Jame-O Shot

In the midst of writing my third book, I decided I needed a break.  A&O was a grueling (yet satisfying) five-year journey.  Goddess was an exercise in pure editing.  And now Absinthe was proving to be more research (and map drawing) than writing.  I was longing to write something that was research free, required little editing, and was light and fanciful.

As a lifelong Star Trek nerd, I had come up with several story ideas throughout my life.  As a palette cleanser, why not write some Star Trek fan fiction? I thought.

But as I started fleshing out the outline to my first Star Trek “episode”, I quickly began feeling weighed down by the franchise’s nearly 50 years of canon.  I didn’t want my characters to be limited to humans, Vulcans, Klingons, the Borg…  I wanted to offer my own clever takes on instantaneous communication and faster-than-light travel.  And I wanted to present a radically different fate for humanity 500 years from now.

So I decided to create my own sci-fi serial.

But as I set out crafting my serial’s setting, I found myself borrowing more and more ideas from Tito’s Martini, my upcoming sci-fi saga.  Then it hit me: why sketch out a brand new setting, when I’ve already created a lush and complex universe, championed by heroes, cursed by villains, all steeped in 500 years of tragic history, ready to be unleashed?

So Jame-O Shot will be the start of a serialized sequel to Tito’s Martini.  Each novella (episodic, ~60 pages) in the series will be released after a major novel, the first coming after Absinthe.  I plan to only release them as ebooks (but depending on their popularity, I may publish bundles of them in print).

I hope you enjoy your shot.