[1508] Antwerp's Island (End of Ch. 1)
Howdy Destructive Readers!
This should be my last submission for a while. I wasn't originally going to post this, but I've gotten so many helpful comments about where things were (and, more importantly, were not) working that I decided "why not?"
This is an excerpt from the end of the first chapter of my novel Antwerp's Island. Link here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xa1KH9IAR25oPAdL7NWXlZ-SBNJVKDrhaIXy2X7Ub0Y/edit?usp=sharing
Log line: A wealthy eccentric hosts a reality television event on his island where dangerous contestants, and other mysterious forces, vie for a cash prize and the decryption key of history's worst ransomware attack.
I think this excerpt mostly stands on its own, but for the curious here's Part 1 and Part 2 that lead up to this section of the chapter. And for anyone who read the previous posts and said that the twist was revealed too fast: this is the actual twist.
To pre-empt one critique that I'm expecting: this section is slower than the first two parts of the chapter because it's designed as a chance to breathe after getting thrown head first into the story. But if it's too slow, please let me know.
Query Letter (Spoilers):
Former gymnast Lt. Edwards has always been a competitor: competing for parents' affection, the love of an estranged spouse, recognition by her commanding officers. Working undercover, Lt. Edwards is one of eighty finalists shipped to a Pacific island set as the grand stage of The Trials: dangerous obstacle courses televised as an extreme reality television event by the legally entrenched business mogul John Antwerp.
Antwerp, who has promised a cash prize sure to bankrupt him, reveals in his final speech the truth and a second, greater prize: he has unleashed a string of ransomware attacks, and the key to winning the contest is also the only key to unlocking the now encrypted data of governments and corporations worldwide. Lt. Edwards' mission is simple. Get the decryption key, get back to the ship.
Jean, a Traveler from a distant future unable to find the mythical island through normal means, has infiltrated Antwerp's contest with his team in an effort to recover the fabled Key of Knowledge for his obsessed employer. Jean knows time is short. Surviving historical records, and radioactive evidence, are clear that a series of military strikes, culminating in the use of atomics over the Pacific to curb the unrelenting and devastating ransomware attacks, start a war ushering in the next Dark Age.
But the contestants, and other mysterious forces, devolve into violence. What starts as a mission to find the key turns into a fight for survival.
In ANTWERP'S ISLAND, a 70,000 word novel in the style of Blake Crouch's Dark Matter meets Squid Games, follow a tangled web of events far outside anyone's control.
Critiques:
Posted Mar 16, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC · edited