Orbital by bill zhao copyright 2017 Bill Zhao Table of Contents act one (earth)

him. A decent sized house with good security. He could seem to agree
with that.

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THE END

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A note from the writer
I began writing this novel in 2014 when I was 15. It was a small
project of mine I wanted to finish. At the time, I knew I was capable
at writing by my grades never really reflected that. I aimed for about
30,000 words, but that was unrealistic. Soon I learnt that practicality
is more important than a fixed word goal.
I like science fiction. I like guns and space battles, and lately the
concept of power, greed and large military forces became ideas I
really admired. Directions changed as I wrote this book but in the
end, the endgame remains more or less the same. I did aim for an
unhappy or bittersweet ending, but the more I wrote, the less
appropriate it seemed.
I think I’m done with Orbital for now, but this story is open for a
sequel, and if it is demanded enough, I might write it.
I am aware that the plot, characters and dialogue here is a complete
mess, but this was never a huge focus for me which is why this
novella took over two years to write. Perhaps even close to three. I
can’t say for sure. I started off writing the first eight chapters in more
or less a close time period. After that, it became incremental, slower,
months could pass before I wrote again and by then I would have
forgotten everything I had written before. And I was too lazy to read
through it so I kept going with whatever knowledge I knew. I also felt
that if I read my earlier chapters, the cringe would do much more
damage to me than the story, so I kept it at that which (in retrospect)
was a bad idea.
The whole midsection (act 2 and parts of act 3) might have been
poorly structured with varying tones. The last ten chapters however, I
pushed myself to write, close to each other especially. I still worked
quickly, with little regard to specific plot details, but in the end I think I
managed a product worthy of the internet. Heck, maybe a heavily
edited copy might even make it onto shelves one day.
So in the end, I thank you for reading this and (enduring through) my
work. Hopefully you enjoyed it. I know I did, writing this story (as
much of an effort it sounds). Actually comparatively, I put very little

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effort into this (compared to actual authors) only with the odd minute
of research here and there. So yeah. Thanks.

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Document Outline

• Orbital
• About ten minutes of excruciating waiting later, a man walked in through the doorway. “Derek” he mut
• Midpoint