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WIP Thursday 3/18

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I really need to put a reminder somewhere to do these posts!

Everyone places their order and the waiter ambles off, his long arms swaying as he walks.
“If we pick a name, Bennie will have a bull.” Maxim says.
“Cow.” Wil corrects.
“Aren’t the same thing?” Cynthia asks.
Wil inhales, “Oh, man.”
“I’m kidding. I’ve watched enough of your archive to know what a bull is.” She turns to Maxim, “The boy cow.”
Zephyr makes a face, “So what’s the female called?”
Wil groans, “Can we get—“ The waiter returns with their drinks. Everyone orders and the bark-skinned man departs. Wil tries again, “Can we stay on task here? We need a name. Something to hang above the door of the warehouse.”
Maxim opens his mouth but is interrupted by a commotion at another table, near the forward-most section of transparent bulkhead. The four Ghost crew members all turn to look. Bennie is fending off the rapid-fire slaps of an angry pale green Brailack woman. “You said I mattered to you!” She screams as the flat of her hand impacts the top of Bennie’s head.
Maxim winces, “That probably hurt.”

I still love the dynamic between the team no matter if it’s all of them together, or any combination of them off on separate adventures. As I work on wrapping up Space Rogues 9, I wonder where the team goes after this. There’s for sure a book 10, but then what? I haven’t decided.

We’ll see what the future holds for Wil and the crew, together. :)

WIP Thursday 2/18 Identities

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To celebrate ‘Side Hustle Tango’ going off to beta readers this Monday I wanted to share a little more of it. Jax and Noami’s partnership is still being fleshed out. As you might expect it’s a lot of learning on the run.

“So… who are you?” The man with the spray bottle asked, his hand lowering, the spray bottle resting in his lap. They’re in a room that’s about three meters square, empty except for the two currently occupied chairs. No table or anything else.
 “No one.” Jax replied.
 The other man cocked his head, “No one? That’s not good. Nobody misses no one’s when they don’t come home.”
 Jax nodded, “Fair enough. My name is Michael Keaton, I’m—” He didn’t finish because a stream of water hit him in the face.
 “We have your gPhone.” Spray bottle man reminded Jax, withdrawing the device from his jacket with his free hand.
 Jax thought hard about the ident he had last used. He was sure it wasn’t his real one. “Fine, fine. My name is Leonard McGarry.”
 “From?” The other man a go on motion.
 “Here. I live down—” More water. Jax rubbed his face, “Cut that out!”

I really like the spray bottle to get to the truth… trope, almost. It adds playfulness to a serious situation. Bonus points to you if you can identify Jax’s alias.

‘Side Hustle Tango’ comes out in May. The first book in the Grand Human Empire series, ‘Any Job Will Do‘ comes out next week. You can pre-order it now, and if you order from me directly, you get it a few days early as a bonus for buying direct. I hope you’ll take a look, I’m really excited to tell this new set of stories. This series is a mix of some of the same (Space Opera) and something new, (no aliens, a diverse cast, and more) stuff you (I hope) you like in my writing.

WIP Thursday – Different Sizes and Shapes

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The droids have a homeworld now. We’ve seen all kinds of droids throughout the adventures of the crew of the Ghost. Not all of them look like Gabe.

Wil notices that Gabe is pointing to what he thought was a powered down load lifter. It was a load lifter, but not powered down, just sitting motionless. It rumbles to life shifting to turn it’s flat optical sensors toward Gabe and the others, “Hello, Gabe.”
“Interim Governor, Mitch,” Gabe replies.
“Mitch?” Wil whispers to Cynthia who elbows him in the ribs then shrugs.
The load lifter droid rolls toward the group as they arrive at the bottom. “It is an honor to meet friends of Gabe the Liberator.”
Gabe makes a choking sound. His friends all smile.
Zephyr inclines her head, “The honor is ours, you’ve accomplished so much in a short period.”
“It helps that we do not sleep,” Mitch replies. The load lifter is at least three meters tall and two wide. His scuffed and warn body is yellow with black stripes. “We expect to have phase one completed in forty of fifty rotations.” Wil whistles. Mitch continues, “We owe a great debt to Ben-Ari Vulvo. You might find this strange, but his technical skills rival that of many of our technical droid citizens.”
Bennie blushes a deeper green. He rocks on his heels, “My, uh, my pleasure.”
Wil steps closer to the governor, “Listen, uh, Mitch, we actually have a favor to ask you.”

Space Rogues 8: No subtitle yet, is proving to be fun. We get to visit the new droid homeworld for a little, and without giving too much away, there’s a heist.

WIP Thursday (7/9) Space Travel has Down Time

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Lots of down time. FTL is great, but unless your entire story is blink of an eye travel, you gotta deal with getting from one place to another.

An hour or so later Steve walked into the common area, Naomi and Lori were on their second pot of coffee, “Morning all.” He rubbed his dark brown hair then ran his hand down his face. He looked at the two women, their eyes boring holes in
Lori looked up, “Good morning to you too.” Something in the way she said those five words caused Steve to blush. He quickly turned away, reaching into the cupboard to grab first one, then a second coffee cup.
Jax walked in, “Morn—“ Steve shoved a cup of coffee at him.
Both women turned their stares from Steve to a new target. Jax sipped the coffee, then looked at the two women, “What?”
Steve sidled towards the lounge area the long way around. Lori I waggled her eyebrows, but said nothing. She tilted her head towards the other woman on the sofa and winked. Jax groaned but said nothing. He turned and looked at Rudy, still in his charging port, “Rudy.”
Rudy made a mechanical sound, “If the hormone parade is over,” he disengaged from his charger and rolled to stand in front of the wall-mounted entertainment screen. “My understanding is that we need to get things planned.” He turned to Steve, “Your order of cabling should be delivered in thirty minutes, I’ll have Baxter accept it.” Steve nodded dumbly looking from Jax, the droid, and the two women.

Travel time is a great opportunity for a writer. Whether it’s FTL or the brave companions crossing the valley on horseback, it’s your chance to world build, to establish details, and to just let yourself have fun. Maybe it’s movie night, maybe a character is amateur chef, and each meal is an adventure.

I’m having a blast exploring Jax and his friend’s personality and preferences. I can’t wait for you to read this new series.

WIP Thursday – This is Awkward

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Somewhere in the first half of the adventure

I’m really enjoying this new series. It started as a “I gotta get this story bit out of my head” but already I’m thinking of the next adventure for Jackson and the others in this universe with a freshly minted Empire.

When Jax came up the stairs, he found mister Ichiko and Lori sitting at the small table near the kitchenette looking over a tablet while Steve was watching what looked like an episode of Star Trek: The New Adventures. Not one of the better episodes Jax noticed. “Oh good, you’re all here.” He made a come-on motion, “This is uh, my, er, girlfriend. Naomi.”
“Your—“ Lori started.
“Girlfriend?” Naomi finished, then coughed, “Girlfriend, yeah, hi. We met a few weeks ago, one of those hookup apps.” She looked around the room, “Couldn’t get enough of him after that.” Jax pointed toward the forward bulkhead and the hatch leading to the head while studiously examining something on the ceiling.
When the hatch closed behind Naomi, Steve paused the vid, “Girlfriend? Couple weeks? Wouldn’t that be around when…” His face had a red hue, but Jax wasn’t sure if it was an angry or embarrassed blush.
Jax ran a hand through his hair, “Uh yeah. Anyway, she’ll make herself useful and won’t get in the way.” He made sure to not make eye contact with Steve.

New Series Fun

I’m normally ‘a finish the first draft then revise’ person. But I got towards what I thought was the end of this story and realized it wasn’t the end. I’d recently introduced a character that was going to be a throwaway, and a few pages in was like, “No, she’s a keeper.”

So I stopped where I was and went back to the start to re-engineer the entire beginning of the story to include this new character and to delve a bit deeper into the backstory of this universe. I’m far and away happier with where things are now.

Also, I’ve decided to try to work on my character descriptions more, so this book is my go at it. I’m really excited about this new series! You can join (if you’re on my list you won’t be 2 emails, but I want people to opt-into this sub-list specifically) my Grand Human Empire mailing list to stay up to date on this new series.

WIP Tuesday “Make New Friends

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Jackson “Jax” Caruso doesn’t have many human friends. He certainly doesn’t welcome just anyone into his circle.

Jax took a sip of his beer then said, “Looks like we’re down a Delphino, any chance they’ll let you adjust the food order?” He took a bite of the burger. Even though he knew it wasn’t beef he closed his eyes and let a low moan escape his lips.
“Uh, what’re you doing?” His nav droid friend asked. “You better not be —“
Jax swallowed, “I’m eating lunch you perv. Can you change the order?”
“I’ll see what they say, but don’t hold your breath. Oh, you had a visitor.”
“Yeah?” Jax pressed. He took another bite, careful that time to conceal the moan of pleasure. Lucas had a gift for spicing the vat meat enough you’d never know it grew on a meter tall frame with nutrient sludge pumped into it.
“Governor Singh came by, said you should visit her sooner rather than later.”
“Weird she didn’t just call me.” He looked at the screen and tapped to his call log, “oh, she did, six times while we were on Mariposa, oops. Ok, anything else.”
“Nope that’s it.” Rudy said, then closed the channel. The screen on Jax’s phone lit up then returned to the home screen.
“Well if it isn’t Jackson Caruso.” A woman said from behind Jax. He looked up as Naomi Himura slid into the booth opposite him.
“Wait, wha?” Jax stumbled over his words.
“Miss me?” The Asian woman asked taking his mug of beer and sipping from it.
Jax regained his composure, “Not even a little.”

This is from book one of Still unknown Series or book name LOL. I’m almost done with my first draft, but had to take a pause to see where I wanted it to go, so have been shuffling things around. I like the new direction I’ve settled on and the flow of the story. I should be able to send it to beta readers in another month or so.

I’m excited to get a new series out into the world, and hope folks enjoy it.

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