Them: Part 2

    Do you know what's really, really cool for me about having a kid in Grade 2 who is reading young adult novels? It's that I made my own Editor. I mean, not for my adult novels of course, but for my Story Shares writing? This kid is awesome. She's only checked the first chapter and I'm already impressed with the things she's finding. My Author Ego had to get shoved into a corner by my Writer Brain, but that happens with everything I have checked over by any Editor who gives me good feedback. (And I'm using "good" as in the feedback makes the story better, not as in praise.)

    The funny part of having her checking my manuscript was how worried she was about telling me the first couple of things she'd found that needed correcting. The cool part was, after the first page, how comfortable she was telling me about what needed correcting. The amazing part is seeing her confidence in her abilities grow exponentially within the ten minutes it took for her to read through the first chapter.
    She also somehow made it seem normal that she just got to keep my good pen so that she can keep editing with the same pen as she started with... There was a con in there somewhere. She has a ton of pens in her room. And I no longer have my good pen in my office.
    You might be wondering why I'm getting a 7 year old to edit a manuscript I want to submit for publication? It's because the books that Story Shares publishes are designed for teens and adults who are improving their reading skills. For students in these age groups, reading about the Easter Bunny who lost their eggs, or about a cute teddy who's afraid of their shadow, isn't interesting. It's been proven that an interest in the reading material means the person reading will learn faster (and this is true for any age of learner). With reader interest as the main goal, Story Shares has developed an expanding library of relevant stories that center topics for teens and adults, but are written for reading levels that cap out around a standard Grade 5 difficulty.

Story Shares is a great cause! You can take a look at my book through them right here:

Or you can skip my book and go straight to checking out their library! Be prepared to get lost in all the great titles, though. (Don't say I didn't warn you):

​    The benefit? Teen and adult learners get access to reading material which is interesting to learn from, fun to read, and full of relatable characters that will give them a much greater chance of achieving learning success.
    I don't have access to anyone more qualified to edit my story than someone in the middle of the target Grade level. (Plus, she's my kid so she works for me for free.)
​    Oh, and Story Shares is a non-profit group that have made their on-line library available world-wide. Profits from book sales go directly into producing more books and learning resources. I'm a firm believer that reading should be available to everyone, and these guys help that happen.
​    Hope you have a great weekend!

2. Rising Threat

        The third type of probe came on August twenty-second. Powerful people had just started to become comfortable again when it landed in Sydney. This one came with a message already included and ready to be played: Reo’s poem as read by Hinata. The Response 1 – as we named it – should have ignited a wave of good-will, but the message was heard only by a chosen few and they did not pass on its quiet intentions.
    The message was followed by a second recording which was posted everywhere: a representative of the race we were talking to. In a very thick and very foreign accent, the representative repeated the final line of the poem through vocal cords that were never meant for our speech and nodded his head in imitation of Hinata’s nervous movements, of all the nervous movements that had been in the personal messages attached to the speeches. The representative didn’t realize that, out of context, the line was not friendly and the body language appeared twitchy. Untrustworthy.
        “We will come” became the slogan for the end of the world.
        Greater attempts were made to study the Response 1 than had been inflicted on the Contact 1. Two people were killed by electrocution as they tampered with technology they pretended to understand. The Response 1 retreated, damaged, carrying no message but the accidentally recorded images of the science teams retreating from the arcing equipment as the soldiers at ready shot it. Fear escalated.
        September fourteenth. The Response 2 landed in Prague in the same park that the Scout had. The military sealed the area and the probe was never seen again. We were never told what it said, not then. We found out After.
        Those of us who were still thinking took it as a lucky omen that the fourth type of probe arrived on November eleventh. It was tracked by satellite and then by ship to the international waters of the Central Pacific. When found, the frightened crew of an undisclosed submarine blew it to bits before the situation could escalate: the probe was emitting a frightening amount of frequencies, many jamming our current communication technologies. Nothing of the wreckage recovered could offer any clue as to the purpose of that probe – and the records from the submarine, like its home country, were never released. The threat of the jamming frequencies was aired. Often.
        People waited, afraid, as the latest “long-ago predicted date” of our world’s demise came and fell away. On December twenty-eighth the media stole and aired the first satellite images. Panic washed in crashing waves covering entire continents. Terror came second. That was when the few governments who hadn’t toppled fell to the force of the fearful many being controlled by the might of the few who could still impose their wills on the mobs. Militaries were handed command and even the few were bent to fit under the martial laws being locked into place.

Year Zero (the year of The Event)
        January eighth witnessed the world hold its breath.
        The ships came in droves, spilling from the stolen satellite images onto live television. The crafts were massive and alien and pouring out smaller, pointed ones which looked like jets that had escaped from far beyond anything in our dreams of science fiction. Our jets fell before them in confused static, the pilots plucked from the cockpits like puppets on invisible strings. Our weapons did no damage we could see. People on the ground were collected in herds. Taken. Deposited in large holding cells and then the small ships would be gone again, gone back for more.