Two weeks of being at home and the jet lag is finally wearing off.
I do actually have the words TIME TRAVEL on my calendar for the first and second of March because I boarded a plane on the morning of the first, spent twelve hours in the hair, and miraculously fast forwarded to late evening on the night of the second. Twelve hours in the air took a day and a half on the ground. But I’m home.
While I’ve been busy ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A GARGOYLE fan kits reached their fans. THE PRICE OF THE MOUNTAIN LILY is making new fans worldwide. And I scheduled a meeting with an editor in Seoul in May.
Now that I’m back I’m diving into early edits for FOR EVERY ACTION (Fleet of Malik #3). If you’re looking for more, make sure you’re following me on BlueSky. Or sign up for my newsletter to hear about fan kits, new releases, and other fun shenanigans.
FOR EVERY ACTION Opening Snippet:
It wasn’t a dream it was a memory. Cold, gray eyes glaring at her across the empty expanse of the landing bay floor. The air smelled of strange chemicals and was a cold, dry and thin, in a way the air of home never was. She’d shivered.
“What are you?” The words had a strange accent. Alien. The boy was rail-thin, so young. So very young, in her memory.
At the time he hadn’t seemed young, he’d seemed so pale and strange, with hair almost white and skin like moonlight.
Now, she had his memories saved with her own. The confusion he’d felt on seeing two people exit the shuttle was recorded by the implant in his arm, a strip of metal and wires snuggled between the radius and ulna.
He’d been sent to find Perrin Carver ahead of schedule. Had rerouted the shuttle to make sure Carver’s first experience at the Academy was controlled by the Balaurs. But he hadn’t expected her. Hadn’t known what to do.
There is no contingency plan for Hermione Marshall.
The thought triggered a cascade of remembered emotions – his and hers.
Frustration. Anger. Delight. Hunger. Passion. Resolve.
Hermione opened her eyes in the absolute darkness of a dead shuttle. The oxygen was good for another few years, but the tracker was down, along with all the other electrical systems. It floated in a degrading orbit around Malik IV’s moon, another piece of wartime flotsam just like her memories. One day it would be salvaged. Remade. Reforged. Flown again.
Today, it was as empty as her life.
She sat up, listening to her own heartbeat in the silence of empty space.
There was a faint echo. As if another heart was beating with hers, trying to find a matching rhythm.
:Mal.: The message rippled into space, tripped over the planet, found nothing.
The implant the code was meant to find was gone. Dead. Burned in a fire bomb.
All she had now was the memory.