Cosmic Patrol

I just received the first draft of the opening fiction for Into The Cosmos and despite having a huge pile of production work to do today, I couldn’t help but take a quick peak.

See, I love going to a book store and picking up the newest books on the shelf and reading the first sentence to see if it grabs me. If it does I then continue for the first paragraph to see if the Voice and hooks they’re generating are still holding.

It’s a fascinating exercise. Obviously not all books have brilliant first pages that still turn out fantastic…and vice versa, not all books that have a strong opening finish well…but it’s still an excellent litmus test that has worked well for me.

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For those that might have missed it, last week Richard Hagon from www.gamehead.com interviewed me concerning Cosmic Patrol. You can find that podcast here.

Thanks to Richard for having me on…love the excitement for our little red book!

Till next episode!

Randall

I’m really excited about this contest. It’s one more step in how I can work on Cosmic Patrol in a fashion with the community that’s further than anything I’ve done in the past. Not only do I get to ask you guys what you’d like to see developed, but I get to see your creativity and enthusiasm and how that can translate into actual content of our books for this great universe.

For those wondering about the contest, the full details are in this previous blog post.

Due to that excitement, I wanted to post here the first Mission Brief we received from the burgeoning community; while this can be found on the forums, thought it would be cool to share it here as well this time around.

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Mission: The Khan Protocol part 1 – Crash Landing!!

++Transmission Interrupt++

On the way to investigate why space tramp Star Runner 6, carrying supplies for nearby Helios Platform in Gliese 581 went silent, your ship was unexpectedly attacked and shot down by a squadron of pirates.

You and your team have crash landed on a nearby asteroid. Your ship is effectively destroyed, you have no communications, and worse yet the hunk of space rock seems to inhabited by malfunctioning service robots. Fortunately there is an old automated research facility on the asteroid, likely the source of the rogue bots.

You only have a limited supply of oxygen and must find a means to reestablish communications with CPHQ on Helios Platform immediately!

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