Readers and writers blog

Today we begin serializing Steal Tomorrow, a new novel by Ann M. Pino showing that young people can be just as resourceful, complex, courageous — and, yes, fallible and dangerous — as older adults.

Also today, we highlight a short story by one of our blogroll colleagues, Tim Hulings, that we hope will be the first of more to come.

The main character of Steal Tomorrow is Cassie Thompson, described by one of the other characters as “Cassie, like Cassandra? The one who knew the Trojans were going to die?” Well, her parents have died, along with most of the world’s older adults, from a pandemic virus.

In the publishing world, the novel might be described as YA/crossover for a young adult book with references and themes that would be appreciated by older readers. But really, Steal Tomorrow is the story of how humans get on in a post-apocalyptic world, whatever their age.

Lord knows, many of the older adults in Nevil Shute’s On the Beach turned out to be a reckless bunch, and some of those in Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (which became the movie Soylent Green) were downright diabolical. In fact, there were some pretty evil characters in a book still in the fiction pages of R&W Blog — Steve Karmazenuk’s science fiction novel The Unearthing.

For Cassie and her friends, just surviving to adulthood is a challenge as her city is beset by food shortages, sanitation problems and gang violence.

Pino, a writer of flash, serial and novel-length fiction, lives in Houston where she is a university administrator, a marathoner, a onetime triathlete and an all-round health and fitness enthusiast. She writes two fiction weblogs, Writings and Steal Tomorrow, the latter of which is now also serializing the novel. The complete book is available at Southwestern Books and Art and at Lulu at $13.50 for paperback, $4 for download edition, and at Amazon in Kindle format at $3.20.

She lives with her husband, a cat and a hyperactive rabbit, all of whom, she says, fail to appreciate her skill at baking banana bread. Well, we appreciate her novel, and we hope you like it, too.

And speaking of things we like, we commend to you a short story that Tim Hulings posted on the weblog he shares with his wife, Tim & Nancy’s Adventures, one of our blogroll listings. The Hulings are Virginia gentlefolk who took a couple of years off from their Shenandoah Valley horse farm to work as Peace Corps volunteers in Romania.

The short story, ‘Parcul Centru,’ is drawn from that experience. The setting is a Romanian park and involves a proper British gentleman who likes to go there to read and a small stray dog with bright eyes and an easy manner who goes there for old food containers and other debris.

While we’re at it, we also should commend a blog entry Tim wrote about one of his favorite equines — ‘The Horse That Never Learned to Love Carrots.’ The man has a knack for writing about animals.

He tells us by email that he’s putting the finishing touches on a manuscript of short stories that he’s planning to self-publish. If the first two samples are any indication, the book is going to be a good one.

And now . . .

Today’s new offerings in Works:

• Chapter One of Ann M. Pino’s novel Steal Tomorrow. Cassie and her friend Leila, wandering their ransacked neighborhoods in search of food, get an invitation to join a group of other young people living in a luxury hotel, a move that could end their most immediate troubles.

• Chapter 25 of R.J. Keller’s novel Waiting for Spring. Finally, a Thanksgiving that Tess can enjoy now that her mother has gone to Europe, probably never to return. Even Brian’s sister Rachel is in a good mood, despite what the next day will bring.

• A short story sample, ‘Parcul Centru,’ from Tim Hulings. See also this blog entry, ‘The Horse That Never Learned to Love Carrots.’

– Sid Leavitt