This virtual book tour is presented by Bewitching Book Tours.
Click HERE to see the tour schedule.
Welcome to The Wormhole and my day on the tour.
It is my pleasure to feature:
Margaret Fieland and Relocated.
About the Author:Born and raised in New York City, Margaret Fieland has been around art and music all her life. Daughter of a painter, she is the mother of three grown sons and an accomplished flute and piccolo player. She is an avid science fiction fan, and selected Robert A. Heinlein's “Farmer in the Sky” for her tenth birthday, now long past. She lives in the suburbs west of Boston, MA with her partner and a large number of dogs. Her poems, articles and stories have appeared in journals and anthologies such as Melusine, Front Range Review, Umbrella Journal and All Rights Reserved. In spite of making her living as a computer software engineer, she turned to one of her sons to format the initial version of her website, a clear illustration of the computer generation gap. Her book, "Relocated," was released by MuseItUp Publishing in July, 2012. The Angry Little Boy," will be published by 4RV publishing in early 2013.
You may visit her website, http://www.margaretfieland.com
http://poetic-muselings.net/http://www.margaretfieland.com/
http://www.facebook.com/margaret.fieland
https://twitter.com/madcapmaggie
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4417476.Margaret_Fieland
Book Description:When fourteen-year-old Keth's dad is transferred to planet Aleyne, he doesn't know what to expect. Certainly not to discover Dad grew up here, and studied with Ardaval, a noted Aleyni scholar. On Aleyne, Keth’s psi ability develops. However, psi is illegal in the Terran Federation. After a dangerous encounter with two Terran teenagers conflict erupts between Keth and his father. Keth seeks sanctuary with Ardaval. Studying with the Aleyne scholar Keth learns the truth about his own heritage. After Keth's friend's father, Mazos, is kidnapped, Keth ignores the risks and attempts to free him. Little does he realize who will pay the cost as he becomes involved with terrorists.
Excerpt:
“What do you mean I must
undergo a psi exam? The Terran Federation legislates against any use of
psi." The speaker, a human woman with wild gray hair, glared at the
immigration official.
I gazed at the official. Like most Aleyni, he
stood over six feet, slender, with extra wide hands, and thumbs able to bend
all the way back. His head appeared more oval than humans, too, and he showed
almost no external ears. His skin appeared almost black, like Dad’s and mine,
and hers appeared pale. His dark skin provided a welcome spot of color against
the general gray of the space port interior. The temperature felt pleasant
enough, though; nicely warm instead of the chill of the Terran Federation space
station circling above Aleyne.
He could have been reading a
laundry list. “Madam, Aleyne is a sovereign planet, not part of the Terran
Federation, and if you want to clear immigration you must undergo a psi exam.”
He pushed a data cube toward her. “Either sign the consent form and undergo the
exam, or go back up to the space station.” He added, “Take it or leave it,” in
Aleyni. No one else noticed.
She threw the data cube on the
floor, stomped, and it shattered into fragments. “I won’t do it. I don’t want
any aliens screwing around in my head.”
The official stared at her for a moment. “It’s against our ethics
to screw around.”
The woman crossed her arms. “I don’t believe you.”
“You can return to the space station and
take the next ship out.” The official’s face revealed nothing, and his gray
eyes stared straight at her. His hands hung loose at his side. I considered him
a model of polite behavior, considering. I would have punched her.
The woman stared at him. Her
head tilted up, because she barely made five feet. Her face, which wore a
ferocious frown, turned bright red. Maybe she disliked dark skin, or maybe she
simply hated Aleynis.
“I’m going.” She spat the
words, turned, glared at us, and marched down the corridor. I glanced back and
noticed her arguing with a Space Force officer. The expression on his face
would have curdled milk.
Dad prodded me. “Keth, come
on.” He grabbed two data cubes, scanned them, and signed both. The official
passed both of them through his reader and put one through a slot. “How old is
the boy?”
“I’m fourteen Terran standard
years. That makes me sixteen in Aleyni years. The Aleyni year is shorter than
ours.”
“You need to consent for
yourself.” He passed me a new cube and I signed.
The official threw it away and
handed me another. “Read first and then sign.”
I sighed loudly and read the whole thing, both the top half,
in Aleyni, and the bottom, in English Common Speech. I started to compare the
two, noticing how much clearer informed consent appeared in the Aleyni version,
when Dad prodded me. I signed the form and returned the cube to the official.
“Okay, I read it.”
The
official smiled and pushed it through the slot after Dad’s.
I wasn’t scared, since Dad told
me about the need to take a psi exam. The Aleyni checked for any kind of plant
or animal, or whether we planned a terrorist attack. Dad said Federation
anti-psi fanatics attacked a couple of times recently, so I understood why they
checked carefully.
The examiner set me in a chair.
He asked me again if I consented to the exam. When I said yes, the examiner put
his hands on the sides of my face, looking into my eyes.
His hands burned hot against my
skin. A thousand ants chewed through my brain and a voice whispered questions I
couldn’t quite make out. I tried to take a breath, but my throat tightened, and
I gasped aloud. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to stop shaking. I shook my
head, trying to make the voices go away, and the examiner removed his hands and
stared into my eyes for a moment. The buzzing voices stopped, leaving my head
feeling as though it would burst open. The examiner smiled at me and passed me
through the checkpoint. A couple of minutes went by before my stomach stopped
heaving, but hammers still pounded inside my head.
Click HERE to buy a copy.
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