Jennifer Arnett

I can__ help but imagine what that would be like__o be all alone on this island with eternity taunting me with loneliness. To say goodbye to the last human you will ever see__here is no crueler hand of fate.

He'd done this hundreds of times: done a job, been drugged with a narcotic that erased his short term memory, and dumped in a seedy hole in the wall locale, where when he climbed out, he would have to figure out where he was, find a payphone, and call in for his next job.

The mind is weak, and it must be mastered, controlled. The body, it knows no master save for instinct and, unfortunately, it is built for terminal suffering.

But every tomorrow has led to today_ to us being alone, hungry, and cold on an unknown island somewhere in the South Pacific.

The thing about the ocean is that the surface won__ always tell you what is going on underneath.

I refuse to sit and wait for salvation. Every day I have looked to the sky for the white streak of a plane making its way across the Pacific, but I have not seen any.

Every few days the sea delivers us gifts, and I am convinced that there is something of the divine nature in this process. Often I have prayed for a jacket, a bucket, or a handsaw, but instead I find one single flip-flop. Many times it has left my heart bitter, but then I find some useful purpose for my found treasure. Maybe the sea doesn__ give me what I want, but what I need.

This island is a hard place to survive and I fear that it has made everything resistant to the cruel hand of death.

We don__ vanish without a trace. We are not like animals, content with burrows in the ground. We are not very skilled at survival without clothing or tools. Our feet are soft, our skin is easily cooled, and our stomachs are too weak to drink water straight from a stream. We must create in order to survive. We build cities, aqueducts, and shields, for we must in order to have an edge over the beasts of the field. And so, wherever humans have tread their covered feet, their path never vanishes without a trace.

A billion stars above us coat the sky white. It would have been beautiful back home, but not here. Here it is the ever present reminder that we are all alone and insignificant.

In her mind, her actions were treason to the false federation, but loyalty to the real United States of America, the one created by a document she had memorized. The real document was set on fire by what the news called "petty arsons" when the National Archives burned down. Bev knew better__he knew who was behind the destruction of the country's most important document. It was more than a document, it was a symbol__ symbol of freedom from tyranny, and one the Federal Government could no longer afford to abide by.

Given that media has become fast-paced, readers now want books that show the action and don__ just tell you what is happening. Modern readers don__ want three pages of descriptions of a farmhouse. They want to hear the door__ creak quiet the chirping of crickets out in the cornfield, they want to feel the cool air drift through the house, then they want to see the shadow of a man, gun drawn, standing over the bed of his disloyal lover.

It isn__ always the treasure that drives men down deep into the sea; it__ something else, something unexplainable, even to them.

Audiences are craving intricate and intelligent stories that keep them on the edge of their seats.