Every story is about a character trying to accomplish something with an obstacle in the way. And what they do and the action they take in the face of those obstacles, well, that is your story.
Launching Christmas 2024
When speed was measured in light, the M/V Redline Overload beat them all. Then its captain took the ship on a planet-killing crusade. Pieces no bigger than a man’s hand were gathered from a thousand kilometers.
Chasse Domuzu has grieved the loss of her best friend and the ship for over two years. The anger burned brightly in her belly. Chasse hunted for the mechanical engineer who helped win the speed title. When she found Jeffen Albene, she put the blueprints, specifications book, and a bottomless bank account on the table.
Albene had been down on his luck for a while. A horrific accident on a repair scared away business. A successful ship builder with dozens of new vessels to his repertoire, Albene lacked that one big project that would put his name on everyone’s lips. Depression, bad nerves, and a career headed for a dead end. And then the call came from Chasse Domuzu.
A new crew that brought along their own less-than stellar baggage. The owner who tries to resurrect the glories of a time past. The exhausting scrutiny of millions of eyes watching. Disapproving stares from Domuzu’s interstellar business partner.
Evil comes calling. Who will win?
The Next Page
Here are some details that don’t come to light in the story, but affect the reactions and responses of the characters. When you read the novel, keep thinking about the different ways they react.
Coeur Riss
Coeur Riss is a fearless test pilot. He has the knack for flying any vessel, ship, or sled. He enjoys running faster-than-light test flights.
Awake in Nizonel Chindi Interstellar Prison. He has been studying for a weapons engineering degree, but abandoned it when a free medical licensing program opened up.
Coeur Riss was born on Planet Zagarik, Sector Twelve, 219 lightyears past Pluto. He is 64 years old now but appears to be in his twenties. Coeur’s father was Earth human, and his mother was Zagarikian. Riss can use the slight chameleon DNA to alter his physical appearance.
Coeur is six foot three inches tall and weighs 180 pounds give or take a pound and current gravity. Hazel eyes, closely shorn hair and clean-shaven.
Riss has held over thirty different jobs. Shuttle pilot, janitor, animal trainer, agricultural worker, etc. He can disarm conventional and nuclear missiles and their systems by touch and feel.
He likes to wear a hat, no matter where he is. He has several favorites acquired along his travels. The pilot has horrific nightmares if he sleeps longer than nine hours. His DNA structure causes medical scanning devices to surmise he is not alive.
Three of the non-strategic nuclear weapons used by Captain Shakka Thuras were purchased and installed by Coeur Riss. The original M/V Redline Overload left Riss’s black site shop and an hour later, started firing planet-buster bombs.
Albene never revealed to Riss who had referred him.
Cher Runos
Cherdine has fifteen years’ of extensive engineering knowledge of making spacecraft systems work together smoothly. Most importantly, she has built three Tellurite Star Engines alone and assisted on twenty-two others.
She is twenty-nine years old, born on Brinks Rings, in Sector S, eighty-six lightyears from Pluto. Cherdine is twenty-nine years old. She has 15 years’ of hands-on experience as a spacecraft engineer specialist. As a child, her family discovered she was double-jointed. They taught her how to squeeze into tight spaces and fix something or take something. Now, she appears to be an average woman, five foot eight, 120 pounds, but muscularly strong with that elastic double-jointed flexibility.
Cherdine “Cher” Runos was in cryo-sleep (asleep) in prison. Convicted of being inside stolen equipment worth less than $5,000 credits. She has a trusting personality. When a team of five contacted her with a money-upfront plan, she climbed into the engine. They double-crossed her and used a gas agent to knock her out. Customs woke her up and while now rich, she went straight to jail. With the option to serve her prison term awake, Cher chose to cryo-sleep.
Cherdine’s father was Parveen and her mother was half Dania, half Human. Cher’s blood shows several other unknown race blood percentages.
She worked on the Radiant Esperra; a private luxury yacht abandoned at a station. She and two others got the reactor working and the computer system running. While she slept, the other two stole the Radiant Esperra and left her stranded.
Cherdine is double-jointed and can contort herself to get into tight spaces. She has no fear of heights and is comfortable dangling strapped into heavy climbing gear.
She can mimic any professional singer. She has a hypnotic wavelength that gently urges people to do what she suggests.
During a kidnapping attempt four years ago, the kidnappers harvested one of her reproductive eggs and stole it. Cherdine believes she has a child out in the universe somewhere.
Frushen Yet
Jeffen Albene was surprised to find his long-lost friend, Frushen Yet in cryo-sleep inside of Nizonel Chindi Interstellar Prison.
An exceptional Senior Weapons Engineer, Yet can take apart household appliances and build lethal weapons.
Born on the Columbia colony on Mars to a human father and a fourth-generation Martian mother. There were six brothers and four sisters. Chaos and mayhem pervaded the house. He had been gone for a year before anyone asked about him.
Yet is now seventy-six years old. His father’s family dealt in legal and not-so-legal weapons, He claims sixty-four years’ experience in disassembling and reassembling weapons.
His appearance is striking with waist-length straight white hair, a deep tan, and hazel green eyes with gold flecks. He wears facial hair, a neatly white-trimmed mustache, and a goatee. A brilliant white smile belying his years. 210 pounds.
He can hold his breath for five minutes with no problems. He doesn’t exhibit it often, but he runs the forty-yard dash in five seconds flat.
Frushen Yet has worked as a consultant trainer for Mars Naval recruits on weapons, the Enforcer teams of the Roharh Group, and lesser-known semi-organized groups. He has an alternate personality of an executive chef aboard shuttles across the expanse.
Frushen Yet met Cherdine Runos five years back during a crew offload. His charisma snagged her to his side, but it was her strong wavelength that captured him. They have been together except for their work.
Frushen knew that Cher Runos was asleep upstairs on the seventh floor in the prison. He has been friends/acquaintances with Jeffen Albene for over forty years. Yet introduced Xxianna Albene to Jeffen.
It is the one question asked more than any other:
I write. I write everything. I read a lot, too. Last year I think I read 80+ books. Cookbooks, operator manuals, and the magazines in the doctor’s office. Only a couple of them actually put me to sleep. Get one of those half-size spiral ring notebooks and start packing it around with you. Write down the things you see. The accident on the freeway. The person in line in front of you at the grocery store. What did you see, hear, smell, or taste?
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Under the Weeds Near the Pond
Ameera Vintebras and Chasse Domuzu
When an alien trafficking cult tears an interstellar freight vessel to pieces hunting for a terrible secret, it’s up to a veteran female freighter captain, an overworked interstellar justice officer, and a gun-slinging extra-terrestrial to hunt down the gang before it kills again.
Organic Apathy
Has your antagonistic character become a story darling or has he eased over into a psychopathic danger?
Write in a few of these tendencies to see if your darling turns into someone we love to hate:
Glibness and superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse, emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of behavioural control, behavioural problems in early life, juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, a history of “revocation of conditional release” (ie broken parole), multiple marriages, and promiscuous sexual behaviour.