Anyway, I whipped this little piece up as the first part of an action serial about a counter-terror team and its semi-serious exploits. Just wanted to see how the first 13 sounded to you.

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"Sand Sharks"

Dust swirled through empty streets, carried on a wind so hot it seemed to bake the amber-colored stone into submission with its very breath. The sun gazed down upon a sea of desolate buildings with unwavering intensity, turning the alleys and open plazas into sweltering reflectors that sucked the life right out of anything careless enough to wander through them. Even the shade under the many sand-swept arches was stifling. Rook grimaced behind grit-etched goggles. Why did the bad guys always pick hellholes to hide in? Just once he would like to take ‘em down in some gorgeous locale where free booze flowed from gilded fountains and beautiful women drooled over men in Kevlar.

The fantasy flashed for a moment before his overheated mind’s eye, until distant rifle fire shattered it into a million tumbling pieces. Rook glanced around the corner as he listened to the gunfire…definitely a Kalashnikov. Another weapon barked across the courtyard, ripping rounds into the stone wall beside his head. Shards of flying rock pelted his helmet like jungle rain on a ceramic roof. Rook jerked backward as muzzle flashes illuminated the shooter—a ski-masked terrorist in urban camo. Urban camo? In the desert?
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Boy, I'll never forget that cab I took in Brussels...

Anyway, hey, this is good stuff. I could almost taste the dust. The action is very well-played. In fact, it was really hard for me to find something about it that you could change, but I think I got something.

1) Location, Location, Location: Yes, this is a desert town of some sort, but where? Africa, Iraq, Afganistan? You could easily add this right into the first clause of your first sentence.

quote:

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Dust swirled through empty streets of ____________, carried on a wind so hot it seemed to bake the amber-colored stone into submission with its very breath.

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Also, I think you could set the last few sentences off as their own paragraph. Starting with, "Rook grimaced...". The thoughts from Rook, while playing off the same ideas as the first part of the paragraph, are kind of separate because now we have a specific POV character. Just a thought.

Lastly...

quote:

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The fantasy flashed for a moment before his overheated mind’s eye, until distant rifle fire shattered it into a million tumbling pieces.

---

Before and until can be used to mean simillar things and while I know what you are saying, I read it wrong at first and it threw me for a loop (I was reading "before" as "until" -- This happened before/until something else happened). I anticipated the "until" and read "before" wrong. Is there a way you could change it? Perhaps, "...in his...mind's eye..."?

The Kevlar line was cool.

Try changing some of those adjectives to verbals and the descriptions will sound smoother.

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Version 2

Dust swirled through the empty streets of Deh-Zireh, carried on a wind so hot it seemed to bake the amber-colored stone into submission with its very breath. Even the shade under numerous arches was stifling. Rook grimaced behind his grit-etched goggles, surveying the inhospitable terrain with no small amount of scorn. Why did the bad guys always pick hellholes to hide in? Just once he would like to take ‘em down in some gorgeous locale where booze flowed from gilded fountains and beautiful women drooled over men in Kevlar.

The fantasy flashed for a moment in his overheated mind’s eye, until distant rifle fire shattered it into a million tumbling pieces. Rook glanced around the corner as he listened to the gunfire…definitely a Kalashnikov. Another weapon barked across the courtyard, ripping rounds into the stone wall beside his head. Shards of flying rock pelted his helmet like jungle rain on a ceramic roof. Rook jerked backward as muzzle flashes illuminated the shooter—a ski-masked terrorist in urban camo.

Urban camo? In the desert? And no body armor…that was surprising. Intel had suggested these guys were better equipped than most small-town operators.
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The section you've presented is extremely good, the most polished I've seen in a while.

Two small notes on this rewritten open.

1- The sentence "Rook grimaced behind his grit-etched goggles, surveying the inhospitable terrain with no small amount of scorn," is problematic.
a. "grit-etched" is too much description on the goggles. It seems slightly tacked into the sentence, making it sound clumsy -- something which looks extremely out of place in surroundings that are so well written. Most importantly, it could be removed entirely with no loss of vivid imagery or essential information (the standard test for superfluous words and phrases).
b. "...with no small amount of scorn," is both passive and archaically structured. To say what something is not -- instead of what it is -- strips the active power away from any sentence. It is passive phrasing, and seems particularly glaring in an action sequence. Also the way it is phrased uses the archaic "with no small amount of," an old chestnut of the sly, prancing language of (primarily British) novels written during the romantic age. It is a stiff phrase, and stiff phrasing sounds warped within the context modern prose. (This is why it is so often used for comedic effect. British sitcoms still use this kind of archaic device to construct punchlines.)

2- "The fantasy flashed for a moment in his overheated mind's eye," is an unnecessary and extremely artificial looking transition. It was added, of course, to move between the fantasy at the end of the first paragraph and the action of the second, but it isn't necessary. Because Rook is commenting on everything he sees anyway, you don't have to tell us that we are moving from mental imagery to reality; it's obvious. You could easily replace this with another event, like, "Distant rifle fire shattered a tile above his head," and keep going from there. This is a transitional error I see in a lot of the manuscripts I read. A friend of mine calls it "not trusting the reader." This is fine prose -- we're right there with you. You don't need to lead us from one expository device to another.

At any rate, excellent work Inkwell. You definitely hooked me. I would love to read the entire thing.

~MR

Thanks go out to all who've volunteered to read (and commented on) the WIP, and to any brave souls that might yet step up to my carnival booth. Don't be afraid of the monkey...he's my editor.

* I'm torn by the opening description. It was good, but my interest started to wane at about "The sun gazed down" On the other hand, it sets up your lines about more exotic locales, which were great. Maybe could you get there another way. How about starting with the absolutely kicker line: "Why did the bad guys always pick hellholes to hide in? Just once Rook would like to..." Then you could work your place-setting description into the action and have me immediately in the story.

* I would shorten the first sentence, second paragraph to: "Distant rifle fire shattered his fantasy into a million tumbling pieces."