This continues an excerpt from Mad Science Institute, a novel of calamities, creatures, and college matriculation. The novel will be available 12/16/2011, but you can read the beginning here first!

Chapter 2 Continued…

She was standing on the far corner, just past the ring of plastic cones that marked the civilian safety zone, with the other spectators. It was her hair that made her so easy to spot: orange-red, the color of a daffodil’s heart, and vivid even at a distance as it flowed over her shoulders. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she wore an earth-toned pants suit that allowed his eyes to follow the long journey of her legs all the way up from her black pumps.

Dean felt a surge of happiness at seeing her, followed almost immediately by a cold splash of regret. He had known her since their first day as college freshman, and since then he might have measured his life by the cycle of intense love and bitter heartbreak they traded with one another. The last time he had seen her had been two years ago, when she rejected his marriage proposal for the second time. All that seemed like so long ago, and his mind raced to come up with an explanation for why she might be here, now, standing on this very street corner.

She saw him and waved, then pushed past the other spectators to follow the safety line closer to him.

“McKenzie,” he called out as he ran to her. He had always called her by her last name, ever since they had first met as freshman in college. Originally it had been a sort of joke, a jock’s nickname for someone who couldn’t have been less jock-like in attitude or upbringing, but the name had stuck with her. Even years later, her new acquaintances mistakenly believed that it was her given name because that’s what everyone else called her. He raced her to the edge of the safety line, but when he reached her he suddenly felt awkward and unsure of what to do. When they had last seen each other, they had been enemies after another ferocious break-up. By their usual pattern, they would now be lovers again, but Dean didn’t want to make any assumptions. McKenzie, however, had no reservations as she flung her arms around him.  He laughed, scooped her off her feet with a bear-hug and inhaled deeply, finding that even the clinging stench of the smoke was powerless to cover her scent of jasmine and honeysuckle–scents he couldn’t name, but which he had learned to love. It meant they were about to re-discover all the ways they were so perfect for each other. Maybe, if they were lucky, this would be the time they would forget to explore all the reasons it could never work out.

“Sorry,” he said, releasing the hug. “I’m all sweaty. But I’m so glad to see you. What are you doing here? And—how did you find me out on call?”

“I just followed the smoke,” she said. “Wherever there’s disaster, there’s Dean.”

This chapter concludes tomorrow!

This is an excerpt from Mad Science Institute, a novel that will be available 12/16/2011. This chapter introduces Dean, the second of two point-of-view protagonists.

Dean is a tough-guy, which is good because he’s going to get knocked around a lot during the course of his adventure. But, hey, someone’s got to keep the school from burning down.

Chapter 2

Dean

As the curtain of black smoke pulled back, Dean yanked the oxygen mask from his face and dropped his heat-warped helmet to the pavement. His fellow firefighters rushed in to offer assistance, but he didn’t need any. He was on his feet, and so were the rest of his crew. One man had a hurt shoulder—a broken clavicle, Dean guessed—but the fire was out and their job was done.

He unclipped the air-tank from his back, and when he shucked his insulated jacket from his shoulders, a light rain of charcoal chunks and burned brick chips fell from him. The late summer Los Angeles wind was hot and tainted by the coppery scent of smog, but it still felt refreshing as it hit his broad chest and played through his short, black hair. He was not the tallest firefighter at his stationhouse, but he was far from the shortest, and his sturdy frame was wrapped in ample muscle and minimal fat, allowing his body to shed heat with the greatest possible efficiency.

His colleagues gathered his discarded clothing as he dropped it and one of them shoved a canteen in his hand. Dean upended it over his head, then accepted a second canteen and gulped down the chilled water. By the time he finished, the station chief arrived and swapped Dean’s canteen for another full one.

“Not exactly the best-case scenario,” the chief said, pointing with his chin back towards the remnants of the building from which Dean had just emerged.

“I’ve seen worse,” Dean said with a shrug. He had once remained on his feet for three days to battle a jet-fuel fire at a hanger outside of Bagdad. By comparison, today was easy. Half the building may have fallen down, but he had read the impending collapse in the sagging interior walls in time to hurry his men to safety. The apartment building was lost, but the fire would not spread.

“Take a rest,” the Chief said, jerking his thumb towards an awaiting ambulance. “I don’t want to see you back on the line for thirty minutes, minimum. That’s an order.”

Dean had a seat and allowed the paramedics to record his vitals before he found a shady spot from which he could watch the clean-up operation. Exactly thirty minutes later, he got up and went to lend a hand.

He took only three steps before he saw someone who stopped him short. There, across the street, stood a figure he instantly recognized but couldn’t believe: Professor Denise McKenzie.

As the curtain of black smoke pulled back, Dean yanked the oxygen mask from his face and dropped his heat-warped helmet to the pavement. His fellow firefighters rushed in to offer assistance, but he didn’t need any. He was on his feet, and so were the rest of his crew. One man had a hurt shoulder—a broken clavicle, Dean guessed—but the fire was out and their job was done.

He unclipped the air-tank from his back, and when he shucked his insulated jacket from his shoulders, a light rain of charcoal chunks and burned brick chips fell from him. The late summer Los Angeles wind was hot and tainted by the coppery scent of smog, but it still felt refreshing as it hit his broad chest and played through his short, black hair. He was not the tallest firefighter at his stationhouse, but he was far from the shortest, and his sturdy frame was wrapped in ample muscle and minimal fat, allowing his body to shed heat with the greatest possible efficiency.

His colleagues gathered his discarded clothing as he dropped it and one of them shoved a canteen in his hand. Dean upended it over his head, then accepted a second canteen and gulped down the chilled water. By the time he finished, the station chief arrived and swapped Dean’s canteen for another full one.

“Not exactly the best-case scenario,” the chief said, pointing with his chin back towards the remnants of the building from which Dean had just emerged.

“I’ve seen worse,” Dean said with a shrug. He had once remained on his feet for three days to battle a jet-fuel fire at a hanger outside of Bagdad. By comparison, today was easy. Half the building may have fallen down, but he had read the impending collapse in the sagging interior walls in time to hurry his men to safety. The apartment building was lost, but the fire would not spread to the rest of the neighborhood.

“Take a rest,” the Chief said, jerking his thumb towards an awaiting ambulance. “I don’t want to see you back on the line for thirty minutes, minimum. That’s an order.”

Dean had a seat and allowed the paramedics to record his vitals before he found a shady spot where he could watch the clean-up operation. Exactly thirty minutes later, he got up and went to lend a hand.

He took only three steps before he saw someone who stopped him short. There, across the street, stood a figure he instantly recognized but couldn’t believe: Professor Denise McKenzie.

Read more of chapter 2 tomorrow!

For the next few weeks I will post excerpts from my novel Mad Science Institute, which is set to release Friday, December 16, 2011. Read the first 30 pages here first! Then you can hit the ground running when you get your copy.

Chapter 1

Soap

My experiment exploded. Again.

Now I’m thirty feet above a concrete sidewalk, dangling from the railing of a gigantic, burning doomsday machine designed to bring civilization as we know it to a sudden and very messy end. Oh, and BTW: my fingers are slipping.

My name’s Sophia, but people call me “Soap.” They also call me a mad scientist, which I hate. Everyone knows mad scientists are old men in white coats who build monsters and death-rays and stuff and then laugh like maniacs while trying to conquer the world. I’m a sixteen-year-old girl, and whoever heard of a girl being a mad scientist? Besides, I don’t mean to keep blowing things up. For me, explosions are just a bad habit, like talking with your mouth full or chronic butt-dialing. The only difference is that my bad habit causes widespread property damage.

So how did I end up here? It sort of started when one of my gizmos accidentally caused a couple dozen cell phones to explode while they were still in people’s pockets. On the up-side, that experiment got me a college scholarship. On the down-side, it set off a chain of events that included chasing a lizard monster through a radioactive basement and being kidnapped by a motorcycle gang. And now I’m stuck between burning alive and falling to my death.

To be fair, half of the story belongs to my cousin, Dean. For him, it started 16 days ago, when the woman he loved showed up out of nowhere. This was the same woman who offered me admission to the college, so it’s probably fair to start the story with them.

More to come tomorrow! Mad Science Institute will be available 12/16/2011. Tell me what you think by leaving a comment below!

This is an ongoing story about a lost world of hungry dinosaurs, sinister villains, and non-stop action. If you’re new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning.

Professor Scrumtumbler paced through the tall green grass of the veldt where he thought sure his drilling machine had been. It wasn’t there. Then he paced back to where he thought it might have been, but still didn’t find it. Finally he went to the spot where it couldn’t possibly have been, and it wasn’t there either.

He gazed around in all directions and absentmindedly tugged at his unruly white hair. Where could that twelve-ton steel-plated monstrosity have gone?

After escaping the cannibals, Scrumtumbler had given an earnest prayer for the safety of his teammates, who were thoroughly scattered throughout this startlingly dangerous wilderness. Scrumtumbler had never been a religious man, but in times like these he didn’t see how a prayer could hurt. “My colleagues never sought to steal Your secrets or topple Your laws of nature,” he reasoned. “If any of us should be punished, it should be me.”

Now, it seemed, the Almighty had taken his suggestion by plucking the drilling machine up into the sky. There seemed to be no better explanation.

Scrumtumbler paced the area systematically, forming a spiraling search pattern. He found triceratops footprints and even a red sequin from Celeste’s dress, but no sign of the machine. He was just about to give up when he parted the grass to discover a broad hillock of freshly churned earth, where small birds and flying reptiles pecked away in search of grubs and worms.

This was surely the exit point of the drilling machine. To dispel any doubt, two deep tracks with the distinctive herring-bone pattern of the drilling machine’s treads led away a dozen feet through the grass. And then the tracks abruptly stopped with no further sign of the vehicle.

There was something else at the end of the tracks: another large patch of churned dirt, but this one was flat and even, as if someone had dug a swimming pool and then refilled the hole. Scrumtumbler paced it, counting his steps to discover that this patch of recently-dug earth was exactly long enough and wide enough to contain the drilling machine.

So: the machine hadn’t mystically flown up into the sky, it had been swallowed by the earth. Mystery solved… and replaced by the new mystery. How it had gotten buried? Who would have done this, and why? If it had drilled itself in, it would have kicked back far more dirt and left a gigantic mole-hill behind it. This smooth patch of churned earth couldn’t be from the machine, yet it also couldn’t be natural, because sinkholes simply aren’t rectangular. Man-made? Perhaps, yet it would have taken a chain-gang a day to dig a hole big enough to conveniently stash the drilling machine, and Scrumtumbler was sure he hadn’t been gone that long. Furthermore, there were no signs of laborers—no boot-prints, no discarded tools, not even a scrap of paper or an extinguished cigarette.

Scrumtumbler shook his wild-haired head and decided that he must be overlooking something.

He paced around the outside of the dirt patch once more in search of some sign or clue that he had overlooked. He got exactly three steps when a hole opened beneath his feet.

The hole happened to be exactly one Scrumtumbler in diameter, and he dropped through before he could even yelp.

Where he had stood only an instant before, freshly churned earth pushed up from beneath to seal the hole behind him.

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com

Don’t forget that next week the Hollow Earth Expedition serial will be paused for a little while. In its place, you will get to read some sample chapters from Mad Science Institute .

What’s Mad Science Institute about?

Sophia “Soap” Lazarcheck is a girl genius with a knack for making robots—and for making robots explode. After her talents earn her admission into a secretive university institute, she is swiftly drawn into a conspiracy more than a century in the making. Meanwhile and without her knowledge, her cousin Dean wages a two-fisted war of vengeance against a villainous genius and his unwashed minions.  Separately, the cousins must pit themselves against murderous thugs, experimental weaponry, lizard monsters, and a nefarious doomsday device. When their paths finally meet up, they will need to risk everything to prevent a mysterious technology from bringing civilization to a sudden and very messy end.

Mad Science Institute: a novel of catastrophies, creatures, and college matriculation!

This is an ongoing story about a lost world of hungry dinosaurs, sinister villains, and non-stop action. If you’re new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning.

The air was still roasting inside the gigantic skull-shaped monolith although only a slight red glow found its way in from the magma pool. Yet it was enough to see what Maia had come for: a life-sized, black skull artifact on a pedestal.

It was a woman’s skull, that much was evident from the graceful curve of the brow and the sleek line of the jaw. It might once have been a human skull because was detailed and organic in a way she had never seen replicated by an artisan. Or, it might also have been a very convincing sculpture, because it was black and shining, and looked like it had been formed from volcanic glass rather than living bone. Either way, Maia expected it would fetch a fortune on the open market. Museums would start bidding wars to get it. She flexed her fingers as if she were already polishing her treasure.

Begrudgingly, the Nazis entered the enclosure, their boots thumping irreverently on the floor. She gave them a quick glance, then stooped down to get a closer look at the skull. If the builders of this ancient tomb had gone to the trouble of creating traps in the hallway beyond and then coming up with some ingenious machine to pump molten rock through the room, they would surely have been counting on a rush of greed to ensnare future a tomb raiders. No need for haste, she thought. If she grabbed it now, she might set off a ceiling collapse or triggering a rolling bolder.

“Oh my beautiful and magnificent queen,” Maia said, flexing her fingers again. “You wouldn’t hurt me, would you? You and I have too much in common.” She knelt down before the pedestal, partially to show her respect for the god-queen, who seemed to be one of the few historical figures whom Maia could respect. More than that, though, she knelt down to get a look at the underside of the skull to inspect the pedestal for wires or pressure plates.

That was when she heard the click of a shotgun breach. She knew then that the lazy-eyed squad leader was aiming her own weapon at her back.

“You have found that which my commandant seeks,” said the squad leader. “To show my gratitude, I will allow you a moment to speak your final prayers.”

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com

Let’s give away some Mad Science Institute posters!

For the rest of this month, I’ll send someone a free 12×18″ poster whenever any of the following three things happens:

1. Every time the Mad Science Institute Facebook page gets 5 new likes (starting at 40), I’ll randomly select one Facebook follower for a poster.
2. Every time @SechinTower gets 5 new followers on Twitter (starting at 110), I’ll randomly select one twitter follower for a poster.
3. Every time I get 5 new subscribers for my free ezine, I’ll randomly select one subscriber for a poster.

To maximize your chances, be sure to like, follow, and subscribe, and be sure to tell your friends!

EDIT: Family is not eligible to win. If I draw your number, I will re-draw. But that should be okay because I’ll give you a poster just because you’re family, so you’ve got that going for you.

This is an ongoing story about a lost world of hungry dinosaurs, sinister villains, and non-stop action. If you’re new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning.

She didn’t go far into the narrow, dusty hallway before halting. The squad leader protested, but she hunkered down and inspected the floor by the red light. She could just make out the mismatched lines of the floor-stones.

Pressure plates, she thought. The ancient builders lined the floor like the ribs of a skeleton, and one misstep would trigger something unpleasant. A trap door? Crushing walls? Poison darts? She saw no need to find out.

“Step only where I step,” she said, and led them along a circuitous route down the hall. They traced her path with great precision and never bothered to ask why. Nazis, she decided, had plenty of practice playing “follow the leader.”

The passage opened up into a bowl-shaped room that burned with the force of hatred itself. Beneath the edge of the threshold, the floor dropped away into a bubbling pit of magma. Maia kicked a few pebbles from the passage into the molten rock below, where they hissed and disappeared beneath the surface. So that’s where the red glow comes from, she thought. It was also the source of the putrid air.

As intimidating as it may have been, the churning magma seemed upstaged by the central feature of the room: a gargantuan skull in the center of the room that seemed to rise up out of the lake of fire like the face of terror itself. This was the image of the god-queen, and it had been hewed from some monolithic black slab of rock large enough to allow a grown man to walk upright between her gaping jaws. Her skeletal face had been stylistically rendered, with a snarl evident in the bony cheeks and a furrowed brow, and cascades of blazing red magma spilling from its crown backwards like flowing sheets of hair. A long, curving tongue projected from her mouth to form a bridge, beckoning them to enter.

Maia felt a surge of awe for this monument, and something more—a kind of kinship with the woman who fought so savagely to keep what had belonged to her people. She inhaled deeply, allowing the heated air to blaze into her lungs and warm her from within. She felt energized, purified, ready to lay claim to the lost treasure. Above all, she felt alive.

She stepped onto the tongue-shaped bridge, heedless of the seething red pool below here.

“Halt!” the squad leader called from behind her. “There may be danger!”

She had forgotten about her guards, and now she turned to see them huddled at the threshold, acting as fearfully as cattle in a thunderstorm. They wrinkled their noses at the room’s scent and held out their palms to block the heat and the glare from their faces.

“Danger,” she said, rolling the word around on her tongue. In every language she had studied, she enjoyed the sound of that particular word. “We wouldn’t want a little danger to hold us back, now would we?”

With that, she proceeded into the dark maw of the god-queen’s skull.

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com

Starting next week the Hollow Earth Expedition story will be taking a little hiatus for a couple of weeks. But don’t worry: in it’s place will be posts covering the first few chapters of my upcoming novel Mad Science Institute! Stay tuned!

This is an ongoing story about a lost world of hungry dinosaurs, sinister villains, and non-stop action. If you’re new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning.

The Nazi guards followed her closely, and the deeper she went the more they huddled together. She might have used her control of the only light-source to bully them, forcing them to keep up with her and go where she pleased. She might even have managed to ditch them in these forking tunnels, but she was too distracted by what the walls were telling her to play games. Ultimately, she stopped in front of a large mural, the Nazis clustered behind her like shadows thrown back by her flashlight.

Pressing her nose close to the wall as she examined it, Maia brushed brown dust out of the crevices and cleared the ancient cobwebs to reveal the full design. The lines of script revolved in great sweeping circles along the wall, contracting towards the center where  the image of the god-queen, her face a leering skull amid viciously flailing hair, glared out prominently. Maia caressed the central image with her finger tips, leaning in close and squinting as she looked deep into the black pits of the eyes.

“You took us here to find primitive gibberish on a wall?” the lazy-eyed squad leader asked. “I am certain this is not what the commandant is seeking. We have plenty of gibberish on the walls closer to the command post.”

“This isn’t a wall,” Maia said. “It’s a door.”

Without looking at him, she slid her index and middle fingers into the empty eye-sockets of the queen’s skeletal face. As she did, the wall shuddered and cast off a thousand years of dust before slowly rumbling backwards.

A blast of sulfurous air rolled out from the newly revealed passage. Only a moment later, a blood-red light filled the passage, as if the gust of air from the opening door had caused the combustion of a bonfire somewhere ahead.

This passage had been sealed for uncounted years, but it had been brought back to life by their presence. The thought thrilled Maia.

The three Nazi guards were not so bold.

“Why is there red light?” the squad leader asked. “No one could be in there, lighting fires for us. The tomb has been sealed too long—no one could possibly be living down here…could they?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” she said, striding forward into the eerie light.

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com