Part 1 of Alpha Slip is edited and ready… any takers?

This editing pace is brutal, but I'm getting it done. 2500 words minimum a day is stretching my brain to the limits. I'm hoping to keep it up all the way through December, which would give me a finished draft by NYE.

They all had bandages; on their legs, their chests, their necks. Always around their necks. None of the kids looked over thirteen but their faces were lined by long nights and the jack of combat amphetamines.

A screen hanging from the ceiling showed the shuttle as a white blip in space. Trajectory lines curved across the black until they intersected a green point of light marked Earth. Mars’s youngest soldiers were returning home.

I polished off part 1 last night, which is chapters 1 to 11, a neat total of 25,000 words. I'd considered just putting it up here on the site, but I don't actually think I can host files for download on wordpress. So, what I'm going to do is update the Alpha Slip preview page sometime this weekend (quite a bunch of clarifying stuff has been added to those opening chapters) and email Part 1 out to anyone who wants it as a pdf.

The interview clicked off and Vice stared out the left window at the dry-grass plains stretching off from the highway; the long, thin roads splitting from the highway to converge on the centre of the city; along these roads, the rows of weatherboard houses and the abandoned lots in between like gummy gaps.

The emptiness of Detroit. Eighty years before it had been a humming, clanking city, full of smoke and energy. Then the economic collapse, the splintering; the great city centre breaking apart into little clotted villages; the single highway connecting those villages together in a wide wheel; the spoke roads linking back to the centre, desperately trying to hold it all in shape.

A giant empty prairie wheel laying in the dirt, and the grass growing between the spokes was a little wilder every year. And it was home.

Keep in mind that this isn't a SECOND draft as such - more of a draft 1.5. I've culled one scene and added another, but besides that the order of what happens and how is completely unchanged. What I've mostly been doing is clarifying - so many of my major plot points were completely incomprehensible because I lost track of what happened when. Hopefully when I finish I'll have a functional, if clunky, novel on my hands.

“Hold on a sec.” Rollo panted, tongue lolling, bright red against white curls of fur. One ear was pricked and the other hung low over one eye. She grinned as only stray dogs could do. “Just…” He banged his forehead with the heel of one hand. The dog flickered, then vanished. “Do you take sugar?”

“Two. What was that?”

“Just a ghost.” He smiled weakly. “Old circuits start to bleed after a while.”

“What, a haemorrhage? Jesus, Vice…”

“No, no. Well, yes. A memory haemorrhage.”

She froze. “That could kill you.”

“It’s stable. Well. It won’t finish me off.”

I know that this first part is very talky, much more so than the rest of the novel. As such, I'd appreciate any advice on how to make it LESS talky - what scenes need to be relocated to create more interest, and such. I'm a big boy, I can take my harsh feedback.

So, any takers? Drop me a line here and I'll send Part 1 straight to you. Part 2 should be done within a week, so you won't have long to wait.