GATEWAY OF THE SUN, an action adventure

[mdsungate]

   I've been mentioning this novel in lots of threads here in the forums.  So If anyone's interested in an action adventure story here's the first chapter:

GATEWAY OF THE SUN

by

Michael J. DeRosa

CHAPTER ONE

     The Sun. A tremendous power, equivalent to the force of a hundred billion hydrogen bombs exploding at once. Energy streams off it like a thousand Zulu warriors dancing in frenzy. Blinding electricity speeds earthward-the sound of it crackling as it blasts through the atmosphere and hits the surface of the planet known as earth with the roar of a great wind. The sharp division between night and day swears to the awesome power of the dawn racing across the earth at a thousand miles per hour.
     The entire Eurasian continent lies quietly in slumber, cradled in the darkness of the night. Suddenly the sun springs to life as if the hand of God touched it. The dawn electrifies China and, in less than an hour, envelops India, greedily consuming all darkness in its path.
     It rapidly spreads across Europe-roosters crow and church bells chime good morning. Life awakens from a long night's sleep, to be tossed about in the river of energy that flows from the mighty sun.
     The dawn lights Greenwich, England and then thunders across the Atlantic with the speed and force of a tidal wave. It crosses thousands of miles of ocean in less time than the fastest airplane.
     If you, the reader, can grasp the sense of this, you will better understand the mystery of the event about to occur. Let us, together, race ahead of the dawn into the silent black of night with the dawn hot on our heels.
     It is a hushed, moonless night on Mystery Hill at North Salem, New Hampshire. A local Boy Scout camps under a blanket of stars on the grounds of America's Stonehenge, (an astronomical complex of huge stones built over four thousand years ago). He came to learn about astronomy and observe the summer solstice.
     It is June 21st, the longest day of the year. The sun will soon rise and fourteen-year-old Frankie Fatone senses the energy of the approaching dawn.
     In the neighboring pup tent, the Scoutmaster's wind-up alarm clock sounds. He reaches out and turns it off. His usually well-hidden metal flask of Southern Comfort drops to the ground as he rolls over, back to sleep.
     Frankie hears the alarm but doesn't realize what it is. He removes his earphones and taps them, wondering how that ringing sound got into his song. He glances at his watch and realizes it is almost time to wake up and view the rising sun of the summer solstice. He rises and leaves his tent, carrying a keyboard under his arm.
     Buggsie Houghton, another Scout, opens his weary eyes and sees his best friend walking off into the morning mist. "Frankie?" he calls out softly, so as to not awaken everyone. He, glances at his watch and also realizes what time it is. He hurriedly gets up and starts after his pal.
     Frankie walks up the stony path. As he nears the top of the hill, he stops at rubble of rocks that form a crude, low-built, stone circle. The square stone in the center makes a perfect seat. He sits down and continues to work on the song he's composing on his keyboard. "The others should be along shortly," he thinks, "and I have the best seat to view the sunrise."
     In the darkness, he can only view the shadow of the standing stone about a hundred feet from where he is. But, soon the sun will appear at the top of the giant monolith jutting out of the earth like the blade of a sharp knife.
     Buggsie struggled up the rocky incline. "Frankie?" He wondered what his friend is doing up there all alone. But Frankie was so absorbed by his work that he didn't notice his friend come up behind and tap him on the shoulder.
     "Aaahh!" cried Frankie, surprised. His cry also startled Buggsie, who screamed, thinking his friend had seen a bear or some other thing. "Buggsie!" Frankie laughed. You scared the life out of me."
     "I saw you leave the tent. What are you doing up here?"
     "I couldn't sleep. And then I realized it was almost time to come up here anyway."
     "Yeah, those sleepyheads better get up here soon. They're going to miss the sunrise."
     "I'm working on a new tune, dude! Check it out. It has an awesome beat." Frankie inserted the RAM card into the compact, one-foot-long keyboard. He pressed a button. "Maybe you can help me with some tight lyrics. It's about Christina Hollander, the blonde in our math class."
     As the tune reverberated over the rocky slopes of Mystery Hill, the boys discussed the song. Like a distant chorus, the inaudible sound of the oncoming dawn answered in refrain. The song's rhythm increased in intensity and tension built as the sounds of night creatures suddenly stopped and the roar of dawn approached.
     "Make it a play faster," Buggsie suggested. So Frankie slowly turned the tempo dial. Faster and faster the song played. And closer approached the dawn.
     A bird cried out and took to the air. The wind picked up and the sudden gust blew Buggsie’s cap from his head. If someone could hear the sound of the dawn now, it would be deafening.
     Behold! On the horizon, like the dreaded Mongol hordes, thundering like a thousand warrior horsemen, the dawn shattered the silent night. Its first rays hit the standing stone dead center, like a pointed blast of a laser beam. A straight beam of light suddenly appeared without warning or perception of its origin.
     It was followed by a booming sound like a chorus of screeching female harpies accompanied by a mist that rose from nowhere. It glowed an eerie green color and everything in the area became blindingly white. Reality lost its very substance and seemed to be carried off by a great tornado into the standing stone.
     Frankie clutched wildly at the stone and moaned, frightened. Buggsie cried out, "What's happening...?" His cry echoed up the mountain.
     Dawn lit the mountainside. Empty!

[unknown]

Hi Sungate

Loved the imagery of the sun coming up...

[mdsungate]

   Thanks Unknown.  Imagery isn't my forte, I have to work at it.  That first page took a lot of work and revisions to get right.  Every book of advice on how to write let's you know that the first page has to grab the reader or the rest of the story won't get read, LOL. 

A few pages later, (after an action scene), it gets to the dialogue, (which is my forte), and it gets very comical.  What I've done is take a very serious, (but way too far out subject for the general public), and made it a comedy.  The only kind of people who take the ley lines and this kind of phenomenia seriously are only found in places like here at Atlantisonline, LOL.  So I've made it an action comedy.  Two of my sons are the next would be cast of Saturday Night Live, and they think it's quite funny.   

[Zodiac]

Nice, powerful descriptions, reminds me a bit of Stephen Spielberg's old TV show, "Amazing Adventures."

Where's it going..?

[mdsungate]

  

Stephen Spielberg's old TV show, "Amazing Adventures

."

I never saw that show.  I'll have to U-tube it and see what I can find. 

But my story is kind of Spielberg'esque.  I've described it as Young Indiana Jones meets Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  However, self help books tell you that that kind of phrase doesn't tell you much. 

Here's the "pitch" I use when I query movie production companies about my screenplay of the same name and story:

The story begins with instant action and comedy as two teens accidentally harness the mysterious forces of America’s Stonehenge which teleport them into danger at Bolivia’s Gateway of the Sun.  The phenomena thrust them into secret occult meetings at England’s Stonehenge and Egypt’s Sphinx as they try to prove that spontaneous teleportation does exist. Pursued by the military and organized terrorists, they travel further along an ancient network of stone ruins then they expected.

The next chapter is an action scene where the two kids land in the middle of a gruesome ritual of human sacrifice with Bolivian headhunters. 

I'll post some of it if you're interested. 

[Zodiac]

I sure would be!  Amazing Stories is a lot like Indiana Jones.  It is sort of an anthology series where ordinary people get in these Twiilight Zone situations, inspired by the old pulps back in the 1940s and 50s!  It may be on DVD, you might like to check it out sometime.

[mdsungate]

   Okay Zodiac.  I'll check for "Amazing Stories" in Blockbuster Online which I belong to. Meanwhile here's then next chapter:

CHAPTER TWO

     Thousands of miles South, it was dawn in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, an ancient ruins soaring high up in the Andes Mountains. Truly a place of mystery, drawings of prehistoric animals on fragments of pottery are found there. The Incas thought the gods must have built it.
     A thousand feet north of the Akapana, or "Hill of Sacrifices", a gruesome ceremony is taking place on the steps of "The Gateway of the Sun." Above the doorway, carved in the enormous ten ton block of stone, is an imposing figure known, to the Incas, as the Cat God, whose faithful worshipers are performing a human sacrifice in accordance with their old religion-the one the Spanish Conquistadors had swept away.
     The victim is a teen-age girl who has been strapped down on the sacrificial stone. It is astonishingly quiet, with no people about except for the fifty followers of the religion. They have all journeyed far, from the jungles below the mountains to this sacred place.
     The priest slowly raises his long, ceremonial sword as he awaits dawning sun's rays to penetrate the doorway. Soon the first light of day appears in the Gateway, silently sounding a death knell for the doomed Peruvian girl.
     The blade plunges down as the light becomes blindingly white. As if in slow motion, it cleanly lops off the girl's head in a shower of warm blood.
     As the light flash fades, two frightened, teen-age boys are heard as Buggsie and Frankie appear in the opening.
     The severed head rolls from the sacrificial stone down the stairway beneath the Gateway. Buggsie and Frankie look in horror and shock, screaming in unison, "Shiitake mushrooms!"
     The frightened pair turn and run out the other side of the stone doorway.
     The priest shouts an order and several men rush up the steps after the boys. The two dash back and forth in opposite directions, like a bad Marx Brothers routine, until Buggsie shouts, "This way!" They stumble and slide down a ruined stairway and run down what was once a boulevard. The pursuers shout and throw spears and stones at them. The boys run past what was a pyramid and duck around its corner.
     Their way appears obstructed as they peer over a stone ledge, which was once a wall. The rubble is loose and, without warning, the ground slides out from under them as they fall off the stone wall.
     The frantic pair plops into a small hay cart, which breaks loose from the impact of their fall and rolls down the hill. Frankie stands as a spear from behind passes between his legs. He looks down and cries in disbelief, "Gulp! Kill me, don't castrate me, you idiots!"
     "Get down, Frankie!" Buggsie yanks him down, the cart thundering down the bumpy path. The boys look behind, holding straw baskets to fend off their pursuers stones and spears. Suddenly, their attackers stop and smile.
     "They're giving up?" Frankie asks in a high-pitched voice. They look at each other and, with the same thought, turn to see where they are headed.
     "Aaahh..." they scream as the cart nears the edge of a cliff where the path suddenly turns right.
   The cart hits a large rock at the cliff's edge and a wheel collapses, causing the cart to veer sharply. Frankie and Buggsie are thrown from the cart and land in rubble near the edge.
     The cart continues on, tumbling and rolling down the sharp incline, eventually shattering. Frankie and Buggsie look themselves over. They're scratched, but alive. They stumble to their feet. "Down here, quick!" Buggsie calls to Frankie. The boys scurry down the loose stone and dirt to a lower path.
     They find more ruins here, where people live or have once lived. They duck around a collapsed mud and straw hut and see little cover ahead, and a considerable distance to traverse.
     "In here!" Buggsie suggests, pointing to a large clay urn. They climb into the vessel, hoping it will hide them from the again-pursuing savages. Buggsie climbs in first and Frankie tries to pull the wooden cover over them. "Suck your gut in," Frankie whispers, as they jiggle and squeeze into the urn.
     Outside, they hear running feet as people shout in the native language. Then suddenly, it becomes quiet.
   "I think they've passed us," Frankie whispers hopefully. "I sure hope so, it's wet in here," Buggsie complains.
   "Sshh...." Frankie replies. 
     "Agh!” Buggsie yells.
   "Quiet! They'll find us, stupid."
   "It's moving!! Get me out of here!" Buggsie screams. Frankie lifts the lid slightly and Buggsie shoves him.
     Frankie lifts the lid and sees a savage running towards him, holding a spear aloft. He raises the wooden lid as a shield. The native jabs the cover several times. Now Frankie and Buggsie are both hysterical.
   "It's a snake!" Buggsie screams, as he throws a reptile from the clay urn. 
   Frankie, terrified by both the snake and the spear-wielder, doesn't know which way to turn. He screams in revulsion and flings the snake into the air. The fangs of the bushmaster are exposed and the snake hisses as it descends on the juggler vein of the native. He screams in agony.
     The lucky throw tips the heavy urn over and Frankie ducks back inside to avoid being crushed between the urn and the rocky ground. The urn begins to roll down the incline. Faster and faster they roll as the terrain becomes steeper. "Whoa," the guys moan in unison as they tumble around inside like clothes in a dryer.
     The pursuing natives watch the rolling urn careen over the edge of the cliff. Down, down, towards Lake Titicaca, the urn plummets, crashing through the roof of a Peruvian lake dweller's hut. The pursuing natives look down into the lake, far below, but see neither the jar nor the boys.
     Inside the hut, the boys moan. Frankie rises, dazed, wet and bleeding. He sees a frightened woman staring at him.
   Moaning, Buggsie slowly awakens. "My arm, I think it's broken!" Wet, terrified and exhausted, the two boys start crying while choking for air in the thin atmosphere.
     The woman mutters words of a mother's concern in Spanish. Seeing the boys are injured, she releases her raft-house from the reeds and uses a pole to push them towards the far side of the lake-and help. All the while, she mutters in her native tongue, with an occasional Saint's name mentioned.
     As the raft travels, the boys continue to cry and sniffle as they wonder, "Where are we?" "Well Toto, we're sure not in Kansas anymore," Frankie laments.

[Zodiac]

Nice twist, mdsungate, this one reminds me of Apocalypto.  Ever see that?

[mdsungate]

   No, I haven't seen Apocalypto yet.  I heard it was good, and I usually like everything that Mel Gibson does.  I'll put it in my cue for Blockbuster online.  I forgot about it, and it's right up my alley, LOL.  Thanks for reminding me about it.

Glad you liked chapter two.

[Kendall Conway]

Nice writing!  Have you been writing for a long time, mdsungate?

[mdsungate]

   Yes Kendall.  I started the novel in 1989, LOL.  It took many years of research, and revisions.  Then I had it professionally edited and we went through 4 rounds of edits over 4 years.  A novel is a lot of work, LOL.  I still haven't sold it, but I've had one literary agent who represented me for a few years, but had no luck selling it, (I think he wanted me to pay him to adapt it to a screenplay for a hefty fee, LOL).

But right now there's a very big literay agent who is reading it and I have high hopes.  It turns out he's a cousin of mine through marriage, LOL... (his uncle and aunt were also mine, but no blood realtion), it's a small world.   

[Rachel Dearth]

Hi, mdsungate,

Unknown and I would like to know:  how do you go about getting a literary agent?? 

It is near impossible, even if you're any good!!!

Rachel

[cleasterwood]

Hi mdsungate,
Let me start by saying I do like the premise of this story so far. Your imagery is also pretty good.   Kudos on that.  However, since I have some experience as an editor, I will say that I can see where some of your problems are with the telling of this story. (As a matter of fact, I'm editing someone's comic book as we speak.)   While the imagery is nice, you have some weak areas that could vastly be improved with minor tweaks.  For instance, you use the word "The" & "they" way too much to start your sentences.  The rule of thumb is to have no more than 3 occurrences of the same starting word for every 10 sentences.  I hope you didn't pay to have this edited.  I found several places where the story would have had more impact if the sentences were restructured properly.  Also some of your paragraphs are a bit choppy.
Please don't take my suggestions as anything more than constructive criticism as that is all they are intended to be.  Do with them what you will.  Also, 10 years is a bit long to have been working on one book.  I was pushing 6 & thought that was too long, but geesh!
Blessings & good luck,
Lynn

Rachel,
Getting an agent is a long process & you must do your homework on every agent you intend on submitting to.  The best place for you to start is here:  http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/  This site has a list of editors, publishers, & agents and each one has been researched for you.  They will tell you which ones are legitimate & which aren't.  Finding an agent is hard; getting published is even harder; selling stories is harder still.  Some people never make it and some get lucky. 

Me, I'll stick with comic books since I've found a love for them.  It's more fun than prose.   

[mdsungate]

   Thanks for the constructive criticism, Cleasterwood.  I really appreciate it.  I haven't been able to post for some time now.  At home I have 4 high school age kids and a wife who monopolizes the computers, and they put a filter on the net at work that blocks AO.  But I just bought a PDA so I'll be posting again. 

Yes, I did pay to have it edited, LOL.  But the editor was a screenplay editor, and I think he was trying to get me to shell out thousands to have it turned into a screenplay by him.  He was recently thrown out of the WGA for those kinds of practices.  That could be why it's a bit choppy.
 
I never actually heard that rule about 3 occurrences of the same starting word for every 10 sentences.  Thanks for the tip.  My cousin is a "big shot" in the publishing industry, and he told me that selling fiction right now is almost impossible for a first time writer. 

Yeah,  ten years for the novel alone.  And then add another 10 to write the screenplay.  With marriage and four children there's not a lot of  time.  But as you can see, although I'm slow, I don't give up easily. 

Although I haven't had much success with the novel, as far as selling it, I could show you dozens upon dozens of personal letters from agents and publishers who like the idea of the story.  No one has complained about the editing, but they all say that it's not something that they could sell or publish at the moment.  The publishing field is very tricky and you have to hit it with just the right thing at just the right time.

But I'm in the process of self-publishing the novel right now.  Lots of people say that's the way to go.  If it catches on that way, then publishers take notice of it, and THEN, they want to publish it. 

I really wrote it to be a screenplay, and just didn't know how to write one.  That's taken me another ten years to learn how and to go through 5 or six attempts at it.  Right now Benderspink, (a big production company in hollywood), has asked to see the screenplay of the same story and is reading it as I post this.

So wish me luck on that one.  As far as agents are concerned, I've had one and it did nothing for me.  In the final annalysis, I think you still have to sell your own story, with or without an agent.  I believe in my story, and I'm going to sell it to someone if it takes me another 10 years, (God willing), LOL.

[unknown]

Congratulations Sungate!

Good luck!