Travis Starnes

The Sands of Saturn - Chapter 5

After Hortensius left, Ky sat down at the small writing table he spent so much time at every day transferring the data in Sophus’s databanks into something usable by the Romans, when Lucilla unexpectedly burst into his tent. He knew it was her the moment the tent flap opened without the normal introduction by one of his guards, since she was the only one his men allowed in unannounced.

“I thought you left with Hortensius?” Ky said, surprised she was still in the camp.

“He ...

Dissonance - Chapter 10

I had to hand it to Brent, our first show was much better organized and much larger than I’d originally expected. It was actually one of the clubs we’d looked at the other night, but hadn’t gone to because I was too young to actually get in. Strange that I was now going to be paid to be inside, but that’s one of the little oddities of life.

It held seven hundred people at max capacity and had two levels. The first floor was standing room only and held the bulk of the audience. A...

The Sands of Saturn - Chapter 4

Outside Londinium

Ky looked over Ursinus’s reports. He’d liked the Legate back when he’d been an Optio, tasked with keeping Lucilla alive, but he missed Velius’s ability to combine thoroughness with succinctness. In Ursinus’s defense, he hadn’t needed to oversee reports detailing the condition and disposition of several thousand of men when he’d been an Optio. Scattered as the reports were, it was clear they had the Carthaginians well hemmed into the city....

The Sands of Saturn - Chapter 3

Ky made his way from meeting the Carthaginian general to Velius’s command tent. During the day, he was out among the lines, making sure his men were on guard for a Carthaginian counter-attack to break the siege and ensuring they had all of the supplies they needed. Ky guessed that, after their meeting about the Carthaginian prisoners, the Legate was still in his command tent, reviewing the next day’s orders with his subordinates.

On top of having a good mind for strategy and impress...

Designated Target - Chapter 15

“The Director was right about you,” Dayoub said, coming to stand next to Taylor on the steps outside the Federal Courthouse. “I honestly had my doubts after hearing about some of your other exploits, but you really came through. Finney has testified and the Amatos are going down for good.”

“Hill doesn’t seem to share your opinion. Someone told me he filed a complaint about my ‘reckless attitude.’

“Fuck him. Besides, you already have a bunch of those, don’t you?...

Designated Target - Chapter 14

Taylor’s big exit did mean he couldn’t turn around and ask for her address but he’d worked with Whitaker long enough to know how to navigate the databases she used to track people down. It took about ten minutes for him to pull her address, which was precious time ticking down

It had occurred to him that there was still ways that Dayoub could have put up roadblocks, the most obvious being calling down and telling them to not assign him a vehicle when he requested it. Taylor could ...

Designated Target - Chapter 13

“What a clusterfuck,” Dayoub said as agents and local cops began shutting down the street.

The running gunfight meant the crime scene stretched across two blocks, through a restaurant and a clothing store, and the alley between them. That didn’t count the empty office Chelsea had used as her shooting perch or the conference room where the shot landed.

Every available agent in Trenton and dozens of Trenton PD cops were swarming everywhere, taking witness statements and report...

Writing Update

So COVID has hit my family, and it hit my wife particularly hard.  I'm not testing positive yet, but I've developed a few symptoms, so hopefully that means it won't be bad for me and won't disrupt my posting schedule too much.  Both my kids are starting to get sick as well, though, which has thrown life into chaos.

That was a lot of words to say, there maybe be some slow postings this week (hopefully only as bad as the last week, since we were traveling and wifi wasn't always ...

Designated Target - Chapter 12

It was late, and Taylor had been going pretty much straight since being assigned this case three days before. Besides a very short night’s sleep in L.A. and sleeping on planes, he’d been awake since leaving D.C., and could feel the exhaustion catching up to him. He was at that point of the investigation where he’d turned everything over to the techs and all he could do was sit and wait for them to find something, so he had an agent drop him off at a local hotel so he could get a few hou...

Designated Target - Chapter 11

Susan Marsh lived in the suburbs of Jersey City, not far from Ronald Reagan High School. She was younger than Mrs. Beacham , in her late sixties, and lived in a nicer area of town than Mrs. Beacham did. The suburbs were old, with most of the houses going back to the fifties, but they had yards and the occasional family walking down the sidewalk instead of fenced-in yards full of junk.

Where Mrs. Beacham had been spry for her age, Mrs. Marsh looked like she’d traveled every mile of her...

Dissonance - Chapter 9

Kent called as I was leaving my training session with Victor. I was sore and a little bruised from his habit of whacking me with the pad every time I missed a block or didn’t time a hit right, and part of me wanted to just ignore it and get back to Hanna’s aunt’s house so I could lay down and rest. That wasn’t an option, of course, but sometimes it was tough dealing with everything being thrown at me while other kids from school were just hanging out and playing video games.

“...

Designated Target - Chapter 10

“Let me guess. ‘Bonnie,’ is it?” Taylor said.

“We can go with that name for now. I have to say, you are about the most persistent cop I’ve ever dealt with. I was sure you’d run out of steam well before now.”

“I don’t run out of steam.”

“I can tell. As fun as it is to watch you fumble around, I think it’s time you stopped looking for me.”

“Or what? You’re going to shoot me like you did my partner?”

“You’re smarter than that, J...

Designated Target - Chapter 9

Jersey City, New Jersey

Like the guy in Internet Crimes had said, the leads were thin. The agents back in the day had checked the name on the Vegas lease and determined it to be a fake, but Taylor called up the original landlord, just to be sure. Or at least, he tried. The property had been owned by an old couple who’d passed away in the meantime. They’d left no children and nothing Taylor could find pointed to anyone who might have known or seen the person renting ...

The Sands of Saturn - Chapter 2

Londinium

“… Then what good are you?” Maharbaal yelled, inches from Caesius’s face.

“You wanted to know what my father and his lackey were up to, and I got you that information. I even told you about their new weapons, not that you did anything with that information. I told you exactly how many men they had under arms and when they left Devnum to meet your forces. My spies told you everything you wanted. It was up to you to put an end to their forces and...

Designated Target - Chapter 8

The whole way back to the LA office, Taylor was still bothered about how she could possibly be tailing them. It seemed impossible. She couldn’t have known which vehicle the local office would have loaned them, so she couldn’t have put a tracker on the car.

It was possible she picked them up at the AUSA’s office, although that then led to the question of how she knew that’s where they were going in the first place. It was probable she hadn’t been on them when they dropped off F...

Dissonance - Chapter 8

After dinner, Kat, Hanna and I went back to her aunt’s house to get ready while the rest of the band headed back to their apartment. Although the last time we’d been in Raleigh our club experience had some hitches, we ended up picking the same one, since it was the only one we knew of that allowed under eighteens.

Since Hanna had nearly been assaulted the last time we’d been here, we all agreed that we’d leave in a group, to prevent further incidents. We didn’t have Victor wit...

Dissonance - Chapter 7

I’d been ‘out on the town’ in Raleigh before, but we’d gone to clubs Victor had known about in the college part of town where every other building was a bar or nightclub. The place Kent had us meet was a level of fancy I’d only ever seen on TV. Lyla called it bougie, a term I’d heard before but never actually been in a place where it would apply. When he’d come by to see us in Wellsville, Kent had mentioned we’d be going out the night after we finished to celebrate, so I’d b...

The Sands of Saturn (Imperium #3) - Chapter 1

Outside Londinium

“Launch!” the Roman optio screamed at the men gathered around the trebuchet.

Pulling a rope releasing the counterweight, the huge arm and its sling-like appendage rose up, the wooden frame groaning under the weight and forces applied to it, sending the large stone sitting in the sling sailing towards the walls in the distance.

The small boulders crashed into the city wall, sending stone and dirt sailing out in all direc...

Dissonance - Chapter 6

Rowan had been right. By Saturday night we were done with all but one song. He said he wanted to leave a little time on the last day to talk about the actual lineup of the songs on the record and listen to it all the way through several times, to make sure we liked the song progression.

We were all back at Hanna’s aunt’s house and the place was kind of a mad house. Monday, we’d all come back to put the drum kit into the garage, since we wouldn’t need it for the rest of the week ...

Designated Target - Chapter 7

Whitaker was right in saying the facility wasn’t a prison. Located in one of LA's suburbs and surrounded by houses and apartment complexes, the short red-brick building looked more like an urgent care facility or retail space than a secure facility, with lots of parking and trees planted all across the site.

It wasn’t until he got to the door that Taylor had his first indication that this place was something other than ordinary. Next to the glass door was a sign that told visitors t...

Designated Target - Chapter 6

Unfortunately for Taylor and Robles, Walsh was being held in San Diego and not Los Angeles, which meant a two-hour plus car ride. Taylor had lived most of his life on the East Coast, so he hadn’t been to LA much, but he remembered the traffic the few times he had. This trip was no different, which is why Taylor broke his normal policy of always being behind the wheel and let Robles drive.

While he was happy for the respite from the constant stop-and-go traffic, Taylor mostly wanted to...

Designated Target - Chapter 5

Unfortunately for Taylor, saying they needed to look into deaths surrounding the Amato family was followed by actually doing the work of digging through police files, obituaries, and newspaper articles, all of which he hated doing. This was one of those moments he missed having Whitaker by his side. Her brain was wired for looking at big sets of data like this and seeing the patterns they were looking for. Taylor could come up with wild theories all day, but finding actual proof was another s...

Going Home - Chapter 28

The next two weeks was chaotic. Because Tessa no longer needed the protection of living with others, what with Lonnie being gone, she and I switched. We moved her into the apartment I was renting so she could start to work on her independence, while I moved into the house, although I opted to move into my old bedroom for now instead of my parents’ old room, since that would have been just too weird.

We also started working on the process of getting the food bank up and running. The lo...

Going Home - Chapter 27

When Orville had said the DA would meet us Tuesday morning, I was expecting something like ten or eleven, not at eight while I was still at the station chatting with Al, who Orville had scheduled for the day shift so we could both go up to Dixon.

I was also surprised to see Orville in uniform, since he rarely wore it when he wasn’t working. Although, seeing Orville in uniform next to a man in his mid-forties wearing a nice suit made it easy to work out that our visitor was Fred Stokes...

Going Home Cover Reveal

Going Home is rapidly coming to a close and should be done at the end of the week.  Just got the cover back and a few weeks before it releases, but here's a sneak peek at the cover.

Once again, really happy how this one came out.

Going Home - Chapter 26

Orville showed up five minutes after I’d shot Lonnie. Thankfully, by the time Lonnie had shown up, pretty much everyone had gone. Beyond Tessa, Rosita, my mother and myself, the only person still in my parents’ house when everything had happened was my mother’s best friend, who wouldn’t have left even if I’d wanted her to. That was actually good, since the entire front yard had become a crime scene, which meant no one could leave the house until Orville showed up to begin the invest...

Going Home - Chapter 25

The next few days were a blur. Mom basically shut down, alternating between hours of crying, and just sitting, staring blankly ahead, just zoned out. Although they had a family plot, that my mother’s parents had bought before they passed, there was still the viewing and funeral to arrange, which I couldn’t have done without Rosita.

On top of keeping her restaurant going and working on the food bank nonprofit, she helped me make calls to the mortuary, insurance companies, and funeral...

Going Home - Chapter 24

Dinner was pretty busy, to the point where I was even put to work putting plates of finished food together and packing to-go containers for orders. I marveled again how Rosita managed to do all this by herself most days. Julie had only needed work some of the time and hadn’t wanted to work every night, so she only came in when Rosita really needed someone to cover for her or something big was happening. Every other night it was just Rosita doing what felt like too much work for me and her, ...

Going Home - Chapter 23

After I parked in front of my parents’ house, I left her sitting in the back seat of the cruiser while I went to talk to them. I’d considered for a moment going to Rosita, who I knew for a fact would help her But between running her restaurant and trying to get the food bank off the ground, there wasn’t really time for Rosita to deal with someone who’d need support. Besides, Tessa’s boyfriend worked at the mine, and since he was an asshole, there was always a chance he’d gotten fr...

Going Home - Chapter 22

My plan to talk to Orville about Evan and Dixon, since he was harassing Rosita on their behalf, didn’t end up working out as planned.

My next shift was the night shift and Orville called me an hour and a half before I should have started to meet him out on the county road all the way out at the county line where Buxton bordered the next county.

It was still early enough in the day that we had a fair amount of traffic on the county road and an eighteen-wheeler had blown a tire an...