The big 500 and patrick Ness

Merry Christmas!  I'm saying this because it's basically the most efficient thing I've ever done.  Instead of having to write all those Christmas cards that I'd probably still be delivering next Christmas (Since my school schedule is all weird, I probably won't get to see everyone that would be on my recipient list.) I can just put one giant Christmas card here.  Done.  So, here it is.

Dear everyone who reads my blog

Merry Christmas!

from Joe



Yeah, I like to keep it short.


So, the blog now has 499 pageviews.  Close enough!  I'll celebrate the big 5-0-0, plus Christmas, as I usually do.  Some writing.  But instead of posting my usual short story, I'll make it special.  below is the first chapter of my book.  Well, two chapters if you count a prologue as a chapter.  Have fun!

Two more things...

Yeah, I've started a new book.  I reaaaaally wanted to write this as soon as I thought of the idea, and it took me an evening before I gave in.  It's an epic fantasy (I literally mean epic here, i'm not just bigging up my book) that i'm really enjoying writing.  It's quite a challenge since there are so many fantasy books, and you really have to try hard to keep it original.

Secondly, Starlight recently contacted my favorite author, Patrick Ness, and yesterday he sent me a box of goodies, including a card written from him.

 Among the things he sent me were audio books of the chaos walking trilogy (I highly recommend it)  And a monster calls (I also highly recommend that), a monsters of men T-shirt, a signed copy of a monster calls, and of course the card
Methinks it's time to re-live the magic of the chaos walking series for a second time.... (I talk like gollum when i'm excited)



Left:  The audio books
Below: Everything in the package.


The card read:

Joseph:
(Which is my brother's name by the way)

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
I've heard nothing but wonderful things about "The world" (From people who wouldn't lie!) and in fact it sounds like some of it isn't a million miles away from my own next book for teens (called "more than this") I wish you the very best of luck with this and cant wait to get my own signed copy one day!  I hope you like some of this stuff I sent along (No worries if you don't) but also, just to say, you've picked the best job in the world.  Some writers complain but I get the sense from the things you've said that you and I know better.  Great to have you along for the journey fellow traveler!
All the best and happy holidays,
Patrick Ness

Thanks to Patrick and Starlight for that!


That's it for now.  I'm not feeling too great at the moment so I may not be in school tomorrow, so if I don't see anybody, have a great Christmas, or a happy Hanukkah, or a lovely Ramadan, or any other holiday that you celebrate.

Stay frosty,

-Joe




Here's my book, by the way.  I'd love to see what everyone thinks so leave a comment below if you have something to say.

The world by Joseph Wills

Prologue

South London, 18^th November, 1986, 8:30 PM

Herb James silently cracked open the door to the basement. He had been waiting for this moment for months.  Months of snooping. Hours and Hours of planning.  What happened here could affect the lives of thousands.
 Herb scanned each corridor looking down the barrel of his hunting rifle, making sure that there were no traps.  Tripwire mines, trap floorboards, anything that could pose a threat to him.  He slid open a door and quickly capped two guards in the leg trying to control the heavy rifle as it almost flew out of his hands.  He was filled with anger and pain, taking him away from his friends and family as they became aware of what he was doing.  Herb knew he was getting closer when he saw a sign, displaying the character 4.  Loads of people had infiltrated the building, and the few that had got out had said the lab was at level zero.  He suddenly felt something; he sensed that he was not alone.  He knew that any soldiers were shooting to maim, not kill, but it could be the end of it all if they got hold of him.  And then, as he opened a metal door to a giant storage room, he was struck with immense force in his stomach.  A boiling sting spread across his torso, the pain gripping onto his breath, taking it away from him.  And as he fell to the ground, blood pouring from his stomach and staining the snow covered floor, he knew it was over.   As the guards began to shout to each other, a few of them taking shots towards him, he crawled over to a huge steel crate, Tears rolling from his eyes and blending into his blood. 
He had one smokescreen left.   With luck he could get past these guards and just get to the mainframe before he bled out. 
After about two minutes getting ready, Herb decided to go.  It was only his first time using weapons, and he had never used a smokescreen before, but he had remembered what he and his friends had said about them.  Pull the pin, wait for five seconds for the smokescreen to fill, and then go.  He pulled the pin off and feebly threw the capsule around the crate.  He began to count to five in his head.  While he was doing so, he thought about what had happened in the past few months.  One.  Two.
How stupid it was to stage a break in.  Three.  Four.    How he had given it all up for some stupid conspiracy theory.
Sensing what could be his final moments, he stood up with great difficulty.  Five! Herb dashed out into the warehouse, wheezing and sobbing in pain, but he still ran.  He looked up to see a walkway, and realized that all the soldiers were up there, with that; he sped up to a very fast run, still weaving around boxes and crates.  And finally, with about two seconds to spare, he reached a second metal door, slid it open, jumped inside, pulled it shut as hard as he could, and jammed a nearby chair under the handle.
He was physically, and mentally, broken.  He was going to die.  He was certain of it.  He couldn’t walk.  He couldn’t even move his foot.  His heart had only stopped pounding when he looked up to see a single soldier pointing a pistol at his brain.  Herb didn’t care anymore.  “G-g-g-g-g go o-o-on. D-d-do it.”
The soldier lowered his weapon and pulled the piece of fabric covering half of his face down to his neck, revealing a calm and sympathetic face. 
“You’re in a fatal state.  And I’m sorry for that.  I truly am.  But I have to do this.” He pointed the gun at Herb once more.  “It’ll save you.”  And with that, Herb realized that it wasn’t a normal gun. “N-n-n-no.” 
“Y-You can K-kill m-m-me.  B-but y-you’re n-n-never putting m-me in there,” But it was too late.
Herb didn’t even have time to scream before the soldier’s finger pulled on the trigger.

South London housing estate, 12^th April 2011, 4:45

Laura Graham had no idea what was going on.  A group of men had just stormed into her flat, brutalized her roommate, and were now chasing her through the back streets of the estate which she lived in.  Her heart was pounding from fatigue and adrenaline as she hopped a wooden fence into someone’s garden and sprinted across it.  She wondered if she should just see who the people were, but when she considered stopping, her mind dismissed the idea.  She quickly glanced behind her before vaulting the fence at the other side of the garden.  They were just meters away.  Laura landed on the other side of the fence and collapsed in the street.  And then, when she saw the situation, desperation streaked inside her.  The men were closing in from all directions.  She had nowhere to run.  She slowly began to realize who these people were.  Why they wanted her.  And when she did, she wanted to cry.  There was a sudden explosion of noise behind her and a second after something hit her foot.  Laura squealed in pain and instantly lost her balance.  Her foot suddenly felt so warm.  And then the pain came.  She realized that someone had shot her in the foot.  Weeping from the pain, she could do nothing but watch as a masked man in full body armour began to bandage her foot as another man injected her with something.  A few seconds later she was out.

Cambridge, 14^th of April, 2011, 8:36

John Ronen had just clicked on the link for the conspiracy site he had become addicted to when his mother called up to him in his room. 
“John, there’s a man here to-“ His mum was cut off there.  What followed was a loud thump.
What the hell? John thought.  He got up from his office chair and cautiously walked to the door.  He put his hand on the handle, but shockingly, it swung open before he could do it.  There, at the door, stood someone who John didn’t expect in his wildest dreams to see.  A man in full body armour.  As soon as he saw John, the man plunged a syringe into his arm, letting him fall to the ground soon after.  In John’s last second of consciousness he realized what was happening, and tried to scream.

Chapter 1

“Wakey, wakey! Rise and shine!”  Daniel Edward’s eyes burned as a figure pulled open a pair of curtains at the far end of the room.  “What?  Where am I?  Who are you?”  The last thing he had remembered was being in the houses of parliament, on a tour.  Now he was laying in a huge king sized bed in a house he had never seen in his life. 
The man who had opened the curtains causally strolled to the bedside and perched on the end of it.
“How ya’ doin? That head o’ yours alright?”  The man seemed very friendly to Daniel, almost as if they had known each other for years.  Daniel didn’t think he had ever had so many different emotions at once.   Angry, scared, shocked, puzzled, excited, and mostly in a state of complete disarray.  He needed answers.  “Who the hell are you!? What happened to me?! Where’s my mum?”  The man stayed calm. 
“Alright, settle down now.  Name’s Herb. Pleasure to meet you!” Herb eagerly stuck out a hand, which Daniel took reluctantly after some hesitation.  “We saw you wandering around out there, presumed you were a newcomer.  So we did what any neighbourly person would do.  We took you in.  Oh, and you had a nasty scar on your forehead, so I patched that up for you!”  As a reflex, Daniel reached to his forehead, feeling tiny stitches across his brow. “But where’s my mum?  What happened to London, because that’s not London,” He said, pointing to the window that was revealing a wide road, dotted with colourful houses sitting at the pavements.  A female English voice suddenly called out from downstairs.  “Come get it!” 
Herb then stood up from the bedside and walked towards the door.  “Why don’t you come down for some breakfast? No rush though. Just come down the stairs, second door on the right.”
“But-“Daniel was just about to erupt, but the look on Herb’s face told him to play along.  So Daniel kept silent.  Herb creaked open the door and slipped out of the room.  After 5 minutes, Daniel managed to get out of bed, feeling oddly numb, and limp over to a long mirror on the right wall.  He inspected his head.  His dark brown, slightly long spiked hair looked like it always did.  Underneath his hair, on his forehead, there was a scabbed over scar, as Herb had said.  There were about five stitches woven neatly into it.  He took a peek at what he was wearing, a dark blue open robe with striped pyjamas.  He worked up the courage to leave the bedroom, shaking with fear, and get down the huge wooden staircase, and into the kitchen.  He was struck by light as he entered.  A huge window covered the whole of the far wall, light flooding in, blinding Daniel temporarily.  After adjusting his eyes to the light, he looked down to see a small wooden table with four chairs.  Herb occupied one of them, smiling politely at him.  His lightly wrinkled face and cropped blonde hair were illuminated perfectly in the light. “Daniel! Come in! Sit down.” 
“How do you know my name?”  Herb produced a laminated piece of paper from his pocket, like a driver’s license.
“Had your ID card on you,” Herb started to read information from the card.  “Name: Daniel Edwards, Age: 16 years.  Mother: Rose Edwards, Father: Nicolas Edwards-“Daniel cut in, shocked.
“Where did that come from? I never had an ID card, and if I did, who made it?” 
“Hey, we all got ID cards.  Gotta carry em’ around or you have to go all the way to the capital, up north-“
“Entry time? What’s that?” Herb quickly shook his head in a shut up kind of way, and with a nervous chuckle, spluttered the words “All in good time, Daniel,” and inserted the ID card into his pocket.
Daniel was still in complete shock.  He had woken up in a place that felt far away from London, in a house of complete strangers, someone had printed every detail of his life onto a piece of paper, and just had to ‘play along’.  But he was so scared, he decided that listening to Herb was the best thing he could do at the moment.  All the time he had been talking to Herb, he hadn’t realized, another two people were in the room.  A girl, around 19 years old was standing at a stove, flipping bacon around in a sizzling pan, and a boy, who looked more Daniel’s age, sitting across the table from him.  “Of course! I forgot to introduce you t’ the other members of the house.  Daniel, meet John.  John, Daniel.” John smiled awkwardly and held out a stiff hand, which Daniel took.
“And this here is Laura.  She’s an excellent cook.”  Laura instantly seemed friendlier.  “Hi! Pleasure to meet you.”
“Erm.. Hi,” Daniel was still trying not to shake from the confusion of the weird place.
Herb delved into his pockets and brought out two more laminated cards.  “Two outside passes.  How ‘bout you skip education today and I’ll show ya’ around your new home?”  Soon after a very appetizing breakfast was served.
It looked like two rinds of normal bacon, but as soon as Daniel bit off a piece, he discovered it wasn’t bacon at all.
“What is this-“Daniel blurted before realizing what he was saying.  Herb looked puzzled.
“Are you sure you didn’t hurt your taste buds last night?”  Herb replied sarcastically.  “It’s good old fashioned Rhubarb flavoured bacon.” 
Daniel tried to act as if he had heard of the disgusting idea.  “Oh! Sorry.”  He looked at Laura.  “No offense.”
“None taken.”  Laura replied cheerily.  She was acting as if Herb took strangers in daily.
After choking down the horrible bacon, Herb and John got up to get dressed, but as Herb walked out of the room Daniel grabbed him subtly by the wrist and whispered, “I want answers.”

Daniel flung open the huge mahogany wardrobe across the room from the bed.  Surprisingly, there wasn’t much variety.  A pair of suit trousers, a worn T-shirt about two sizes too small for Daniel, a pair of grey cargo trousers, a huge hoodie, and a Women’s frock.  In the end, Daniel settled for the cargo trousers and the small t-shirt. 
Daniel collapsed onto the bed.  What had just happened?  Where was he? Where was his family?  And who was Herb?  Was he a murderer?  Had he locked up his Mother? Or was he dead?  Was this heaven?  Daniel had to hold back tears.  He would play along until Herb gave him answers, and if he didn’t, Daniel would run.  He would call the police.  He would find his mother.  Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, and Herb crept in.” Are ya coming or are you gonna lie there all day?”  Daniel reluctantly stood up, the tiny shirt choking him.  It was a crimson red, with the word football printed across the front in white.
They descended the giant winding staircase and watched as John and Laura flung open the door and disappears down the road, which, as the name suggested, was scattered with maple trees.
Daniel got really creeped out when he stepped outside.  It was humid.  Normally, Daniel wouldn’t have even thought about it twice.  But something caught his mind.  It was winter.  He had seen the weather.  It was supposed to be bitterly cold for the next few weeks.  Everywhere in Britain.  So that came down to two things.  He wasn’t in England anymore.  He had been given a sleeping pill and shipped off to a warm European country.  Or, he had been in some sort of coma.  Asleep for weeks. Months.  Maybe even years.  But, Herb had said he had seen Daniel stumbling across the street last night.  The very night before.  He couldn’t have been asleep for that long.  This was too weird.  Daniel followed Herb down the driveway, taking in his surroundings.  It looked like a normal day.  The next door neighbour was gardening.  A man wearing a brown jumpsuit was getting into his car a few doors up.  Laura and John were strolling down the road, accompanied by two other kids.  There. In the corner of his eye.  A man wearing body armour.   Dead white, full body armour.  A full face helmet displaying different accessories.  A thin, blacked out visor covered his eyes.  Just above that, a torch was taped neatly onto the metal that covered the man’s face.  Two small metal grills were fixed onto the metal helmet, displaying the man’s mouth.  That was the only part of the man Daniel could see.  He had to be police.  Or military.  But either way, Daniel didn’t think twice.  He launched himself forward, just about to shout out to the man, when Herb pulled him back with great force.  One small yanking motion and he was back where he was in the first place.  That was it.  He couldn’t trust Herb at all.  Why else would He stop Daniel from interacting with the police?  He had to get away.  But before he knew it, Herb had shoved him into the passenger seat, locked the door and pulled out of the driveway. 





Daniel glared at Herb as he drove through the identical streets of maple drive, chattering happily as he did.  After a while, Herb realized that Daniel was staring at him and mumbled,”What?”
“Why did you just bundle me up and throw me in the car?”  Daniel replied bitterly.
Herb continued to stare at Daniel blankly.  After about twenty seconds Daniel huffed and said, “When I was walking up to that policeman!” Through clenched teeth.  “Oh, that was just an Abrexi corporation officer.  There good, they protect us, but they just don’t like to be annoyed.”  He said it in a kind of nervous tone.  “No offense.”  Herb added.  Daniel remembered the man’s armour.  He had never seen a police officer that looked like that, not even on the news.  He looked like Robocop.  That old movie.  Daniel was definitely considering that he was in the future.  Even though Herb had said he had seen him last night.  But Herb could have been lying.  Easily.  Daniel didn’t remember a thing about last night.  There was no time. Daniel had to move.  And fast.  This madman was going to kill him, he knew it.
Daniel didn’t even wait a split second.  He spun round and tugged at the door handle. Locked.  He glanced out the window.  And his heart skipped a beat.  The dreamy, residential area they had been in minutes ago had been replaced by a dead, barren desert.  It had all gone.  Daniel gave up.  Forget about Herb killing him, he was about to kill Herb. 
Tears streaming down his face, Daniel broke down.  “Where are we??!!”  Herb stayed silent.  Ignoring him.  “What’s happening?! Tell me!!!!”  Then Herb halted the car and started talking.  Quickly and seriously.  His voice had lost all tone of Cheeriness.  “Listen very carefully and don’t interrupt.  You are in great danger here.  We all are.  Not from me.  From them.  Abrexi.  If you show any sign that you want to get outside, they’ll kill you.  They even monitor conversations.  I’m not even sure we’re safe talking now.”
Daniel started to feel different.  It was the urgency in Herb’s voice.  Daniel suddenly felt like he could trust Herb.  Like he should trust Herb.  “Daniel, I am extremely sorry for that this has happened to you.  But you have to trust me.  In ten days, I can explain everything.  I will help you find your mother.  And I’ll get you out of this god forsaken place.  But you have to trust me!” 
Daniel had temporarily forgotten about his mother.  “Where is my mother?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure she’s safe.  And your father is-“Herb pulled the weird ID card from Daniel’s pocket, stared at it for a few seconds, tossed it back onto Daniels lap and finished off his sentence. “Still dead.”
Daniel didn’t have another option.  He had to stick with Herb.  Something told him that it was the right thing to do.
“Ok.” Daniel said wearily.
Herb smiled and nodded at Daniel.  He was going to stick with Herb for ten days.  That’s when Herb promised that he would explain everything.  If he took any longer than that, he would give Herb one chance to explain himself, and if he didn’t, he would run. 
The sound of a car stopping filled Daniels ears.  When he looked out of Herb’s window, he saw a car idling next to the one they were in.  Daniel saw two Abrexi officers sitting in the car.  After what Herb had said the look of them sent a chill down his spine.
“Everything all right here?”  Asked one of them. 
And then Herb went back to the way he was when Daniel woke up.  The cheery Londoner.
“Its fine, officer, my car stalled is all.”             

(Keep in mind I was ten when I wrote that part, so be nice)