with a clear bubble helmet, especially with antennae on
top. People will mistake you for a
1950s-era space alien rather than a time traveler, leading to a variety of
potential problems: quarantine, imprisonment, military attack, being a guest on
The Today Show, and other horrific outcomes. Dress in a low-key fashion, and save the
aluminum-foil outfit for another occasion...or, actually, just throw it
away. That silver bodysuit doesn’t go
well with your hair.
DON’T wear
ankle-length dresses, tight corsets, or other binding clothes. Again, you may need to fight or flee for
survival, so jeans or slacks might be your best bet. Short skirts are both alluring and provide
ample kicking radius, in case you need to kick in a face or two.
DON’T clash
with the time and place you’re visiting.
Skinny jeans, for instance, are huge no-no in the Puritan era. That cute cami top may be both comfortable
and casually sexy, but if you wear it in Victorian England, you’ll stick out
like a sore thumb from another century...a thumb full of licentiousness and
sin.
Learn before you get burned! Always study the correct attire and customs
of your destination before you travel in time.
For help, contact your local vintage thrift shop and/or Halloween
store. Remember: the right look at the
right time is the right way to go. And
you can quote us on that.
AUTHOR BIO
J.L. Bryan studied English literature at the University of Georgia and at Oxford, with a focus on English Renaissance and Romantic literature. He also studied screenwriting at UCLA. He lives in the metro Atlanta sprawl with his wife Christina, where he spends most of his day servings the toddler and animal community inside his house. He is the author of the Paranormals series and the Songs of Magic series.
His novel Jenny Pox is currently free on Kindle, Smashwords, Apple, Sony, Kobo, and Nook!
Sounds like an interesting read. Thanks for sharing.
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