Very excited! My new novel, Thawing A.C. Nielsen, is now up and available for "pre-sale" (just $2.99 for Kindle or other ebook format, then price goes up before the holidays) on Kindle here:
http://amzn.to/2bULRD1
In the first 24 hours the book is already in the top 8% of Amazon books sold! Woot!
Also, newly posted there-- a 5-star review from one of the top reviewing companies! Until it goes "live for sale" there won't be any customer reviews or samples-- that happens Oct. 18th. There will also be a paperback version up soon. Check it out and please spread the word. I need all the publicity help I can get since I am not giving away my book to a mainstream publishing house!
I am wondering if any of you would consider reviewing the book. It will be released on Amazon/Kindle on October 18th. I need reviews from regular folks posted to amazon on the release day, if possible. You get a FREE pdf, word.doc or .mobi (Kindle ebook file) copy and plenty of time between now and mid-October to read it. Let me know, friends!
Chapter 24 is short, but upsetting. It seems that the veterinarian, Amman, has found something wrong with Mr T, the recenty defrosted guinea pig. Wahh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
November
2013
Word spread quickly throughout the building, even
to the people watching over A.C. Nielsen—somehow cryo had cured Mr. T’s cancer tumors
from 1987. But how in the world was that possible? No one knew the answer.
Amman and Ritika, with Kate’s help, kept studying Mr. T day and night, combing
their data for anything that might tell them more. Meanwhile, Mr. T kept on
wiggling and piggling away. Ritika eventually had to return to Boston, and
Edouard would leave soon for a week or two in the Caribbean, so most of the
continuing work fell on Amman. Chrissy had already taught Mr. T a few tricks to
the amazement of everyone. He was the number one attraction at ExitStrategy—so much so that Mike had
to occasionally shoo people away and yell at them to get back to their actual
work.
Despite these happy
times, Amman had found some issues that weren’t to his liking. He kept these to
himself for a while, waiting to gather evidence to confirm or deny them before
he told anyone else his concerns. Norm happened upon him once, as Amman stared
almost cross-eyed at some EEG readouts, drumming his fingers for minutes on
end. When Norm asked if he was okay, Amman snapped out of his trance but looked
troubled. Norm decided to not press the issue, figuring that perhaps Amman was
simply sleep-deprived. However, this all came to a head three weeks after Mr. T
had rejoined the living.
One morning, Amman
entered ExitStrategy with a
newly arrived guest from San Francisco, a veterinarian named Dr. John Shipley,
who had attended grad school at Cornell’s revered veterinary program with
Amman. Amman had asked Mike and Kate to let him bring in Shipley as a
consultant. Amman and Shipley disappeared into Amman’s temporary office and
were holed up in there for hours. Kate wondered what was going on, but left
them alone. Amman finally emerged, looking exhausted. He walked into the lab
and sat down beside Mr. T’s cage. Mr. T was hard at work rearranging his wood
chips for the seventh time that day. Amman stared at Mr. T for what seemed like
forever. Kate noticed him there but held back—she could see that something was
bothering him. Shipley entered the room and stood quietly by Kate. She finally
broke Amman out of his trance.
“So what do we know,
Amman?”
“What I’ve always told
you, Kate. He’s a guinea pig.”
“Right. And you brought
him back to life,” she said gently.
“Yes, the whole team
did. It wasn’t just me.”
“True, but you were the one
with all the training, all the knowledge.”
“Yes, and Ritika, too.”
Amman kept staring at Mr. T, not even looking up at Kate. Finally, he stood up and walked back to his temporary office. Kate
looked to Shipley, who just stared back at her without expression. Amman
returned to the lab with his laptop and brought up the report he and Shipley
had created for Kate and Mike to read.
“Kate, come over here, look
at this—page one, page two, page three, and so on. This could be any guinea pig
in the world.”
Kate squinted at the
data and charts. “That’s good, Amman. We want him to be like all the other
guinea pigs, right?”
“Here—” He stood. “—take
my seat. Go ahead and keep scrolling.” Amman started pacing the room slowly.
Meanwhile, Shipley remained like a statue, expressionless. Kate kept reading
and scrolling. As she went through more and more pages her face lost its luster,
and her usual cheerful smile turned into a frown. At page forty, Shipley’s
observations as an expert in mammalian behavior appeared. Over the past week
Amman had sent him hours and hours of video footage of Mr. T, and Shipley had summarized
his observations for inclusion in the report. Kate read on about ten more
pages. “That’s far enough, Katherine. Just
technical-shmechnical stuff there now. Go ahead and skip to page seventy-five.
There’s a fairly succinct summary there,” Amman said softly.
Kate found page
seventy-five and read more slowly, mouthing each word. When she finished she
took a moment to steel herself before she spoke.
“Amman, thank you. Dr.
Shipley, thank you for reviewing this case and sharing your expertise with us.
We really appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome, Miss
Pearson. I’m sorry,” he said.
“Shall I call Mike in,
Amman?” Kate said.
“Yes, I think so,” he
replied. “But better yet, why don’t you get everyone in here? We’ll tell them
all together.”
“We could do that.
Almost everyone is here now. I can get the rest of them here by one this
afternoon.”
“Let’s do that, then,”
Amman said, placing his hand gently on Kate’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, too, Kate.
I never expected this.”
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