Laura Montgomery's Blog, page 2

Life Colonizes

I was raking leaves and uncovered the little dudes in the picture. More raking showed they came up in a circle, like a fairy ring. My plant ID app says it’s called shaggy mane.  It’s also known as lawyer’s wig, but I will not be putting it on.  In a fit of optimistic ignorance, I took the pieces I’d accidentally raked and tossed them into one of my new terraforming beds with the fragrant sumac and the cardinal flower.  I muttered incantations about mycorrhizae, like that would make it so.

[image error]I’ve b...

Making Tomorrow’s Moon

I was on one of the Beyond Earth’s Institute’s webinars regarding lunar and cislunar development.  I, of course, discussed property rights because they’re important.  More inspiring, however, were John Reed, ULA’s chief rocket scientist, Andrew Rothgaber and Dallas Beinhoff.  Andrew is with the start-up, ICON, which is working on how to do lunar construction.  Dallas is the space systems architect for Off World, Inc., which is working on swarms of mining robots.  They all make the future sound e...

Your Honor, I Can Explain

The wacky crew at Raconteur Press just published Your Honor, I Can Explain, a court room drama anthology. The stories aren’t all science fiction, but I’m looking forward to reading them even so. I’m open-minded about such things. Also, they promise to be whimsical.

One of those stories is mine! I’m feeling pretty honored to be included.

The story’s called “Took Their Wages,” and features space lawyers Calvin Tondini and Sara Seastrom from Mercenary Calling (which you do not need to have read...

LibertyCon After Action Report

LibertyCon last weekend was super fun.  The travel wasn’t, but the con was.

You know when you get to the airport for your 8 a.m. flight and they tell you at the gate that your plane’s “been downgraded”–which is not a sentence you ever want to hear about an aircraft in the first place–that things aren’t going to go smoothly.  Who wants a downgraded aircraft?  I knew they meant it was smaller, but it didn’t create a great impression.

But wait! There’s more.  They needed to get 67 of us to give up ...

LibertyCon and Sleeping Duty

I’m looking forward to LibertyCon in Chattanooga, TN this weekend.  It’ll be fun to see old friends and meet new ones!

I wanted to let you all know about a temporary–and very brief–price drop for the paperback version of SLEEPING DUTY.

I had to order author copies for LibertyCon , but left it too late, so dropped the price so I could order them myself.  With Prime shipping and royalties, it’s only a little bit of a bad method.

But never mind all that about my lack of financial genius. If you’d l...

You Find an Alien Artifact on an Exoplanet. Do You Apply the Law of Salvage or Finds?

Clients never provided their lawyers enough time, and this was one of those times.

Joseph Stern walked as fast as Yoel Aronson, first mate on the Copernicus, not only because he could but because he had to. Aronson, who seldom saw cause for formalities, had come and fetched the lawyer himself.

There was only one problem. “I don’t see how I can brief her. I’ve had no time to prepare, and—” Joseph paused for both breath and emphasis “—you still haven’t told me what it’s about.”

“Try to be a littl...

Stonecropping in a Fugue State

I have never entered a shoe-buying, jeans-bingeing, on-line procuring fugue state, where I’m surprised later by my acquisitions.  I did, however, worry last week that I’d gone around the bend with the on-line plant purchasing when a large Izel box arrived that I didn’t remember ordering.  It was full of stonecrop–fifty plugs of stonecrop, to be precise.  What had I done?  Was a time traveler controlling my terraforming efforts?  More importantly, what the heck was stonecrop?

My first thought was...

April’s Free Books!

If you’re looking for more free science fiction (including one of mine–a Martha’s Sons prequel), check these out.  I’ve already picked one up myself.

 

by

Free Books!

Check out the free books available at Sci-Finatics.  My Martha’s Sons prequel is one of the offerings!

 

 

 

by

WORKING LOOSE–Free prequel

 

Working Loose is a prequel to Martha’s Sons, and it’s free!  I think of it as Edward’s story.  If you’ve read Long in the Land, you know what I’m talking about, and you can get it through Book Funnel when you sign up for my newsletter.

The planet Nwwwlf—so named by the starship’s crew because it was Not What We Were Looking For—has one small, fully terraformed human settlement.  Otherwise, Nwwwlf offers only unwelcoming wilderness. Two decades after its founding, the city of First Landing is...