Chace Randolph

Hello internet friends. Work continues, but I have good news. Work continues on multiple fronts. I am still editing the audio book. Progress is slow, or at least much slower than I would like, as life keeps on happening and I have to do things like work my day job, and fix cars or go grocery shopping. I am almost done with the edits to Chapter 12 as of this writing. And I will record chapter 13 tomorrow.

But that’s not the exciting news, or at least the most exciting news. Remember how I mentioned I was working with an Etsy Shop called Nerd Smith Consolidated? And we were going to partner up to help sell merch and signed copies of the book? They’re opening an imprint. I won’t be self publishing. I am getting published under Nerd Smith Consolidated. They’re opening an imprint just for me. I guess they like the samples I’ve sent them and the lore I have shared with them.

That’s the news, we’re starting a new publishing imprint together, to Publish The Descendant Saga. It’ll make it easier for me to get my book into physical stores, like Barnes and Noble or whatever, because it’ll have a publisher’s name on it, not just mine. Looks more reputable that way. We’re still waiting on state paperwork, and I guess that takes time, but when it happens, NS-C and I will let you know. To celebrate, here’s another of my short stories, called…

The Machine

They trembled in anticipation together, the rider and the machine. One stood on their boots, helmet in hand, clad in leather. The other stood upon their tires, seat slung low, clad in steel and chrome. The squeaky door went up and let the hot stale air, loaded with the tangible excitement of the caged beasts out of the chamber and set them loose upon the world.

The rider swung a leg over the machine and with one heel flipped up the kickstand, while using their hands to pull in the clutch and touch the button to bring the dormant machine to life. It woke instantly, with a low lopping growl like a sullen guard dog woken from its kennel and ready to chase. The rider oozed further down into the saddle, relishing in the organic curves, the chiseled lines, the black paint, the polished chrome the oiled chain. Knowing this animal inside and out, physically and spiritually. The blood had mixed with the oil and they had become one. The throb and rumble of the machine echoed inside the box, the flat walls coated not just in paint and dust, but in signs, old license plates, greasy hand prints and the lingering scent of gasoline, but no longer was this a prison, the cage already forgotten, no longer containing the animal and making it stir crazy. The road lay ahead, an alley, narrow, lined with dumpsters and detritus. Crowded with greasy old buildings shouldering their way in, crowding each other as much as the street.

The machine grumbled, and with a clunk and a hardly perceptible lurch, dropped into gear, as the rider folded up their legs and hooked a toe under the shift lever, easing the clutch out and rolling off the concrete, out to where their tires belonged, on the pavement. Weaving between the refuse and the trickle of discolored liquid that used to be water down the center of the alley. The machine and the rider made it to the street, and with nothing in their way but traffic, they thrust themselves upon the world. Merging with its faceless masses, their problems, worries and individual identity drowned out by the limitless others, letting them for the time, forget the world as it troubled them, and become the world as it pleased them.