NB, Post updated June 2023 – First chapter of story only here now –
STORY NOW AVAILABLE AS A STANDALONE PAPERBACK AND EBOOK – HERE.
Also (and probably a better bet) available in the collection No Lack of Courage – HERE – which has all the Cole Wright stories from 2022.
A little slow off the mark with this… call it the end of the year blues. Mostly I like to have a Cole Wright short story up free to read in the first week of the month when a Cole Wright novel is coming out. This time, I missed that by a wide margin – Zero Kills, book 6 in the series, has already been out for a few days now.
The idea with a free story on the website here is to promote the upcoming title and the series as a whole. Since I’m kind of goofy with that whole marketing thing, sometimes pieces fall by the wayside. Social media? Advertising? Up to date website? Email list? What’s all that?
“A Steep Climb” as it turns out, was actually the first Cole Wright short story I wrote. When I was getting a feel for the character. It was fun coming back to it at this point (and making a couple of important changes) and cool to let it out into the world. I’ll leave it free here for a week or two. Maybe longer.
More Cole Wright news soon – an update on Zero Kills (you know, promotion), a little news on book 7, which has been drafted and as such is in the machine to get up to scratch to be publishable, and on a collection of all the Cole Wright short stories so far, including the novella.
A Steep Climb will also be out soon as an ebook and in paperback – priced as usual at $2.99 and around $5.99.
Enough of my waffling on – here’s the story. STORY NOW AVAILABLE AS A STANDALONE PAPERBACK AND EBOOK – HERE.
Also (and probably a better bet) available in the collection No Lack of Courage – HERE – which has all the Cole Wright stories from 2022.
A Steep Climb – blurb
Hitching a ride, Cole Wright finds himself listening to tall tales. He meets some remarkable people on the road.
When the driver suggests a detour to a beautiful overlook, they find more than they expect. People dressed and ready for a ball.
But they have other things on their mind.
Cover illustration © Janusz Walczak (figure) ©Jing (landscape) Both | Pixabay
A Steep Climb
Chapter 1
Delle Brodie climbed the steep face of the grassy slope, nursing her twisted ankle, watching the rage of angry waves below.
There were rocks there, at the base. Old granite or basalt or something. The kind of rock that sat implacable against the ocean’s onslaught for millions of years. Or against the impact of a boat’s hull.
Above the rock, the grassy slope was something she had to cling to. Maybe mountain goats or bighorn sheep could traverse it easily, but for a reasonably fit woman like herself, it was still a struggle.
Unnerving, even.
The grass was crisp and dry. The blades crackled underfoot and in her hands as she grasped at them. Some came away in her fingers. Hopefully the root mass was tougher. Otherwise, her urgent traverse might dislodge something and send a whole volume of it down into the Pacific. Her with it.
Back down with the debris of Hibiscus, her boat.
Insects buzzed around. Hornets, maybe, or bees. Despite the dryness of the landscape, there were still weedy flowers around. The smell was a heady mix of dusty earth, pine and a mess of floral scents.
If you could bottle it, you’d make a killing selling it at state fairs.
The sun beat down on Delle. Late September in Oregon you’d think it would be more temperate. There had been some fires a year or two back, racing up through parts of this countryside. Relentless and without mercy. Times were sure getting hotter.
Still, at least the sun would be setting soon. It might have been six PM already. Maybe later. On the boat, time hadn’t seemed to matter so much.
Somewhere south of Portland, north of Crater Lake National Park, one of her favorite places. Amazing that a lake could be so deep–deepest in the country–but only be accessible at the top of a mountain. Stunning, summer or winter.
It would be a whole lot better there right now, than here.
She was wearing running gear, which was a good thing. Tights, Nikes, a wicking, long-sleeved Ladbrook top. Black with bright colors–pinky-crimson on the upper half of the top, and the same color highlights along the leggings.
Better than if she was in jeans, sandals and some old baggy sweater.
She was in good shape, for her age. Pushing forty. She ran five miles a day, put in a couple of regular weekly sessions at Stone’s Gym in Tacoma hefting weights and pulling the oars on a rowing machine.
Delle stopped and took a breath. The slope had to be sixty degrees. Math had never been her strong suit. Ask her to pick the chords in a song and she could do that easy. Listen to something once, then play it on the piano no problem.
But angles and square roots and even multiplication baffled her.
Honey, her mother had said right through school, Music is just math.
Well, she got that. All the notes relate, one to the other. That was easy. But when you had to look up the cosine of an angle to figure out how long the side of a triangle was, well, that just lost her.
And why was she thinking about that now?
As if poor math skills were something to worry about when her boat was wrecked, she was stuck here scrambling up some wasteland into who knew where?
Another glance down–didn’t they say don’t look down?–and she could see that she was actually making progress.
She didn’t remember scaling the rocks. Just being thrown into the water, then she was here on the slope. Some survival instinct taking over. The conscious, memory-forming part of her brain shoved aside as something took over to get her away from those waves and out of the water.
A plunge through the water–she was still wet–and a scramble up the rock face. She had some cuts on her fingers and the left knee of her leggings was torn, the skin beneath scraped.
She stopped for another breath. Impossible to tell how far the slope reached. It curved back away from her.
It was tiring. And already she’d had to deal with the broken steering on the boat.
Hibiscus was a forty-foot fiberglass cutter. At least, she had been. Now she was just jetsam, with the mast bobbing in the waves, the keel sitting at the bottom of this little cove.
Her own fault, really. It was her father who’d been the sailing enthusiast. He’d gifted her the boat in his will.
He’d tried to share a lot of his enthusiams with her. Taking her to Jayhawks games, teaching her to shoot at the local range, watching bad fifties science fiction movies. Some of them were really terrible.
Maybe it was some desire to honor his name, to take the boat out. Maybe it was something clouding her judgement.
She’d been out on the boat plenty of times with him, from when she was maybe ten and he’d come into the money to purchase it.
He made it look easy. Adjust the sheets, work the tiller, change the sail configuration.
The last five years it had sat almost idle–just occasional rentals that helped pay the hospital bills–while he made noises about beating his cancer. Right up until the last day.
I’ll lick it, you hear me? I will.
Sure Dad.
Delle climbed on. Maybe it wasn’t too much farther. And the slope definitely seemed to be growing less steep. Something darted away through the grass to her right. Maybe a mouse. Maybe a small snake.
She should know more about the area’s wildlife, really.
The slope evened out. The grass was more vibrant and strong. Soon the slope was shallow enough that she could stand and walk upright.
The tips of trees showed farther up. Some pieces of litter were caught in the grass in places. Burger wrappers, plastic bottles.
The slope changed not far ahead. An edge to it. The grass scruffier, a low fence made from fat round pieces of wood. When she reached it though, the fence was higher than it had seemed. More like three feet high, with wire mesh between the posts.
Beyond, there was a gravel area, with tall pines behind. The scent of them was strong.
A black Cadillac was parked in the middle of the gravel area.
With a man standing at the open driver’s door. Just watching her.
Chapter 2
Cole Wright sat in the passenger seat of the rickety old Ford, listening to the driver talk about his time in the marines. Nice guy, though perhaps getting on a bit to still be driving, especially at the speeds he was doing. Staying within the posted limit, but the twists and turns didn’t lend themselves to the aggressive mode at all.
….
COMPLETE STORY NOW AVAILABLE AS A STANDALONE PAPERBACK AND EBOOK – HERE.
Also (and probably a better bet) available in the collection No Lack of Courage – HERE – which has all the Cole Wright stories from 2022.
Thanks for reading a little of “A Steep Climb”. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did (after all, this is marketing, right), check out the other stories and novels in the series on the Cole Wright page on the website here. Ebooks, paperbacks and even hardbacks (of the novels). Does anyone want audiobooks? Seems as if lately the AI revolution is making that a little more cost effective (as expense, I suspect, of numerous skilled voice artists – that’s kind of scary). Maybe I should wander down that path for a little while.
Again, thanks. Feel free to comment, even just to say hi.
Take care,
Sean
On his last day alive, Gus Caleb sits alone in a bar. Quiet place. No problems. Until problems show up.
My novella “Goldie” from the January/February 2022 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction is a finalist in annual Asimov’s Readers’ Poll Awards. Amazingly this is actually my third time as a finalist for this award, following “
Dead Ringers, book 9 in my Captain Arlon Stoddard series is available on pre order with an April 20th release – 
Liquid Machine – blurb
A trip north of the border takes Cole Wright into the heart of snowbound Canada. Friendly people, vast distances, tough vehicles, isolation.
For a little change and a little challenge, I took on participating in NaNoWriMo this year. The background to taking that on comes from my day job workplace, a public library, where the youth team are working to encourage young writers to participate. I’m going to run a couple of workshops for in the Youth Space too.
The last novel for this year will be the sixth in the Cole Wright thriller series, Zero Kills. It should be up for preorder soon. The cover it a little different from the original, but matches the story better. (cheeky me, I’ll reuse that original image on another book, maybe next year).
Experienced Captain Ulliana Alvis loves skimming above the forty-five hundred kilometer stretch of the Tegh Sea. Her vessel the Mourave carries fifty passengers in safety and comfort. The calm of the water always reassures and moves her at once.