Brothers in Exile – Page 3 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Brothers in Exile — excerpt 6

They found the first body a short while later. It had decayed so much, with the skin stretched tight across the dry old bones, that it almost looked like a bag of discarded waste. Only when they came up to it did the human form become apparent.

“Stars of Earth,” Aaron swore, jumping back. “What is that?”

Isaac crouched and gripped one of the curled up arms as gently as he could with his oversized gloves. The suit did not transmit the sensation of touch, but the blackened skin peeled off like dry paper, the bone snapping off at the elbow joint. In the eerie silence of the station, the crack of the broken bone sounded surprisingly distinct through the external mike.

“What are you doing?”

“Investigating,” Isaac said softly as he laid the bone back in place. The body was curled up in a fetal position, with ribs poking out from the stomach and stringy black hair still hanging from the scalp. It was roughly adult-sized, with the gaunt remains of facial muscles pulled back from two rows of worn, flat teeth. Strangely, there was no sign of clothing—perhaps the colonists had preferred organic fibers over synthetics. Either way, the only indication of the body’s sex was in its bone structure, and Isaac didn’t know enough about that to tell whether it had been a man or a woman.

“Sol, Earth, and Luna, Isaac,” Aaron swore. “Step away from that thing.”

It’s not a thing; it used to be a person, Isaac wanted to say. Instead, he stood up slowly and took a step back.

“I can’t tell how long it’s been since he died, but clearly, it’s been a while. Years, at least.”

“At least,” Aaron agreed. “Stars, it gives me the creeps.”

Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 1) is coming out this weekend to Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. It is a novella about 36,000 words long–about the same length as Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII), perhaps a bit longer. It will be $.99 the first week, and $2.99 after that.

To be notified when it comes out, be sure to sign up for my new release email list if you haven’t already. Or you can just keep watching this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3
Excerpt 4
Excerpt 5

Cover reveal for BROTHERS IN EXILE!

I just got the cover art for Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 1) and it looks pretty sweet–check it out!

The cover designer is Kalen O’Donnell–he’s going to be doing the covers for the rest of the series. The scene here is from the first chapter, where Isaac and Aaron arrive at the derelict station in the Nova Alnilam system.

The book is coming along quite well–I should be ready to publish it before the end of the week! Just have to go through the edits, make a couple of small changes, and format it for publication (but that part doesn’t take too long). With luck, it should be up in time for Memorial Day.

I’m going to try something a little different with this book and launch it at $.99 for the first week, then raise the price up to $2.99 afterwards. That way, I can give my fans a good deal, and hopefully move it up on some of the lists to gain some visibility. That means it will only be available on Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble for the first week, though, since it’s harder to make price changes on the other sites, and Amazon will send you a nasty take-down notice if the book is selling for less on any other site.

That’s just about it. Back to work now–I’ve got a book to publish!

Brothers in Exile — excerpt 5

The moment the helmet clamps sealed with a hiss, Isaac felt as if he’d been cut off into his own private universe. The glass faceplate gave a slightly copper color to everything outside, while the indicators in the corner of his vision lit up softly with his vitals. He took a deep breath of the canned oxygen, and the hiss of the airflow filled his ears.

“Need a little help?” he asked, toggling the external speakers by clicking his right thumb and ring finger twice.

“I’ve got it,” said Aaron, his voice coming through a bit tinny. The pickup on the microphones wasn’t all that great, probably because the designers hadn’t considered them an important feature. After all, there was no sound in space.

“Great. I’ll be waiting for you in the airlock.”

Isaac barely lifted his feet as he shuffled through the heavy durasteel door into the starship’s only airlock. Even so, he could hear the clang of the metal grating against his boots through the fibers of his suit. The greenish-yellow LEDs shone down through thick plastiglass, protection from the harsh vacuum. Unlike the rest of the ship, the walls and ceiling were made of the same durasteel plating as the rest of the hull, designed for exposure to the void.

He stopped and stared at the opposite door. The rhythmic hiss of the airflow mingled with the silent pounding of his heart as he wondered what lay on the other side. The sweat pooling against the back of his neck felt strangely cold. He wished his brother would hurry up.

“All right,” came Aaron’s voice, followed by a short burst of static. The suit’s radio sounded a lot clearer than the external microphone.

“Are you ready?”

“I’m right behind you.”

“Great,” said Isaac. “Let’s get started.”

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is coming out later this week–I’m very excited! I think you guys are really going to like this one, and the new series that it’s going to launch. It’s set in the same universe as Star Wanderers with some of the same characters, but takes that story in a much different direction.

To be notified by email when Brothers in Exile is out, be sure to sign up for my mailing list if you haven’t already.

Thanks for reading!

Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3
Excerpt 4

Brothers in Exile — excerpt 4

“If anyone’s still alive—”

“They can’t be. If they were, they would have fixed the leak.”

Aaron bristled. “How do you know that? For all we know, the engineers are gone and none of the survivors knows what to do about it.”

“If there are any survivors, why haven’t they hailed us?”

“How should I know? All I know is that it’s possible. You can’t refute that.”

I guess I can’t, Isaac thought. Instead of admitting it, though, he kept silent, peering at the ghostly derelict as if lost in thought.

“We should dock and go in there,” said Aaron. “Peek inside, take a look around. Even if there aren’t any survivors, maybe we can at least find out what happened to them.”

“Are you crazy?” said Isaac, his heart beating a little faster at his brother’s suggestion. “We have no idea what’s in there. For all we know, the place is infested with some sort of disease.”

“So we go in in EVA suits and take a quick sterilizing spacewalk before we come back. No big deal.”

“It’s still a dumb idea. We’re not going.”

Aaron scowled and rolled his eyes. “So what, you just want to turn around and leave? Abandon this place without finding out what happened?”

“That’s right. We know that the station is dead, and that’s enough.”

“But we don’t know that,” said Aaron, raising both of his hands. “We don’t know hardly anything. All we know is that no one has answered our transmissions and there’s a small reactor leak at the hub, but everything else looks fine.”

It does not look fine, Isaac thought to himself. His palms felt clammy, and he was already beginning to regret his decision to come to this system at all.

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is coming out the weekend of May 17th. The cover art should be out soon–I’ll post it as soon as it is! In the meantime, I’ll keep posting these excerpts to give you a taste. If you’ve enjoyed Star Wanderers and the Gaia Nova books, I think you guys are really going to like this new series!

To be updated when it comes out, be sure to sign up for my email newsletter if you haven’t already.

Thanks for reading!

Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3

Brothers in Exile — excerpt 3

On the dark side of the horizon, where the ocean of stars met the blackness of night, a tiny point of light gradually grew brighter than all the others. It was the station, reflecting the starlight. As they came closer, the man-made structure gradually took shape: two narrow wheels running at cross-purposes to each other around a fat central cylinder with long antennae on either end. Isaac gripped the flight stick a little tighter and rechecked the nav-computer to make sure that they were still on course. Down below, a flash of pale blue lightning lit up a tiny patch of the planet’s atmosphere, but only for an instant. Whatever tempest swirled in the clouds below them, it preferred to brood in the shadows.

“We’re coming up on the station,” said Aaron. “One klick and dropping.”

“Can you try to contact them as I make the final approach? Be sure to try the shortwave too—if anyone’s still alive in there, chances are better that they’ll have something rigged up on those bands.”

Aaron shrugged, but he went ahead and did it anyway. Isaac kept an eye on the main screen as he made the final maneuvers to put them in a parallel orbit just 500 meters away.

“So this is Alnilam station,” he mused as he peered out the forward window. The station’s hull was a dark gray, the beacons at the ends of the antennae a deep flashing red. The starlight was too dim to give anything more than the basic shape of the structure. On the inside of the wheels where the windows should have been, there was a blackness as dark as the night on the planet below.

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is my latest book, due to come out later this month. It expands the Star Wanderers universe and starts an epic new story arc that will eventually tie in with the Gaia Nova books as well.

To be notified when it comes out, be sure to sign up for my mailing list if you haven’t already.

Thanks for reading!

Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2

Brothers in Exile — excerpt 2

“There,” said Aaron. “Got it.” The main cockpit holoscreen lit up between them, showing an image of the planet with their current trajectory in green. Around the sphere representing the planet itself, a red ellipse traced a separate orbit.

“What’s that?” Isaac asked.

“The station. Since they aren’t responding to our hails, I figure we ought to calculate our own approach vector.”

Isaac frowned. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. We don’t know what else is down there. For all we know, our approach could put us on a collision course with local traffic.”

“What traffic? We’re picking up nothing but radio silence across all bands—for all we know, the station is dead.”

Dead.The suggestion sent chills down the back of Isaac’s neck. He sighed and shook his head.

“If the station were dead, wouldn’t the colonists have set up some sort of distress beacon?”

“What’s the point in setting up a distress beacon if you’re more than two parsecs from the nearest help?”

What if they are dead? Isaac wondered. What if that’s why they haven’t hailed us?

“Something is definitely wrong,” he said softly. “Maybe we should just cut our losses now and leave.”

“What? You mean turn around and go back to Nova Minitak?”

“That, or move on to Esperanzia. This isn’t right—we’ve been transmitting on every major frequency, with no response. Something about this system is very wrong, and I don’t want to get involved.”

“Involved in what?” asked Aaron, his face incredulous. “If something is wrong, maybe they need our help. How can we turn around and leave them if they need us?”

We can’t help them if they’re already dead.

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is coming out in ebook format later this month. It is the first book in the Sons of the Starfarers series, which takes place in the same universe and timeline as Star Wanderers. To be updated when it comes out, be sure to sign up for my mailing list if you haven’t already.

Thanks for reading!

Excerpt 1

Brothers in Exile — excerpt 1

Something about the Nova Alnilam system felt wrong. Perhaps it was the silence that greeted Isaac and his brother as they exited jumpsace near the fifth planet. The deep blue ice giant world shone pale in the crystalline light of its sun, while all their commscans picked up nothing but empty static. For a planet that was supposed to have a mid-sized orbital colony of more than a thousand people, that was highly unusual.

“Alnilam Station,” he said, transmitting across all the major radio bands. “This is Isaac of the Medea, requesting docking permission. Do you copy?”

Silence. Isaac counted to five and glanced at his younger brother Aaron.

“I don’t think they’re picking us up,” he said. “How’s our orbital trajectory?”

“It’s coming, it’s coming,” said Aaron, his eyes practically fused to his display screen. “Just give me a second.” He brushed his unkempt brown hair out of the way and scratched at the patchy stubble on his chin.

Isaac sat back in his chair and mentally reviewed what they knew about the system. A class F star on the barely inhabited Outworld fringes of the south second quadrant, it lay almost six light-years from the nearest established settlement. The first colonists had arrived about a hundred and twenty standard years ago, but all the records since then were spotty and inconsistent. An obscure astrographical survey in the Gaian Imperial catalog showed that the system was rich in uranium and other radioactives, which if true would make it the perfect third leg in a trade route of the local stars. Few starfarers ever came out this way, though—for all Isaac knew, they were the first people to visit this colony in a generation.

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is coming out later this month. This excerpt is the opening scene, taken from the first chapter.

To be notified by email when it comes out, you can sign up for my mailing list here. Brothers in Exile is also listed on Goodreads, so feel free to add it to your to-read list. It doesn’t have a cover yet, but that should be coming out soon.

Thanks for reading!

Okay, back to work

Well, the Blogging from A to Z challenge was fun, but now that it’s May it’s time to switch gears and focus on other things. I’ve got about a bazillion projects going on, so it’s definitely going to be a full month! Here’s what I hope to accomplish:

Writing

Finish the first draft of Strangers in Flight (Sons of the Starfarers Book III).
Revise Comrades in Hope (Sons of the Starfarers Book II) and get it ready for publication.
Start writing Star Wanderers: Wanderlust (Part IX).

Publishing

Finish redoing the covers for the Star Wanderers ebooks.
Put all the Star Wanderers books on Google Play, All Romance eBooks, and DriveThru Fiction.
Typeset The Jeremiah Chronicles and Tales of the Far Outworlds for print.
Publish Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers Book I).
Finalize all the print editions for Star Wanderers I-VIII.

That’s pretty much it. Some of it, like redoing the Star Wanderers covers and putting those books up on Google Play and ARe shouldn’t take more than an afternoon. Others are going to take a lot more work to fully realize.

The thing I’m most excited (and nervous!) about is getting Sons of the Starfarers ready for publication. I’ve had an awesome time writing these books so far, and I think you’re really going to love them. Brothers in Exile is with my editor right now, and I’m working with a new cover designer to come up with some awesome cover art. If all goes well, it should be out by May 15th.

In the next few days, I’m going to post some short 250 word excerpts from Brothers in Exile to give you a taste. I’ve never tried something like this before, so let me know what you think! I’ll probably post the first one tonight.

Here’s the book description:

TO WAKE A LOST GIRL FROM THE ICE, TWO BROTHERS MUST FACE AN EMPIRE.

Deep in the Far Outworlds, a derelict space station holds the bones of a long-dead people—and a beautiful young woman locked in cryofreeze. When the star-wandering brothers Isaac and Aaron find the sleeping girl, they soon realize that they are her only hope for rescue. If they don’t take her, then slavers certainly will.

With no way to revive her, they set a course for the New Pleiades in the hopes of finding someone who can help. But a storm is brewing over that region of space. After a series of brutal civil wars, the Gaian Empire has turned its sights outward. A frontier war is on the verge of breaking out, and the brothers are about to be caught in the middle of it.

They both harbor a secret, though. Somewhere else in the Outworlds is another derelict station—one that they used to call home. That secret will either bind them together or draw them apart in

SONS OF THE STARFARERS
BOOK I: BROTHERS IN EXILE

Pretty cool, huh? Keep an eye on this space over the next few days for more!

L is for Launch

How important is it to have a massive book launch whenever you release a new book?

I think the answer to this question varies from genre to genre. For the more mainstream genres where word of mouth is driven by general popularity, such as romance or thriller, it’s probably fairly important. For more niche genres like science fiction that are driven mostly by a dedicated core of fans, it’s not as crucial as you might think.

The reason most often cited for doing a big book launch is to try to get onto the rolling 30 day and 90 day new release lists on Amazon. When I published Genesis Earth back in 2011 before the publishing landscape flooded with indie books, I saw decent sales for the first 90 days, probably because that book was on the list. That happened more by accident than design, though, and it would be much harder to replicate now.

In general, I think that indies tend to overemphasize the importance of the new release lists. On forums like KBoards, I’ve even heard some writers go so far as to say a book is dead after the first 90 days. That runs contrary to my own experience–in fact, I doubt that it’s true even in the mainstream genres. Ebooks are forever, and there are all sorts of things that can give a book wings after months or even years from its initial launch.

That said, I do try to do a couple of things whenever I have a new release:

Mention it on social media and here on my blog. I don’t generally send out those annoying “buy my book!” posts, but when I have a new book out, I figure it’s worth a mention since my readers are going to want to know.
Send out an email to my mailing list. That’s the only reason why the list exists–to announce new releases. Typically, though, I wait until the book is up on multiple retail sites, so that I can include most if not all of the links.
Put up the book on the sidebar of my blog. Ever since I got rid of all the typical blogging widgets (like calendars, tag clouds, archive lists etc) and dedicated the sidebar almost exclusively to my books, I’ve sent a small but steady trickle of traffic in that direction. The sidebar links aren’t comprehensive, but most of my books are up there.

That’s about it. As you can see, nothing too fancy. My book launches tend to be fairly quiet, and that works just fine for me.

At the same time, though, I kind of wonder what would happen if I tried for a more aggressive launch. When I was first starting out, it didn’t make much sense because I didn’t have much of a platform or very many books out. Now, though, I wonder if putting a bit more emphasis on a new release will yield measurable results.

When I release Brothers in Exile in May, I’m going to try out a couple of things to give it an initial boost. I already have it listed on Goodreads, and I’ll post a few short excerpts from it here on my blog in the days leading up to and immediately following its release. Beyond that, I don’t have any firm plans, but I would like to do a few guest posts and maybe run a couple of promos.

As you can probably tell, I’m not a huge expert on how to run a massive book launch. What I do know is that in some genres at least, you can succeed without going all out on them. Throwing a massive launch probably isn’t going to hurt you, but it’s not like that’s your only hope for ever breaking out.

Crazy ideas and other updates

I had the craziest idea today while taking a late-night walk around Provo. It’s for the new series that I’m working on, Sons of the Starfarers, and it’s going to take six or seven books to get there, but it’s going to be AWESOME. Unfortunately, I can’t say much about it because the first book isn’t out yet, but I think you guys are going to be wowed.

I still remember the moment when the final PAGE of Desert Stars came to me. I was driving back to Provo from the Salt Lake Airport (alone, fortunately), and when it popped into my head I must have screamed for five minutes straight. The way that Mira’s final observation wraps everything up–both the overarching story her own personal growth arc–it was just awesome.

Those moments of insight are rare, but when they happen, they illuminate everything. It’s as if the whole story is unfolded to you, so that you can see how everything that came before ties into everything that happens later. It also opens you up to the heart of the story itself, so that you can see what it’s all about. As a writer, I live for that kind of insight. It’s one of the most powerful things that makes the whole endeavor worthwhile.

So yeah, Sons of the Starfarers is coming along nicely. The first book, Brothers in Exile, should be out May 10th, with the next two coming out six weeks apart from each other. That’s the plan, anyway. For updates on when those books come out, you can either follow my blog or sign up for my email list. I’ll post a few excerpts in the lead up before and after Brothers in Exile is published.

For April, though, I’ll be participating in the Blogging from A to Z challenge. Every day except Sundays, I’ll have a post for a different letter of the alphabet, all following a common theme. Last year, I blogged about the science fiction genre and some of my favorite tropes. This year, I’ll be blogging about my experience as an indie writer and what I’ve learned from it over the past three years.

I’ve already written and scheduled the first couple of posts: A is for Algorithm and B is for Book Blurb. Beyond that, I’ll be doing stuff like D is for Discoverability, P is for Pricing, S is for Serials, etc. Whether you’re a writer from one of the indie author communities I’m a part of, or a fan who discovered this blog after reading one of my books, I hope you’ll find this behind-the-scenes series of blog posts interesting. I can already tell I’m going to have a lot of fun with it!

That’s just about it for now. This week, I hope to finish up Book II: Comrades in Hope and get ready to dig into Book III: Strangers in Flight. The stuff in that third book is going to set the stage for some major wow moments later on in the series, and I can hardly wait to dive into it!