Star Wanderers – Page 8 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Thoughts on sequels and the Desolation of Smaug

So last week I saw the new Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, and I really, really liked it … right up to the ending. Why?

BECAUSE IT RESOLVED NOTHING!!!

Okay, sorry for the spoiler (though you probably should have guessed there would be spoilers in a post like this). There’s going to be more in this post, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, read on at your own risk.

Overall, I thought the movie was pretty good. The action was fun, the fantasy elements were very well executed, and Benedict Cumberbatch was excellent as the voice of Smaug. My only real hangups (beside the ending) are relatively minor, such as the impossible physics of Thorin’s luge run down the river of molten metal, or the fact that all of the gold ever mined in the history of the Earth would not fill a tenth of the stockpile in Erebor (seriously, all of the world’s gold would only fill a cube about 20 meters to a side … so maybe half of that big statue they melted at the end?). Oh, and I thought the politics of Laketown were simplified to the point of caricature. That was actually a fairly big issue for me, though I suspect the third movie will either make it or break it.

But all of those are dwarfed (no pun intended … okay, maybe a little) by the movie’s biggest flaw, which is that IT HAS NO RESOLUTION.

Seriously, none of the half-dozen subplots resolve in any meaningful way. The one that comes closest is that love affair between the elf woman and the dwarf, since I guess she kind of saves him from his orc wound. But he doesn’t even regain consciousness, which means that they aren’t even really reunited by the end. And as for the other storylines … well, Smaug is still alive and about to burn Laketown, Gandalf is a prisoner of Sauron, Bard is a prisoner of that fat guy who wasn’t ever in the book and the dwarves still haven’t taken Erebor.

I understand that the middle installment in a series can’t resolve everything, but I still think it should resolve something. Take The Empire Strikes Back, for example. It ends on something of a cliffhanger, but there’s still enough of a resolution that it stands very well on its own. Han Solo is frozen in carbonite, but Leia, Chewie, and the droids have escaped to safety. Luke hasn’t defeated Vader, but he has learned something that completely changes the relationship between them both. The Rebel Alliance hasn’t won yet, but they have gotten away from Hoth without being completely decimated by the Empire.

The Empire Strikes Back is not just part I of The Return of the Jedi–it stands on its own as a complete story. It bridges A New Hope and Jedi by showing the tragic failure of Luke Skywalker to defeat Vader, rescue his friends, and become a Jedi. By the end of the movie, he’s a very different person than he was at the beginning. Could the same be said of Thorin, Bilbo, and the Desolation of Smaug? Not really.

I suppose I have to be a bit cautious here, since there are those who would say that I’m guilty of this myself. I’ll freely admit that I’ve written a few cliffhanger endings, most recently in some of the Star Wanderers stories. However, I always try to resolve something, so that each book can stand at least partly on its own.

In Fidelity, for example, Jeremiah and Noemi haven’t found a home yet, but they do have one to work toward. It starts with their arrival at Oriana Station and it ends with their departure–everything that they need to do there has been done. In Sacrifice, the language barrier, cultural misunderstandings, and Jeremiah’s own personal shortcomings converge until he’s more or less forced to leave Noemi, at least temporarily. It’s not a feel-good ending, but it is a resolution of sorts. And in Reproach, Mariya comes to the horrifying realization that she’s destroyed everything that she was hoping to build.

I guess the key to bridging a series in such a way that the sequels stand on their own is to keep the individual conflicts and subplots distinct, especially the internal and external ones. For example, I thought that The Unexpected Journey had a much better ending, not because the overall plot was resolved, but because Bilbo had transformed from a homebody to an adventurer. The internal conflict had a satisfying resolution, and the growth arc had more or less come full swing. The Desolation of Smaug could have done that with Thorin, and in some ways it seemed to be trying, but by the end it just fell short.

So am I going to see the third movie? Well, yeah, so from a Hollywood perspective, I suppose the movie was a success. But I’m not as excited for it as I was for Return of the Jedi. And the lesson I’m taking from this is that cliffhangers are good, but you’ve got to deliver at least some satisfaction–you’ve got to resolve something. Otherwise, people are going to feel cheated.

New STAR WANDERERS story coming soon!

For those of you who have been following the Star Wanderers series, I’m happy to report that Deliverance (Part VIII) will be out soon! My test readers have more or less gotten back to me on it, and aside from tying up a couple loose threads, it looks like we’re good to go.

This one is a bit longer than the other ones, and has quite a bit more action and adventure. It basically shows the events of Homeworld from Mariya and Lucca’s points of view. In Homeworld, most of the action takes place off the page while Jeremiah and Noemi work together in virtual space to hack the pirates’ network. Well, Deliverance brings all that back, plus a whole bunch of other awesome stuff that I think you’re going to enjoy.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Star Wanderers story without some kind of love story. Homeworld of necessity glossed over the romance between Lucca and Mariya, but in Deliverance, that’s at the center of everything. He sweeps her off of her feet when he rescues her from the pirates, but when the escape attempt fails and they crash on the alien planet, she sweeps him off of his.

Here’s the teaser:

SHE NEVER TOOK A CHANCE AND HE NEVER HAD A PLAN UNTIL THEY MET IN THE OUTWORLD STARS.

Lucca Tajjashvili isn’t a typical star wanderer. The youngest son of a wealthy planetborn family, he took out his inheritance early in order to build his own starship and seek his fortune on the Outworld frontier. The starfaring life suits him well, and he has no plans to settle down.

All of that changes when he picks up a distress signal in the Far Outworlds. A small colony has been taken over by pirates, and Lucca is the only one in a position to help. Among the prisoners is a beautiful young woman whom Lucca decides to rescue. But when the pirates see through his skillful ruse, any escape plan he might have had soon falls completely apart.

Mariya isn’t the kind of girl who likes to take chances. But when she finds herself stranded on an alien world with her would-be rescuer, that’s exactly what she has to do. Lucky for her, Lucca is just the sort of guy who can teach her.

So yeah, I should be finalizing the story in the next day or two. My first readers really liked this one, so I’m going light on the revisions, basically just fixing a couple of small issues and tying up some loose threads that didn’t quite get enough resolution before the end. If I don’t finish it tomorrow, I’ll definitely get it done on Monday.

The teaser and book cover are already good to go, so the only thing left is to proofread and format the thing, which I can almost certainly get done before January, even with the holidays. Right now, I’m shooting for a publication date in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. That might be a little ambitious, but it’s definitely doable, especially if I can get the proofreading done in the next ten days.

As with all the other Star Wanderers stories, I’ll be giving this one away for free via Smashwords to all my newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, there’s a form in the sidebar over there. ———–> I only send out emails when I have a new release, so you don’t have to worry about getting spammed (unless, of course, you think I write too many books, in which case you’re probably not going to sign up anyway :P). Smashwords has every ebook format, so if you get it from there you should easily be able to sideload it onto any device.

The print version probably won’t be available until January, seeing as it’s taking me forever to get the print versions up for the rest of the series. But Outworlder is already available in print, albeit with the old cover. Who knows, though–maybe those will be worth something someday. At this point, it’s almost certain that I’ll change them, but I’ll do original covers for all the print books in the series, just for those who want a complete set.

… and that’s about it. Lots of work to do, but I’m definitely having fun doing it! This story is solid, so I can’t wait until I can put it in your hands. If all goes well, I should be able to do that before the end of the month.

Take care, and as always, thanks for reading!

SW-I OUTWORLDER is #1 on Amazon’s Space Opera subcategory!

Check it out! 😀

With the new cover, Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I) has been bouncing around the #3 / #4 slots, with the top slot taken by books with holiday weekend promos. But now that it’s Tuesday, it’s right up there at the #1 spot! This is without any kind of extra promotion on my part.

Outworlder has been kicking around on this list ever since it went free in October of last year. With the old cover, it hovered somewhere between #10 and #15. I’m not sure if this is the new cover, the holiday weekend, something else, or some combination of the three, but I’m happy to be riding the wave!

#1 on Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera translates to #41 on Kindle Ebooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction, which is not bad. This is for free books, not paid books. I haven’t cracked any of those subcategories yet, though the other Star Wanderers books are selling at a pretty decent rate.

This is for the Amazon.com store. Here’s how it currently ranks at the other stores:

Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom): #13
Amazon.ca (Canada): #18
Amazon.fr (France): #2
Amazon.in (India): #14
Amazon.com.au (Australia): #6

I may have a problem with checking my sales numbers too much. 😛

Not a new book, just a new cover!

So a couple of weeks ago, I got an email out of the blue from Derek Murphy over at CreativIndie Covers. He’s a cover designer who periodically does cover makeovers for indie writers, as a way to bring in business and build his own reputation. He wanted to do an experiment to see if he could double my sales in a month by making over the cover for Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I).

Well, I’ll be the first to admit that the original cover isn’t all that great. The book was a bit of an experiment, to see if writing in a more serial format would be more effective than writing and releasing full-length novels. I’d spent a fair amount of money to get Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars up, and sales were too low at that time to justify another huge publishing project. In order to cut costs, I did the covers myself, using public domain images from NASA and Hubble. They aren’t super great, but they do say “space!” which is better than a gray box with a question mark.

If anything, I’m surprised that the series has done as well as it has with the current covers. Each book in the series sells in the double or triple digits monthly, and Outworlder has been in the top 20 on Amazon’s Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Space Opera and Kindle eBooks > Romance > Science Fiction subcategories for over a year. The consistency with which these books have been selling has really surprised me, so anything to push these books to the next level and put them in front of new readers will hopefully yield some awesome results.

So Derek and I went back and forth for a while, and this is what we came up with:

Pretty sweet, huh? 😀

I am extremely excited about this cover, and I’d love to see what he can do with the other ones. First, though, we’re going to put this one up for the month of December to see if it has a noticeable impact on overall sales. I’ve got data from last December as well as the last few months to compare it to, so we’ll see how it does. And if there is an appreciable increase, I’ll probably go ahead and have him redo all the other covers as well.

Since this is still just an experiment, though, the covers for the print editions will remain the same as the old ones. I don’t anticipate keeping them forever, though, especially if this experiment works out. Even so, I’m still going to release them as I’d planned, so if you want the print versions, you can get them.

And who knows? If these books take off, or I become a well-known author in the future, the original print versions of the Star Wanderers books may be worth something someday. Maybe. Who knows?

So far, it appears to be working. The new cover went live on Amazon last night, and Outworlder has dropped about 700 rankings to #1,705. That’s without any sort of advertising or promotion, except for the also-bots of course. Last year around this time I participated in a fairly big group promo, so I’ll try to get this book listed in a couple of places to make up for that. Or maybe we can extend the experiment through January, in the interest of ~~keeping a really cool cover~~ getting more accurate data? We’ll see.

Man, it’s so much fun to be a self-published indie writer! 😀

I’m not going to talk about nanowrimo

I’m not going to talk about nanowrimo because … yeah, I’m not going to talk about nanowrimo.

I’ve been doing a lot to get the print versions of the Star Wanderers novellas up, but beyond that, not a whole lot of writing. Still one scene to go in Sons of the Starfarers: Brothers in Exile (that’s the working title, anyway), but I keep putting it off because … I dunno. So many other things going on, maybe? Sometimes it’s the easy stuff you put off the longest, sometimes, the hardest stuff. But I already said I wasn’t going to talk about nanowrimo …

In any case, I set Thanksgiving as the deadline to get all the print versions out for Star Wanderers, and it looks like I’ll be able to hit it. Outworlder, Fidelity, Sacrifice, and Homeworld are already up, and should propagate to Amazon in the next couple of days. Dreamweaver is in the proofing process, and I should be able to typeset Benefactor and Reproach in the next couple of days. It’s a relaxing thing to do while listening to podcasts, and the books are short enough that I can get all the work done in just a few hours.

In December, I hope to release a new Star Wanderers book: Deliverance, which covers the events of Homeworld from Mariya and Lucca’s points of view. This was a fun one to write, so I’m looking forward to getting it out there for you guys to read. It’s with my first readers now, who should get back to me by the first week of December or so. The draft is already pretty clean, so unless they bring up some major issues, I should be able to get it out fairly quickly.

And after that, I think I’m going to take a break from the Star Wanderers universe for a while to work on some novels. It’s been fun doing the shorter stuff, and I’ll definitely return to the novella form in the future, but there are a bunch of unfinished projects screaming at me to work on them. First among them is probably Heart of the Nebula, which I haven’t even touched in almost a year. It needs a huge overhaul–I’ll probably scrap a good half or so from the middle, probably more. But the ideas behind the story are solid, and I would really like to get another Gaia Nova novel out soon.

But the one that’s calling the most to me is probably Lifewalker. That’s the post-apocalyptic one with the guy wandering down the ruins of I-15 with a copy of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn toward a Las Vegas populated by cannibals. There’s actually a lot more to it than that, but that’s the 10 second pitch I’ve been giving people. The voice on that one was so different from anything else I’ve done, I had to take a break from it after I got to a good stopping place. But recently, it’s been calling out to me to finish it. I’ll probably move on to that one if I don’t go to Heart of the Nebula first.

Then there’s Edenfall, The Sword Bearer, a couple of other untitled ones, that Sword & Planet story I said I’d write … holy crap, so many unfinished books. I feel like I’m a bad writer whenever I don’t finish everything I start, but that just seems to be part of my process. Hopefully none of my readers are too impatient to get any particular book–although, come to think of it, that kind of pressure might be just what I need.

Either way, I really need to get back to writing. But I already said I wasn’t going to talk about nanowrimo (I wonder if this blog post counts?)

😛 Later.

Nanowrimo is kicking my butt

… but that’s a good thing. While procrastinating my daily word count, I’ve almost finished Book I of Sons of the Starfarers, formatted and orders proofs for the first four Star Wanderers novellas, alpha-read most of another book for a friend, and done a bunch of other things (which is nothing compared to a friend of mine, who procrastinated by getting a job).

Right now, I’ve got about 3,500 words written, which means I need to write about 2,000 words a day in order to hit 50k words before the end of the month. Actually, that shouldn’t be too hard–most of the difficulty of writing is just getting out of the way, so when I put my hands on the keyboard and say “whatever you do, DON’T STOP WRITING,” good things actually happen. At a nanowrimo get-together at Dragon’s Keep in Provo, I knocked out 1500 words in about an hour using that method. It’s actually quite liberating–I should do it this way more often.

So why only 3,500 words, instead of the 11,666 that I’m supposed to have? Because I REALLY REALLY REALLY have to finish this Sons of the Starfarers book, and that’s been taking up virtually all of my time and mental space. I hit the action stuff a couple of days ago, and things were just flowing, but now it’s that last crucial scene and I’m not quite sure how to pull it off. Probably I’ll write something and change it later, or tell myself that at least so I can just finish it and move on.

But UURGHH!

Anyways, that is all. Back to writing.

Publishing is as easy as the Irish Tinwhistle

David Gaughran has another excellent blog post up, this time about publishing in general and something that most newbies don’t realize when they first start out. From his post:

I’m saying that when a newbie has been convinced that self-publishing is hard or expensive the chances of them falling into the clutches of a third-party which will result in a poor outcome increase exponentially. Because they’ll take any kind of deal, or sign up with any fly-by-night outfit, or engage one of the vanity presses masquerading as a self-publishing company.

So we need to get the message out. Yes, writing is hard, but these third parties will give you no help there. And yes, marketing can be tricky, but that’s probably going to fall on you no matter what path you choose.

Publishing, on the other hand, is easy.

I’ve found this to be exactly the case, and it’s one of the reasons why I’ve decided to stick with the indie publishing path.

Publishing is easy. Publishing is fun, in fact. There’s a lot of hair-pulling when you first start out, but once you get over the initial learning curve, it’s a blast. These people selling “self-publishing packages” are almost all scammers, especially if they’re charging more than $1,000.

Marketing is an aspect of this business that currently eludes me. Even so, I’m still doing all right. I’ve been making a profit since 2012, and I’m currently about halfway to making a full-time living at this. With the whims of the market, that could change at any moment, but there’s still a lot of room for things to go up so I’m not too worried.

As for writing, well, that’s probably always going to be hard. I tend to self-edit a lot as I write, so hopefully nanowrimo will help me out with that. Once you’ve found your voice and gotten the basics of your craft, you have to learn to let go and let the story happen, which is something I struggle with.

Right now, I’m having a hard time with putting out a consistent word count. That’s probably the hardest part of taking the indie path–keeping yourself from getting spread too thin. I’m trying to get print versions of the Star Wanderers novellas out on Amazon (Outworlder is already out! Get it here!), so that’s taking a fair amount of time and energy, even though I’m taking it slow. Really, though, I wonder how much of it is just fear or self-doubt or other writerly angst that pops up from time to time. It’s a constant struggle.

But publishing? Publishing is easy. Give me a manuscript, and I can turn it into a fully functional, well formatted ebook in less than an hour. For a print book, I can do the typesetting and cover design over a long weekend if I’ve got nothing else going on. Easily. And from there, it’s just a matter of uploading to Amazon / Smashwords / wherever, filling out the metadata fields, and clicking the button that says “publish.”

There is nothing about the technical aspects of publishing that a writer can’t learn how to do for himself. If you can publish a blog, you can publish an ebook. The only reason to pay someone to do it for you is if the opportunity cost of taking the time to learn is too high, which is only really the case if you’re a highly paid professional at something else and writing isn’t your main career. Even so, it’s not hard to find someone (like me!) who can do a good job for $50 or less.

It’s kind of like the Irish tinwhistle. Sure, you can pay through the nose for a limited edition collector’s piece (which probably has a very generic sound), but the best ones cost less than $20 and look like they’ve been used as a doorstop for a while. The quality of the sound does not correlate at all with the price–in fact, you’re more likely to get a better instrument if you don’t pay through the nose. You can even make your own!

In fact, there are a lot of similarities between self-publishing and playing the Irish tinwhistle. You can teach yourself how to do it, pick up tips and tricks by hanging out with other unwashed, self-taught musicians, learn all sorts of tunes or make up your own, and play it any way you like. You can play for pennies in the park, beers in a pub, or go for gold and hit the big time.

Dang–now I really want to get back into Irish music again! One dream at a time, Joe–one dream at a time.

But yeah, publishing is easy–not to mention, fun!

Nanowrimo anyone?

November is coming up, and with it, nanowrimo. I’ve always wanted to participate, but every time it rolls around, it seems like I’ve got another project going on that’s more important.

This year is no exception, but I think I have a way around that. The goal for nanowrimo is just to write something–it doesn’t have to be any good. I’ve got a bunch of projects I’m currently working on, including Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) which I hope to publish by Thanksgiving, but I think I can still do a just-for-fun sort of thing on the side, with the understanding that it doesn’t have to be serious.

What I think I’ll do is write a story where all of the characters from all of my previous books get caught up in some sort of a weird time-space dimensional warping thing, so that they end up in books where they don’t belong and universes where they never existed. It should be a fun way to revisit some of them, especially the ones from the Gaia Nova books, which I haven’t really done much with in a while.

It’s probably not going to make much sense to anyone who hasn’t read my books, but who cares? That’s not the point. I may or may not put it up somewhere for people to read, but it may have some stuff from projects that are either unfinished or unpublished, so it might be a little obtuse even for the fans. However, it seems like a really fun project, one that I can really run with, and that’s all that really matters for nanowrimo.

As far as my other projects go, right now I’m working on a heroic fantasy novel that’s a prequel of sorts to The Sword Bearer. I have no idea where it’s going to go, but I’m taking a page from my favorite writer of all time (David Gemmell), with lots of violence, lots of blood, and lots of true grit and heroism.

At the same time, I’m still working on Sons of the Starfarers off and on, though I may end up putting that one on hold for a while as I figure things out with this heroic fantasy story. It will get done, though–it’s definitely a story I’m itching to tell. In a couple of reviews and emails, readers have asked whether I’ll ever write an origin story for the Hameji. Well, that’s what Sons of the Starfarers is going to be, though the connection might not happen until well into the series.

There’s a couple of other Gaia Nova books I’ve been meaning to write for a long, long time, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get to them anytime soon. This nanowrimo project might spark something, though, since I’ll be revisiting a lot of those old characters. And even if the nanowrimo novel itself is pretty bad, if it gets those projects on the back burner simmering again, then that will definitely be something.

Dang, I really want to get started with nanowrimo now! So many wacky ideas … it’s like writing fanfiction for one of your own books! In any case, I’d better get back to writing before I get too excited. Don’t want to spend so much time thinking about writing that it becomes hard when I actually sit down to do it.

Later!

SW-VII: REPROACH is now out!

If you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to lately, I’ve been busy publishing a new book! Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) is now out on Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo as a $2.99 ebook, and should be up on Barnes & Noble and iTunes in a couple of weeks.

This now brings the total number of books I’ve published to 17. Part VIII: Deliverance should be out in early- to mid-November, and if things go well, I should be able to put out at least one more ebook before the end of the year.

My main publishing goal, though, is to get print versions out of every Star Wanderers story before Christmas. I got the first proof of Outworlder a few days ago, and fixed the issues with it over the weekend. Just have to order another proof and make sure it looks good, then it’s just a matter of clicking a couple buttons and it should be up on Amazon. Because it’s a small book, it should sell for between $4 to $6–I know there are a lot of books in this series, so I’ll do what I can to keep the prices low!

Speaking of print editions, the trade paperback of Stars of Blood and Glory is now out on Amazon and the CreateSpace store! If you prefer to read in paper or just want a copy for your bookshelf, you can pick it up now. I’ve gotten some requests for signed copies, so I’m going to order a few from CreateSpace and try to get those sent out in the next few weeks. If you’re interested, shoot me an email at joseph [dot] vasicek [at] gmail [dot] com, and I’ll see what I can do.

That’s just about it. So much publishing–when am I going to get a chance to just write? It’s been a lot of fun though, and I’m happy to get these books out to you guys. Next week, I’ll turn my focus back to Sons of the Starfarers and hopefully make some good progress on the first book of that series.

Thanks for reading!

SW-VII: REPROACH coming out soon!

So I’ve been working hard at Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) these past few days, and I’m happy to say that it will be coming out sooner than I’d expected! I finished a quick proofreading and touch up pass today, which mostly involved cutting some unnecessary paragraphs and rewording a few sentences here and there. I also wrote the author’s note and acknowledgments, so all it needs is another proofreading pass and it should be good to go!

This story wasn’t quite as difficult as Sacrifice, but it certainly was a challenge, and I’m surprisingly pleased with the result. Revisiting the Star Wanderers story from Mariya and Noemi’s points of view was a great experience, and I did my best to really get into their heads and show what they were thinking. The themes are a bit unusual for a science fiction story, but if you’ve followed the Star Wanderers this far, it should be another fun and interesting ride!

I suppose this is where I should include an excerpt or something. I’m not a fan of huge, unwieldy excerpts, so here’s a quickie:

The others laughed with her. As they returned to their work, however, a strange silence fell over them, as if some unspoken tension hung thick in the air. Mariya glanced nervously at her mother, making Noemi wonder if it was something between the two of them. But instead of speaking with Mariya, Salome turned to her.

“About Jerem-ahra,” she said. “He’s a good man, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes,” said Noemi, slowing down a little as she folded the last of the clothes. “Why?”

“God knows there aren’t many good men where we’re going—the Far Outworlds, I mean.” Salome pulled the bed-sheet taught and tucked it expertly beneath the thin foam mattress. “Not many Deltans out there either. At Zarmina, we’ll be the only ones.”

Noemi frowned. She glanced at Mariya, who was watching her intently out of the corner of her eye. Something was going on here—she didn’t know what it was exactly, but it felt as if they were backing her into a corner.

“Really?” she asked, her arms growing tense. “Just the three of us?”

“And father too, of course,” Mariya interjected. “He wasn’t born Deltan, but he’s as good as one of us now.”

“And Jerem-ahra,” said Salome.

What are they trying to get at? Noemi wondered. Both of them were staring at her now, making her hands feel clammy. It was as if they expected an answer from her, but she didn’t even know what they were asking.

“J-Jeremahra hasn’t been baptized yet,” she said, her voice quavering. “I don’t know how to bring it up. We understand each other when it comes to little things, but—”

“I can talk with him!” Mariya said, smiling cheerily. “I can help translate almost anything for you. And even though he hasn’t been baptized yet, I’m sure he’ll come around eventually. When he married you, he practically married into it—just like daddy. For your sake, he’ll convert before too long.”

That’s odd, Noemi thought to herself. Back on Oriana Station, she did everything she could to avoid bringing up religion. It wasn’t like she’d stopped believing, though—just that she was nervous talking with people who didn’t share their faith. Considering all the anti-Deltan bigotry back on Oriana Station, Noemi didn’t blame her. But why was she so eager to see Jeremahra converted now?

“Let me put it this way,” said Salome. “Where we’re going, we need to stick together. And what’s a better way to do that than to become one family?”

Stars of Holy Earth, Noemi realized, they want Mariya to become his second wife. Her eyes widened, and an awful sinking feeling began to pull at her gut even as her legs turned to water.

I’m not sure whether to hire a proofreader or just proofread it myself. I doubt I’ll find someone who can turn it around before the end of the week, but who knows? The manuscript is pretty clean, though, so it shouldn’t take too much work to catch the last few typos–just a good eye.

In any case, I’ll leave you with the track I’m listening to right now. It’s a great track by Paul van Dyk, Arty, and Sue McLaren, remixed by Pedro Del Mar. Stuff like this really helps me to get in the zone.

Take care!