Alasdair C. Shaw's Blog, page 8
January 27, 2019
The January Roundup of Scifi Books
Had a great weekend just now, especially the orienteering event I went to on Saturday. 1st in my age category and 4th overall - not too shoddy!
And here are the books you want...
For centuries, the Daegon waited. They plotted. And now they are ready to strike.
The core worlds of settled space enjoy a tenuous peace, unaware and ill prepared for the threat building beyond the furthest reaches of humanity. The star kingdom of Albion stands as a shining light of justice and mercy in a harsh galaxy, and they will be the first to suffer the Daegon's fury.
Defying his low born status, and despite his self-doubt, Commodore Thomas Gage has risen through the ranks by sheer grit and determination, defending Albion from brutal pirate clans.
And when the onslaught comes, Gage and his fleet may be Albion's last hope for freedom.
The Hegemony controls Megara, the Confederation’s capital. War has raged for five years. Millions are dead, vast fleets of ships have been destroyed. But in the stronghold where Tyler Barron and his comrades have gathered their allies and the last of their strength, a plan is being devised.
Barron and his people have fought bravely, stubbornly, relentlessly, but the Hegemony has been too strong. Now, Barron is relying on the one source of strength that remains to him.
Defiance.
He will not surrender, he will not yield. And he will not remain meekly on the defensive, waiting for the enemy to bring forward reinforcements to launch the final assault.
That leaves only one option. Attack. Take back what the enemy has captured. Bring the war to the invader, and send them reeling back into the Badlands from whence they came.
The fight will be difficult, the odds steep. But Barron is ready to take the final gamble, and as one, the thousands of spacers he leads are behind him, shouting a single rallying cry.
Back to Megara!
Jain, a former SEAL whose mind is now the AI core of an advanced alien warship, has agreed to broker peace between humanity and the extraterrestrial race known as the Mimics.
Unfortunately, a new breed of alien has decided to crash the party. These newcomers, part of the hostile Link empire, aren't very happy humanity is trying to coax a former member species into signing a treaty.
Jain and the Void Warriors have to fight off this new threat while struggling to salvage the smoldering ruins of the peace talks. Things certainly don't look good, not just for themselves, but humanity: if they can't secure allies against the Link, Earth will eventually be crushed.
Some days, having your mind stored in the AI core of a starship just isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Welcome to the Kwa system, where three suns shine their light on over twenty worlds, where a giant cloud nebula dominates the skies and where everything and everyone can be bought and sold. Until now.
Ex-smuggler Will scratches out a living piloting a deep-space fishing boat over the vast sea of dust, but trouble is stirring in the outer reaches of the system and soon Will and his motley crew find themselves dragged into a conflict that could engulf every one of the Kwa worlds. Caught between the in-fighting gangsters who run the system and a rebellion by the native Kwa, Will has to balance his obsessive search for one man with his love for another.
Flight Decurion Seivers is stranded on a frozen moon, far from the Legion. The Perception of Prejudice is barely functioning and Percy is offline. Seivers' future is measured in days.
Captain Lusimi searches for enemy survivors. By the order of the Protectors, the Sidexan Fleet is to avenge the Legion's violation of Protected System Five. He will follow his orders, but protecting his warriors and crew is his highest priority.
The hunt is on.
Storms rage, both within and without.
Yajain just gained a personal victory, but the dangers of frontier space only intensify. She and the rescue fleet are cast into a struggle far larger than themselves as alien forces loom amid the chaos of insurrections and natural disasters.
On the edge of growing conflict, a single colony tucked away in a remote corner of space may offer the assistance they need. Intrigue and violence build with every moment. Can Yajain and the others find a way to survive at the epicenter of the largest war ever seen in human history?
At the heart of all the mystery and violence is the rebel Yajain once knew, Mosam Coe. Will his influence bring doom or hope?
Daniel Hankerson is a genetically enhanced member of the royal family, but rather than family fortune and influence, he always preferred to rely on his ability to evaluate people, which helps him in his work in naval intelligence and also when playing cards.
This ability now tells him that something is in the air when he almost falls victim to an assassination attempt. The forthcoming mission to the fringes of the Imperium also does not feel quite right. The more he hears about a 'just routine' test of a brand-new communications ship, the more suspicious he becomes.
The Central Imperium is too big and too fragile, and is held together by too many compromises. External enemies are about to seize some of its territory, but the internal enemies are even more dangerous.
With their landing on Alysia long overdue, the remaining Terrans descend to the alien planet to begin a new life. However, not all the native inhabitants are welcoming and conflict between the two races escalates.
That is, until an unexpected time traveler pays Richard Steele a visit in his time lab and warns him of a hostile invasion in the foreseeable future. Richard, along with the ex-commander of the Terran Fleet, his wife Elise, must convince, and then coordinate, the two factions into working together if they are to survive this deadly threat.
Once again, against a ticking clock, Sunpointe Academy becomes the competitive training ground for brash, inexperienced men and women who must be molded into competent fighting space pilots.
Terran and Alysian alike need to put aside their animosities and prepare their planet's defense if they have any hope of surviving this latest crisis.
But it won't be easy. And lives are on the line.
A massive sphere appears near Earth, defying all attempts to communicate or understand its purpose. Power outages plague key cities and military bases, causing wide spread panic and chaos. Only the Space Agency seems to have a grasp on the situation but with all their combined resources, they’re baffled.
Captain Warren Miller races to join his colleagues in the Agency headquarters, hoping to convince his superiors to launch their latest space craft, the battlecruiser Leviathan, which may be able to defy this intruder. In the absence of communication, he hopes a little intimidation might bring about a conversation.
But then smaller objects descend upon the Earth, grabbing up people from all over the globe. Captain Miller never makes it back to base, forcing the Agency to scramble for a response. With the weight of an expectant world beating down on them and the alien threat looming above, they have no choice but to engage the enemy or simply witness history in the making.
Siobhan Dunmoore was not having a good war. She’s had more ships shot out from under her by the invading Shrehari Empire than any other officer in the Fleet. Some called her overly aggressive. Others simply called her reckless. What the enemy called her was something else altogether. That she gave the Shrehari a good drubbing along the way didn’t matter in the least, because not all her enemies wore an Imperial uniform. A reputation for bad luck was pretty much the only reputation she had left.
Sailing yet another ruined starship home after a near defeat, she wanted nothing more than a long, long rest, because this time, she had escaped by the thinnest of bluffs. Unfortunately, the Admiralty had other ideas. The frigate Stingray was known as the unluckiest ship in the Fleet and her Captain had just been removed in disgrace for cowardice. Some in the Admiralty would dearly love to retire the old warhorse. After all, she was the last of her type left in service, and perhaps it was time to break up the jinx permanently, along with the crew. But in the midst of an interstellar war, every ship that could fight was needed. In short order, Dunmoore went from staring down the Empire’s finest on the bridge of a wrecked battleship to taking on a demoralized, semi-mutinous crew, scheming Admirals and a deadly mystery. Stingray’s bad luck wasn’t just superstition gone rampant. Between a crew that won't talk, political enemies who want her gone, and her personal demons, she's got her hands full. Taking the frigate into battle under those conditions would seem foolish to anyone else, but Dunmoore was never one to shrink from a good fight. Failure was not an option, and defeat not an acceptable alternative, for there was no honor in death, only in victory. She would redeem herself and her ship or be damned for all eternity.
And here are the books you want...
For centuries, the Daegon waited. They plotted. And now they are ready to strike.
The core worlds of settled space enjoy a tenuous peace, unaware and ill prepared for the threat building beyond the furthest reaches of humanity. The star kingdom of Albion stands as a shining light of justice and mercy in a harsh galaxy, and they will be the first to suffer the Daegon's fury.
Defying his low born status, and despite his self-doubt, Commodore Thomas Gage has risen through the ranks by sheer grit and determination, defending Albion from brutal pirate clans.
And when the onslaught comes, Gage and his fleet may be Albion's last hope for freedom.
The Hegemony controls Megara, the Confederation’s capital. War has raged for five years. Millions are dead, vast fleets of ships have been destroyed. But in the stronghold where Tyler Barron and his comrades have gathered their allies and the last of their strength, a plan is being devised.
Barron and his people have fought bravely, stubbornly, relentlessly, but the Hegemony has been too strong. Now, Barron is relying on the one source of strength that remains to him.
Defiance.
He will not surrender, he will not yield. And he will not remain meekly on the defensive, waiting for the enemy to bring forward reinforcements to launch the final assault.
That leaves only one option. Attack. Take back what the enemy has captured. Bring the war to the invader, and send them reeling back into the Badlands from whence they came.
The fight will be difficult, the odds steep. But Barron is ready to take the final gamble, and as one, the thousands of spacers he leads are behind him, shouting a single rallying cry.
Back to Megara!
Jain, a former SEAL whose mind is now the AI core of an advanced alien warship, has agreed to broker peace between humanity and the extraterrestrial race known as the Mimics.
Unfortunately, a new breed of alien has decided to crash the party. These newcomers, part of the hostile Link empire, aren't very happy humanity is trying to coax a former member species into signing a treaty.
Jain and the Void Warriors have to fight off this new threat while struggling to salvage the smoldering ruins of the peace talks. Things certainly don't look good, not just for themselves, but humanity: if they can't secure allies against the Link, Earth will eventually be crushed.
Some days, having your mind stored in the AI core of a starship just isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Welcome to the Kwa system, where three suns shine their light on over twenty worlds, where a giant cloud nebula dominates the skies and where everything and everyone can be bought and sold. Until now.
Ex-smuggler Will scratches out a living piloting a deep-space fishing boat over the vast sea of dust, but trouble is stirring in the outer reaches of the system and soon Will and his motley crew find themselves dragged into a conflict that could engulf every one of the Kwa worlds. Caught between the in-fighting gangsters who run the system and a rebellion by the native Kwa, Will has to balance his obsessive search for one man with his love for another.
Flight Decurion Seivers is stranded on a frozen moon, far from the Legion. The Perception of Prejudice is barely functioning and Percy is offline. Seivers' future is measured in days.
Captain Lusimi searches for enemy survivors. By the order of the Protectors, the Sidexan Fleet is to avenge the Legion's violation of Protected System Five. He will follow his orders, but protecting his warriors and crew is his highest priority.
The hunt is on.
Storms rage, both within and without.
Yajain just gained a personal victory, but the dangers of frontier space only intensify. She and the rescue fleet are cast into a struggle far larger than themselves as alien forces loom amid the chaos of insurrections and natural disasters.
On the edge of growing conflict, a single colony tucked away in a remote corner of space may offer the assistance they need. Intrigue and violence build with every moment. Can Yajain and the others find a way to survive at the epicenter of the largest war ever seen in human history?
At the heart of all the mystery and violence is the rebel Yajain once knew, Mosam Coe. Will his influence bring doom or hope?
Daniel Hankerson is a genetically enhanced member of the royal family, but rather than family fortune and influence, he always preferred to rely on his ability to evaluate people, which helps him in his work in naval intelligence and also when playing cards.
This ability now tells him that something is in the air when he almost falls victim to an assassination attempt. The forthcoming mission to the fringes of the Imperium also does not feel quite right. The more he hears about a 'just routine' test of a brand-new communications ship, the more suspicious he becomes.
The Central Imperium is too big and too fragile, and is held together by too many compromises. External enemies are about to seize some of its territory, but the internal enemies are even more dangerous.
With their landing on Alysia long overdue, the remaining Terrans descend to the alien planet to begin a new life. However, not all the native inhabitants are welcoming and conflict between the two races escalates.
That is, until an unexpected time traveler pays Richard Steele a visit in his time lab and warns him of a hostile invasion in the foreseeable future. Richard, along with the ex-commander of the Terran Fleet, his wife Elise, must convince, and then coordinate, the two factions into working together if they are to survive this deadly threat.
Once again, against a ticking clock, Sunpointe Academy becomes the competitive training ground for brash, inexperienced men and women who must be molded into competent fighting space pilots.
Terran and Alysian alike need to put aside their animosities and prepare their planet's defense if they have any hope of surviving this latest crisis.
But it won't be easy. And lives are on the line.
A massive sphere appears near Earth, defying all attempts to communicate or understand its purpose. Power outages plague key cities and military bases, causing wide spread panic and chaos. Only the Space Agency seems to have a grasp on the situation but with all their combined resources, they’re baffled.
Captain Warren Miller races to join his colleagues in the Agency headquarters, hoping to convince his superiors to launch their latest space craft, the battlecruiser Leviathan, which may be able to defy this intruder. In the absence of communication, he hopes a little intimidation might bring about a conversation.
But then smaller objects descend upon the Earth, grabbing up people from all over the globe. Captain Miller never makes it back to base, forcing the Agency to scramble for a response. With the weight of an expectant world beating down on them and the alien threat looming above, they have no choice but to engage the enemy or simply witness history in the making.
Siobhan Dunmoore was not having a good war. She’s had more ships shot out from under her by the invading Shrehari Empire than any other officer in the Fleet. Some called her overly aggressive. Others simply called her reckless. What the enemy called her was something else altogether. That she gave the Shrehari a good drubbing along the way didn’t matter in the least, because not all her enemies wore an Imperial uniform. A reputation for bad luck was pretty much the only reputation she had left.
Sailing yet another ruined starship home after a near defeat, she wanted nothing more than a long, long rest, because this time, she had escaped by the thinnest of bluffs. Unfortunately, the Admiralty had other ideas. The frigate Stingray was known as the unluckiest ship in the Fleet and her Captain had just been removed in disgrace for cowardice. Some in the Admiralty would dearly love to retire the old warhorse. After all, she was the last of her type left in service, and perhaps it was time to break up the jinx permanently, along with the crew. But in the midst of an interstellar war, every ship that could fight was needed. In short order, Dunmoore went from staring down the Empire’s finest on the bridge of a wrecked battleship to taking on a demoralized, semi-mutinous crew, scheming Admirals and a deadly mystery. Stingray’s bad luck wasn’t just superstition gone rampant. Between a crew that won't talk, political enemies who want her gone, and her personal demons, she's got her hands full. Taking the frigate into battle under those conditions would seem foolish to anyone else, but Dunmoore was never one to shrink from a good fight. Failure was not an option, and defeat not an acceptable alternative, for there was no honor in death, only in victory. She would redeem herself and her ship or be damned for all eternity.
December 25, 2018
The December Roundup of Scifi Books
I'll get straight into the books this time!
The Flying Dutchman of the stars! Rigger and star pilot Renwald Legroeder undertakes a search for the legendary ghost ship Impris—and her passengers and crew—whose fate is entwined with interstellar piracy, quantum defects in space-time, galactic coverup conspiracies, and deep-cyber romance.
The science vessel, Hermes, has been urgently recalled from its mission to survey the moons of Saturn, just as First Officer Miranda Lee receives bad news from home—her mother is dying so she must leave the ship and return to Earth—for good. Commander Scott McNabb is so distraught by her sudden decision to leave that he pays little or no attention to the parameters of the new mission being requested by the Council of Europa.
Harry Robinson lives an idyllic lifestyle. A brilliant computer engineer, he made his fortune pushing the limits of android design. When a neighbouring planet is hit by a global nuclear strike, he feels compelled to help. A chance encounter with a group of offworld soldiers launches him on the trail of the perpetrators.
Prefect Olivia Johnson leads a Legion of disillusioned soldiers from both sides of the civil war. She blames herself for failing to prevent the attack. Now her mission is to hunt for its architect. But first, she must reclaim their adopted home from a different enemy. An enemy who won’t even talk.
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is Johnson’s best friend and closest ally. Despite the lives they have saved, artificial intelligences are still the victims of fear and prejudice. The shadowy warship fights to defend the first place it felt accepted, and for equal rights for its kind.
Ironvale. Splitdawn. Poisoncry.
Three bloodthirsty guilds that control the decaying corner of space called the Reaches. This balance of power exists at a tipping point. One nudge and chaos reigns. Sela Tyron is willing to supply that nudge to help her partner with an important rescue. Even if it means trusting a shifty criminal. Or turning herself into a power-armored assassin.
The Commonwealth government refuses to acknowledge it. Propaganda and lies fill the media, dispelling all rumors of the invasion. Anyone who dares reveal the truth finds themselves in prison. Their minds erased by Entrents -- genetically engineered telepaths.
There are no heroes here. Only people and aliens trying to survive. This is not a story about the end. We are only at the beginning.
Welcome to the Kwa system, where three suns shine their light on over twenty worlds, where a giant cloud nebula dominates the skies and where everything and everyone can be bought and sold. Until now.
Ex-smuggler Will scratches out a living piloting a deep-space fishing boat over the vast sea of dust, but trouble is stirring in the outer reaches of the system and soon Will and his motley crew find themselves dragged into a conflict that could engulf every one of the Kwa worlds. Caught between the in-fighting gangsters who run the system and a rebellion by the native Kwa, Will has to balance his obsessive search for one man with his love for another.
When a bankrupt armourer ends up owning a second-rate jugger player, he decides to go for it. But will he manage to even turn a profit, when he knows little about the game and its seedy world, when the opponents play dirty on and off the field, and when the game's popularity grows with every player injury and death?
1899 years after the Catastrophe, Bridges is owned by the Mob. As the city's steam-driven infrastructure fails, a new faction rises: the Red Dogs.
Jacqueline Spadros is haunted by her best friend Air's death, killed as he tried to stop her sale to the Spadros crime syndicate ten years ago. Now in an unwilling marriage to the city's biggest drug lord, she secretly runs a small-time private eye business to earn enough money to escape.
Air's little brother disappears from his back porch. And now someone is following Jacqui.
Dark, gritty, psychological, multi-layered Victorian-inspired far future detective noir that keeps the reader guessing to the very end.
After The Fall the scattered pockets of civilization that survived choose to live in ignorance of the past. No-one wants to know what caused the apocalypse. No-one, except Ethan.
As a boy, Ethan believed in the guardians – mysterious lights in the night sky that, according to folklore, safeguard survivors from The Maddening. This horrific sickness mutated men and women into Roamers; savage nomads, stripped of their humanity. But when a Roamer attack killed his parents, Ethan’s faith was shattered and replaced with a hunger to know the truth.
One night Ethan watches a light grow bright in the night sky and crash to the planet’s surface near a ruined city. There he finds Maria, a descendant of the pre-Fall civilization which is trapped off-world and unable to return to the poisoned planet. Maria has risked everything to find a Planetsider; a man or woman with an inborn resistance to The Maddening. She begs Ethan to help to save her people, and in return he will finally learn the truth.
But the revelations come at a terrible cost and Ethan finds himself drawn into a war that has raged for generations. Who will he choose to save and can he himself be saved?
Over 100 players enter a virtual world to play a game – survive 24 hours of their chosen apocalypse. Instead of game over at the end, they're plunged straight into another game, and then another.
They have no communication with the outside operators. Their simulation pods are designed to only last 3 days. The artificial intelligence is tapping into their minds and creating 'death dreams'. And they’re trapped in a dangerous world with strangers they can’t trust.
It’s clear something is keeping them inside the game, but who or what? Everyone dreams of escaping reality but this game has far greater risks than they could have imagined…
The Flying Dutchman of the stars! Rigger and star pilot Renwald Legroeder undertakes a search for the legendary ghost ship Impris—and her passengers and crew—whose fate is entwined with interstellar piracy, quantum defects in space-time, galactic coverup conspiracies, and deep-cyber romance.
The science vessel, Hermes, has been urgently recalled from its mission to survey the moons of Saturn, just as First Officer Miranda Lee receives bad news from home—her mother is dying so she must leave the ship and return to Earth—for good. Commander Scott McNabb is so distraught by her sudden decision to leave that he pays little or no attention to the parameters of the new mission being requested by the Council of Europa.
Harry Robinson lives an idyllic lifestyle. A brilliant computer engineer, he made his fortune pushing the limits of android design. When a neighbouring planet is hit by a global nuclear strike, he feels compelled to help. A chance encounter with a group of offworld soldiers launches him on the trail of the perpetrators.
Prefect Olivia Johnson leads a Legion of disillusioned soldiers from both sides of the civil war. She blames herself for failing to prevent the attack. Now her mission is to hunt for its architect. But first, she must reclaim their adopted home from a different enemy. An enemy who won’t even talk.
The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is Johnson’s best friend and closest ally. Despite the lives they have saved, artificial intelligences are still the victims of fear and prejudice. The shadowy warship fights to defend the first place it felt accepted, and for equal rights for its kind.
Ironvale. Splitdawn. Poisoncry.
Three bloodthirsty guilds that control the decaying corner of space called the Reaches. This balance of power exists at a tipping point. One nudge and chaos reigns. Sela Tyron is willing to supply that nudge to help her partner with an important rescue. Even if it means trusting a shifty criminal. Or turning herself into a power-armored assassin.
The Commonwealth government refuses to acknowledge it. Propaganda and lies fill the media, dispelling all rumors of the invasion. Anyone who dares reveal the truth finds themselves in prison. Their minds erased by Entrents -- genetically engineered telepaths.
There are no heroes here. Only people and aliens trying to survive. This is not a story about the end. We are only at the beginning.
Welcome to the Kwa system, where three suns shine their light on over twenty worlds, where a giant cloud nebula dominates the skies and where everything and everyone can be bought and sold. Until now.
Ex-smuggler Will scratches out a living piloting a deep-space fishing boat over the vast sea of dust, but trouble is stirring in the outer reaches of the system and soon Will and his motley crew find themselves dragged into a conflict that could engulf every one of the Kwa worlds. Caught between the in-fighting gangsters who run the system and a rebellion by the native Kwa, Will has to balance his obsessive search for one man with his love for another.
When a bankrupt armourer ends up owning a second-rate jugger player, he decides to go for it. But will he manage to even turn a profit, when he knows little about the game and its seedy world, when the opponents play dirty on and off the field, and when the game's popularity grows with every player injury and death?
1899 years after the Catastrophe, Bridges is owned by the Mob. As the city's steam-driven infrastructure fails, a new faction rises: the Red Dogs.
Jacqueline Spadros is haunted by her best friend Air's death, killed as he tried to stop her sale to the Spadros crime syndicate ten years ago. Now in an unwilling marriage to the city's biggest drug lord, she secretly runs a small-time private eye business to earn enough money to escape.
Air's little brother disappears from his back porch. And now someone is following Jacqui.
Dark, gritty, psychological, multi-layered Victorian-inspired far future detective noir that keeps the reader guessing to the very end.
After The Fall the scattered pockets of civilization that survived choose to live in ignorance of the past. No-one wants to know what caused the apocalypse. No-one, except Ethan.
As a boy, Ethan believed in the guardians – mysterious lights in the night sky that, according to folklore, safeguard survivors from The Maddening. This horrific sickness mutated men and women into Roamers; savage nomads, stripped of their humanity. But when a Roamer attack killed his parents, Ethan’s faith was shattered and replaced with a hunger to know the truth.
One night Ethan watches a light grow bright in the night sky and crash to the planet’s surface near a ruined city. There he finds Maria, a descendant of the pre-Fall civilization which is trapped off-world and unable to return to the poisoned planet. Maria has risked everything to find a Planetsider; a man or woman with an inborn resistance to The Maddening. She begs Ethan to help to save her people, and in return he will finally learn the truth.
But the revelations come at a terrible cost and Ethan finds himself drawn into a war that has raged for generations. Who will he choose to save and can he himself be saved?
Over 100 players enter a virtual world to play a game – survive 24 hours of their chosen apocalypse. Instead of game over at the end, they're plunged straight into another game, and then another.
They have no communication with the outside operators. Their simulation pods are designed to only last 3 days. The artificial intelligence is tapping into their minds and creating 'death dreams'. And they’re trapped in a dangerous world with strangers they can’t trust.
It’s clear something is keeping them inside the game, but who or what? Everyone dreams of escaping reality but this game has far greater risks than they could have imagined…
December 14, 2018
An Interview with John Wilker
Got quite a bit of caving done recently. Some were trips I led, but one really fun one was my leadership revalidation where we got to play in the bits of Wookey Hole that the tourists don't usually get in. We also tried out their adventure caving route to give advice on its suitability for running training courses.
Anywho, on with the rest of the post. In my interview today, I am talking to John Wilker, author of the Space Rogues series.
What draws you to writing science fiction?
I've always been a dreamer and optimist. Around my middle school years, I swore I wanted to freeze myself at 40 so I could be woken up in a glorious future of peace and prosperity for all. When I turned 40 I told no one of that plan :D
I think science fiction, even the darker stuff, is optimistic, even that post-apocalypse stuff. The general feeling seems to always be, to quote Ian Malcolm, "Life, uh, life finds a way." :) I think that's important.
When did you decide to become a writer?
I don't know that was a particular finger snapping moment, but in 3rd grade I entered a Young Authors contest and won. I got to meet a famous author (who I can't recall now, but my mom was thrilled), I got a neat gold seal sticker to put on my one and only print edition (this was the 80s). I've always found a way to imbue creativity into my writing, whether it is a work email, a Facebook post, etc.
In 2016 I entered (for the 10th time) NaNoWriMo and just by luck my November was light and I kept up the pace until I hit a point where not finishing would be silly. That was the birth of my current status as "Writer".
For your own reading, do you prefer ebooks or traditional books?
Ebook. I LOVE paper books, but they're heavy. I've moved enough in my life and had to move countless boxes of books, that I just don't want to any more.
There's also a bit of an environmental issue for me. We need trees making oxygen, not mass market paperbacks.
I'm torn, too. For comfort reading I don't think anything beats paper. However, when I'm out and about, particularly on expedition, I don't want the weight of actual books. As I'd have my 'phone anyway, the Kindle app works great.
Tell us a little about the series.
When I finished the first book, I couldn't wait to tell more stories about the crew of the Ghost. They entertained me to no end, and I hoped that they'd entertain others. I immediately had an idea for book 2 and have already started book 3.
What are your thoughts on writing a book series?
I don't have a strong opinion other than I enjoy reading series. Mostly because I know the characters. If I move from book one, to book two, I want as much as I can get about the characters. Several of my favorite series are at or past ten books. Each book to me is an episode of the TV series the books form in my head. I can't get enough.
That said, I don't shy away from one-off books. There are plenty of books that are excellent and go no further than the one book. I'm ok with that.
Good luck with book 3 and thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
John would love nothing more than to make his living writing (Who wouldn't, right?). Until that happens he runs a conference company where he organizes his own events and offers event consulting to others.
His writing career went full speed in 2016 when he (self) published his first novel. He's been a story-teller since he can remember, and is happy to be able to have an outlet for that, and one that people seem to enjoy.
He's married to the love of his life, Nicole, and lives in Denver CO with her and their two dogs; Paco and Winston.
Anywho, on with the rest of the post. In my interview today, I am talking to John Wilker, author of the Space Rogues series.
What draws you to writing science fiction?
I've always been a dreamer and optimist. Around my middle school years, I swore I wanted to freeze myself at 40 so I could be woken up in a glorious future of peace and prosperity for all. When I turned 40 I told no one of that plan :D
I think science fiction, even the darker stuff, is optimistic, even that post-apocalypse stuff. The general feeling seems to always be, to quote Ian Malcolm, "Life, uh, life finds a way." :) I think that's important.
When did you decide to become a writer?
I don't know that was a particular finger snapping moment, but in 3rd grade I entered a Young Authors contest and won. I got to meet a famous author (who I can't recall now, but my mom was thrilled), I got a neat gold seal sticker to put on my one and only print edition (this was the 80s). I've always found a way to imbue creativity into my writing, whether it is a work email, a Facebook post, etc.
In 2016 I entered (for the 10th time) NaNoWriMo and just by luck my November was light and I kept up the pace until I hit a point where not finishing would be silly. That was the birth of my current status as "Writer".
For your own reading, do you prefer ebooks or traditional books?
Ebook. I LOVE paper books, but they're heavy. I've moved enough in my life and had to move countless boxes of books, that I just don't want to any more.
There's also a bit of an environmental issue for me. We need trees making oxygen, not mass market paperbacks.
I'm torn, too. For comfort reading I don't think anything beats paper. However, when I'm out and about, particularly on expedition, I don't want the weight of actual books. As I'd have my 'phone anyway, the Kindle app works great.
Tell us a little about the series.
When I finished the first book, I couldn't wait to tell more stories about the crew of the Ghost. They entertained me to no end, and I hoped that they'd entertain others. I immediately had an idea for book 2 and have already started book 3.
What are your thoughts on writing a book series?
I don't have a strong opinion other than I enjoy reading series. Mostly because I know the characters. If I move from book one, to book two, I want as much as I can get about the characters. Several of my favorite series are at or past ten books. Each book to me is an episode of the TV series the books form in my head. I can't get enough.
That said, I don't shy away from one-off books. There are plenty of books that are excellent and go no further than the one book. I'm ok with that.
Good luck with book 3 and thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
John would love nothing more than to make his living writing (Who wouldn't, right?). Until that happens he runs a conference company where he organizes his own events and offers event consulting to others.His writing career went full speed in 2016 when he (self) published his first novel. He's been a story-teller since he can remember, and is happy to be able to have an outlet for that, and one that people seem to enjoy.
He's married to the love of his life, Nicole, and lives in Denver CO with her and their two dogs; Paco and Winston.
November 27, 2018
The November Round-up of Scifi Books
Usually I don't manage to get to do parkrun because I'm looking after the kids while my partner does it. However, the last few times I've been lucky enough to do it, I've shaved a bit off my PB.
If you don't know what Parkrun is, it is a worldwide series of timed 5km events that are free to enter. There's no pressure to get a certain time, or even to run; the point is to enjoy yourself and get a bit fitter. I've been to quite a few different locations now, and all have been very friendly and supportive of all those taking part.
And now, here are some incntives to hide away and not run...
Zona Nox, 3555. James Terrin and his gang of thieves love dominating the war-ravaged streets of his backwater planet. He and his fiercely loyal crew are virtually untouchable as they battle rival gangs, dodge the military police, and escape vicious raiders. But when violent extraterrestrials invade and kill his gang, all James has left is his burning desire for revenge...
Setting aside his former rivalries, James finds himself fighting alongside men he used to despise as his street-wise survival skills clash with the rule-bound corps. While he questions his decision to enlist, his focus remains on a single-minded mission: kill as many aliens as possible.
Can James lead a rag-tag unit against galactic invaders, or will his unorthodox methods end in another bloody massacre?
Night is falling.
The unstoppable Hegemony invasion has reached the very heart of the Confederation. Battle after desperate battle has been fought, and each time, the Confeds have been pushed back, columns of battered and blasted ship retreating from system to system. Now, they prepare to grimly defend the capital world of Megara, the very center of the Confederation.
Tyler Barron prepares for what could be his final battle, a final desperate defense, one last chance to stem the tide of Hegemony conquest and subjugation. The fleet is ready, its exhausted crews prepared to fight with all the strength that remains to them. Still, the enemy is overpoweringly strong, and the odds of victory are slipping quickly away.
But, there is still hope. From unexpected allies. From the grit and determination of the defending fleets and their spacers. And, from a plan so daring it borders on the impossible... a wild and desperate gamble to stem the tide of conquest and halt the enemy.
It is night, and everywhere there is darkness, but the Confederation is not beaten yet. Barron and his comrades will stand, and they will struggle to somehow endure the darkness and fight through to the dawn.
Jain thought he'd never go back.
Ten years had passed since he last had dealings with humans and their machines. He was happy. He'd built a base for himself and his Void Warriors around the barren moon of a gas giant, where they planned to live out their immortal days in peace.
And then humanity came looking for them. Hunting them.
Now they have no choice but to return. But what they find waiting for them in human territory will make them wish they'd never left their new home.
In the aftermath of a battle a ship drifts helplessly in space. Is the strange new warship they were fighting still out there? Will it come back for them? Commander Johnson faces a desperate race to get her destroyer back into action and save her crew.
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Jet Rusco is a man who lives on the edge. A down-and-out wanderer turned to heists in a daily struggle to survive in a far future of colonized worlds ruled by space thugs, warlords and gangsters. He stumbles on alien tech in a heist gone bad in a clash with some ruthless players. Rusco must up his game, build a team of able recruits if he is to defeat the despot who wants to put the tech to use for more sinister reasons than obvious gain. Rusco must decide whether he is to remain a scavenger all his life, or an avenger. The stakes are high when worlds are at great risk and the choice of doom or salvation rests on the toss of the dice.
As the colony grapples with the realization that New Earth is not as uninhabited as they’d once thought, tensions between the colonial settlements rise to new heights, and the Colonial Defense Force finds itself caught in the middle.
When Connor uncovers evidence of a militant colonial faction secretly exploiting the NEIIS, he has to investigate. Connor learns that some of the colonial settlements have been holding back discoveries of their own. He’d thought the NEIIS were a threat to the colony, but he was wrong. They all were, and the truth is beyond anything Connor could have imagined.
Meanwhile, Colonel Sean Quinn’s latest mission brings him off-world to investigate a previously discovered NEIIS settlement. When all communications from home go silent, he must return to New Earth to investigate. Cut off from everything, Sean must lead the crew of a CDF warship against a mysterious foe. Sean must forge a path into the unknown if he’s to have any hope of unraveling the mystery.
Trapped on a hostile world, hunted by pirate bands and abandoned by her fellow captains, Alexis Carew must lead her small band to safety, even though it seems every hand is set against her. Stalked by pirates in the skies above and shadowy, alien figures on the planet below, Alexis must convince former enemies to trust her even as she discovers where the tendrils of her true enemies lead.
One final Orb remains at large in the wild and the Gnosis is dispatched to get it. Lost somewhere in a space station on the edge of civilized space, early intelligence reports suggested it would be a milk run…until a team of Pahxin technicians went missing there. Altering their mission parameters to include rescue, they load up an extra team of marines and head off on the mission.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, AIA operative Christina Dawson closes in on the traitor selling out humanity to the Tol’An. Her people have located an old military base currently occupied by the mercenary group responsible for attacking Gamma Alpha. She gathers a former marine and newly appointed AIA agent to investigate in person.
Under siege and left for dead, the end has finally come for Lucky and the survivors of mankind's failed invasion.
Or has it? A strange new force is altering the balance of power. But will it save humanity, or enslave them once and for all?
Don't ask Lucky. Just give him a weapon and get out of the way.
On her last mission, HMS Invincible discovered an alien threat beyond human understanding: a sentient virus that has already absorbed a number of intelligent races into its multitude and now intends to do the same to humanity. Defeat means the end of everything, the end of existence as nothing more than mindless host-bodies, the end of humanity and its alien allies alike. The stakes could not be higher.
As a deeply divided humanity struggles to prepare a defence, with enemies inside and outside the human sphere just lurking to strike, Invincible is sent deep into alien space on what should have been a simple reconnaissance mission. But, as Captain Shields and his crew begin their mission, it rapidly becomes clear that a juggernaut is bearing down on Earth ...
... And, no matter what they do, they may never make it home again.
Hundreds of years in Earth’s future sees the united global territories striving to colonize the Moon and Mars. The discovery of a clean energy source ended the world’s reliance on fossil fuels overnight, and years after the resulting wars, a new discovery puts the tenuous world peace at risk; that of faster than light travel.
With humanity on the verge of travelling to new solar systems and all the humanitarian and scientific possibilities involved, a discovery by the reconnaissance team turns everything upside down.
The Dvorkans were pushed out of Diakan space, and now their Empire is mired in civil war. But, the Antikitheri have returned, and Emperor Kriss is leveraging their help to regain all that he has lost. Will he succeed and again threaten the UHSF and its allies?
In Kemmar space, after a decade of occupation, a growing insurgency makes occupation costly for the UHSF. When the insurgent tactics prove surprisingly lethal, Admiral Jon Pike is left with an ominous decision to make. The question is, who or what is behind the Kemmar resurgence?
Just beyond human space, the Juttari Empire still threatens the human race with annihilation. Jon Pike has made great gains against the Juttari in recent years. Will the Juttari return and take back what they believe is rightfully theirs?
Humanity remains surrounded by enemies and existential threats. Can Jon Pike continue his winning streak, or will this be the end for him and humanity?
The Federation needs help and Taj volunteers. She takes the team to a distant planet. The fate of her people doesn’t depend on her success, but if she fails, the Furlorians’ hope goes with her.
Wearing that mantle, they hold nothing back as they go into the lion’s den, their cat eyes focused on a singular goal.
The discovery of the Vraxar planetship – Aranol - has revealed to the Confederation how much they are outgunned by the invading aliens. The Space Corps’ successes to date will count for nothing if the largest spaceship in the known universe is allowed to reach human territory.
Fleet Admiral John Duggan is not a man to sit on his hands while there is a chance to act. He sends Captain Charlie Blake on a daring mission deep into Estral Space, to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Aranol and also to rescue the lost battleship Ulterior-2. Blake and his crew aren’t alone - Lieutenant Eric McKinney and his squad are along for the ride and they’re itching to get involved.
What Blake finds is a long-forgotten war, still raging with incredible intensity. Surrounded by enemies, it will take every ounce of his ingenuity to achieve victory. Where ingenuity fails, there are other, more direct options. His spaceship, the ES Cataclysm, is equipped with experimental and potentially devastating weaponry, as the Vraxar will soon discover.
The Aranol has existed for millennia and overseen the fall of a thousand empires. It will not go down without a fight.
The Acolyte Empire and the Clone Defense Force are warring for dominance, spreading chaos through the galaxy.
Devante, the son of the Acolyte Empire's God-Emperor, lead a lavish life in power. His sole devotion has been to free slaves across the galaxy until he discovers a secret tied to the root of the beloved empire he has served.
While the rulers of the galaxy wreak havoc and endanger the lives of all, black op teams have to clean up the mess and keep the mistakes of their leaders quiet.
Danger is ripe in a universe filled with spies, assassins, god-emperors, slaves, queens, and princesses. Follow Devante as he embarks on a path of destruction fueled by vengeance. Who will be victorious in the war for supremacy?
Would you leave behind everything you know to start a new world? Would you destroy that world to save everything you believe in?
Born on the moon of Verygone, on the distant edge of the galaxy, Oren Siris is a loner and a dreamer, yearning for a life beyond his humble home. When an interstellar ship arrives, it will take him on a journey across the stars to the shores of an undiscovered planet. Oren and his team strive to build peace with the indigenous peoples of this beautiful new world, but some unseen force works against their every effort, driving them to the very brink of war.
When the virus which killed millions of people is gone, humanity lives in a planet-wide quarantine enforced by an alien species.
The year is 2355. The deadly virus that killed millions of people is gone, thanks to the quarantine measures put in place by the Criterion, an alien species who appeared just in time to save the human race. In exchange for complying with their tough control measures, the Criterion promised us the technology for interstellar travel. We’ve done all they’ve asked, yet we’re still on Earth with no way of getting into deep space. The Criterion are lying to us. What they don’t know is that we’re lying to them...
The battle-scarred star carrier Flying Dutchman is finally on her way back to Earth, after an exceptionally successful series of missions that have once again Saved The World. The ship needs a serious refit, and her exhausted crew just wants a break from constant clandestine warfare against a vicious and superior enemy. Wishes come true, right? Not for the Merry Band of Pirates.
Winter Mulcahy is the last wizard in the city of Seahaven, WA and all that stands between the fractious preternatural population and total chaos.
Holding the city together by the skin of her teeth, the blood of her friends, and an addiction to stimulants that is slowly killing her, the young wizard is approached by a pair of sidhe lords. They claim that her city is harboring a fugitive who has kidnapped a sidhe prince, and that they are on a mission to rescue the boy. Winter must investigate this fugitive to get to the truth of the kidnapping, discover the cause of the surges of wild magic tearing open rifts between realms across her city, and navigate the deadly waters of preternatural politics before Seahaven both figuratively and literally rips itself apart.
They tell me the country looked different back then. They talk of open borders and flowing rivers. They say the world was green.
But drought swept across the globe and the United States of the past disappeared under a burning sky.
Enora Byrnes lives in the aftermath, a barren world where water has become the global currency. In a life dominated by duty to family and community, Enora is offered a role within an entity that controls everything from water credits to borders. But it becomes clear that not all is as it seems. From the wasted confines of her small town to the bowels of a hidden city, Enora will uncover buried secrets that hide an unthinkable reality.
As truth reveals the brutal face of what she has become, she must ask herself: how far will she go to retain her humanity?
In the zombie apocalypse, the dead are the least of your worries.
Paxton Bale wants nothing more than to lead his youth group and get home to his wife, but when a cosmic event causes people to turn into soulless monsters, he finds himself fighting for his life against the teens he was supposed to keep safe. Trapped at the church, only a miracle can save him. A miracle named Danny, but Danny isn’t exactly who he says he is. Fresh off his last kill, Danny is what people define as a serial killer, and he is finding out that the rules from the old world don’t apply anymore.
In this chance encounter of two men, they each must find the balance of humanity and animalistic survival to make it out of the apocalypse alive.
Marc Gregorio wakes up paralyzed. He can’t feel his own body. Accident? Stroke? The answer, he discovers, is much, much worse. He’s only a copy of Marc—a digital brain without a body, burdened with all Marc’s human memories, but without access to human sensual pleasures. Now called Adam, he contemplates life without actually living. He uses his total web access to patrol cyberspace and prevent evil acts. His good deeds earn him the attention of a power-mad military contractor who will stop at nothing to control the formidable technology for his own ends. Without a body, how will Adam save himself–and the world–from a terrible fate?
Time’s attention must have been elsewhere the moment elderly, grey, unsophisticated Alice Watkins died in her armchair a few days before her birthday in November 2016. It still wasn’t minding what it was doing on Saturn Station in the year 2513. Dr Jim Grossmith, one of the most eminent scientists of the age has devoted his career to The Sleeping Beauty Phenomenon, guarding the beautiful, red-haired young woman who sleeps peacefully, in a mysterious sarcophagus, her life perfectly suspended, her body preserved in a strange fluid. The woman, cocooned in her protective shell has defied scientific analysis for almost four hundred years. History recorded little, only that she is Dr Alexis Langley, a noted scientist of her time. When the sarcophagus opens and vanishes without a trace, leaving the young woman in his care, Jim Grossmith eagerly awaits the day when she can tell him the manner of her preservation. A strange science, lost in the annals of the past? Alien technology? But as he learns her story, Jim Grossmith finds himself faced with an even deeper mystery. He is certain the physical form of Dr Alexis Langley emerged from the sarcophagus, but as for anything else…
What would you do if you found a super intelligent dog only to discover he had valuable information inside his head that could change mankind forever?
The first time I saw him, I had no idea he had recently escaped from a mysterious lab. That he had been created there. I'd been living on the streets which was tough, but preferable to home. Then one day, I stumbled upon this mangy dog being attacked.
I saved him, but then he saved me, and I realized that Muttface wasn't a normal dog. He was crazy intelligent. I'm talking Mensa levels.
When we sought help from a grieving veterinarian named Sully, his clinic was attacked and destroyed by mercenaries. So now here we are, the three of us. On the run across the country against a powerful enemy. Who are they and what do they want with us?
Through the danger, terror, and pain, one thing was becoming clear to me: I have finally found the family I always wanted and I will do anything to keep them safe...
Brent Bolster isn’t worried about the alien who’s just appeared in his bedroom.
For one thing, Brent is an approved PI and immune from abduction. For another, he has something hidden under his pillow: a snub-nosed pulse pistol.
So everything will be fine. Probably.
Join Brent as he tackles Earth’s new overlords and uncovers a deadly plan. Mainly by accident.
After an encounter with an alien, Brent loses a week and a half. He has no idea where he’s been, but when he sees the glamorous Maisie Richmond, she triggers memories that could solve the mystery of his missing time. Maisie has a wit that could cut through toughened steel as well as the kind of good looks that can stop traffic. Brent is in no doubt: she’s trouble.
Things could get interesting. And somewhat...strange.
But Brent will work his hardest to solve this mystery. Just as soon as he's had his coffee.
After The Fall the scattered pockets of civilization that survived choose to live in ignorance of the past. No-one wants to know what caused the apocalypse. No-one, except Ethan
As a boy, Ethan believed in the guardians – mysterious lights in the night sky that, according to folklore, safeguard survivors from The Maddening. This horrific sickness mutated men and women into Roamers; savage nomads, stripped of their humanity. But when a Roamer attack killed his parents, Ethan’s faith was shattered and replaced with a hunger to know the truth.
One night Ethan watches a light grow bright in the night sky and crash to the planet’s surface near a ruined city. There he finds Maria, a descendant of the pre-Fall civilization which is trapped off-world and unable to return to the poisoned planet. Maria has risked everything to find a Planetsider; a man or woman with an inborn resistance to The Maddening. She begs Ethan to help to save her people, and in return he will finally learn the truth.
But the revelations come at a terrible cost and Ethan finds himself drawn into a war that has raged for generations. Who will he choose to save and can he himself be saved?
What would you do if you could see the future?
Diana Hawthorne can do just that. Every day she delves into personal prophecies, giving guidance to all the poor souls knocking at her door. There's a catch; while she helps others see where they've been, and to know where they're going…she has no recollection of her own beginnings. Nothing before the age of twenty-four holds residency in her mind.
Then she meets a cocky, self-assured private investigator and takes an immediate disliking to him. But more than that, he’s the first person in all her existence who she can’t read—and she’s been around a long time. Everything about him is a complete void and she’s not sure if it’s blissful or completely annoying. Fate intervenes, putting Diana in his path as she helps him solve a missing girl case.
As pieces begin to fall in and out of place, Diana is forced to make a decision that could unlock her memory but unravel her world.
Being an officer means balancing many conflicting demands. Making the wrong decision can have serious consequences. It takes a special kind of person to cope with the responsibility.
The Officer is an anthology of eleven science fiction short stories by writers from across the globe. It is part of the Newcomer series of scifi anthologies.
Dreams of tomorrow become reality in this fourth collection of bestselling authors and newly emerging writers from Sci-Fi Bridge. From the inner worlds of unforgettable characters to alien planets at the farthest reaches of our galaxy and beyond, our writers examine the human experience from within and without. They hold up a mirror to the human experience. Who are we as a species? Who do we want to be? How do we achieve that greatest vision of ourselves for us and our children?
The hyperdimensional crystalline network allows reality to be reset to past moments in time...
After a routine 'reset' on her homeworld, Elle Hartmut instead awakens on a spaceship. Her body is different, she has new seemingly magical abilities, and she’s told that the fate of known civilization is in her hands.
An alien Darkness is corrupting the Hegemony's worlds. Elle and a team of companions with enhanced abilities like her own embark on an interstellar quest to stop the advancing Darkness. The team's only clue is that fabled relics may hold the key to salvation.
With their worlds already destroyed, the only hope is a 'universal reset' to undo the damage. However, as legends become fact and the lines between magic and science blur, Elle and her friends must unravel ancient secrets before their worlds and loved ones are lost in shadow forever.
If you don't know what Parkrun is, it is a worldwide series of timed 5km events that are free to enter. There's no pressure to get a certain time, or even to run; the point is to enjoy yourself and get a bit fitter. I've been to quite a few different locations now, and all have been very friendly and supportive of all those taking part.
And now, here are some incntives to hide away and not run...
Zona Nox, 3555. James Terrin and his gang of thieves love dominating the war-ravaged streets of his backwater planet. He and his fiercely loyal crew are virtually untouchable as they battle rival gangs, dodge the military police, and escape vicious raiders. But when violent extraterrestrials invade and kill his gang, all James has left is his burning desire for revenge...
Setting aside his former rivalries, James finds himself fighting alongside men he used to despise as his street-wise survival skills clash with the rule-bound corps. While he questions his decision to enlist, his focus remains on a single-minded mission: kill as many aliens as possible.
Can James lead a rag-tag unit against galactic invaders, or will his unorthodox methods end in another bloody massacre?
Night is falling.
The unstoppable Hegemony invasion has reached the very heart of the Confederation. Battle after desperate battle has been fought, and each time, the Confeds have been pushed back, columns of battered and blasted ship retreating from system to system. Now, they prepare to grimly defend the capital world of Megara, the very center of the Confederation.
Tyler Barron prepares for what could be his final battle, a final desperate defense, one last chance to stem the tide of Hegemony conquest and subjugation. The fleet is ready, its exhausted crews prepared to fight with all the strength that remains to them. Still, the enemy is overpoweringly strong, and the odds of victory are slipping quickly away.
But, there is still hope. From unexpected allies. From the grit and determination of the defending fleets and their spacers. And, from a plan so daring it borders on the impossible... a wild and desperate gamble to stem the tide of conquest and halt the enemy.
It is night, and everywhere there is darkness, but the Confederation is not beaten yet. Barron and his comrades will stand, and they will struggle to somehow endure the darkness and fight through to the dawn.
Jain thought he'd never go back.
Ten years had passed since he last had dealings with humans and their machines. He was happy. He'd built a base for himself and his Void Warriors around the barren moon of a gas giant, where they planned to live out their immortal days in peace.
And then humanity came looking for them. Hunting them.
Now they have no choice but to return. But what they find waiting for them in human territory will make them wish they'd never left their new home.
In the aftermath of a battle a ship drifts helplessly in space. Is the strange new warship they were fighting still out there? Will it come back for them? Commander Johnson faces a desperate race to get her destroyer back into action and save her crew.
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Jet Rusco is a man who lives on the edge. A down-and-out wanderer turned to heists in a daily struggle to survive in a far future of colonized worlds ruled by space thugs, warlords and gangsters. He stumbles on alien tech in a heist gone bad in a clash with some ruthless players. Rusco must up his game, build a team of able recruits if he is to defeat the despot who wants to put the tech to use for more sinister reasons than obvious gain. Rusco must decide whether he is to remain a scavenger all his life, or an avenger. The stakes are high when worlds are at great risk and the choice of doom or salvation rests on the toss of the dice.
As the colony grapples with the realization that New Earth is not as uninhabited as they’d once thought, tensions between the colonial settlements rise to new heights, and the Colonial Defense Force finds itself caught in the middle.
When Connor uncovers evidence of a militant colonial faction secretly exploiting the NEIIS, he has to investigate. Connor learns that some of the colonial settlements have been holding back discoveries of their own. He’d thought the NEIIS were a threat to the colony, but he was wrong. They all were, and the truth is beyond anything Connor could have imagined.
Meanwhile, Colonel Sean Quinn’s latest mission brings him off-world to investigate a previously discovered NEIIS settlement. When all communications from home go silent, he must return to New Earth to investigate. Cut off from everything, Sean must lead the crew of a CDF warship against a mysterious foe. Sean must forge a path into the unknown if he’s to have any hope of unraveling the mystery.
Trapped on a hostile world, hunted by pirate bands and abandoned by her fellow captains, Alexis Carew must lead her small band to safety, even though it seems every hand is set against her. Stalked by pirates in the skies above and shadowy, alien figures on the planet below, Alexis must convince former enemies to trust her even as she discovers where the tendrils of her true enemies lead.
One final Orb remains at large in the wild and the Gnosis is dispatched to get it. Lost somewhere in a space station on the edge of civilized space, early intelligence reports suggested it would be a milk run…until a team of Pahxin technicians went missing there. Altering their mission parameters to include rescue, they load up an extra team of marines and head off on the mission.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, AIA operative Christina Dawson closes in on the traitor selling out humanity to the Tol’An. Her people have located an old military base currently occupied by the mercenary group responsible for attacking Gamma Alpha. She gathers a former marine and newly appointed AIA agent to investigate in person.
Under siege and left for dead, the end has finally come for Lucky and the survivors of mankind's failed invasion.
Or has it? A strange new force is altering the balance of power. But will it save humanity, or enslave them once and for all?
Don't ask Lucky. Just give him a weapon and get out of the way.
On her last mission, HMS Invincible discovered an alien threat beyond human understanding: a sentient virus that has already absorbed a number of intelligent races into its multitude and now intends to do the same to humanity. Defeat means the end of everything, the end of existence as nothing more than mindless host-bodies, the end of humanity and its alien allies alike. The stakes could not be higher.
As a deeply divided humanity struggles to prepare a defence, with enemies inside and outside the human sphere just lurking to strike, Invincible is sent deep into alien space on what should have been a simple reconnaissance mission. But, as Captain Shields and his crew begin their mission, it rapidly becomes clear that a juggernaut is bearing down on Earth ...
... And, no matter what they do, they may never make it home again.
Hundreds of years in Earth’s future sees the united global territories striving to colonize the Moon and Mars. The discovery of a clean energy source ended the world’s reliance on fossil fuels overnight, and years after the resulting wars, a new discovery puts the tenuous world peace at risk; that of faster than light travel.
With humanity on the verge of travelling to new solar systems and all the humanitarian and scientific possibilities involved, a discovery by the reconnaissance team turns everything upside down.
The Dvorkans were pushed out of Diakan space, and now their Empire is mired in civil war. But, the Antikitheri have returned, and Emperor Kriss is leveraging their help to regain all that he has lost. Will he succeed and again threaten the UHSF and its allies?
In Kemmar space, after a decade of occupation, a growing insurgency makes occupation costly for the UHSF. When the insurgent tactics prove surprisingly lethal, Admiral Jon Pike is left with an ominous decision to make. The question is, who or what is behind the Kemmar resurgence?
Just beyond human space, the Juttari Empire still threatens the human race with annihilation. Jon Pike has made great gains against the Juttari in recent years. Will the Juttari return and take back what they believe is rightfully theirs?
Humanity remains surrounded by enemies and existential threats. Can Jon Pike continue his winning streak, or will this be the end for him and humanity?
The Federation needs help and Taj volunteers. She takes the team to a distant planet. The fate of her people doesn’t depend on her success, but if she fails, the Furlorians’ hope goes with her.
Wearing that mantle, they hold nothing back as they go into the lion’s den, their cat eyes focused on a singular goal.
The discovery of the Vraxar planetship – Aranol - has revealed to the Confederation how much they are outgunned by the invading aliens. The Space Corps’ successes to date will count for nothing if the largest spaceship in the known universe is allowed to reach human territory.
Fleet Admiral John Duggan is not a man to sit on his hands while there is a chance to act. He sends Captain Charlie Blake on a daring mission deep into Estral Space, to launch a pre-emptive strike against the Aranol and also to rescue the lost battleship Ulterior-2. Blake and his crew aren’t alone - Lieutenant Eric McKinney and his squad are along for the ride and they’re itching to get involved.
What Blake finds is a long-forgotten war, still raging with incredible intensity. Surrounded by enemies, it will take every ounce of his ingenuity to achieve victory. Where ingenuity fails, there are other, more direct options. His spaceship, the ES Cataclysm, is equipped with experimental and potentially devastating weaponry, as the Vraxar will soon discover.
The Aranol has existed for millennia and overseen the fall of a thousand empires. It will not go down without a fight.
The Acolyte Empire and the Clone Defense Force are warring for dominance, spreading chaos through the galaxy.
Devante, the son of the Acolyte Empire's God-Emperor, lead a lavish life in power. His sole devotion has been to free slaves across the galaxy until he discovers a secret tied to the root of the beloved empire he has served.
While the rulers of the galaxy wreak havoc and endanger the lives of all, black op teams have to clean up the mess and keep the mistakes of their leaders quiet.
Danger is ripe in a universe filled with spies, assassins, god-emperors, slaves, queens, and princesses. Follow Devante as he embarks on a path of destruction fueled by vengeance. Who will be victorious in the war for supremacy?
Would you leave behind everything you know to start a new world? Would you destroy that world to save everything you believe in?
Born on the moon of Verygone, on the distant edge of the galaxy, Oren Siris is a loner and a dreamer, yearning for a life beyond his humble home. When an interstellar ship arrives, it will take him on a journey across the stars to the shores of an undiscovered planet. Oren and his team strive to build peace with the indigenous peoples of this beautiful new world, but some unseen force works against their every effort, driving them to the very brink of war.
When the virus which killed millions of people is gone, humanity lives in a planet-wide quarantine enforced by an alien species.
The year is 2355. The deadly virus that killed millions of people is gone, thanks to the quarantine measures put in place by the Criterion, an alien species who appeared just in time to save the human race. In exchange for complying with their tough control measures, the Criterion promised us the technology for interstellar travel. We’ve done all they’ve asked, yet we’re still on Earth with no way of getting into deep space. The Criterion are lying to us. What they don’t know is that we’re lying to them...
The battle-scarred star carrier Flying Dutchman is finally on her way back to Earth, after an exceptionally successful series of missions that have once again Saved The World. The ship needs a serious refit, and her exhausted crew just wants a break from constant clandestine warfare against a vicious and superior enemy. Wishes come true, right? Not for the Merry Band of Pirates.
Winter Mulcahy is the last wizard in the city of Seahaven, WA and all that stands between the fractious preternatural population and total chaos.
Holding the city together by the skin of her teeth, the blood of her friends, and an addiction to stimulants that is slowly killing her, the young wizard is approached by a pair of sidhe lords. They claim that her city is harboring a fugitive who has kidnapped a sidhe prince, and that they are on a mission to rescue the boy. Winter must investigate this fugitive to get to the truth of the kidnapping, discover the cause of the surges of wild magic tearing open rifts between realms across her city, and navigate the deadly waters of preternatural politics before Seahaven both figuratively and literally rips itself apart.
They tell me the country looked different back then. They talk of open borders and flowing rivers. They say the world was green.
But drought swept across the globe and the United States of the past disappeared under a burning sky.
Enora Byrnes lives in the aftermath, a barren world where water has become the global currency. In a life dominated by duty to family and community, Enora is offered a role within an entity that controls everything from water credits to borders. But it becomes clear that not all is as it seems. From the wasted confines of her small town to the bowels of a hidden city, Enora will uncover buried secrets that hide an unthinkable reality.
As truth reveals the brutal face of what she has become, she must ask herself: how far will she go to retain her humanity?
In the zombie apocalypse, the dead are the least of your worries.
Paxton Bale wants nothing more than to lead his youth group and get home to his wife, but when a cosmic event causes people to turn into soulless monsters, he finds himself fighting for his life against the teens he was supposed to keep safe. Trapped at the church, only a miracle can save him. A miracle named Danny, but Danny isn’t exactly who he says he is. Fresh off his last kill, Danny is what people define as a serial killer, and he is finding out that the rules from the old world don’t apply anymore.
In this chance encounter of two men, they each must find the balance of humanity and animalistic survival to make it out of the apocalypse alive.
Marc Gregorio wakes up paralyzed. He can’t feel his own body. Accident? Stroke? The answer, he discovers, is much, much worse. He’s only a copy of Marc—a digital brain without a body, burdened with all Marc’s human memories, but without access to human sensual pleasures. Now called Adam, he contemplates life without actually living. He uses his total web access to patrol cyberspace and prevent evil acts. His good deeds earn him the attention of a power-mad military contractor who will stop at nothing to control the formidable technology for his own ends. Without a body, how will Adam save himself–and the world–from a terrible fate?
Time’s attention must have been elsewhere the moment elderly, grey, unsophisticated Alice Watkins died in her armchair a few days before her birthday in November 2016. It still wasn’t minding what it was doing on Saturn Station in the year 2513. Dr Jim Grossmith, one of the most eminent scientists of the age has devoted his career to The Sleeping Beauty Phenomenon, guarding the beautiful, red-haired young woman who sleeps peacefully, in a mysterious sarcophagus, her life perfectly suspended, her body preserved in a strange fluid. The woman, cocooned in her protective shell has defied scientific analysis for almost four hundred years. History recorded little, only that she is Dr Alexis Langley, a noted scientist of her time. When the sarcophagus opens and vanishes without a trace, leaving the young woman in his care, Jim Grossmith eagerly awaits the day when she can tell him the manner of her preservation. A strange science, lost in the annals of the past? Alien technology? But as he learns her story, Jim Grossmith finds himself faced with an even deeper mystery. He is certain the physical form of Dr Alexis Langley emerged from the sarcophagus, but as for anything else…
What would you do if you found a super intelligent dog only to discover he had valuable information inside his head that could change mankind forever?
The first time I saw him, I had no idea he had recently escaped from a mysterious lab. That he had been created there. I'd been living on the streets which was tough, but preferable to home. Then one day, I stumbled upon this mangy dog being attacked.
I saved him, but then he saved me, and I realized that Muttface wasn't a normal dog. He was crazy intelligent. I'm talking Mensa levels.
When we sought help from a grieving veterinarian named Sully, his clinic was attacked and destroyed by mercenaries. So now here we are, the three of us. On the run across the country against a powerful enemy. Who are they and what do they want with us?
Through the danger, terror, and pain, one thing was becoming clear to me: I have finally found the family I always wanted and I will do anything to keep them safe...
Brent Bolster isn’t worried about the alien who’s just appeared in his bedroom.
For one thing, Brent is an approved PI and immune from abduction. For another, he has something hidden under his pillow: a snub-nosed pulse pistol.
So everything will be fine. Probably.
Join Brent as he tackles Earth’s new overlords and uncovers a deadly plan. Mainly by accident.
After an encounter with an alien, Brent loses a week and a half. He has no idea where he’s been, but when he sees the glamorous Maisie Richmond, she triggers memories that could solve the mystery of his missing time. Maisie has a wit that could cut through toughened steel as well as the kind of good looks that can stop traffic. Brent is in no doubt: she’s trouble.
Things could get interesting. And somewhat...strange.
But Brent will work his hardest to solve this mystery. Just as soon as he's had his coffee.
After The Fall the scattered pockets of civilization that survived choose to live in ignorance of the past. No-one wants to know what caused the apocalypse. No-one, except Ethan
As a boy, Ethan believed in the guardians – mysterious lights in the night sky that, according to folklore, safeguard survivors from The Maddening. This horrific sickness mutated men and women into Roamers; savage nomads, stripped of their humanity. But when a Roamer attack killed his parents, Ethan’s faith was shattered and replaced with a hunger to know the truth.
One night Ethan watches a light grow bright in the night sky and crash to the planet’s surface near a ruined city. There he finds Maria, a descendant of the pre-Fall civilization which is trapped off-world and unable to return to the poisoned planet. Maria has risked everything to find a Planetsider; a man or woman with an inborn resistance to The Maddening. She begs Ethan to help to save her people, and in return he will finally learn the truth.
But the revelations come at a terrible cost and Ethan finds himself drawn into a war that has raged for generations. Who will he choose to save and can he himself be saved?
What would you do if you could see the future?
Diana Hawthorne can do just that. Every day she delves into personal prophecies, giving guidance to all the poor souls knocking at her door. There's a catch; while she helps others see where they've been, and to know where they're going…she has no recollection of her own beginnings. Nothing before the age of twenty-four holds residency in her mind.
Then she meets a cocky, self-assured private investigator and takes an immediate disliking to him. But more than that, he’s the first person in all her existence who she can’t read—and she’s been around a long time. Everything about him is a complete void and she’s not sure if it’s blissful or completely annoying. Fate intervenes, putting Diana in his path as she helps him solve a missing girl case.
As pieces begin to fall in and out of place, Diana is forced to make a decision that could unlock her memory but unravel her world.
Being an officer means balancing many conflicting demands. Making the wrong decision can have serious consequences. It takes a special kind of person to cope with the responsibility.
The Officer is an anthology of eleven science fiction short stories by writers from across the globe. It is part of the Newcomer series of scifi anthologies.
Dreams of tomorrow become reality in this fourth collection of bestselling authors and newly emerging writers from Sci-Fi Bridge. From the inner worlds of unforgettable characters to alien planets at the farthest reaches of our galaxy and beyond, our writers examine the human experience from within and without. They hold up a mirror to the human experience. Who are we as a species? Who do we want to be? How do we achieve that greatest vision of ourselves for us and our children?
The hyperdimensional crystalline network allows reality to be reset to past moments in time...
After a routine 'reset' on her homeworld, Elle Hartmut instead awakens on a spaceship. Her body is different, she has new seemingly magical abilities, and she’s told that the fate of known civilization is in her hands.
An alien Darkness is corrupting the Hegemony's worlds. Elle and a team of companions with enhanced abilities like her own embark on an interstellar quest to stop the advancing Darkness. The team's only clue is that fabled relics may hold the key to salvation.
With their worlds already destroyed, the only hope is a 'universal reset' to undo the damage. However, as legends become fact and the lines between magic and science blur, Elle and her friends must unravel ancient secrets before their worlds and loved ones are lost in shadow forever.
November 10, 2018
An Interview with Kate Hodson
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
In my interview today, on the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Armistice at the end of the Great War, I am talking to Kate Hodson, author of My Dear Old Boys. Now, most of you will know me as a science fiction author and are used to this slot being given to a scifi or fantasy writer. However, this month felt right to highlight some very personal stories of people who fought so many years ago.
What made you decide to write this book?
The initial interest to find out about the Old Boys who had died in the war came as I was sat in Chapel during preparations for the 100 year anniversary in November 2014. I remember looking at the red panels where the names of the fallen are written and wondering who these men really were. We had their regiments and date of death but we knew nothing about their lives. It was here I determined to find out as much as I could about them.
The decision to write the book came in July this year when I visited four of the graves of our Old Boys in France. The sheer number of graves laid out in endless rows was overwhelming. When I looked at the grave of 2nd Lieut. H. G. Shapland, one of the most prolific letter writers to George and Mary Corner, the lively voice I had heard contrasted with this silent stone and I felt I owed it to him to tell his story and those of the other Old Boys. Few might know the stories of those in that cemetery but I did know something about Herbert; he deserved it have his told. And that was the starting point for turning the research into a book.
What is the origin of the title? Is it a quote from George Corner’s letters?
George Corner was the headmaster of Wellington School. ‘My Dear Old Boys’ was the opening of every letter he wrote to the former pupils serving during the war and the community after the war when he was trying to get a shared interest and investment in the building of the Chapel. Although I hadn’t planned to write about Corner, the passion of his letters and clear affection he had for the boys struck me. Here was a man who was devoted to making sure his Old Boys would never be forgotten. I began to realise that it was down to him that we had such a rich insight into the impact of war on our small community. George Corner is the overriding presence in the book and his story frames the Roll of Honour in Chapter 3. I think he was an exceptional man whose story is extraordinary. He gave the School so much more than many realise and he did it with great affection, drive and, at times, at great personal cost. Without his efforts, the school would be a very different place today.
Is the building shown on the cover that chapel?
Yes. The building on the cover is the one that Corner dreamed would be a 'fitting memorial' to the Old Boys who died, but his ambition to build it was staggering. Wellington School was not a rich or large school and the road to completing it was indeed long and hard. It took 12 years. Corner is reported to have put much of his own money into building it when funds were low. It is believed that at the time of his retirement he was owed between £6,500 and £8,000, that’s around £400,000 in today’s money. Corner’s attention to detail was meticulous. Every aspect had significance. He made a point of using local craftsmen and sourcing local products. He helped with the cutting of the wood and drilling of the stone. He was 'everywhere'. The building was never quite finished to the specification he had wanted, but it was dedicated in 1931 and has been in use ever since.
How did you collect the information to put the stories together? What were the most useful resources for your research?
The research into the 37 took four years to complete. The School magazines were an excellent starting point because all bar two of the Old Boys had an obituary which detailed their date of death and regiment. From this point, I was able to go to the CWGC website to find their regimental number and place of burial. The magazines also contained hundreds of ‘Extracts from the Head’s Letter Bag’ which allowed me to hear the voices of the Old Boys who had written to Corner.
The next stage involved much work on Ancestry.co.uk. Here I could access birth, marriage, death, probate and military records. I could also access the Census records so I could work out who else lived with our Old Boys in various years. This then enabled me to follow each member of the family as far as I could. Often it was a case of trying to fit the pieces together. Ancestry also contains a link to other people researching the particular person you are researching and this was particularly helpful in getting in touch with relatives.
Tell us about one of the 37. Someone whose story struck a chord for you.
Over the four years of research, the story of 2nd Lieut. Colin Graham Gordon has always stood out for me, initially because of the tone of his letters but because he came to embody the waste of potential the war caused. He was in France in 1914 with the London Scottish and wrote very honestly about what he was enduring and the awful sights he had seen. His letters were both amusing and ironic in places yet there are moments of anguish which bring the horror of battle to an audience who probably still thought the fighting would be over by Christmas. In his School career, Gordon had been the pupil who excelled in everything. He was a fantastic sportsman, held the record of 100m for years, an academic and an accomplished actor. He was also very high up in the O. T. C.
Gordon was killed as he led his troops out of a trench in the early hours of the Battle of the Somme. He was shot through the head and died instantly. He was buried in The Gordon Cemetery which is a small cemetery on the road to Mametz. He is one of six officers who died on the 1st July. Their graves were wired in and marked. The other Gordons who died (nearly two hundred) are buried ‘somewhere’ in the cemetery. This intimate cemetery tucked away on the Mametz road, is particularly striking. It had been the site of the reserve trench during the fighting.
During the research, one of the things that struck me was that some of our most revered pupils who died appeared to have been almost forgotten as no living relatives seemed looking for them. There were many others whose school careers and military careers lacked the heights of Colin Gordon’s yet there were people who valued them and were actively looking to find out more about them. Perhaps we assume that those who excel in school will always go on to make the biggest marks but I’m not sure this is so.
In 2016, I was able to purchase the Shrouds of the Somme figure in his name and this now hangs in Chapel.
Do you feel close to these people? How did you cope with their individual tragedies?
When I started this research I never imagined becoming emotionally attached to men I would never meet and who lived a hundred or so years ago, but I really have. When I think of a name of one of our fallen, I don’t think of a name on a chapel wall, I think of an actual person. Their letters to George Corner convey their voices, their courage and their love for the School. They are alive and yet I read the letters knowing what will happen to them, which makes it all the more poignant. I remember watching celebrities on Who Do You Think You Are become emotional when sad stories were related and thinking it was all an act to make good television, but now I feel that there is a connection on a human level to tragedies even though the victims are not known to us in the conventional sense.
Many of the stories moved me. There are some men who always seem to be close to being recognized for their actions yet never were. There are men whose death left children without a father. In the case of Harry James Martin, his death in 1915 was followed by his wife’s in 1917, leaving three children orphaned. There are some men who served from early 1915, Pastfield being one, and who died in the last weeks of the war, over three year later.
Thank you so much for this insight into the lives of people who gave so much.
Kate Hodson lives in Wellington with her ever-patient husband and two boys. She joined Wellington School in 1999 as an English teacher and is now Head of English. Having studied a degree in American Studies (Literature) at Sussex University she moved back to the West Country and completed a MA and then a PhD at Exeter University. Though she loves teaching, she spends her free time reading and researching. 'My Dear Old Boys' is her first book.You can follow her on Facebook and on Twitter.
October 27, 2018
The October Round-up of Scifi Books
This Indian Summer has been a great boost to my time outdoors running qualification sessions (and indoor sessions for that matter, too). In fact, I might just see my 200th succesful NICAS candidate and my 200th succesful NNAS candidate this year.
This month I'm bringing you a selection of space marine and space police books...
Outgunned and outmanned on a remote alien world, their only hope is a recruit who doesn’t even want to be there.
Plucked from his life in academia, Jack Forge must find a way to survive as a Fleet Marine recruit. When the Chitin attack, he is forced to fight a war he never wanted any part of. The only way out is to win the war, and Jack Forge will do whatever it takes to make that happen. In the process, he just might save humanity.
A young lieutenant. A fleet of alien invaders. Will first contact be humanity’s last stand?
In his short military career, Lieutenant Warden has already battled insurgent groups, criminal gangs, and intergalactic pirates. When a distant colony sends out a distress signal, he and his fellow space commandos can't wait to transfer their consciousness and launch their clone bodies into action. But no amount of enthusiasm could've prepared Warden for humanity's first alien encounter and the ensuing bloodbath.
After his captain falls to the attack, Warden feels both pride and fear as he assumes first in command. Outmanned and outgunned, the confident commando must find a way to eliminate the aliens before they slaughter an entire human colony. Will Warden’s troops prove they are made of tougher stuff, or have they finally met their fatal match?
Ajax answers the call of duty and becomes an Einherjar space marine, charged with defending humanity against hideous alien monsters in furious combat across the galaxy.
The Garm, as they came to be called, emerged from the deepest parts of uncharted space, devouring all that lay before them, a great swarm that scoured entire star systems of all organic life. This space borne hive, this extinction fleet, made no attempts to communicate and offered no mercy. Such was the ferocity of their assault upon the civilization of humanity that our own wars and schemes were made petty in comparison.
Humanity has always been a deadly organism, and we would not so easily be made the prey. Unified against a common enemy, we fought back, meeting the swarm with soldiers upon every front.
We were resplendent in our fury, and yet, despite the terrible slaughter we visited upon the enemy, world after world still fell beneath ravenous tooth and wicked claw. For every beast slain in the field, another was swiftly hatched to take its place and humanity was faced with a grim war of attrition.
After a decade of bitter galactic conflict, it was all humanity could to do slow the advance of the swarm and with each passing year we came closer to extinction. The grinding cost of war mounted. The realization set in that without a radical shift in tactics and technology the forces of humanity would run out of soldiers before it ran out of bullets.
In desperate response to the real threat of total annihilation, humanity created the Einherjar. Fearless new warriors with frightening new weapons who were sent to fight the wolves at the gate.
We hide in shadows. Our planet is lost. We are the last humans, and we must go home.
Two thousand years ago, aliens destroyed Earth. Our fleets shattered. Billions died. The last humans fled a burning planet, heading to the stars
Today we are still refugees. Hungry. Afraid. Our enemies hunt us everywhere.
So we hide. On distant asteroids. In rundown space stations. In deep caves on frozen worlds. And we dream.
Of green hills. Blue skies. Golden fields. We dream of Earth.
And for the first time, we have hope.
A few of us, just a handful of brave souls, form the Heirs of Earth. We are humans who stand tall. Who fight back. Aliens call us terrorists. The humans we save call us heroes. We have starships, weapons, and warriors. We can bring humanity home.
Earth is far. We have not seen her in many generations. But we have not forgotten. Earth is our heritage. Earth is our birthright. We will return!
Alone and unafraid. Sometimes you prevent war by hunting down your enemies.
Integrated with a superdreadnought, the artificial intelligence known as Reynolds takes his ship across the universe in search of the elusive Kurtherians. He comes to a revelation. He’s better in the company of living creatures.
He needs a crew. He needs information. And he needs to continue his search and destroy mission.
Needing a crew and getting a crew are two completely different things. Reynolds is out of his element as he tries to reach out and make friends. Through it all, he has his vessel, the superdreadnought, the most powerful warship in the galaxy.
James McGill is sent to the Core Worlds!
In an unprecedented first, Earth sends a message to Mogwa Prime. Unfortunately, the messenger is not met with enthusiasm. Misunderstandings soon threaten all of Humanity. Forced to prove Earth can serve the Empire better than any rival, McGill does his best.
Eager to prove our worth to the Galactics, the frontier war between Rigel and Earth is expanded to Storm World. Circled by six moons, the planet is ravaged by wild storms and tides. Battles are fought in raging hurricanes, and death stalks the soldiers on both sides.
McGill grimly fights and dies in the mud until the job gets done, but will it be enough to satisfy the angry Mogwa?
A perplexing distress call. A missing crew. Only one marine can save them.
Sergeant Andrea “Andy” Dolan leads a squad of fearless marines into the depths of space. After the Star Chaser receives a distress call from the star base Zenith, Andy’s squad is sent to investigate. When all heck breaks lose, there is only one person who can save the crew of the Zenith and her own squad.
Desperate to escape a life of poverty on his desolate home planet, Ryck Lysander enlists in the United Federation Marine Corps, hoping to make a better future for himself. However, Ryck soon discovers that the Corps is more than a means of escaping his former life as he is pushed beyond the very limits of his strength and willpower.
From bootcamp brawls to skirmishes with galactic pirates, Ryck's new life presents him with unimaginable adventures and forces him to prove his mettle as he forges his new identity and fights to earn his place as one of the Brotherhood of Marines.
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life.
A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case - until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder: a covert takeover bid by a shadowy figure, Aurora (who may once have been human but certainly isn't now), who believes the people of the Glitter Band should no longer be in charge of their own destiny.
Dreyfus discovers that to save something precious, you may have to destroy part of it.
Security Lieutenant Dave is looking forward to some simple cases and patching things up with his wife. His handling of a terrorist attack has gained him acclaim and some new friends in high places, but he is still closely involved with Arancha Station's mob boss.
When the space station manager is killed in a new and worrying way, Dave realises that he's got possibly the biggest case of his career. Unfortunately, as soon as his new boss arrives with reinforcements, he is relegated to monitoring data and assigned a rookie partner to babysit.
Dave needs to find something that will crack the case open before the killer can strike again.
Half-alien Mark Praed’s mind-reading powers make him the right man to complete demanding assignments for the Commonwealth Intelligence Service. When his last mission leaves him betrayed and tortured, he faces perils worse than intergalactic traitors and spies: a new job and a partner. Forced to transfer from CIS to the Commonwealth’s counter terrorist task force, Praed is partnered with Alexandra Lansing.
Alex is a by-the-book task force veteran of two years who isn’t fond of change. And the auburn-haired beauty is far from happy working with a partner who can read her mind whenever he feels like it. Their first operation together is an easy one: Jonathan Reul is suspected of selling arms from The Groves, a resort planet he owns. They are to watch him and discover if task force suspicions are correct.
After working solo for two years at CIS, Praed is finding it difficult working with a partner. Alex wants to micromanage him, and her interfering annoys him. Added to that is her intense curiosity about his history. Her constant questions are too invasive for his liking. But as ghosts from his past rear their ugly heads, the team’s simple observe-and-report operation quickly becomes a life or death battle. Can they come together and apprehend their quarry, or will he slip away?
SpaceCorp has established a cislunar colony at the Earth Moon Lagrange Point #1, 55,000 km from the surface of the Moon towards Earth. It consists of twelve Einstein-class space stations orbiting the Lagrange Point in a 60,000-km diameter Lissajous orbit. Each of these space stations carries a crew of around 300 officers, astronauts, and able spacemen, plus a contingent of 700 to 1000 scientists and engineers. CisLuna was a happy place, until a pretty young flight surgeon is discovered nude and hanging by her feet from the ceiling of her cabin. This being CisLuna’s first major crime, Detective Sergeant Roy Stone is immediately dispatched from Vandenberg up to CisLuna to put things right. The SSS Wm Borucki on the cover, beautifully rendered by master space artist Douglas Shrock, is named for the Principal Investigator of the Kepler Mission renowned for discovering over 2000 exoplanets.
This month I'm bringing you a selection of space marine and space police books...
Outgunned and outmanned on a remote alien world, their only hope is a recruit who doesn’t even want to be there.
Plucked from his life in academia, Jack Forge must find a way to survive as a Fleet Marine recruit. When the Chitin attack, he is forced to fight a war he never wanted any part of. The only way out is to win the war, and Jack Forge will do whatever it takes to make that happen. In the process, he just might save humanity.
A young lieutenant. A fleet of alien invaders. Will first contact be humanity’s last stand?
In his short military career, Lieutenant Warden has already battled insurgent groups, criminal gangs, and intergalactic pirates. When a distant colony sends out a distress signal, he and his fellow space commandos can't wait to transfer their consciousness and launch their clone bodies into action. But no amount of enthusiasm could've prepared Warden for humanity's first alien encounter and the ensuing bloodbath.
After his captain falls to the attack, Warden feels both pride and fear as he assumes first in command. Outmanned and outgunned, the confident commando must find a way to eliminate the aliens before they slaughter an entire human colony. Will Warden’s troops prove they are made of tougher stuff, or have they finally met their fatal match?
Ajax answers the call of duty and becomes an Einherjar space marine, charged with defending humanity against hideous alien monsters in furious combat across the galaxy.
The Garm, as they came to be called, emerged from the deepest parts of uncharted space, devouring all that lay before them, a great swarm that scoured entire star systems of all organic life. This space borne hive, this extinction fleet, made no attempts to communicate and offered no mercy. Such was the ferocity of their assault upon the civilization of humanity that our own wars and schemes were made petty in comparison.
Humanity has always been a deadly organism, and we would not so easily be made the prey. Unified against a common enemy, we fought back, meeting the swarm with soldiers upon every front.
We were resplendent in our fury, and yet, despite the terrible slaughter we visited upon the enemy, world after world still fell beneath ravenous tooth and wicked claw. For every beast slain in the field, another was swiftly hatched to take its place and humanity was faced with a grim war of attrition.
After a decade of bitter galactic conflict, it was all humanity could to do slow the advance of the swarm and with each passing year we came closer to extinction. The grinding cost of war mounted. The realization set in that without a radical shift in tactics and technology the forces of humanity would run out of soldiers before it ran out of bullets.
In desperate response to the real threat of total annihilation, humanity created the Einherjar. Fearless new warriors with frightening new weapons who were sent to fight the wolves at the gate.
We hide in shadows. Our planet is lost. We are the last humans, and we must go home.
Two thousand years ago, aliens destroyed Earth. Our fleets shattered. Billions died. The last humans fled a burning planet, heading to the stars
Today we are still refugees. Hungry. Afraid. Our enemies hunt us everywhere.
So we hide. On distant asteroids. In rundown space stations. In deep caves on frozen worlds. And we dream.
Of green hills. Blue skies. Golden fields. We dream of Earth.
And for the first time, we have hope.
A few of us, just a handful of brave souls, form the Heirs of Earth. We are humans who stand tall. Who fight back. Aliens call us terrorists. The humans we save call us heroes. We have starships, weapons, and warriors. We can bring humanity home.
Earth is far. We have not seen her in many generations. But we have not forgotten. Earth is our heritage. Earth is our birthright. We will return!
Alone and unafraid. Sometimes you prevent war by hunting down your enemies.
Integrated with a superdreadnought, the artificial intelligence known as Reynolds takes his ship across the universe in search of the elusive Kurtherians. He comes to a revelation. He’s better in the company of living creatures.
He needs a crew. He needs information. And he needs to continue his search and destroy mission.
Needing a crew and getting a crew are two completely different things. Reynolds is out of his element as he tries to reach out and make friends. Through it all, he has his vessel, the superdreadnought, the most powerful warship in the galaxy.
James McGill is sent to the Core Worlds!
In an unprecedented first, Earth sends a message to Mogwa Prime. Unfortunately, the messenger is not met with enthusiasm. Misunderstandings soon threaten all of Humanity. Forced to prove Earth can serve the Empire better than any rival, McGill does his best.
Eager to prove our worth to the Galactics, the frontier war between Rigel and Earth is expanded to Storm World. Circled by six moons, the planet is ravaged by wild storms and tides. Battles are fought in raging hurricanes, and death stalks the soldiers on both sides.
McGill grimly fights and dies in the mud until the job gets done, but will it be enough to satisfy the angry Mogwa?
A perplexing distress call. A missing crew. Only one marine can save them.
Sergeant Andrea “Andy” Dolan leads a squad of fearless marines into the depths of space. After the Star Chaser receives a distress call from the star base Zenith, Andy’s squad is sent to investigate. When all heck breaks lose, there is only one person who can save the crew of the Zenith and her own squad.
Desperate to escape a life of poverty on his desolate home planet, Ryck Lysander enlists in the United Federation Marine Corps, hoping to make a better future for himself. However, Ryck soon discovers that the Corps is more than a means of escaping his former life as he is pushed beyond the very limits of his strength and willpower.
From bootcamp brawls to skirmishes with galactic pirates, Ryck's new life presents him with unimaginable adventures and forces him to prove his mettle as he forges his new identity and fights to earn his place as one of the Brotherhood of Marines.
Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life.
A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case - until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder: a covert takeover bid by a shadowy figure, Aurora (who may once have been human but certainly isn't now), who believes the people of the Glitter Band should no longer be in charge of their own destiny.
Dreyfus discovers that to save something precious, you may have to destroy part of it.
Security Lieutenant Dave is looking forward to some simple cases and patching things up with his wife. His handling of a terrorist attack has gained him acclaim and some new friends in high places, but he is still closely involved with Arancha Station's mob boss.
When the space station manager is killed in a new and worrying way, Dave realises that he's got possibly the biggest case of his career. Unfortunately, as soon as his new boss arrives with reinforcements, he is relegated to monitoring data and assigned a rookie partner to babysit.
Dave needs to find something that will crack the case open before the killer can strike again.
Half-alien Mark Praed’s mind-reading powers make him the right man to complete demanding assignments for the Commonwealth Intelligence Service. When his last mission leaves him betrayed and tortured, he faces perils worse than intergalactic traitors and spies: a new job and a partner. Forced to transfer from CIS to the Commonwealth’s counter terrorist task force, Praed is partnered with Alexandra Lansing.
Alex is a by-the-book task force veteran of two years who isn’t fond of change. And the auburn-haired beauty is far from happy working with a partner who can read her mind whenever he feels like it. Their first operation together is an easy one: Jonathan Reul is suspected of selling arms from The Groves, a resort planet he owns. They are to watch him and discover if task force suspicions are correct.
After working solo for two years at CIS, Praed is finding it difficult working with a partner. Alex wants to micromanage him, and her interfering annoys him. Added to that is her intense curiosity about his history. Her constant questions are too invasive for his liking. But as ghosts from his past rear their ugly heads, the team’s simple observe-and-report operation quickly becomes a life or death battle. Can they come together and apprehend their quarry, or will he slip away?
SpaceCorp has established a cislunar colony at the Earth Moon Lagrange Point #1, 55,000 km from the surface of the Moon towards Earth. It consists of twelve Einstein-class space stations orbiting the Lagrange Point in a 60,000-km diameter Lissajous orbit. Each of these space stations carries a crew of around 300 officers, astronauts, and able spacemen, plus a contingent of 700 to 1000 scientists and engineers. CisLuna was a happy place, until a pretty young flight surgeon is discovered nude and hanging by her feet from the ceiling of her cabin. This being CisLuna’s first major crime, Detective Sergeant Roy Stone is immediately dispatched from Vandenberg up to CisLuna to put things right. The SSS Wm Borucki on the cover, beautifully rendered by master space artist Douglas Shrock, is named for the Principal Investigator of the Kepler Mission renowned for discovering over 2000 exoplanets.
October 5, 2018
An Interview with Yakov Merkin
Autumn is hitting hard, and I've been doing a lot of tidying in the garden. Just finished raking up huge piles of leaves, ready for the next wind to bring down another carpet of them. The hammock is tidied away and the fish are on winter feed. At least the new grass seed has taken and the areas of lawn killed during the construction of the shed and decking are shooting well.
I'm writing this article a little ahead of time. As you read it, I'm on windswept Dartmoor. If the forecast is right, the rain will be at its height as I take my latest bunch of trainees out for some section attack practice.
Hey ho, on with the rest of the post. In my interview today, I am talking to Yakov Merkin, author of A Greater Duty and A Looming Shadow.
I see that A Greater Duty and A Looming Shadow are part of a series. Can you tell us a bit more?
A Greater Duty is the first book in my Galaxy Ascendant space opera series, which I currently plan to be a 7 book main series, with other stories in the universe to follow. The series' primary inspirations are the space opera stories that I grew up with and loved for a long time, such as Star Wars, Mass Effect, and to a lesser extent, Star Trek. The series is grand-scope, in a galaxy completely of my own creation, and without any human characters! Lots of action, of course, intrigue, and more.
Why do you write?
I started writing out of a love of the sci-fi and fantasy stories I grew up enjoying, and as time went on it became more of a compulsion. These stories are in my head, and they have to come out. It's also taken on a spiritual/religious connotation for me, as a religious Jew, as I am essentially playing G-d with my universe, and my writing has truly given me a better understanding of our world. Additionally, this is just something I really enjoy, and I plan to eventually make this my full-time job.
How long on average does it take you to write a book?
It's actually been changing the longer I write, specifically, it's getting faster. My first book (counting from when I began seriously writing) took a couple of years, while successive books took around a year or so each (not including editing), and my latest, book 3 in the Galaxy Ascendant series, will be completed in less than half a year if I keep my current pace for the next month or two. This is partly intentional, as a result of better time management and understanding the realities of the indie publishing scene, but it also just feels easier the longer I do it.
Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer to just see where an idea takes you?
Definitely outlining, though I don't write overly detailed ones, so I have some flexibility as I go. I outline chapter by chapter, with a paragraph or two of what needs to happen in the chapter, and who is the viewpoint character for that chapter. This follows from my mention above of how I am almost playing G-d with my universe, in that there needs to be a plan - not just for individual books, but beyond that to future books and series. Outlining also helps make the writing process go faster; there's a lot less time wasted figuring out what needs to happen, and I've yet to get stuck anywhere with plot issues, as I (almost always) finish the entire outline well in advance of starting to write the book.
Yeah. I don't go anywhere without my plot book. Any time I'm at a loose end I can whip it out and build a little more.
How do you make time to write?
This is an important question, and I often see people talking about how hard it is to find time to write. In my view, that's the wrong approach. especially if you aren't able to write full time, it is on you to make time to write, even if only for a few minutes a day. To use myself as an example, I am currently serving, and for my first couple months, during training, writing was very tough. I was on base all week, with no computer and 1 hour of phone time per day. So I brought a pen, and a small pad of paper I could put in my pocket, and during little 10, 15, 20-minute breaks during the day I jotted down as much as I could. The result? In about 2 months, I wrote a 20,000 word, 5 part short story, and 10,000 words toward another story. On my new base, where I have more phone access and time, I have, over two months, with my phone and a bluetooth keyboard, written over 60,000 words toward the third book in the Galaxy Ascendant series. To sum up, there are almost no situations in which one actually has no time to write. Even a few minutes a day, every day, keeps things moving, and you'd be surprised how many words you can write in 10 minute bursts.
Tell me about it. All the things I've written in 'hurry-up-and-wait' time! I can't settle down to 'proper' writing in a short time slot, but I can do productive work on all the other bits of crafting a story.
Yakov Merkin grew up in New York City, though now lives on the other side of the world in Israel. He holds a Master’s Degree in history, though the plan was always to write science fiction and fantasy. The universe in his head had to get out one way or the other. He can be found on Twitter @YakovMerkin, and at yakovmerkin.com.
Besides writing, he has helped build houses, worked on a farm, and practices Krav Maga, as well as (amateur level) parkour.
I'm writing this article a little ahead of time. As you read it, I'm on windswept Dartmoor. If the forecast is right, the rain will be at its height as I take my latest bunch of trainees out for some section attack practice.
Hey ho, on with the rest of the post. In my interview today, I am talking to Yakov Merkin, author of A Greater Duty and A Looming Shadow.
I see that A Greater Duty and A Looming Shadow are part of a series. Can you tell us a bit more?
A Greater Duty is the first book in my Galaxy Ascendant space opera series, which I currently plan to be a 7 book main series, with other stories in the universe to follow. The series' primary inspirations are the space opera stories that I grew up with and loved for a long time, such as Star Wars, Mass Effect, and to a lesser extent, Star Trek. The series is grand-scope, in a galaxy completely of my own creation, and without any human characters! Lots of action, of course, intrigue, and more.
Why do you write?
I started writing out of a love of the sci-fi and fantasy stories I grew up enjoying, and as time went on it became more of a compulsion. These stories are in my head, and they have to come out. It's also taken on a spiritual/religious connotation for me, as a religious Jew, as I am essentially playing G-d with my universe, and my writing has truly given me a better understanding of our world. Additionally, this is just something I really enjoy, and I plan to eventually make this my full-time job.
How long on average does it take you to write a book?
It's actually been changing the longer I write, specifically, it's getting faster. My first book (counting from when I began seriously writing) took a couple of years, while successive books took around a year or so each (not including editing), and my latest, book 3 in the Galaxy Ascendant series, will be completed in less than half a year if I keep my current pace for the next month or two. This is partly intentional, as a result of better time management and understanding the realities of the indie publishing scene, but it also just feels easier the longer I do it.
Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer to just see where an idea takes you?
Definitely outlining, though I don't write overly detailed ones, so I have some flexibility as I go. I outline chapter by chapter, with a paragraph or two of what needs to happen in the chapter, and who is the viewpoint character for that chapter. This follows from my mention above of how I am almost playing G-d with my universe, in that there needs to be a plan - not just for individual books, but beyond that to future books and series. Outlining also helps make the writing process go faster; there's a lot less time wasted figuring out what needs to happen, and I've yet to get stuck anywhere with plot issues, as I (almost always) finish the entire outline well in advance of starting to write the book.
Yeah. I don't go anywhere without my plot book. Any time I'm at a loose end I can whip it out and build a little more.
How do you make time to write?
This is an important question, and I often see people talking about how hard it is to find time to write. In my view, that's the wrong approach. especially if you aren't able to write full time, it is on you to make time to write, even if only for a few minutes a day. To use myself as an example, I am currently serving, and for my first couple months, during training, writing was very tough. I was on base all week, with no computer and 1 hour of phone time per day. So I brought a pen, and a small pad of paper I could put in my pocket, and during little 10, 15, 20-minute breaks during the day I jotted down as much as I could. The result? In about 2 months, I wrote a 20,000 word, 5 part short story, and 10,000 words toward another story. On my new base, where I have more phone access and time, I have, over two months, with my phone and a bluetooth keyboard, written over 60,000 words toward the third book in the Galaxy Ascendant series. To sum up, there are almost no situations in which one actually has no time to write. Even a few minutes a day, every day, keeps things moving, and you'd be surprised how many words you can write in 10 minute bursts.
Tell me about it. All the things I've written in 'hurry-up-and-wait' time! I can't settle down to 'proper' writing in a short time slot, but I can do productive work on all the other bits of crafting a story.
Yakov Merkin grew up in New York City, though now lives on the other side of the world in Israel. He holds a Master’s Degree in history, though the plan was always to write science fiction and fantasy. The universe in his head had to get out one way or the other. He can be found on Twitter @YakovMerkin, and at yakovmerkin.com.Besides writing, he has helped build houses, worked on a farm, and practices Krav Maga, as well as (amateur level) parkour.
September 27, 2018
September Roundup of Scifi Books
Well, there's not much to report since last time I wrote. Term has started again, so me real job has kicked back in with a vengeance. Still, I did manage a weekend in Snowdonia earlier in the month, taking about 60 young teenagers into the mountains walking and scrambling.
Don't let the picture fool you. We had 40mph wind, heavy rain, 5m visibility, and sub-zero temperature on the summit. Great training!
And here are the books you want...
War... like none that has come before.
The Hegemony has launched the invasion Tyler Barron and his Confederation comrades have feared, and all the Rim is ablaze with the fires of war and destruction.
The Hegemony has brought its vast fleets, its advanced technology, and its endless legions of grim cyborg warriors to impose its system of rigid genetic hierarchy over all humanity on the Rim.
The Confederation fleet is outnumbered and outmatched, but they will fight nevertheless, struggling and dying to hold back the onslaught any way they can, even as the Marines they leave behind dig in and prepare to defend worlds swallowed up by the advancing battle lines.
Barron and his people will fight, they will fight like demons unleashed, and Jake ‘Raptor’ Stockton will lead his wings of strikefighters in one desperate attack after another into the teeth of the enemy armada, but time is running out…even as the enemy pushes relentlessly toward the Confederation’s Core and final victory.
One maverick crew against the Cluster's deadliest criminal organization...
Mike Starrunner, captain of an independent space freighter, is no stranger to trouble. But things get hotter than he bargained for when he lands on a planet occupied by Travellers. These grisly space pirates have a reputation so dire, even aliens won’t mess with them.
But even aliens aren't as badass as Shifters.
Mike and his crew are Shifters--alt-humans with the ability to Shift into animal form. When they impulsively rescue three of the Travellers' victims, they stumble on a deadly plot that spans the Cluster—and it's focused like a laser beam on their homeworld.
From deep space to the slums of Shiftertown, the chase is on.
The threat of invaders is gone, and Earth has been bartered away as a price for peace.
Yet, the human world of New Spero is thriving and full of hope.
Joining the rank of the Gatekeepers, Dean and Mary set off to explore worlds connected by the mysterious portals.
When they stumble upon a strange symbol, they are led to an ancient object, one that sets them on an unstoppable path.
The journey takes them through multiple worlds, before they can find what they’re searching for. Long ago, the ancient race called the Theos vanished without a trace, and have been next to forgotten for centuries. Do they still exist?
Dean intends to find out, but when he’s faced with the truth, he fears everything he loves will be lost.
Some think the City of Jade Spires is a utopia. It very much isn’t.
Holly Drake is in prison for defending herself from a murderer. That’s the kind of corruption thriving in the city where evidence is destroyed and the innocent go to jail.
But everything’s about to change.
Someone exonerates Holly and she walks free. She has no idea who. Or why. But they have a job for her. Steal back the Eye of the Colossus, a priceless jewel. It’s about to be moved off-planet, and when that happens, the trail will go cold.
Out of prison with no other work on the horizon, the job is a gift. If only she knew how to pull off a heist. The clock is ticking. If she can assemble a team and pretend like she knows how to do this, maybe she can fake it long enough to do a job better suited to a master-thief. Why Holly? Who’s pulling her strings? And just how far across the moon system will she have to go to finish the job?
A boy vanishes. But not just any boy.
1899 years after the Catastrophe, Bridges is owned by the Mob. As the city's steam-driven infrastructure fails, a new faction rises: the Red Dogs.
Jacqueline Spadros is haunted by her best friend Air's death, killed as he tried to stop her sale to the Spadros crime syndicate ten years ago. Now in an unwilling marriage to the city's biggest drug lord, she secretly runs a small-time private eye business to earn enough money to escape.
Air's little brother disappears from his back porch. And now someone is following Jacqui.
Dark, gritty, psychological, multi-layered Victorian-inspired far future detective noir that keeps the reader guessing to the very end.
Someone needs to be alive to call for help.
A dishonourable discharge left Margo unable to find honest work on Earth. Signing onto a colonizing mission heading to a new world promised a fresh start. Or at least that's what she'd thought.
Strapped into a crashing colony ship, she realized how wrong she'd been.
They hit the ground and the straight-forward colonizing mission becomes a scramble for survival. Accidents keep happening—too many to blame on random bad luck. A trail of evidence leads Margo to a startling conclusion — one of her fellow colonists is a saboteur.
Tomorrow is the colony's first communications window with Earth and their only chance to send a message home.
Will Margo stop the saboteur before it’s too late?
Captain Eris, AKA Death Engine, former military DNA tweak and mercenary is unexpectedly pulled out of her retirement in Champion Acres and dragged back into the shit by an idiot in a mech suit.
Feeling pissed off and miserable about losing her retirement lifestyle and subsequently, her chances of dying of old age; she searches for the reasons why she was reactivated. With the help of her old friend Al, an incognito artificial intelligence; and Om, a twenty-something emo tweak-girl, she discovers a plot that goes a lot deeper than losing her death. And in doing so, she finds a reason to survive.
The reincarnated souls of King Arthur, Merlin, and an anxiety-ridden priestess return to save Britain after a devastating nuclear attack, only to find an old foe: Morgaine.
After a nuclear attack on London that heralds The Time Foretold, Ava Cerdwin, the high priestess in charge of fulfilling a 1,500-year-old prophecy, must assist the heirs of King Arthur and Merlin in healing the devastated country.
The descendants of Britain’s great men of legend have kept the myths and relics for sixty-one generations, but no one is quite clear on what they must do next.
Nothing goes as planned: Ava falls for the wrong heir, the panic attacks are getting worse, the complex obligations of reincarnation are straining old relationships, and Morgaine and her henchwomen are trying to kill them.
Somehow, some way, Ava has to make the Healing happen, or Britain is finished.
The public can't know they exist. It could start a panic. The average citizen is perfectly fine with superheroes saving the day or causing mayhem in movies and comic books. But if those suprahumans actually walked among us, what would happen then?
In a crumbling post-war city of the future, private eye Charlie Madison stands in the gap. The last of his kind, a champion of lost causes, he confronts corrupt cops, violent bratva and yakuza, doing whatever he can for the average citizen in need of help. A war veteran with plenty of hardship in his past, he's not afraid to go toe-to-toe with the powers that be, whether they're in the criminal underworld or the federal government.
Madison has encountered more than his share of unusual suspects over the years. But this time he's up against something he's never seen before, on or off the battlefield: people with unnatural abilities. Suprahumans. Gifted ones. Their powers are too incredible to believe, too dangerous in this unstable world. Their existence is a secret guarded by government agents who mindwipe anyone encountering them.
For Charlie Madison, the Suprahuman Secret emerges when a little girl goes missing and no ransom demand is made. He takes the case, but time isn't on his side. After 48 hours in this town, it's unlikely an abducted child will be found in one piece. As the mystery unfolds, Madison uncovers a bizarre truth about the girl that seems impossible. But it could explain why she was kidnapped - and why she might still be alive.
Humanity's thousand-year-old interstellar empire has been rotting from the inside for over a century, thanks to venal, corrupt, and power-hungry sovereigns from a dynasty many consider illegitimate. The latest in that lineage, an increasingly psychotic empress, is pushing her realm toward catastrophic collapse as admirals and generals rebel against her rule. That rebellion quickly drags the once mighty Imperial Fleet into a devastating fratricidal conflict between factions.
With civil war raging across human space, a Navy torn asunder can no longer protect frontier colonies, and barbarians long confined to the galactic badlands see an opportunity. After generations of hard existence on worlds beyond the bounds of human civilization, they hold life cheap, especially that of others. The barbarians will gladly steal everything they find and condemn defenseless star systems to technological and demographic collapse. That is if they don't wipe them out entirely from sheer bloodlust or by selling survivors on alien slave markets.
One man, Captain Jonas Morane of the cruiser Vanquish, saw the empire's collapse coming years before the first admiral rebelled. When he finds himself the senior surviving officer of a loyalist Navy unit almost entirely annihilated by rebels, Morane puts in motion a plan he developed long ago. This plan was designed to not only save his ships and crews from certain death but keep humanity's accumulated knowledge from being obliterated by the long night of barbarism. However, before his dream can become a reality, Morane must lead the remains of the 197th Imperial Battle Group through an intricate wormhole network and across a shattered empire to the sanctuary he selected, while dodging his former colleagues from both sides. Along the way, he rescues an Imperial Marine Corps Pathfinder battalion and the survivors of a religious order known for its mysticism, and enlists them in his cause. But will Morane's sanctuary survive both the flames of rebellion and the depredations of invading marauders before his rag-tag fleet can reach it?
WHEN YOU’RE A BRAIN WITHOUT A BODY, CAN YOU STILL BE CALLED HUMAN? Marc Gregorio wakes up paralyzed. He can’t feel his own body. Accident? Stroke? Did someone slip him an overdose of Botox? The answer, he discovers, is much, much worse. He’s only a copy of Marc, a digital brain without a body, burdened with all Marc’s human memories, but without access to human sensual pleasures. Now he has to find a reason to keep on, um, “living.” Adam the Mindclone meets the real Marc Gregorio--and his new girlfriend Molly Schaeffer. Adam loves her, too. But how does a digital entity experience love? He can’t even experience pizza. His one compensation: a powerful digital brain. At Molly’s urging, he applies it to unearthing terrorist plots, aborting schoolyard mayhem, exposing congressional malfeasance and Wall Street chicanery. However, his good deeds gain the attention of a power-mad military contractor who will stop at nothing—theft, kidnapping and worse—to control the technology for his own ends. Without a body, how will Adam save himself – and the world – from a terrible fate? Mindclone, 94,000 words, is a serio-comic science fiction romance about the first successful mind-upload. It’s a book of ideas that explores looming advances in cognitive computing and neural networks, and what it means to be human even if you don’t have a body. Plus there’s a carbon-carbon-silicon love triangle, a redeemed ad-man, adventure, humor, frustrated romance, human and digital foibles, and as an extra added bonus, the defeat of death itself.
Duty, honour, loyalty. What meaning did those words still hold in the midst of a stalemated interstellar war where the difference between the enemy and one’s own leadership was sometimes paper thin? Unfairly relegated to punishment duty far from the battle lines and still pursued by her past, Siobhan Dunmoore was ordered to sail her ship deep into pirate-infested space on a quest to restore the Navy’s reputation after she failed to stop an attack that destroyed a civilian freighter. There, she hoped to find clues that might absolve the crew of the Stingray from blame but instead, she was sucked into a vortex of intrigue and treachery that threatened not only all of their lives, but the future of the embattled Commonwealth. In the midst of competing schemes for supremacy, fending off marauders, mercenaries and spies, Dunmoore had to find a way to get her people home safe and beyond the reach of powerful cabals that had burrowed their way deep into the heart of the Admiralty. If her ship was to survive, she had to find the path of duty, no matter the personal cost, even if the price she had to pay was her own existence.
The adventure continues after Colin’s leadership proves pivotal during the defense of Cambridge. The Federation rewards Colin with a promotion and decides it’s time for him to take a break from combat roles. He gathers a team together to help design a new class of warship. Cambridge builds and launches the new vessel, and Colin commands a flotilla during a cruise to Sankarah. During war games, the new ship’s capabilities astound the Navy’s senior leadership. Meanwhile, the Peschal Alliance captures a Federation Admiral. The Navy gives Colin command of a task-force and sends him to rescue her.
A few short years from now, eco-terrorists unleash the worst attack the world has ever seen. Over 25,000 autonomous combat drones are released in Manhattan from the hold of a ship. Hundreds of thousands are dead, and the entire island is evacuated and quarantined in just a few days’ time.
Ten years later, Manhattan is still empty of humans, with the exception of the salvage specialists of the most watched reality show in history: Zone War. Produced live and unedited, the show follows five teams of armored vehicle specialists who brave the active drones to recover lost riches and collect bounties on dead ones. Ram it, slam it, grab the goods and bull your way back out. And don’t break down, because no one will be coming to your aid. Armored entry is the way to go... Unless...
Meet Ajaya “AJ” Gurung, sniper’s son, drone technician and Zone infiltrator. Following his father’s footsteps while forging ahead in ways all his own, AJ has the potential to be the most successful recovery specialist of all time. The drones are changing, the rules have been thrown out and nothing about the Zone is what it seems. Adapt or die.
As the lead designer for the touring exhibit, Monsters from Outer Space, Jasim’s played the role Society has given her. That doesn’t mean she believes everything that comes out of the Supreme Potentate’s mouth. One night at work, Jasim discovers an animal from her exhibit being put through terrible experiments. She also comes face to face with the terrorist group known as the Divisionists, led by her oldest friend. Soon, Jasim is presented the opportunity to join their ranks. And when Jasim’s young brother meets one of the animals, a species known as Human, that’s been physically manipulated, he unwittingly reveals the exhibit’s darkest secret. It quickly becomes a race just to survive, but will the personal agenda of one derail everything the Divisionists have fought for?
Welcome to the Old Kingdom!
It's a wonderful time to visit! There's lots to do and plenty to see!
Participate* in a public execution!
Wave a pathetic little sword at the Queen's Champion! (With luck**, become the new champion!)
Practice real magic*** in public!
Make fun of the Halfling**** and experience excruciating pain!
What are you waiting for? Dive into the Old Kingdom right now! *****
* Note: you won't be the one swinging the axe.
** You'll need it.
*** Abracadon't. Seriously.
**** His name is Runt, and he's just tall enough to reach your groin. With his knife.
***** Try not to land on a giant sea serpent. Tourists give them indigestion.
All Slap ever wanted was his ranch and family. The gangster Lyssel destroyed all that, leaving only charred remains. Tristan wanted nothing; he had no expectations from life and trusted no one. When the cowboy and space pirate meet, they discover they are hunted by a common enemy: Lyssel. Able only to trust each other against this gangster and his mob, the two are forced to work together. But how can two such total opposites ever make their alliance work?
Earth and her colonies are not alone.
Politics, discussions and alliances. Mark doesn’t care about any of it. When did it matters when the artillery falls and blood is spilled?
All that matters is who stands beside you when blood is spilled and hell lays all around you.
Centurion Victor, has a nice ring to it, Major Victor, Corporal Victor, Private Victor, his path has not been a short one. Brothers and sisters have fallen beside him, casualties of war.
He thought Tyler and Alexis were just casualties of war, he accepted that.
Politics, discussions and alliances, killed them and should have killed him. Mark Victor is on a warpath, a path that leads to the top.
The secretive Roma Union has stepped forward. The warlike Maraukian’s are coming and humanity must rally together or shatter into oblivion.
Alliances, position, power, when a Victor has your name and a blood debt to be paid, it will be paid.
Don't let the picture fool you. We had 40mph wind, heavy rain, 5m visibility, and sub-zero temperature on the summit. Great training!
And here are the books you want...
War... like none that has come before.
The Hegemony has launched the invasion Tyler Barron and his Confederation comrades have feared, and all the Rim is ablaze with the fires of war and destruction.
The Hegemony has brought its vast fleets, its advanced technology, and its endless legions of grim cyborg warriors to impose its system of rigid genetic hierarchy over all humanity on the Rim.
The Confederation fleet is outnumbered and outmatched, but they will fight nevertheless, struggling and dying to hold back the onslaught any way they can, even as the Marines they leave behind dig in and prepare to defend worlds swallowed up by the advancing battle lines.
Barron and his people will fight, they will fight like demons unleashed, and Jake ‘Raptor’ Stockton will lead his wings of strikefighters in one desperate attack after another into the teeth of the enemy armada, but time is running out…even as the enemy pushes relentlessly toward the Confederation’s Core and final victory.
One maverick crew against the Cluster's deadliest criminal organization...
Mike Starrunner, captain of an independent space freighter, is no stranger to trouble. But things get hotter than he bargained for when he lands on a planet occupied by Travellers. These grisly space pirates have a reputation so dire, even aliens won’t mess with them.
But even aliens aren't as badass as Shifters.
Mike and his crew are Shifters--alt-humans with the ability to Shift into animal form. When they impulsively rescue three of the Travellers' victims, they stumble on a deadly plot that spans the Cluster—and it's focused like a laser beam on their homeworld.
From deep space to the slums of Shiftertown, the chase is on.
The threat of invaders is gone, and Earth has been bartered away as a price for peace.
Yet, the human world of New Spero is thriving and full of hope.
Joining the rank of the Gatekeepers, Dean and Mary set off to explore worlds connected by the mysterious portals.
When they stumble upon a strange symbol, they are led to an ancient object, one that sets them on an unstoppable path.
The journey takes them through multiple worlds, before they can find what they’re searching for. Long ago, the ancient race called the Theos vanished without a trace, and have been next to forgotten for centuries. Do they still exist?
Dean intends to find out, but when he’s faced with the truth, he fears everything he loves will be lost.
Some think the City of Jade Spires is a utopia. It very much isn’t.
Holly Drake is in prison for defending herself from a murderer. That’s the kind of corruption thriving in the city where evidence is destroyed and the innocent go to jail.
But everything’s about to change.
Someone exonerates Holly and she walks free. She has no idea who. Or why. But they have a job for her. Steal back the Eye of the Colossus, a priceless jewel. It’s about to be moved off-planet, and when that happens, the trail will go cold.
Out of prison with no other work on the horizon, the job is a gift. If only she knew how to pull off a heist. The clock is ticking. If she can assemble a team and pretend like she knows how to do this, maybe she can fake it long enough to do a job better suited to a master-thief. Why Holly? Who’s pulling her strings? And just how far across the moon system will she have to go to finish the job?
A boy vanishes. But not just any boy.
1899 years after the Catastrophe, Bridges is owned by the Mob. As the city's steam-driven infrastructure fails, a new faction rises: the Red Dogs.
Jacqueline Spadros is haunted by her best friend Air's death, killed as he tried to stop her sale to the Spadros crime syndicate ten years ago. Now in an unwilling marriage to the city's biggest drug lord, she secretly runs a small-time private eye business to earn enough money to escape.
Air's little brother disappears from his back porch. And now someone is following Jacqui.
Dark, gritty, psychological, multi-layered Victorian-inspired far future detective noir that keeps the reader guessing to the very end.
Someone needs to be alive to call for help.
A dishonourable discharge left Margo unable to find honest work on Earth. Signing onto a colonizing mission heading to a new world promised a fresh start. Or at least that's what she'd thought.
Strapped into a crashing colony ship, she realized how wrong she'd been.
They hit the ground and the straight-forward colonizing mission becomes a scramble for survival. Accidents keep happening—too many to blame on random bad luck. A trail of evidence leads Margo to a startling conclusion — one of her fellow colonists is a saboteur.
Tomorrow is the colony's first communications window with Earth and their only chance to send a message home.
Will Margo stop the saboteur before it’s too late?
Captain Eris, AKA Death Engine, former military DNA tweak and mercenary is unexpectedly pulled out of her retirement in Champion Acres and dragged back into the shit by an idiot in a mech suit.
Feeling pissed off and miserable about losing her retirement lifestyle and subsequently, her chances of dying of old age; she searches for the reasons why she was reactivated. With the help of her old friend Al, an incognito artificial intelligence; and Om, a twenty-something emo tweak-girl, she discovers a plot that goes a lot deeper than losing her death. And in doing so, she finds a reason to survive.
The reincarnated souls of King Arthur, Merlin, and an anxiety-ridden priestess return to save Britain after a devastating nuclear attack, only to find an old foe: Morgaine.
After a nuclear attack on London that heralds The Time Foretold, Ava Cerdwin, the high priestess in charge of fulfilling a 1,500-year-old prophecy, must assist the heirs of King Arthur and Merlin in healing the devastated country.
The descendants of Britain’s great men of legend have kept the myths and relics for sixty-one generations, but no one is quite clear on what they must do next.
Nothing goes as planned: Ava falls for the wrong heir, the panic attacks are getting worse, the complex obligations of reincarnation are straining old relationships, and Morgaine and her henchwomen are trying to kill them.
Somehow, some way, Ava has to make the Healing happen, or Britain is finished.
The public can't know they exist. It could start a panic. The average citizen is perfectly fine with superheroes saving the day or causing mayhem in movies and comic books. But if those suprahumans actually walked among us, what would happen then?
In a crumbling post-war city of the future, private eye Charlie Madison stands in the gap. The last of his kind, a champion of lost causes, he confronts corrupt cops, violent bratva and yakuza, doing whatever he can for the average citizen in need of help. A war veteran with plenty of hardship in his past, he's not afraid to go toe-to-toe with the powers that be, whether they're in the criminal underworld or the federal government.
Madison has encountered more than his share of unusual suspects over the years. But this time he's up against something he's never seen before, on or off the battlefield: people with unnatural abilities. Suprahumans. Gifted ones. Their powers are too incredible to believe, too dangerous in this unstable world. Their existence is a secret guarded by government agents who mindwipe anyone encountering them.
For Charlie Madison, the Suprahuman Secret emerges when a little girl goes missing and no ransom demand is made. He takes the case, but time isn't on his side. After 48 hours in this town, it's unlikely an abducted child will be found in one piece. As the mystery unfolds, Madison uncovers a bizarre truth about the girl that seems impossible. But it could explain why she was kidnapped - and why she might still be alive.
Humanity's thousand-year-old interstellar empire has been rotting from the inside for over a century, thanks to venal, corrupt, and power-hungry sovereigns from a dynasty many consider illegitimate. The latest in that lineage, an increasingly psychotic empress, is pushing her realm toward catastrophic collapse as admirals and generals rebel against her rule. That rebellion quickly drags the once mighty Imperial Fleet into a devastating fratricidal conflict between factions.
With civil war raging across human space, a Navy torn asunder can no longer protect frontier colonies, and barbarians long confined to the galactic badlands see an opportunity. After generations of hard existence on worlds beyond the bounds of human civilization, they hold life cheap, especially that of others. The barbarians will gladly steal everything they find and condemn defenseless star systems to technological and demographic collapse. That is if they don't wipe them out entirely from sheer bloodlust or by selling survivors on alien slave markets.
One man, Captain Jonas Morane of the cruiser Vanquish, saw the empire's collapse coming years before the first admiral rebelled. When he finds himself the senior surviving officer of a loyalist Navy unit almost entirely annihilated by rebels, Morane puts in motion a plan he developed long ago. This plan was designed to not only save his ships and crews from certain death but keep humanity's accumulated knowledge from being obliterated by the long night of barbarism. However, before his dream can become a reality, Morane must lead the remains of the 197th Imperial Battle Group through an intricate wormhole network and across a shattered empire to the sanctuary he selected, while dodging his former colleagues from both sides. Along the way, he rescues an Imperial Marine Corps Pathfinder battalion and the survivors of a religious order known for its mysticism, and enlists them in his cause. But will Morane's sanctuary survive both the flames of rebellion and the depredations of invading marauders before his rag-tag fleet can reach it?
WHEN YOU’RE A BRAIN WITHOUT A BODY, CAN YOU STILL BE CALLED HUMAN? Marc Gregorio wakes up paralyzed. He can’t feel his own body. Accident? Stroke? Did someone slip him an overdose of Botox? The answer, he discovers, is much, much worse. He’s only a copy of Marc, a digital brain without a body, burdened with all Marc’s human memories, but without access to human sensual pleasures. Now he has to find a reason to keep on, um, “living.” Adam the Mindclone meets the real Marc Gregorio--and his new girlfriend Molly Schaeffer. Adam loves her, too. But how does a digital entity experience love? He can’t even experience pizza. His one compensation: a powerful digital brain. At Molly’s urging, he applies it to unearthing terrorist plots, aborting schoolyard mayhem, exposing congressional malfeasance and Wall Street chicanery. However, his good deeds gain the attention of a power-mad military contractor who will stop at nothing—theft, kidnapping and worse—to control the technology for his own ends. Without a body, how will Adam save himself – and the world – from a terrible fate? Mindclone, 94,000 words, is a serio-comic science fiction romance about the first successful mind-upload. It’s a book of ideas that explores looming advances in cognitive computing and neural networks, and what it means to be human even if you don’t have a body. Plus there’s a carbon-carbon-silicon love triangle, a redeemed ad-man, adventure, humor, frustrated romance, human and digital foibles, and as an extra added bonus, the defeat of death itself.
Duty, honour, loyalty. What meaning did those words still hold in the midst of a stalemated interstellar war where the difference between the enemy and one’s own leadership was sometimes paper thin? Unfairly relegated to punishment duty far from the battle lines and still pursued by her past, Siobhan Dunmoore was ordered to sail her ship deep into pirate-infested space on a quest to restore the Navy’s reputation after she failed to stop an attack that destroyed a civilian freighter. There, she hoped to find clues that might absolve the crew of the Stingray from blame but instead, she was sucked into a vortex of intrigue and treachery that threatened not only all of their lives, but the future of the embattled Commonwealth. In the midst of competing schemes for supremacy, fending off marauders, mercenaries and spies, Dunmoore had to find a way to get her people home safe and beyond the reach of powerful cabals that had burrowed their way deep into the heart of the Admiralty. If her ship was to survive, she had to find the path of duty, no matter the personal cost, even if the price she had to pay was her own existence.
The adventure continues after Colin’s leadership proves pivotal during the defense of Cambridge. The Federation rewards Colin with a promotion and decides it’s time for him to take a break from combat roles. He gathers a team together to help design a new class of warship. Cambridge builds and launches the new vessel, and Colin commands a flotilla during a cruise to Sankarah. During war games, the new ship’s capabilities astound the Navy’s senior leadership. Meanwhile, the Peschal Alliance captures a Federation Admiral. The Navy gives Colin command of a task-force and sends him to rescue her.
A few short years from now, eco-terrorists unleash the worst attack the world has ever seen. Over 25,000 autonomous combat drones are released in Manhattan from the hold of a ship. Hundreds of thousands are dead, and the entire island is evacuated and quarantined in just a few days’ time.
Ten years later, Manhattan is still empty of humans, with the exception of the salvage specialists of the most watched reality show in history: Zone War. Produced live and unedited, the show follows five teams of armored vehicle specialists who brave the active drones to recover lost riches and collect bounties on dead ones. Ram it, slam it, grab the goods and bull your way back out. And don’t break down, because no one will be coming to your aid. Armored entry is the way to go... Unless...
Meet Ajaya “AJ” Gurung, sniper’s son, drone technician and Zone infiltrator. Following his father’s footsteps while forging ahead in ways all his own, AJ has the potential to be the most successful recovery specialist of all time. The drones are changing, the rules have been thrown out and nothing about the Zone is what it seems. Adapt or die.
As the lead designer for the touring exhibit, Monsters from Outer Space, Jasim’s played the role Society has given her. That doesn’t mean she believes everything that comes out of the Supreme Potentate’s mouth. One night at work, Jasim discovers an animal from her exhibit being put through terrible experiments. She also comes face to face with the terrorist group known as the Divisionists, led by her oldest friend. Soon, Jasim is presented the opportunity to join their ranks. And when Jasim’s young brother meets one of the animals, a species known as Human, that’s been physically manipulated, he unwittingly reveals the exhibit’s darkest secret. It quickly becomes a race just to survive, but will the personal agenda of one derail everything the Divisionists have fought for?
Welcome to the Old Kingdom!
It's a wonderful time to visit! There's lots to do and plenty to see!
Participate* in a public execution!
Wave a pathetic little sword at the Queen's Champion! (With luck**, become the new champion!)
Practice real magic*** in public!
Make fun of the Halfling**** and experience excruciating pain!
What are you waiting for? Dive into the Old Kingdom right now! *****
* Note: you won't be the one swinging the axe.
** You'll need it.
*** Abracadon't. Seriously.
**** His name is Runt, and he's just tall enough to reach your groin. With his knife.
***** Try not to land on a giant sea serpent. Tourists give them indigestion.
All Slap ever wanted was his ranch and family. The gangster Lyssel destroyed all that, leaving only charred remains. Tristan wanted nothing; he had no expectations from life and trusted no one. When the cowboy and space pirate meet, they discover they are hunted by a common enemy: Lyssel. Able only to trust each other against this gangster and his mob, the two are forced to work together. But how can two such total opposites ever make their alliance work?
Earth and her colonies are not alone.
Politics, discussions and alliances. Mark doesn’t care about any of it. When did it matters when the artillery falls and blood is spilled?
All that matters is who stands beside you when blood is spilled and hell lays all around you.
Centurion Victor, has a nice ring to it, Major Victor, Corporal Victor, Private Victor, his path has not been a short one. Brothers and sisters have fallen beside him, casualties of war.
He thought Tyler and Alexis were just casualties of war, he accepted that.
Politics, discussions and alliances, killed them and should have killed him. Mark Victor is on a warpath, a path that leads to the top.
The secretive Roma Union has stepped forward. The warlike Maraukian’s are coming and humanity must rally together or shatter into oblivion.
Alliances, position, power, when a Victor has your name and a blood debt to be paid, it will be paid.
September 8, 2018
An Interview with Jeffrey Bardwell
Had to put that out there. Now, on with the rest of the post. In my interview today, I am talking to Jeffrey Bardwell, author of the Rotten Magic series.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Don't be afraid to fail. Also, you look good with a beard: grow it out sooner.
What do you do to get book reviews?
I have a responsive ARC mailing list of awesome folks. I also send requests to genre-specific book bloggers.
Where can you see yourself in 5 years time?
I see myself with a large backlog of ebooks on the market and several finished series under my belt. Once I've gotten to a stable point in my career, I think I'd like to try filking (fantasy music festivals).
Do you have any advice for other authors on how to market their books?
Variety truly is the spice of life. Try everything at least once. Now for the useful portion of this answer: Bookbub, AMS ads, and Facebook are supposedly the big three, but you can also run ads on google directly and many smaller genre-specific venues. Some are little used, such as Project Wonderful, which pops your ads on webcomics. Whatever you choose, I suggest picking venues that cater to your specific audience.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Never give up, never be afraid to try, and never succumb to the fear you're stuck on one beaten path.
Wow! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
Jeffrey Bardwell wrote his first fantasy epic when he was 7 years old: a thrilling single page adventure. Subsequent epics have grown and matured alongside their author. He devours fantasy and science fiction novels and is most comfortable basking near a warm wood stove. When not writing, Jeffrey enjoys cooking, gardening, and shooing baby dragons from the compost bin.The author lives on a farm and in a prior life worked as a community ecologist. He is overfond of puns and alliterations. He is also an unabashed history and mythology enthusiast and would love to hear from you.
August 27, 2018
August Scifi Roundup
I'm trying an experiment for the next few months. Those of you who have subscribed solely to get my scifi roundups and author interviews won't see a change. Those of you, however, who get them as part of my wider newsletter will see a big difference.
Instead of sending the whole roundup, with the large number of cover images that involves, I'm sending an excerpt. You can click on the 'Read this on my blog' link to see the full article.
As I said, it's an experiment. Hopefully most people will like the new setting. Please get in touch if you have strong views either way.
Now, the biggest news with me is that our new shed and deck in the orchard is almost finished. The new shed has meant that I've been able to create lots of extra plant space where one of the old ones was.
Anywho, on to the books...
In the aftermath of a battle a ship drifts helplessly in space. Is the strange new warship they were fighting still out there? Will it come back for them? Commander Johnson faces a desperate race to get her destroyer back into action and save her crew.
Mars invites scientists to participate in terraforming experiments which brings the MAVREK team all the way from Terra. But minutes after docking on the space station, Dr. Mark Warren is accused of murder.
The warm welcome continues with an attack on his spaceship, then three Terrans are found dead, and killer cyborgs are spotted. Authorities immediately conduct a massive hunt throughout Martian space and terrible new enemies surface with a direct link to Warren's old nemesis. On the planet, the same fugitives hunting Warren also threaten the downfall of Mars itself. The high-octane x-military MAVREK crew battles arms dealers, mercenaries, an infamous hacker, clone trafficking, and an insidious female enemy who will kill to avoid capture. Perhaps they'll save Mars... if they don't die first.
Humankind is under siege. Time to send in Star Brigade.
Following a deadly ambush, Captain Nwosu is tasked with resurrecting a once elite unit of covert supersoldiers.
He must now rally an unlikely, untested band of brothers to protect Union Space–and humankind’s survival–from galactic empire upheaval.
If he can’t, they’re all as good as dead.
She tried to be a hero... will she die a traitor?
Star Captain Dani Devereaux dreamt of following in her father's footsteps... but she had no idea where they'd lead her.
Hard work and dedication earned her a respected position in the Galactic Conglomerate.
Then things went sideways.
Dani and her crew get caught up in a battle nobody can win. She has only seconds to make the most momentous decision of her career.
But is it the right choice?
Dani doubts her instincts as the repercussions ripple out of control and the Galactic Conglomerate hunts for a place to pin the blame.
After solar flares decimated Earth’s population, an alien corporation gave humans a recipe for immortality, and saved them from extinction. Cloning might have stopped the spread of disease, but it didn’t stop the black market from thriving.
Snarky smuggler Selene has a bad habit of getting into trouble. While fleeing Dominion drones during a mission gone wrong, she suffers a debilitating head injury. The pain unlocks memories from twenty lost years: stark labs and human experiments. As her nightmares become more and more real, they reveal a sinister plot centuries in the making, and the aliens who saved the world might be at the center of it.
Can Selene decipher her dreams in time to avoid enslavement to the aliens? Or has her luck finally run out?
The stars brought life to the planet, and the stars destroyed it.
Endless sand, hidden secrets, domes... and a mysterious death.
Is Calix also in danger?
As part of a scavenging crew, he must salvage old technology they barely understand, crawling from outpost to outpost.
But the sand hides secrets, and when it shifts, questions unasked and allegiances long forged are challenged.
Just what is the sand hiding?
God's weapons are scattered across the universe.
Sets of armor left by an ancient civilization give unbelievable powers when combined.
Raiden is awakened 2000 years in the future, only to have his fiancée abducted by Dark Mages.
Desperate to save his fiancée, Raiden's only hope is a power suit... but is it enough in this new world, where he is the only human without any magic?
Fighting alongside him is Princess Visaka, an Air Mage and a traitor on her home planet. Running from her past, she's being chased by pirates, the Royal Navy, and now Dark Mages too.
Caught between love and loyalty, Raiden must choose. Which side will he be on? The fate of humanity may rest on his decision.
Sirio Falken has been a fighter his whole life. But when the government bans professional fighting, his life spirals out of control. All of the convicts he's ever known have disappeared from Earth, never to return. He's about to find out firsthand what happened to them. He'll have to stay alive amongst Earth’s most ruthless felons if he wants to survive … and become the first man to escape from Oz.
In the vein of the hit television show Battlestar Galactica comes Earth Strike—the first book in the action-packed Star Carrier science fiction series by Ian Douglas, author of the popular Inheritance, Heritage, and Legacy Trilogies and one of the most adept writers of military sf working today. Earth Strike rockets readers into a vast and deadly intergalactic battle, as humankind attempts to bring down an evil empire and establish itself as the new major power. Fans of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, welcome aboard the Star Carrier!
Avalon was the flagship of the Castle Federation in the last war, now twenty years past. The first of the deep space carriers, no other warship in the fleet holds as many honors or has recorded as many kills.
No other warship in the fleet is as old.
Accepting the inevitable, the Federation Space Navy has decided to refit her and send her on a tour of the frontier, showing the flag to their allies and enemies as a reminder of her glory – and then decommission her for good.
But Avalon has been a backwater posting for ten years – and has problems a mere refit can’t fix. The systems along her planned tour have been seeing pirates for the first time in decades, and there are rumblings of Commonwealth scouting ships all along the border.
It may be Avalon’s final tour – but it looks to be anything but quiet!
Former Marine Arthur Holland’s destiny begins when an aircraft crashes on his property in the mountains of Colorado. He moves to investigate and to help any survivors, but the closer he gets the less control he has of his movements.
An unknown force urges him to open the door of the mysterious craft, discovering the secret that lies within: a dead, alien pilot and a peculiar, otherworldly crystal. If that wasn’t enough, the crystal feels like it is alive. That’s when he hears a single word inside his mind: Run.
Joan Everett, captain of the USS Monolith, receives a distress call from the planet Corla’s primary defense, Vulta Station. Engaging her ship’s jump drive, they attempt to save the station from an attack by the Daliqians, an alien race humanity once defeated. As the Monolith retaliates, the ship takes severe damage, putting the crew at the brink of annihilation. Crippled to the point of no return, Captain Everett is forced into a decision that may jeopardize millions of lives.
A Rip in the fabric of time, a far-flung globally warmed future, a flooded Earth and the only remainder of civilisation—a militaristic organisation living underneath 'Desert Amazon'...
Getting back home was the only thing that mattered to messed up, mixed race teenager, Blue (named after his stupid, googly blue eyes) - and that was the problem—home was over four hundred years in the past.
But how does a lowly cadet in a military academy living in a post-apocalyptic future achieve such a goal, especially with the distractions of girls, pilot training, spacewalks and his almost constant unpopularity?
The more Blue found out about this flooded, gung-ho and annoying future, about himself—who and what he was (was he even human?)—and the equally disturbing and shocking truth about his parents, the more he realised getting home was the only solution.
Captain Grimshaw is having a really bad day. Colony 115 was supposed to be a milk run, but when he arrives an unidentified alien race blows his vessel out from under him. His crew is scattered across the planet, and he’s trapped behind the lines of a race the Alliance doesn’t even know exists. Thankfully, the world’s largest pain in his ass also survived. Somewhere on the colony, is the the Chit's worst nightmare. Ensign Evans will find him, even with an alien army standing in her way. They'll get off the god-forsaken planet and warn the powers-that-be or they'll die trying, for the attack on Colony 115 is just the beginning.
Earth: a space pirate's dream when it comes to booty, but not a good place to hide when bounty hunters come looking. Pulling up stakes means Rafe must leave his vintage trailer behind, but in the process, he acquires a passenger, a mouthy female who seems to think she's calling the shots. She'll soon learn who's the captain.
And it isn't Annabelle, his bossy ship.
In a world ravaged by demons, sacrifice is necessary...
What would you be willing to sacrifice to save those you love?
When Minneapolis, MN is ravaged by demons, Erik is forced to go to his sister, Sloane for help. Sloane wants to live a normal life in Dinkytown and forget she was ever born a Shikari warrior. Erik would defy his father before he’d ever admit to needing help.
Five years ago, their mother was murdered due to a vicious betrayal by one of their own. Sloane swore she’d never hunt demons again. Erik is more determined than ever to kill them. Both must put their past aside to save the city.
Secrets known only to the Shikari have been revealed.
Have they been betrayed by one of their own?
Is it the same person who murdered their mother?
Sloane and Erik are forced to work together to discover the truth and stop anyone else from being killed.
Will they be able to put their past aside to save the city and everyone they love?
A secret hidden in plain sight. A devastating attack. And a world hanging in the balance.
There are a lot of things I wish I’d known earlier—but three top my "wow, she was naïve" list.
First—there are others on Pendomus.
Second—a prophecy is in motion & I hold the key to the survival of literally everything.
Third—I'm being hunted by a madman who is desperately trying to wipe me from existence.
So yeah, no pressure.
When a battered old robot washes up on the shores of the Old Kingdom, it signals the end of a fragile alliance amongst the four ancient lands.
It turns out dragons are really tasty, and having filleted, boned and baked their scaly allies to the very brink of extinction, no single kingdom can hope to win out against the other three.
Into this shaky impasse steps the mechanical man, impervious to crude weapons, magic, suspicious wedding feasts, poisoned wine, and fire of any colour, be it wild, angry or just slightly annoyed.
Each kingdom stakes their claim to the mechanical marvel, convinced the mysterious creature will lead them to a crushing victory against the others once they teach it to fly. And breathe fire. And, you know, ignore the Three Laws.
It's just a pity none of them thought to ask the robot what it wants.
The sky over the Edges shimmers then falters. Hovering between night and day, the dawn has come and trapped it between two very different realities - blurring it at the fringes until it becomes impossible to tell whether it is in one state or the other.
Maybe both, maybe neither. Maybe something altogether different.
The only vaccine for a deadly galaxy-wide pandemic is missing... and the only ones who may be able to find it are a powerful talent on the verge of a meltdown, and a security specialist hiding her extraordinary skills in a menial job.
A millennium into the future, the Saloon Sector is where the Wild West meets the 1950s, in space, with robots. It’s where careers go to die.
Thelma Bach graduated top of her class after four years at the Galactic Justice academy. But she’s a Rock Sector citizen. The core worlders were never going to let her transcend her background. So she’s been assigned to serve her seven years as a deputy in the Saloon Sector. The message for the Federation’s out-world citizens is clear: you’ll never be our equal, so don’t even try.
The stuffy bureaucrats of the Galactic Justice service chose the wrong person to push around. Thelma will subvert her interstellar sheriff, charm artificial intelligences, fight bandits and hunt the legendary Eldorado Cache. But with the frontier region holding secrets of its own, she needs to choose her new allies wisely because a scary, business-suited enemy is hunting her.
It is 1961 and America’s a theocracy controlled by the Fellowship and its tyrannical council of eleven men. Miranda Clarke’s family is part of the ruling elite, rich and powerful, with plans for Miranda’s life.
Haunted by lurid nightmares, Miranda wants nothing more than to stay out of the public eye.
Her power-hungry mother forces Miranda into an engagement to an up-and-coming Fellowship member and schemes to get Miranda’s father elected President of the United States.
To escape the nightmares, the arranged marriage, and the repressive Fellowship, Miranda makes a break for freedom.
But she finds a dead man and lands in a prison called Redemption.
She not only must escape prison and outwit her mother’s ruthless ambitions but avoid the deadly Azrael, the Fellowship’s enforcers who Take unbelievers.
As the Greshian Empire broadens its reach, pockets of rebel forces form to combat their tyrannical rule. Death before dishonor becomes the last gasp of dying civilizations.
Brendle Quin is the death dealer. More times than he can count he has pulled the trigger to desolate entire worlds. Growing disenchanted with galactic murder, he finds himself on a course that will pit him against the empire he once swore to serve.
When two sides of the war converge, surviving becomes common ground for unlikely allies. As the battle wages overhead, they will die unless they trust one another—no simple task after years of mutual hate.
Contacting recent settlers half a planet away is the only hope for a rebellious young man's failing colony, though the conflicts they bring from Earth could be deadly.
Jake lives in a colony that's slowly dying, abandoned by Earth. Sickness plagues his family and friends, and they lack vital resources. A second colony arrives half a planet away, but visiting the newcomers is more perilous than he imagined.
They hold the key to survival, if only he can understand the conflicts among these Earth-borns from China and Africa. They bring advanced technologies and offer Jake a tantalizing chance to meet new people for the first time in his life. But if they forge ties with Jake, they'll defy their masters on Earth and perhaps also be abandoned on the deadly Red Planet.
If you've ever believed angels were really aliens. If you've ever wondered what goes through a sentient butterfly's mind. If you've ever been in love and couldn’t make yourself leave. If you believe Chuthulu is coming. If you've ever wondered, you'll want to read the stories waiting to thrill you in Ofendra.
Instead of sending the whole roundup, with the large number of cover images that involves, I'm sending an excerpt. You can click on the 'Read this on my blog' link to see the full article.
As I said, it's an experiment. Hopefully most people will like the new setting. Please get in touch if you have strong views either way.
Now, the biggest news with me is that our new shed and deck in the orchard is almost finished. The new shed has meant that I've been able to create lots of extra plant space where one of the old ones was.
Anywho, on to the books...
In the aftermath of a battle a ship drifts helplessly in space. Is the strange new warship they were fighting still out there? Will it come back for them? Commander Johnson faces a desperate race to get her destroyer back into action and save her crew.
Mars invites scientists to participate in terraforming experiments which brings the MAVREK team all the way from Terra. But minutes after docking on the space station, Dr. Mark Warren is accused of murder.
The warm welcome continues with an attack on his spaceship, then three Terrans are found dead, and killer cyborgs are spotted. Authorities immediately conduct a massive hunt throughout Martian space and terrible new enemies surface with a direct link to Warren's old nemesis. On the planet, the same fugitives hunting Warren also threaten the downfall of Mars itself. The high-octane x-military MAVREK crew battles arms dealers, mercenaries, an infamous hacker, clone trafficking, and an insidious female enemy who will kill to avoid capture. Perhaps they'll save Mars... if they don't die first.
Humankind is under siege. Time to send in Star Brigade.
Following a deadly ambush, Captain Nwosu is tasked with resurrecting a once elite unit of covert supersoldiers.
He must now rally an unlikely, untested band of brothers to protect Union Space–and humankind’s survival–from galactic empire upheaval.
If he can’t, they’re all as good as dead.
She tried to be a hero... will she die a traitor?
Star Captain Dani Devereaux dreamt of following in her father's footsteps... but she had no idea where they'd lead her.
Hard work and dedication earned her a respected position in the Galactic Conglomerate.
Then things went sideways.
Dani and her crew get caught up in a battle nobody can win. She has only seconds to make the most momentous decision of her career.
But is it the right choice?
Dani doubts her instincts as the repercussions ripple out of control and the Galactic Conglomerate hunts for a place to pin the blame.
After solar flares decimated Earth’s population, an alien corporation gave humans a recipe for immortality, and saved them from extinction. Cloning might have stopped the spread of disease, but it didn’t stop the black market from thriving.
Snarky smuggler Selene has a bad habit of getting into trouble. While fleeing Dominion drones during a mission gone wrong, she suffers a debilitating head injury. The pain unlocks memories from twenty lost years: stark labs and human experiments. As her nightmares become more and more real, they reveal a sinister plot centuries in the making, and the aliens who saved the world might be at the center of it.
Can Selene decipher her dreams in time to avoid enslavement to the aliens? Or has her luck finally run out?
The stars brought life to the planet, and the stars destroyed it.
Endless sand, hidden secrets, domes... and a mysterious death.
Is Calix also in danger?
As part of a scavenging crew, he must salvage old technology they barely understand, crawling from outpost to outpost.
But the sand hides secrets, and when it shifts, questions unasked and allegiances long forged are challenged.
Just what is the sand hiding?
God's weapons are scattered across the universe.
Sets of armor left by an ancient civilization give unbelievable powers when combined.
Raiden is awakened 2000 years in the future, only to have his fiancée abducted by Dark Mages.
Desperate to save his fiancée, Raiden's only hope is a power suit... but is it enough in this new world, where he is the only human without any magic?
Fighting alongside him is Princess Visaka, an Air Mage and a traitor on her home planet. Running from her past, she's being chased by pirates, the Royal Navy, and now Dark Mages too.
Caught between love and loyalty, Raiden must choose. Which side will he be on? The fate of humanity may rest on his decision.
Sirio Falken has been a fighter his whole life. But when the government bans professional fighting, his life spirals out of control. All of the convicts he's ever known have disappeared from Earth, never to return. He's about to find out firsthand what happened to them. He'll have to stay alive amongst Earth’s most ruthless felons if he wants to survive … and become the first man to escape from Oz.
In the vein of the hit television show Battlestar Galactica comes Earth Strike—the first book in the action-packed Star Carrier science fiction series by Ian Douglas, author of the popular Inheritance, Heritage, and Legacy Trilogies and one of the most adept writers of military sf working today. Earth Strike rockets readers into a vast and deadly intergalactic battle, as humankind attempts to bring down an evil empire and establish itself as the new major power. Fans of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, welcome aboard the Star Carrier!
Avalon was the flagship of the Castle Federation in the last war, now twenty years past. The first of the deep space carriers, no other warship in the fleet holds as many honors or has recorded as many kills.
No other warship in the fleet is as old.
Accepting the inevitable, the Federation Space Navy has decided to refit her and send her on a tour of the frontier, showing the flag to their allies and enemies as a reminder of her glory – and then decommission her for good.
But Avalon has been a backwater posting for ten years – and has problems a mere refit can’t fix. The systems along her planned tour have been seeing pirates for the first time in decades, and there are rumblings of Commonwealth scouting ships all along the border.
It may be Avalon’s final tour – but it looks to be anything but quiet!
Former Marine Arthur Holland’s destiny begins when an aircraft crashes on his property in the mountains of Colorado. He moves to investigate and to help any survivors, but the closer he gets the less control he has of his movements.
An unknown force urges him to open the door of the mysterious craft, discovering the secret that lies within: a dead, alien pilot and a peculiar, otherworldly crystal. If that wasn’t enough, the crystal feels like it is alive. That’s when he hears a single word inside his mind: Run.
Joan Everett, captain of the USS Monolith, receives a distress call from the planet Corla’s primary defense, Vulta Station. Engaging her ship’s jump drive, they attempt to save the station from an attack by the Daliqians, an alien race humanity once defeated. As the Monolith retaliates, the ship takes severe damage, putting the crew at the brink of annihilation. Crippled to the point of no return, Captain Everett is forced into a decision that may jeopardize millions of lives.
A Rip in the fabric of time, a far-flung globally warmed future, a flooded Earth and the only remainder of civilisation—a militaristic organisation living underneath 'Desert Amazon'...
Getting back home was the only thing that mattered to messed up, mixed race teenager, Blue (named after his stupid, googly blue eyes) - and that was the problem—home was over four hundred years in the past.
But how does a lowly cadet in a military academy living in a post-apocalyptic future achieve such a goal, especially with the distractions of girls, pilot training, spacewalks and his almost constant unpopularity?
The more Blue found out about this flooded, gung-ho and annoying future, about himself—who and what he was (was he even human?)—and the equally disturbing and shocking truth about his parents, the more he realised getting home was the only solution.
Captain Grimshaw is having a really bad day. Colony 115 was supposed to be a milk run, but when he arrives an unidentified alien race blows his vessel out from under him. His crew is scattered across the planet, and he’s trapped behind the lines of a race the Alliance doesn’t even know exists. Thankfully, the world’s largest pain in his ass also survived. Somewhere on the colony, is the the Chit's worst nightmare. Ensign Evans will find him, even with an alien army standing in her way. They'll get off the god-forsaken planet and warn the powers-that-be or they'll die trying, for the attack on Colony 115 is just the beginning.
Earth: a space pirate's dream when it comes to booty, but not a good place to hide when bounty hunters come looking. Pulling up stakes means Rafe must leave his vintage trailer behind, but in the process, he acquires a passenger, a mouthy female who seems to think she's calling the shots. She'll soon learn who's the captain.
And it isn't Annabelle, his bossy ship.
In a world ravaged by demons, sacrifice is necessary...
What would you be willing to sacrifice to save those you love?
When Minneapolis, MN is ravaged by demons, Erik is forced to go to his sister, Sloane for help. Sloane wants to live a normal life in Dinkytown and forget she was ever born a Shikari warrior. Erik would defy his father before he’d ever admit to needing help.
Five years ago, their mother was murdered due to a vicious betrayal by one of their own. Sloane swore she’d never hunt demons again. Erik is more determined than ever to kill them. Both must put their past aside to save the city.
Secrets known only to the Shikari have been revealed.
Have they been betrayed by one of their own?
Is it the same person who murdered their mother?
Sloane and Erik are forced to work together to discover the truth and stop anyone else from being killed.
Will they be able to put their past aside to save the city and everyone they love?
A secret hidden in plain sight. A devastating attack. And a world hanging in the balance.
There are a lot of things I wish I’d known earlier—but three top my "wow, she was naïve" list.
First—there are others on Pendomus.
Second—a prophecy is in motion & I hold the key to the survival of literally everything.
Third—I'm being hunted by a madman who is desperately trying to wipe me from existence.
So yeah, no pressure.
When a battered old robot washes up on the shores of the Old Kingdom, it signals the end of a fragile alliance amongst the four ancient lands.
It turns out dragons are really tasty, and having filleted, boned and baked their scaly allies to the very brink of extinction, no single kingdom can hope to win out against the other three.
Into this shaky impasse steps the mechanical man, impervious to crude weapons, magic, suspicious wedding feasts, poisoned wine, and fire of any colour, be it wild, angry or just slightly annoyed.
Each kingdom stakes their claim to the mechanical marvel, convinced the mysterious creature will lead them to a crushing victory against the others once they teach it to fly. And breathe fire. And, you know, ignore the Three Laws.
It's just a pity none of them thought to ask the robot what it wants.
The sky over the Edges shimmers then falters. Hovering between night and day, the dawn has come and trapped it between two very different realities - blurring it at the fringes until it becomes impossible to tell whether it is in one state or the other.
Maybe both, maybe neither. Maybe something altogether different.
The only vaccine for a deadly galaxy-wide pandemic is missing... and the only ones who may be able to find it are a powerful talent on the verge of a meltdown, and a security specialist hiding her extraordinary skills in a menial job.
A millennium into the future, the Saloon Sector is where the Wild West meets the 1950s, in space, with robots. It’s where careers go to die.
Thelma Bach graduated top of her class after four years at the Galactic Justice academy. But she’s a Rock Sector citizen. The core worlders were never going to let her transcend her background. So she’s been assigned to serve her seven years as a deputy in the Saloon Sector. The message for the Federation’s out-world citizens is clear: you’ll never be our equal, so don’t even try.
The stuffy bureaucrats of the Galactic Justice service chose the wrong person to push around. Thelma will subvert her interstellar sheriff, charm artificial intelligences, fight bandits and hunt the legendary Eldorado Cache. But with the frontier region holding secrets of its own, she needs to choose her new allies wisely because a scary, business-suited enemy is hunting her.
It is 1961 and America’s a theocracy controlled by the Fellowship and its tyrannical council of eleven men. Miranda Clarke’s family is part of the ruling elite, rich and powerful, with plans for Miranda’s life.
Haunted by lurid nightmares, Miranda wants nothing more than to stay out of the public eye.
Her power-hungry mother forces Miranda into an engagement to an up-and-coming Fellowship member and schemes to get Miranda’s father elected President of the United States.
To escape the nightmares, the arranged marriage, and the repressive Fellowship, Miranda makes a break for freedom.
But she finds a dead man and lands in a prison called Redemption.
She not only must escape prison and outwit her mother’s ruthless ambitions but avoid the deadly Azrael, the Fellowship’s enforcers who Take unbelievers.
As the Greshian Empire broadens its reach, pockets of rebel forces form to combat their tyrannical rule. Death before dishonor becomes the last gasp of dying civilizations.
Brendle Quin is the death dealer. More times than he can count he has pulled the trigger to desolate entire worlds. Growing disenchanted with galactic murder, he finds himself on a course that will pit him against the empire he once swore to serve.
When two sides of the war converge, surviving becomes common ground for unlikely allies. As the battle wages overhead, they will die unless they trust one another—no simple task after years of mutual hate.
Contacting recent settlers half a planet away is the only hope for a rebellious young man's failing colony, though the conflicts they bring from Earth could be deadly.
Jake lives in a colony that's slowly dying, abandoned by Earth. Sickness plagues his family and friends, and they lack vital resources. A second colony arrives half a planet away, but visiting the newcomers is more perilous than he imagined.
They hold the key to survival, if only he can understand the conflicts among these Earth-borns from China and Africa. They bring advanced technologies and offer Jake a tantalizing chance to meet new people for the first time in his life. But if they forge ties with Jake, they'll defy their masters on Earth and perhaps also be abandoned on the deadly Red Planet.
If you've ever believed angels were really aliens. If you've ever wondered what goes through a sentient butterfly's mind. If you've ever been in love and couldn’t make yourself leave. If you believe Chuthulu is coming. If you've ever wondered, you'll want to read the stories waiting to thrill you in Ofendra.
