Green Corrosion (The Corrosion Series Book 1) Post-apocalyptic, Dystopian Science Fiction by Costi Gurgu Book Tour with Guest Post and giveaway
Earth is plagued by the Black Rain turning water into a gel and destroying the whole ecology. Geo Woodman is on a mission to protect his clan and to save the people of Torono from the upcoming ecological disaster.
Green Corrosion
The Corrosion Series Book 1
by Costi Gurgu
Genre: Post-apocalyptic, Dystopian Science Fiction
The devastating Black Rain has transformed the once-lush land into an arid wasteland, turning all water into a gel-like substance across the globe. Fresh, drinkable water has become the planet's most precious commodity, sought after by all. Some have chanced upon underground liquid reserves, while those with no choice but to drink gelled water become "Corrosives," disfigured by a verdigrislike substance covering their bodies.
The Golden Tower of Prince Boris shines above the otherwise derelict city of Torono.
From the Golden Tower, Geo Woodman secretly leads the fight to save his clan and the people of Torono from the dangers of corrupt leaders and the hazardous climate.
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The sky was the color of moldy cheese. A upside-down, frothy swamp
hanging so oppressively low, some of the decaying towers pricked its purulent
belly.
Geo always felt sick after looking at the sky, but he inevitably looked
every time he observed the Golden Tower, or the Silkers
Tower, as people called it. The only high-rise structure in the city still
in use. All the other high-rises had been abandoned long ago, after entire
floors collapsed with the tenants inside. They rose, derelict, their windows
clotted, in a ghostly jungle. The Silkers Tower, though…it supposedly had been
consolidated and adapted to the new conditions. The golden structure gleamed
like the only source of light in a city of eternal mist and green reflections.
Geo breathed deeply a few times to calm himself. The unwholesome
effluvia of corroding bodies coiled through the air. He shut his eyes and
ignored the fetid damp creeping through the rebreather. Then he looked around
and felt a pleasant thrill, an ever-present fear, and lust, all at once in a
bubbling, poisonous mixture. Lately, that had been the marinade his brain
floated in.
He was part of the Silkers procession that had traversed the city from
its port to their Golden Tower. Ninety Silkers soldiers had disembarked and
took to the streets of the city to be next to their brothers in the most
celebrated event of the year—the Water Passage.
The people of the city filled the streets, eager to glimpse the
glorious army. And Geo was at its head, in the lead. Next to Prince Boris and his court, surrounded by Boris’s elite
guard of Luna Warriors, atop the royal wheeled
platform of rust-red water-silk.
He was thrilled to be in such dangerous company. He lusted for the kind
of attention this display of power attracted. And the fear was ever-present,
fear of the Silkers’ reality and their way of life, their values and
ever-shifting interests. Fear that today he was at the center of their
attention and tomorrow he might wake up discarded. Fear of what being part of
the Silker Court implied and what not being part of
it meant for Geo’s clan.
The mayor and his Blue Officers watched the
passing procession from the central balcony of the City
Hall. It was supposed to show the people that the procession was for him,
for the ruler of the city. But Geo knew that in reality it meant that the mayor
was not invited to be part of the procession and was not invited to watch the
Water Passage Ritual, as he, Geo, was. Geo, the prince’s special guest. Last
year Nimesh of the Bones Clan, who had mysteriously
vanished; this year, Geo. Prince Boris’s special guests and friends. The
Silkers’ ever-shifting political interests.
The City Hall was a two-storey building lined with waves and waves of
mortar to keep it from collapsing under the continuous attack of the water. It
looked like a thick, monstrous candle, the wax melted in ripples from years of
burning. Its balcony was the only thing moved forward so it remained on the
outside, overlooking the Mayor’s Square and the
Golden Tower. Prince Boris said that they had decided to rehabilitate the
Golden Tower as a sign of respect for the City Hall. But Woodman
the Elder, Geo’s grandfather and the leader of his people, had a different
opinion on the matter—that Prince Boris wanted to rub the mayor’s face in the
fact that they had the knowledge to actually convert an old structure to
survive the vicissitudes of their times. And that the Golden Tower of the
Silkers looked a thousand times more royal than the City Hall. And that all the
people could see it, because the two buildings faced each other.
The procession stopped in front of the Golden Tower. The mayor waved
formally and the prince nodded elegantly. The crowd gathered in the Mayor’s
Square burst into cheers. The three detachments of the prince’s three armies
took their places around the royal platform and waited. The Luna Warriors
secured the tower’s entrance and took up position as a guard of honor.
Geo shuddered. He was about to enter the infamous tower for the first
time. He was about to pull his clan into history. They were about to go public.
Official. Known of. Dangerously exposed. Thrills and fear.
EXCERPT 2
Beyond the noise of the rain lies silence.
I am alone, surrounded by hundreds of Silker warriors. Everybody is
still; they don’t even breathe. It’s quiet. The silence, in the presence of the
sick rain’s rattle pouring from the loudspeakers, fills me with loneliness.
The candle flames tear the Initiation Hall from the darkness. The smell
of wax and incense hangs in the air. Arms are stretched out on the logs; the
Silker officers raise their hatchets, and zzzip! The red shadows of
the chopped arms jump on the walls while the thick, stifling air absorbs the
screams—the silk screams of the rain, the porous screams of the stones…
Panic assailed him with the memory, quickly followed by his mind
lurching into full awareness. He was panting, his body trembling. As he
struggled to get up, he noticed that the screams had stopped. I was
hallucinating! Two words came back to him—silk tea! No, that can’t be. I’ve
actually attended the Silkers’ ritual. I’ve been there. But that was some hours ago. Holy Water, where am I?
He sighed and the pain in his back made him groan; he felt like each of
his bones had been crushed. Silk tea might give him hallucinations for days,
but never physical pain. Something happened. One moment I—where was I? The
Water Passage Ritual. Then I retreated to my room and… He blinked, but only
inky darkness filled his vision. He realized he couldn’t see; he could only
make out a web of shadows. What the sky’s silk is
happening to me? He stared as hard as he could, and distinguished shapes
approaching through the mist. His heart pounded.
The noise of the rain in the dream hadn’t disappeared, only faded. Swish,
swish—not rain. He touched the ground around him and felt cobblestones. He
was lying in the street somewhere. He couldn’t remember how he’d come to be
there.
The swishing sound was getting closer.
He cursed and got to his feet. His whole body felt as if it were being
torn. His heartbeat turned into a torrent that thundered in his temples and his
mouth filled with the bitter taste of danger. He instinctively reached for the
dagger tucked up his sleeve, but could not find it. His fear growing, he
touched his chest, but his knuckle-duster was gone too. He couldn’t find the
knives in his boots. His sweat froze, feeling like icicles down his back. He
was a naked piglet, squealing in front of the butcher.
A hand grabbed his ankle.
Geo thrashed and kicked madly, trying to crush the soft flesh of the
sewerers attacking him. Then, in the midst of his hysteria, he froze. A sudden
frenzy devoured the silence of his executioners. It sounded like a whole crowd
had engaged the sewerers in bloody slaughter. And he was still blind!
Desperation clogged his throat like cotton. He gagged.
Strong hands grabbed him and carried him into the light. Somebody
sprayed something in his eyes. He screamed in sudden pain and fell. But in a
few seconds the stinging in his eyes and the headache faded, and he started to
distinguish shapes. Then, slowly, details.
Oh, Holy Wood, not them! he thought, smiling
wide and friendly. He was in the middle of a Blue Patrol.
One of them, with a silver star on his metallic mask, bent over and
offered him his hand to help him to his feet. He was a mountain of a man, still
quite human in shape, with the uniform stretched tightly over his muscles and
his helmet a different shape than those of ordinary Blue Patrollers. His was a
more of a tall dome with horns all around, like a crown. “Mr. Ambassador, I’m so glad we found
you in time!”
“What happened? Why am I here?” said Geo.
“I don’t know, sir. We got a report and came to check it. Luckily for
you.”
“Thank you, Mr.…”
“Everybody calls me Silver Star.”
“Thank you, Mr. Silver Star. I appreciate your help.”
“Now we have orders to escort you to the train station. Don’t worry, we’re
right there.” Silver Star moved purposefully to stand at Geo’s shoulder and
urged him forward. The Blue Patrol followed close behind.
People looked at them in wonder as they passed. Most averted their
eyes. It said a lot about the mayor’s regime.
Geo realized that during the night he’d been dumped under the air-road,
right at the back of the train station. Very close to not only the train
station, but to the Golden Tower. Which also made it close to the mayor’s
palace as well.
There were only three trains still working—northbound, eastbound, and
westbound. Pretty basic. Geo would have to take the northbound train, but with
the patrol at his back, he didn’t feel comfortable actually showing them the
direction of his clan’s Caves. So he made a left from the station’s waiting
hall and walked to the eastbound platform. Then he felt Silver Star’s fingers
grabbing his arm and pulling him back quite aggressively.
The man smiled widely. “I’m sure you had a rough night and may be
confused, but we’re here to make sure you’re getting on the right train to go
home.” Silver Star turned on his heel and walked to the northbound platform.
Two Blue Patrollers pushed Geo from behind in the same direction.
Holy Water! They know. They had actually
watched him and knew more about him than he’d assumed. And they wanted him
back home. But why?
When the train arrived, Silver Star produced a cylinder with the mayor’s
seal on it. He handed it to Geo. “This is from the mayor to Woodman the Elder.
Please, don’t open it beforehand; give it to him directly.”
The Writing Process
I’m a planner myself. I first tend to write my
novel in my mind. I’d just go through some major events, the main timeline, a
few characters, not all of them, only to get an idea of what is it about and
see if I want to write it.
Then I start to plan it. First, there’s the rule of
three. Every piece of writing, from the entire novel to the smallest scene
could be divided into three parts: beginning, middle, and end. Different
writers tend to divide an entire novel into three, four or five parts. But if
you analyze their parts, you realize they’re those three parts I told you
about, but differently explained.
Each part has certain things that tend to
happen inside them. I call these things pillars. Pillars are good
because instead of thinking I wrote the beginning, I know where I’m going,
but I have no idea what happens in between, you now have the opportunity to
place some pillars along the way and think of not how I can get from here to
the end, but how I can get from here to only several pages later, to the next
pillar. And from that pillar to the next and so on, until you finally reach the
end.
I like to get my pillars down and be sure that I have
sufficient meat to write a novel, not only a short story.
Then I start writing and what often happens is that
through writing (a slower process than imagining, running through the story in
your mind) a lot changes. Some scenes don’t make sense anymore. There are other
scenes I didn’t think of. Some characters behave differently. The story goes in
a different direction than originally thought because it’s more natural that
way, or because it makes it more interesting. Things discovered while writing
are always fascinating.
In the end, working on novel structure in the
beginning gives a writer the means to be able to write from the first page to
the last, without stumbling. But the writing itself brings a lot of surprises
along the way, at least in the first draft. The following drafts are less
surprising as one works in more detail on different aspects of the
novel—language, characters, world-building, etc.
Costi’s fiction has appeared in Canada, the US, and Europe. He has sold 5 books and over 50 stories for which he has won 24 awards. He was three times a finalist for the Canadian Aurora Awards.
His latest sales include the anthologies Tesseracts 17, The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, Dark Horizons, Street Magick, Water, and Alice Unbound.
His bestselling novel RecipeArium has won three awards (Kult, Nemira, and Vladimir Colin) and was a 2018 finalist for the Aurora Awards.
His second novel, “Servitude” was published in October 2022. And his latest novel “Green Corrosion” is book 1 of the “Corrosion” series, and was published in September 2023.
To find out more about Costi Gurgu visit https://costigurgu.com/
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The excerpts sound really interesting. Great cover art.
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