The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon -- 19 November 2020
My latest novel, The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon will be released on 19 November 2020 as a free ebook on Smashwords, Apple, Kobo, B & N, and Google. It will be priced at $.99 on Amazon. Free is my preferred price, but hey, it's worth a buck. It will be up for pre-order on Amazon shortly.
Rafe d’Mere’s quick thinking saved the spaceship Tzaritsa Moon from a catastrophic explosion. He made some very unpleasant people very unhappy.
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon marks the long awaited return to the Nine Star Nebula of the Bright Black Sea. This story takes place in the Alantzia star system, the most remote of the eight star systems. The Alantzia system is rather infamous for its many little worlds, moons, and rocks that are reputed to be more like the “lawless” drift worlds than the staid worlds of the Unity.
To fully appreciate the exotic romance of the Alantzian experience, old spaceers convinced Rafe d’Mere that he needed to ship out on one of the small planet traders that called on the eccentric little worlds of the system. So he did, signing aboard the Tzaritsa Moon, under the name Rye Rylr, as her second engineer.
Fortunately for Rafe, his swift response on discovering a dangerous hot spot on the no. 7 plasma injector tube saved the ship. And his life. Unfortunately for Rafe, one of the pirate princes of the Alantzia had made arrangements for the Tzaritsa Moon not to reach Fairwaine orbit. And when she did, thanks to Rafe, the pirate prince was far from happy. The best Rafe could hope for at the hands of this pirate prince was to have his memory of the voyage erased. Erasing Rafe would, however, work just as well.
So Rafe decided that he needed to get clear of the Tzaritsa Moon and get very lost on Fairwaine until things cooled down. Fortunately, and again, unfortunately, while doing so, he crossed orbits with a thief; a girl with a pretty face. She may, or may not, have been a covert agent of the Patrol. She was rather evasive about that. But she was very clear about her desire to discover why the pirate prince wanted the Tzaritsa Moon destroyed. And Rafe found that he couldn’t resist helping her to do so. She had a pretty face.
The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon is a cozy SF mystery adventure. It features the new characters of Rafe d’Mere, ex-Patrol contraband suppression and repair tech, now a spaceer engineer, and Vaun Di Ai, who probably is a Patrol Lieutenant JG, Intelligence Analyst 2, who had, somehow, escaped her desk job to be an acting covert agent. The story is set mostly on the moon of Fairwaine, in an old fashioned, nonconforming society, that uses toasters to make toast.
