1st 5 Pages Oct Workshop - Franz

Name: Jason Franz

Genre: Middle Grade Sci-Fi

Title: Attention Authors of Earth

My heart beats faster than the U.S.S. Enterprise’s warp drive as I clutch the invitation to the young sci-fi writer’s conference. It’s my salvation from the spring break I would’ve spent at home while Mom complained about not getting to spend time with her boyfriend. Tears of excitement cloud my vision as I read my invitation again. A cartoonish drawing of planet Earth is in the middle of the flyer surrounded by dark blue space and white stars. Across the top, in bright yellow font it reads: Attention Authors of Earth! 

The bus rattles as the driver fails to avoid yet another pothole and I groan. Half because of the bumpy ride, the other half because I know I can’t avoid my blank page any longer. It’s the same blank page that’s been staring at me since I boarded the conference shuttle. So I stick my invitation in the back of my notebook, lean up against my window, smoosh my brown, curly pigtail against the cold glass, and try to write a few more chapters of my book.

I close my eyes and, just like I’m in history class, I think about the star ships from my favorite sci-fi movies. In my head I deconstruct an Imperial Probe Droid from Star Wars, mix it with a jellyfish, then multiply the size by a bajillion. When I open my eyes the oval silhouette of my new skyscraper-sized starship is following the bus outside my window. Long whip-like tendrils glowing with an orange energy pump softly, keeping the ship aloft. The whips are attached to something that looks like a massive upside-down metal dinner plate with red eyes wrapping around it. On top of that is a light green basketball-sized glass dome that I can’t see in to. It looks like a flying jellyfish. It passes in front of the sun, but it’s no longer the sun—it’s purple, with gray continents, and black clouds.

Following closely, in what appears to be pursuit, are three smaller ships flying in a triangular formation. They are attached to one another with a thin beam of yellow energy. They rain blasts from their turbo lasers upon the bigger ship, which shows no sign of damage.

The hand holding my pen begins to fidget, my head drops down to my notebook, and I begin to write what I’m “seeing” in my mind.

The dreaded dreadnaught of the Deathlorian fleet blazed across the sky as it left their enemy’s planet in ruin. The surface-dweller’s feeble fleet firing their inferior weapons upon them in a show of “force”. Light glistened off The Deathlorian commander’s metallic skin as he laughed, For the people on the planet surface had only a few days to consider his offer before he returned, either to rule their world, or finish it off.

Usually when I get to this point in my books, I can’t write one more word and I have to start a new project. If I tried writing short stories for magazines they always turned out even shorter because they didn’t have an ending. When I got into online writing contests my dreams died the second the mentors asked to see the whole manuscript, because the sample I’d sent to entice them was the whole manuscript.

The closest I’d come to finishing a story was something I’d turned in for history class a few days ago. It had proper grammar, romance, strong character arcs, and, as with any great story, a villain you loved to hate. And that’s not me talking, that’s a direct quote from Ms. Rathchin. But she gave me an F anyway. Apparently her instruction to make the report our own didn’t include making John Wilkes Booth an intergalactic bounty hunter (Boba Booth), who shot the president of the universe with a laser pistol before fleeing back to planet Marylandar.  She said my imagination overtook the facts. She told me that if I spent all my time in fantasy, I’d miss out on a lot of really great reality.

History teachers. They’re just so logical. If every history classroom in the United States were a system of planets, you can bet Rathchin would be the Galactic Emperor, lightening from her fingertips and all.

Like she knew anything about interesting writing…or interesting anything? I mean history is all stuff that’s happened. Sci-fi is stuff that hasn’t happened yet—the possibilities are endless.

Much like potholes the farther we get from California. The bus tires on my side dunk down into like, the ninety-thousandth pothole. My notebook bounces off my knees, ricochets off my black boots, then slides toward the back. Crap! I get down on all fours and peer under the brown pleather, past the shoes, (and one pair of slippers), of the other passengers. It slides past the tissue that has what I can only hope is a half-eaten Baby Ruth bar, until it stops two seats back.

I stretch my arm out until my bicep is burning. I’m almost touching it when some grubby, little, thieving hands lifts it from the floor. I’m about to shriek something accusatory when a quiet, shaking voice stutters from somewhere near the back of the bus. “Did um, did, s-someone lose a uh…um,” there’s a quick clearing of the throat before the sentence finally concludes, “a notebook?”

I nearly give myself whiplash as I pop back up from the floor and land on the seat with my knees. The person who had only picked up, not stolen, my book—the person I was sure had to be such a cretin, doesn’t look like a cretin at all. He’s a boy my age in a blue plaid shirt (that I’m kinda jealous of), with dirty blonde hair. He’s standing, trying to find the owner of the book, he is still looking down, but not like he’s looking at my notebook, more like he’s afraid to make eye contact with, like, anyone.

I raise my hand. “That’s me,” I say softly as though I’m trying to get a baby deer or squirrel to eat out of my hand.  

The boy’s eyes bounce up, then back down, followed by a sheepish smile. He scoots out of his seat, keeping his eyes glued to the floorboards as he approaches me. Maybe he’s just clumsy and worries he’ll trip or something if he doesn’t watch where he’s going. But he keeps looking at the floor even as he loiters in front of me, drumming his fingers against the cover of my book without a word. Kinda creepy. Finally I can’t take it anymore. “Thank you,” I say.

The boy chuckles, clears his throat, and chuckles again. “Ok, well it was n-nice talking to you, I’ll l-let you g-get back to your b-book now.” He places it on my backpack even though I’m reaching for it, then he hurries back to his seat. He watches the other passengers out the corner of his eye. That’s how he catches me looking at him. His blue eyes get real big then he sinks down in his seat until I can’t see him anymore.

A light bulb flickers on inside my head. Awwww! He’s not creepy, he’s shy! I rise from my seat, tie my black and grey plaid top around my waist so as to display my “Tribbles ate my homework” T-shirt, and walk toward the boy. “Hi,” I say when I get to his seat, in which he’s hunkered down like a WWII fox hole.