Prologue A: Moscow

The first prologue (of two) is online at http://www.WebFeats.com/Transition/a.html.

I'm introducing a couple of peripheral characters who will come back into the story later on. Just thought that it might be interesting to inject some foreign intrigue into the mix before I launched the main plot.

One sports-related issue: You'll notice that Dimitri Boronov boasts that one of his students has run a 2:04 marathon, which is about a minute better than the current world record. Since I hope to get Transition published some day, I wanted to pick a time that may still be better than the world record even if someone is reading the book a few years from now. Of course, it may be impossible to predict a record that won't be broken. On the other hand, it may all be moot, as I'm probably being wildly optimistic to think that the book will ever be published, much less that anyone will be reading it a few years into the future...

At the bottom of the prologue, you'll notice a drawing by the talented Jennifer Daigle, who was generous enough to create drawings for several of my chapters. I very much like Jennifer's work and appreciate her contributions, her drawings help to relieve the inevitable monotony of paragraph after paragraph of text. And it's interesting to see how her vision of my characters differs from (and coincides with) my own mental images of them.

Feel free to add your comments, I'd love to know your thoughts. Thanks!