Laura Montgomery's Blog

On Amazon!

I published Planting Life!  If you like near-future, young-adult, science fiction, check it out!

by

Cover Reveal

PLANTING LIFE goes live this week!  (I hope).  Check out Tom Edward’s brilliant cover!

 

The road to Mars has to start somewhere.  It might as well be central Virginia.

Jack Darien scorns his parents’ path. After the disaster at his father’s Mars settlement, the high school senior scraps both his lifelong interest in space exploration and his college plans. Even his rescue of a college student from assault doesn’t make him see his own future any differently.

Jack becomes obsessed, however, when...

Do you lie awake wondering whether Earth or ship time should apply to interstellar employee wages?

Returned from long years in interstellar space to longer decades missed on Earth, a starship’s crew face their biggest obstacle yet:  Human Resources.

Fresh off their victorious defense of a starship captain on mutiny charges, attorneys Calvin Tondini and Sara Seastrom must now pivot to a new challenge: defending the same starship crew’s hard-earned salaries.  Bureaucrats citing relativity want to apply a different clock than bargained for in the crew’s original contract.

Whatever may be said a...

Cover Reveal for New Space Law SF

I’m excited to share that I’ll be publishing a new space law short story soon, and I thought you all might want to see the cover.

The title comes from A.E. Housman’s poem “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries.”  My usage is a little twisted from the original.

COMING SOON:  Returned from years in interstellar space to long decades missed on Earth, a starship’s crew must face their biggest obstacle of all: HR.

 

by

An Occupying Force, A War Bride, and the Fog of Translation

I read a lot of genres:  history, mystery, fantasy, and science fiction.  Science fiction is really my first love, but I’m no fan of nasty, whiny, possibly evil main characters.  Or general hopelessness.  There was a spell where if you read science fiction that’s what you got.  So when I try a new author, I always feel a pang of trepidation.

The spell is broken!  Wow, wow, wow.  I just finished the Vixen War Bride series.  What a saga!  The two main characters are actually heroic.  Noble, too.  ...

Free Books on Book Funnel

It’s that time of year, the time to check out free dystopian fiction!  Book Funnel allows authors to provide free stories, and I’ve included Working Loose, the prequel novelette to Martha’s Sons in the offerings.  Working Loose tells part of Edward’s origins story, and if you haven’t read it yet, you might want to check it out.

I’ve looked over the other stories, and I must say, some of them look quite intriguing.  Despite the complete improbability of the fall of space debris, I’m going to pick...

Liberty Con After Action Report

I attended Liberty Con in Chattanooga Tennessee again at the end of June.  I seem to go there a lot.  I like the people, the programming, and the general air of good cheer.

I was on a panel called A Writer Walks into a Dojo, which was about how writers incorporate their martial arts into their fiction.  I studied Okinawan Uechi Ryu karate in college, and then again in later years when my boys did.  I also practice kobudo, another Okinawan system, but with sticks:  staff, sai, jifa (hairpins), to...

LUNA LACUNA in Space Force Anthology

LUNA LACUNA

I have a story in TALES OF THE UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE, which just came out this week!

The anthology is exactly what it sounds like, near future stories and essays about the newest service branch in the U.S. military.

I wish I could say something thrilling like LUNA LACUNA is ripped from the headlines.  But, no.  I actually ripped the central idea from a NOAA rulemaking about whether to require remote sensing licenses for taking pictures of the Moon.  Not exactly headline material ...

The Wheels Run Truly is Live!

THE WHEELS RUN TRULY has been out in the wild for a few days now, roaming freely across the plains, stopping at watering holes, and trying to make friends with other free-range books.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CRPY7WW6Thank you to everyone who’s picked up a copy!  If you enjoy the book, please consider leaving a rating or review.

As you may know, I’ve been mining Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Sons of Martha” for book titles.  I feel honor bound to share at least the parts that apply to th...

Coming Very Soon!

It’s almost here!  The final book in my Martha’s Sons series goes live on March 7.  I want to share the cover first.

I have to say, I’m pretty bittersweet about it finishing.  I’ve been living with these people for years, and now everything’s wrapped up.  How did that happen?

Anyway, maudlin mooning aside, here’s the blurb:

Two brothers fight for freedom. A lost colony’s governor strives to reinvent the feudal state. Can Martha’s sons escape to liberty and a future?

Thaddeus Dawe is a patient m...