GENERAL





  



FUN STUFF

Template provided free by WEBalley
 

For ages 12 to Adult

For a virtual book tour of the images and real places that inspired this book, CLICK HERE (AFTER READING EXTRACT BELOW)

Librarian Review:

In the current world climate where it's hard to tell who is friend and who is foe, this is an exciting read. In an effort to stamp out forged currency the world's governments have agreed to introduce a standard currency (shades of the Euro) to the small islands and countries that find it difficult to wipe out this activity. The governments use the most advanced technologies to make it impossible for it to be copied, but little do they know just how deep the corruption goes. Forces opposed to this move are working to undermine it, and action abounds as Corporal Locklin attempts to sort out good from evil and to ensure the safety of world peace. Would be great to use in a cross curriculum study of world events - English and S&E could develop an engrossing program! Level: Upper primary - secondary

CLICK HERE FOR FULL REVIEW: http://www.omninet.net.au/~singtree/page6.html

Extract from Project Apocalypse

The infiltrator dissolved into moon-shadows behind the bridge of the cruise liner. He waited for the grey silhouette of a British frigate to slide past the port bow and glanced ahead to the black horizon where the cone of a dormant volcano scraped stars from the sky. At the base, the sparkle of warning shots from American gunships lit the narrow mouth of the island's harbour.

Too late for him to help the escaping crime lords and their mercenaries now, but perfect timing for the distraction of their capture to benefit his own plans.

He shouldered against the base of The Lady Peacemaker's communications array and turned his attention to her satellite dish, perched above him like a steel nest in a forest of antennae. He reached inside the pocket of his dinner jacket for a spider-shaped listening device and threw it upwards to the underside of the dish.

A soft thud and a brief patter confirmed that magnetic legs had engaged. He used the red light from a laser pen to initiate the tap into the ship's communications net, and he kept one eye on it, knowing the spider would flash red too if the captain or bridge crew detected his next step and made any attempt to report ahead to the bodyguard fleet. Then he scanned south, over the broad sleek decks of the luxury ship to the twin flagpoles, and beyond them to the fat moon, the constellations and the high orbit satellite he relied on to keep watch over the Pacific rim.

No sign of it yet. His eyes followed the long body of Centaurus south to the Triangulum Australe and to its three corner stars that he knew only as the Three Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; which swung like a cosmic pendulum between Ara, the altar, in the west and Lupus, the wolf, in the east.

The irony of the symbolism wasn't lost on him. The balances of power had shifted back and forth between nations for over four thousand years. One planet, one people, they should have realised by now, but he spotted the tiny silver blink of the satellite as it moved through the heart of the constellation and knew it wouldn't be long before his mission made that obvious. Survival as a species depended on reliance - on him, each other and the multi-race circle of elders who would guide them all through a new beginning.

Laughter rippled across the pool deck below, reminding him to hurry. He knew the crowd of UN diplomats would be ushered inside the main dining hall, soon followed by a blackout of external lights to assist their safe approach and passage through the headlands into the harbour. And as a guest speaker at the celebration to mark the event, he couldn't be missed. He also knew that a well-placed sniper on the cliffs could clean his ears with a bullet from a nautical mile away - and each second of delay drew him closer to that possibility.

He reached into his pocket again for a slim, silver pill-box and set it down on the safety rail, being careful to angle the broad side of the lid to face the Patriarchs. Then he removed the contact lens from his left eye and inserted it into a side-slot on the pill-box like a mini-CD into a laptop computer. An internal DNA decoder registered a match against traces from his ocular fluids and a signal light in the top corner flashed red with a blink of high frequency light. Two seconds later he saw the silver blue wink of a reply from The Watchful Eye as it continued its tranquil orbit through the Triangulum.

The contact lens popped out and he checked to make sure nobody had climbed the stairs behind him, then removed his contact lens from the device and repositioned it over his eye. Pain stung the nerves behind his retina.

He clenched his eyes shut until the moment passed and, as he reopened them, the left contact lens projected a mosaic of holograms backwards into his eye. He saw the deck of the cruise liner around him and, overlaid, the ghostly images of an island dancer wearing a woven skirt of palm leaves, an Italian ambassador in a black suit and a young corporal, crouched as he stalked through a dense forest. Below them, he saw names, instructions and an oceanographic map and a region labelled the Ring of Fire.

He recognised the broad arc of islands as those swiftly approaching from the eastern horizon. The circular logo of an apocalypse rider marked the position of the allied fleet in the middle, with a thick vein of volcanoes that bled north along the fault lines between two major continental plates. Past Japan, China and the eastern tip of Russia, the volcanic Ring of Fire ran east toward Canada, then turned south past the United States, cutting through Los Angeles and the San Andreas fault-line, before heading further south toward Antarctica.

One major jolt to the pulse of the planet beneath the fleet and he knew the adjacent continents would suffer the tectonic repercussions for decades.

He memorised the map and his mission tasks, clenching his eyes until the images dissolved, then flashed the spider on the satellite dish with his laser pen again as a signal to disengage. He stashed it back in his pocket and turned to leave.

Drum beats throbbed from the recreation deck, calling him back to the railing to survey the media circus around the pool. The tempo doubled to crescendo and then he saw her; the palm-leaf skirted dancer from the hologram.

Story Outline (low level spoilers)

Exploited by a 3000 year old alliance (known to some as Equilibrium, the secret force behind the United Nations, and to others as the Four Factions of Apocalypse Riders), the youngest member of an international special-ops team is ambushed during his first mission with a joint-nation task force and blackmailed into hunting the leader of a rebellious splinter faction of peace-makers who believe that world peace can be re-established by setting off a string of volcanic eruptions around the "Ring of Fire" in order to flip the Earth's magnetic poles, wipe out all satellite communications and more than half of the earth's population, in the process resetting climatic conditions to those last experienced during the dark ages.

But with enemies everywhere, the young Corporal J. Locklin discovers that the rebel leader is using the United Nations luxury cruise liner, The Lady Peacemaker, as a mobile base for his operations and that he plans on completing its mission to replace all third world currencies with new counterfeit-proof polymer notes, before initiating his plans.

Phase One: implode the harbour to distract the military escorts with emergency evacuations.

Phase Two: smuggle 1500 hostages and crew into shipping containers and drop them overboard at sea as a further distraction to the rest of the bodyguard fleet

Phase Three: Breach the magma chamber under the Indonesian Super-volcano, allowing seawater to enter and trigger the world-wide chain reaction.

The only things not factored on by either the rebel faction members or their enemies, are the resourcefulness of the young Corporal Locklin and his refusal to be used by any of them as a pawn - and in defence, they use his family to ensure he cannot escape his part in their plans without losing a part of himself, or somone very dear to him.

Note: Crystal Coffin and Project Apocalypse (a trilogy in progress) also have a spin-off series for younger readers aged 8 to 12, called Kirby's Crusaders, featuring Locklin's younger thrill-seeking sister, Kirby.

Support resources for teachers
A wide range of free teacher's notes and resources are available through the links below:

Virtual tours of the scenes of real places used in the novel

Background technical data for key research notes acquired during the process of writing, including details of the advance technologies which were recently invented in Australia and now used and on-sold by the Australian Defence force to co-ordinate civilian as well as military assets.

Background historical data around the first "hot confrontation" between Australian troops and "rebel militia" in East Timor, Dec, 1999, due mainly to the misunderstanding of where territorial boundaries were because UN troops were using satellite imaging maps, while rebels used photocopies of maps from a school atlas which hadn't been corrected since the original Dutch settlers surveyed boundaries over 200 years earlier.

Sample assignment topics on the usage of complex characters, metaphors, symbolism, themes, plot twists, scene structure, research, dialogue, chapter-titling and action. Also suits exam questions. (Click this dot point for samples, or contact the author HERE.)

Extensive teachers' notes on plotting, character development, creative writing activities, goalsetting, world creation, dialogue and problem solving to encourage students to take their own writing to the next level.

Book Template Kit... 30+ pages of index, intro, chapter discussions, author comments, images and conclusions... as a lasting memento of Anita's school visits for students to insert their stories and work samples and publish their own book. Free to class groups who've studied any of Anita's fiction titles and produced work as a result of participation in a group session with Anita. Or else price available, depending on numbers of copyright issues required.

Note: Kit also includes detailed how-to notes on creating great characters, scenes, titles and plots, which are provided along with inside info, hints
and tips about story creation and editing as discussed during the session
(or series of online sessions)... all of which is designed to be used and re-used by students from upper primary to highschool, university and beyond to assist in getting better marks, winning competitions and achieving publication for themselves.

Free online author-chats to primary/high schools who study this book as a class or as a sub-class group, depending on booking availablity, so please book ahead.

Note: easy2use chatroom is firewall friendly4schools thanks to
The Learning Place, State Library & Education Queensland.