On the Inside
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
"OUR GOAL HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED!" Ax Zeal announced excitedly, his serious eyes, now joyously tearing from relief. Raising his hand to his pounding chest, he studied the sparkling lights on Marvel’s all-black, highly technical control panel. "Passengers, it is exactly 3:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Earth-time! We’ve traveled 9 trillion, 300 billion miles in less than one hour! That’s one thousand times further than the Sun is from the Earth," he stated proudly, awe-inspired, realizing his leadership would be documented in galactic history. Absorbed with the 39-year-old pilot’s crucial message, Mary Robbins raised her fleshy hands upward, clamped them together, and then thanked God for Marvel’s safe landing. She thought of the vast distance she had traveled and distractedly wondered how many zeroes were needed to make a trillion. Starting with her thumbs, then fingers, and lastly her toes, she counted. But the mature woman quickly lost her count, became frustrated, and gave up the numerical challenge by joining her fellow travelmates in an exuberant applause. While the cheering continued, Mary peeped out of the adjacent window¾
small and round like the portholes typically seen on commercial airplanes and cruise ships. Stretching her neck, she squinted, hoping for a better look, but couldn’t get one. Finally she succumbed to her immense curiosity and removed the snugly fitted, shiny helmet from her short-cropped red-haired head. Hoping for an even closer view, she mashed her pug-nose directly against the glass, causing her nostrils to flatten out wider and wider like a pig’s snout, her breath forming two small clouds of smoke on the window. "What’s wrong, honey?" her husband George asked, peeping around, observing his wife’s strained expression as he wondered why her cheeks had turned from blushing-pink to ghost-white. Pointing outside, Mary said, "Take a look!" Peering, George’s hazel eyes grew bigger and bigger. "My God! They’ve taken us to nowhere!" he shrieked. "They’ve actually taken us to nowhere!" Alarmed by George’s outburst, Japanese scientist Daiki Yazaki checked the view from a nearby window. "Craters, just craters!" he bellowed. Surveying further, he became thoughtful and ran his hand through his short black hair several times, pondering his new surroundings. Perfectly rounded craters equally distanced from each other. I wonder why that wasn’t included in the precursory brief. I wonder what else they left out. Flummoxed, he crossed his arms tightly, making his puffy spacesuit appear puffier, and then uttered, "What in the yell is going on here?"
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About the Book
Set in the year 2025, On the Inside takes off inside the space-travel ship Marvel. There, vacationer Mary Robbins of the United States is introduced, and the tale of Marvel’s existence illuminates the new relationship between Great Britain, Japan, South Africa, and the United States – each country belonging to the Unified Nations Special Galaxy Forces, commonly known as the UNSGF. Along with four accomplished space pilots, aboard the ship are Mary’s husband George, and one couple from each of the three remaining unified nations, each having won a place on Marvel’s maiden voyage to QSSSTII, a planet located in the Galaxy of Rayne – where, to their surprise, the extraterrestrial life form exists on the inside of the celestial body. Intertwined in the fantastical Outer Space vacation, which comes with all the trimmings of a first-class hotel, tours of museums, palaces and amusement parks, is a sudden rebellion by an extraterrestrial renegade group that brings forth discord between Queen Trr of QSSSTII and Queen Blaze of Planet Passion. The alien conflict adversely affects the earthling vacationers, at which point the attention-grabbing relationship between Trr and the UNSGF surfaces, leading a surreptitious state of affairs to a bizarre and ambiguous conclusion.
About the Author
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Q. Sheree Smith earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Law Enforcement Administration from Western Illinois University; although very early in life her career interests shifted to professional sales and marketing. Formerly a top-producing real estate sales broker, Smith’s curiosity regarding creative writing led her to Houston, Texas’ renowned Rice University, where she studied the art of writing fiction for two years, along with a brief introduction to screenwriting. As she continues to write fiction, she also runs a small home-based business. Along with On the Inside, Q. Sheree Smith is the author of Kiss of Life, a captivating, out of the ordinary romance. She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico and has two toy poodles.