ONE:
SABRE is now carefully rolling the map back up as she speaks.

DRAKE and DRUM listening, thinking. Troubled.

1. SABRE: And that is why The Smoke wishes to possess it.

TWO:
SABRE slips the MAP back into its TUBE.

2. SABRE: And that is why men will murder for it.

THREE:
SABRE tucks the TUBE away on her person.

3. SABRE: And that is why the Hollern Regent will wage war to read
it.
4. SABRE: So, I must ask…

FOUR:
On DRAKE and DRUM. DRUM grins. DRAKE is grim.

5. SABRE: …still think coming along was a grand idea?

Screen 1

ONE:
Back in Sabre’s cabin. The MAP, with her palm flat upon it.

1. SABRE/above: This isn’t simply a map of the weather, gentlemen.

TWO:
SABRE, DRAKE, and DRUM, as she speaks to them.

2. SABRE: It foretells which Lands shall be touched and which shall
not.
3. SABRE: Which Lands shall live and which shall die.

THREE:
On SABRE. Aglow with the excitement of the find, fully aware of what it portends.

4. SABRE: This is a map of the future.

THREE:
The FAMILY, clinging to each other as the impossibly vast STORM bursts around them, obscuring them.

6. CAPTION/Sabre: “These things are known and true.
7. CAPTION/Sabre: “But in every age, there are whispers of Great Storms that
do more…
8. CAPTION/Sabre: “…Great Storms that devour the Lands they touch, or remake them entire…

Screen 3

ONE:
On the FAMILY, the storm having passed. The TERRAIN is different, altered, radically so.

The structure, the home, is gone. BLEACHED and SCOURED BONES, almost fossils already, of two of the people.

But the THIRD… has been changed into something entirely different. A new creature, some strange, perhaps docile, perhaps tragically or blessedly ignorant creature, that now grazes on the foliage growing between the remnants.

1. CAPTION/Sabre: “…and leave them forever changed.”

This is, in no small part, responsible for the delays in getting the rest of “Merrimount Orde” finished and up. You are all very patient, and for that, I am grateful. It should be ready by a week from this Friday (there are three scripts and another short story to write between now and then, just so you know what it is you’re being so darn patient about!).

For those of you interested, there will be an abbreviated ALPHA tour:

I’m signing in Portland on May 22nd, the day of release, at Powell’s Cedar Hills Crossing.

On the 24th, I’ll be up in Seattle, signing at The Seattle Mystery Bookshop.

The 30th sees me in Scottsdale, Arizona, signing at The Poisoned Pen.

The 31st sees me at BookPeople in Austin, Texas.

If it’s June 1st, it must be Houston and Murder by the Book, and the 2nd sees a special event in Dallas, at Rathburn’s Blue Plate Kitchen (more details to follow).

If you’re interested in getting a signed (and/or personalized) copy of ALPHA, I would urge you to contact any of the above booksellers. They would be – sincerely – delighted to take your order and record your specifics for how you’d like the book inscribed, and they would be just as happy to make certain said inscribed book reaches you in a manner that would surely be called “mint” or, at the worst, “near mint.”

Hope to see/meet/chat with some of you, at least, in the coming weeks!

Hold fast!

Greg

Screen 1

ONE:
Looking into the vast open Aether of the Sphere.

AETHER CLOUDS are beginning to gather. We can see small islands of LANDS dotted here and there.

1. CAPTION/Sabre: “The Aether foams and storms, this is well known.
2. CAPTION/Sabre: “And most of those storms are harmless, the damage they wreak minor.

TWO:
Closer on the CLOUDS… or are the CLOUDS growing that much larger?

There’s a fury brewing.

3. CAPTION/Sabre: “But rarely, every century or so, the Great Storms come.
4. CAPTION/Sabre: “Storms that manifest in the deep skies…
5. CAPTION/Sabre: “…and grow…

THREE:
It’s magnificent and terrifying, now, the CLOUDS of MANIFEST AETHER, bolts of energy shooting and sheeting within, swirling towards us like a massive, churning wave.

6. CAPTION/Sabre: “…and grow…
7. CAPTION/Sabre: “…and grow…

FOUR:
We’re in it now.

8. CAPTION/Sabre: “…and grow hungry.

Screen 2

ONE:
We’re on the leading edge of some nameless, lost to memory Land. A MAN is at work on his home, here.

And in the distance, we can see the STORM coming in.

1. CAPTION/Sabre: “Where they make Land, brush their shores or strike head on…
2. CAPTION/Sabre: “…chaos.

TWO:
The MAN has looked up, seeing the STORM.

His FAMILY has rushed outside to see – WIFE and CHILD.

3. CAPTION/Sabre: “The land heaves, tears itself in twain, erupts in volcanic, liquid fire.
4. CAPTION/Sabre: “That which was fertile becomes barren, that which was desiccated blooms.
5. CAPTION/Sabre: “The famines that ravaged Fueille in the last century? The legacy of a Great Storm.