First Pages: Dragon Coast

-
Dragon Coast is the first short story in An Anthology of Dragons. It is also available as a stand-alone short story.


Jessica is out of work and in desperate need of a job, so when fashion company, Dragon Coast, start advertising vacancies, she decides to aim high and then work her way down the list. Will she be good enough to snare the top job, or will she have to settle for something further down the ladder? Will she be able to score a job at all?
 
Dragon Coast can be found in An Anthology of Dragons, or for sale on its own at Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, iTunes and Nook.

First Page: Dragon Coast


Critics described ‘Dragon Coast’ as “a vibrant, young company whose flamboyant style in garment design had already won the minds of the rich and famous”. Jessica saw the description and dismissed it with a snort.
Dragon Coast had at least won those minds for now, she’d thought. And if it hadn’t won their minds, someone was paying them an awful lot of money to wear the label on their bodies. Today, with bleak sunshine streaming through the kitchen window, Jessica ate her toast and read the newspaper classifieds, viewing the company with a lot less cynicism.

‘Dragon Coast’ is expanding, the advertisement read. We are seeking employees at all levels of production and managerial assistance. Positions include assembly-line workers, overseers, security guards, delivery drivers, department secretaries and managerial secretary. Interested candidates should apply to ...

Jessica let her eyes scan the rest of the ad. It was the best opportunity this newssheet had offered for a long time. She let her gaze wander over the page again. No restrictions on how many times you could apply, either.
She smiled.
‘Well then,’ she thought, ‘I might as well start at the top and work my way down.’ 
She knew the top was a long shot. There would be others with more experience to offer, more time in executive positions, more qualifications, but she’d done well in similar positions before, even if she’d only been ‘the temp’.

END EXCERPT 

 Dragon Coast can be found in An Anthology of Dragons, or for sale on its own at Smashwords, Kobo, Kindle, iTunes and Nook.
Location: Canberra ACT, Australia

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Australian Insects: An Unknown Caterpillar eating Grevillea flower buds

-
Image
So, this little guy nearly bought it when I caught it eating the still-forming buds on my Robyn grevillea, but then I thought I might like to see which particular butterfly was responsible, so I took some pictures and decided to keep an eye on it, so I knew when it pupated. The first shot - caterpillar happily nibbling on flower buds:  Yup - definitely nibbling: And here's another view. Note the little yellow lumps near its back end. Same day, but it was one of those cloudy days with variegated light. And it kept nibbling for quite some time: Stretching out to get the more tasty tidbits, and using its hind feet to keep a firm grip on the branch. Eventually it looped back on itself... ...and headed into denser foliage. It didn't always move in a straight line... How come caterpillars have more feet than butterflies? Eventually, it got into some much thicker growth (well, for a young grevillea, anyway), meaning it was somewhat prot...
Read more

NEW RELEASE: AUTUMNAL THREAT

-
Image
An alien autumn. An unseen predator. Deadly burrowers and an oncoming winter. And bugs big enough to ride. Joaquin only wants to warn his daughter of a new danger. To keep her safe. To make her understand her mother isn’t coming back, while keeping her alive. But what if he’s wrong? What if Mariam really did survive? What if, when everything looks like it’s going wrong, it’s really going right? Autumnal Threat is Joaquin's story. It is a father's story...and the story of a husband who misses his wife, and wants to keep his daughter safe from a new threat on their frontier world. It's a story of hope, and not giving up, and of family, as well as an exploration of what an alien eco-system might look like. It was a lot of fun to write. You can find links to this newly released, stand-alone, science-fiction short story on this Books2Read page: https://books2read.com/u/mgyopK or read an earlier version in A Collection of Lost Ships and Colonies .  
Read more

Free Read: Forest Connections

-
Today, I managed to settle down and write a response to the latest flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig's Terribleminds blog - The Dead Body . There were only two rules: the word limit was 1,000, and the story had to open with a dead body. This is what came out: Forest Connections The body swayed in the trees rocked by storm winds and illuminated by lightning. It was naked, except for the green, leather gloves it wore on both hands—the hands from which it was suspended from the tree. It might have been an attractive body, if there hadn’t been a gaping wound where its stomach should be. Perhaps… but Garamond wasn’t looking at the body, didn’t notice the slender hips or sculpted chest, the beauty of fine-chiselled cheek bones or luxurious fall of hair. Garamond fought his breakfast back into place, swallowed bile, forced his focus to the other trees in the grove, the ground onto which he’d nearly stepped. If it hadn’t been for the crow flying out of the chest cavity...
Read more