A New Adventure Begins #WIP #AmWriting

I'm trying something I've never done before, and that's to write a story that runs concurrently with a novel I've already published.

Well, it seemed like a great idea at the time.

And yeah, I think it's still a great idea. It's just proving to be a bit more of a challenge than I imagined. It also required re-reading portions of my novel Inherit the Stars, for context, as well as figuring out timelines and defining a chain-of-events that wasn't all that key to the original story, but became majorly important when looking at things from the vantage point of two new characters and their role in the overall series.

An entire adventure is now taking root from this one small passage in the novel.

[Scene set-up: Captain Drea Mennelsohn and the Specter crew are making a desperate jump from Calos spaceport on Banna to evade enemy agents. Edited for length and content.]

The G-forces tugged at Sair before the dampener neutralized them. Then all sense of motion ceased, but from the thunder of the drive he knew the ship was rocketing toward space. The pana-screen brightened and a three-hundred-sixty degree view of Banna, her fiery sun, and countless stars surrounded him. His gaze followed the screen around the complete arc. The two Bannan moons, one pocked with dull gray craters and the other rich with greens and blues, rolled across the screen to his left. Distant nebulas and galaxies flared against the velvet darkness of deep space. Tiny points of color moved against the blackness. Alliance ships.

Jaeo elbowed his arm. "Watch your monitor, not the view."

"The coyotes and the Wisdom have been vaporized," Drea announced, and in a private aside to Sair, "They had to be destroyed to safeguard the technology."

The Wisdom?" Sair questioned.

"My ship," Jaeo responded through gritted teeth.

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The set-up for my new story is contained in those last three sentences. The destruction of Wisdom on the surface of Banna, and the series of events this triggers for two characters on the planet below.

StarDog, the story in the original Pets in Space anthology, took place about six months (moons) earlier and illustrated that Wisdom was no ordinary vessel, and its destruction was sure to cause havoc for the Network.

So far in the series, only StarDog has scenes that take place aboard the actual ship.

This is hero Taro Shall's first encounter with Wisdom when he escorts Adini Kemm to the vessel, so you can have a glimpse of the vessel in her heyday.

[Edited for length]

Two haras later, after checking in at Flight Authority, Taro helped Adini locate the ship captained by Gant, slotted in bay 1552 South.

After making a mostly wordless trek across the expansive spaceport, they found the vessel in her assigned hangar—an immaculate silver craft with a flame-in-pyramid symbol emblazoned on her hull that identified her LaGuardian registry. She might’ve passed as an upper-end passenger liner if not for the fact that she bristled with an array of weaponry.

“Expensive looking craft,” Taro muttered.

“Mennelsohn design,” Adini responded under her breath.

Taro gave a low whistle. Vessels blueprinted by Zaviar Mennelsohn weren’t easy to come by. Gant had to be quite wealthy. And that level of wealth wasn’t always gained via legitimate means.

***

Wisdom’s interior was even more intimidating than her outward appearance. She was a larger vessel than Calypso, with four decks of cleanly gridded corridors and cabins, a contrast to the rounded Manta configuration of Captain Jordan’s ship. Every aspect was polished and orderly. All of Gant’s crew were professionally outfitted in crisp black and gray uniforms and branded service hats.

Wisdom had the look and feel of a military flagship. Except LaGuardia wasn’t supposed to have a military. The planet had been stripped of its fleet two centuries ago, along with its Universal Peacekeeper status, when the Ithians had wrested control. 

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This new work-in-progress has given me the chance to delve into whole new facets of the Network vs. Alliance struggle, and to explore two new characters--I'm sorry, StarDog makes three!--in this tale of intrigue and adventure.

Coming in October 2019.

Have a great week.