Cognitive Dissonance - What is it and What does it have to do with Writing?

Recently, I stumbled on an article about cognitive dissonance and immediately thought, "I've got to write a blog about that." 

What is it? It's humans' ability to hold two contrary beliefs at the same time and the mental discomfort that arises with holding contrary beliefs, or even more specifically, from learning new information which contradicts a deeply held belief. 

Wikipedia describes it this way: 

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, belifs [sic], values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as pyschological [sic] stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things.

[The inserted '[sic]' notations are mine. The Wiki info apparently hadn't been well proofed.] 

Cognitive dissonance also sometimes comes into play for authors. In fact, for many works, it's essential. It's something ALL writers must face to some degree, in particular when giving voice to a villain. And even, sometimes, a hero. 

This Blog comes with a Trigger Warning!

Controversial content ahead dealing with an unsettling topic which some may find disturbing. If you become offended, upset or squeamish by the discussion of the darker aspects of human nature, please stop reading here.

To explore this topic more fully, I need to take a closer look at one of the most difficult and challenging aspects I ever had to deal with in penning a novel. (Actually two difficult aspects, but I'll get to that.)

Writers have to put themselves in the bad guy's head ("guy" is used loosely here and throughout the post - of course villains can be any gender). They have to have the ability to reach a mental state where they can effectively relate what the villain believes, what motivates him, and how he justifies his actions while making it understandable and meaningful for the reader. Even when it's something deeply upsetting and repulsive to explore, they have to be capable of relating the villain's mindset (perspective, justification, etc.) to the reader. Villains need to be real and have emotions and motivations that feel real.

And that can put an author in a very dark and questionable place.

One aspect in the anchor novel of the Inherited Stars Universe caused me a great deal of mental angst and bouts of emotion that ranged from gut-wrenching disgust to extreme sympathy and sadness for what some of the characters were subjected to and threatened with. 

This also caused me to question if I shouldn't steer clear of this element entirely. Take a safer route. It's a tough one to explore even in a blog post, and caused me to question my instincts, because I knew it was going to put some readers off from even finishing the book. 

But I decided, for the integrity of the storytelling, it was essential to stay the course. 

Let me delve into the specifics as much as possible, while avoiding major spoilers. In order to make the villains, uh...habits...workable, I had to have one of their leaders explain to a hero why his subspecies evolved into cannibals, and it had to make sense to readers -- as skin-crawling as the subject may be. The Ithians had a dark history and an evolution to cannibalism that had to make sense to me as the writer before I could even begin to convey their culture (not justify it, mind you) via the story line. 

But why cannibals? Why even go there?

Here's the background. I based the Ithian empire, in part, on ancient Rome. Rome was a great culture of poets, writers, philosophers, builders, scientists, and craftsmen, with a strong and disciplined military, who enjoyed a lavish lifestyle rich in culture and the arts. But on weekends they went to the coliseum to cheer on bloody and horrific spectacles of human and animal carnage. It was all for sport, in their empire. The juxtaposition of refinement and savagery is still a little hard to accept or even understand, but it was a fixed and accepted part of their society.

I had to make my Ithian Alliance worse. Much worse. Forcing humans to fight each other or wild beasts as gladiators just wasn't bad enough. (Not to mention it's been done-to-death in science fiction.) The culture of Ithis had to be just as enlightened and enriched as the Roman Empire was in its day, but it also had to have a much, much darker side. But why had their culture evolved in such a disgusting and horrifying way? That was my struggle with cognitive dissonance as I created a history and traditions that allowed them to justify their actions.

 

But there's a caveat. What happens to the Ithian Alliance as a result of their horrendous mistreatment of other subspecies -- as bad as that was -- was also gut-wrenching but in a very different way. They lost something truly precious to them, as a means of rendering them defenseless. Did the ends justify the means? That's left an open-ended question. 

Certain members of the "hero" side of the equation believed there was only one way to restore basic human rights to the known galaxy, without instigating a conventional galaxy-wide war that would kill millions, if not billions. The Ithian Alliance had become so dominant, oppressive and heartless to the rest of the known galaxy, that the inhumanity they forced on others had to be clearly drawn in the story  before they could be dealt so devastating a blow in the story arc. In order to deal with monsters, the good guys had to become monsters themselves in the actions they took to end the horrors perpetuated by the Alliance. But in spite of the unmitigated oppression and callousness of the villains' society, I still had struggles writing those passages and even had readers and reviewers ask, "Wow! Should they have done that?"

That was the flip side of the coin. I had to be able to explain the thoughts and motivations behind the "good guys" extreme actions -- as well as the "bad guys" -- and why they took the steps they did, when they did, and how they did it. 

Cognitive dissonance to the max on both sides of the equation.

As the author, some of the situations described in Inherit the Stars and related books still bother me. I still sometimes feel a certain uneasiness about where I took the story. But that doesn't mean I don't think it was the right call. Call it a danger of the occupation, but cognitive dissonance as it applies to writing, is an integral but uncomfortable part of the writing process.

I welcome your thoughts and comments below. 

Truth is Stranger than Fiction? What if DEDspace is Real?

Sometimes the fiction we imagine can actually start to look like truth.

I recently came across this site while randomly surfing the web, and immediately thought, "Aha! So my fictional DEDspace [Dark Energy Dimension Space] that certain advanced ships in my Inherited Stars series employ to "gallop about the universe" might actually be a thing!"

I kinda have to love it when some of my wilder fictional ideas later turn out to not be so very wild after all.

Here's a link to the online article I found that was posted on February 1, 2024: 

Quanta Magazine:  In a 'Dark Dimension,' Physicists Search for the Universe's Missing Matter

Apparently, scientists are now starting to explore the hypothesis that Dark Energy and Dark Matter may exist in their own dimension. (Um. Yeah. Exactly! LOL) That may be one way of accounting for approximately 96% of the universe -- the matter and energy that must be out there in order to keep galaxies from coming apart at the seams, but to date hasn't been observable or proven to exist except through mathematics. 

So I have two words to sum up my thoughts on this new discovery. Cool beans! 

To be sure, I didn't get into some of the vastly complex particulars outlined in the article in my books. After all, I write fiction, not scientific papers. I provide an imagined framework for how my advanced ships navigate this DEDspace -- and what the consequences are -- without going into all the quantum mechanics and string theory details. My job as a writer of sci-fi is to entertain and open up an imaginative world to readers, not bore them to tears with pages and pages of scientific explanation. 

As the old adage goes, you don't need to know all the details of how a television works just to sit back and enjoy the show.

To explain how my fictional DEDspace worked without diving in to too much of the nittygritty, I wrote a blog back in June of 2016 (almost eight years ago) titled: 

What is this DEDspace of Which You Speak?

The highlights of that blog are below, or you can read the post in it's entirety by clicking the title link just above (it also discusses the futility of traveling around our galaxy -- or even to the nearest star --  with our current technology and the price that must be paid to access my fictional DEDspace).

______________________________________________ 

Even with the star-hopping that their decidedly advanced technology can manage, allowing them to travel system-to-system in a matter of days and span a number of systems inside a couple of weeks, we're talking months of travel to reach the outlier points of the Milky Way, which is one of their destinations in both stories. And that just wouldn't work. I had to find some form of "Galaxy Express" transit.

And Dark Energy provided that magic carpet.

You see, scientists aren't even sure what Dark Energy is just yet. Only that, in theory, it must exist in order for the universe to work, along with Dark Matter. We can't see it. We can't sense it. We only know that, mathematically, there's something dark and mysterious out there, and it accounts for nearly 68% of the actual universe. Dark Matter makes up an additional 28%.

Nearly ninety-six percent of the universe may be Dark Energy and Dark Matter!

That's a whole lot of something that's nothing!

In order for galaxies to not spin apart, there has to be something they call Dark Matter that accounts for the mass and the gravity that holds it all together, and in order for observations from deep space (which also means deep time) to make sense, there also has to be something stretching the universe apart--and they dubbed that Dark Energy. In tandem, Dark Energy and Dark Matter create the theoretical dynamics that might explain how the universe functions as it does when normal mathematics say it shouldn't function at all. (I'm paraphrasing here.)

When I started researching Dark Energy, the theory that made the most sense to me is that Dark Energy actually exists in another unknown dimension. Okay, I can get my head around that. (And better yet, my muse seemed to latch onto the idea big time.) I'd read theories that some scientists believe there could be up to nine dimensions--though trapped in our mortal bodies, we're only programmed to function within three--height, width, depth. Or maybe four, if you consider time a dimension onto itself.

So Dark Energy may form another dimension--one that we could actually enter if we found a way and a means to access it. And in doing so, we might be able to span huge distances in space by slipping the surly bonds of 3D. But...there's also Dark Matter, which some scientists believe might even provide a galaxy-wide transport system. Other experts are exploring the idea that Dark Energy and Dark Matter are connected. (In my universe, they are, and the combined phenomena is simply referred to as DEDspace, meaning Dark Energy Dimension space.)

Fifteen hundred years in our future, a man named Zaviar Mennelsohn did (or will) discover a way to access DEDspace. Or at least, he will in The Inherited Stars universe.

_______________________________________________

If you have any thoughts or comments about DEDspace, please let me know below. 

Thanks for tuning in. Hope you dock again soon.

The Perfect Storm Inspires Ideas

Recently, while watching an episode of Deadliest Catch (one of about three television series I follow anymore), I had a bit of a surprise in terms of the introduction of a new crew member to the show. 

It was a lengthy introduction and for good reason.

The new crew member was Linda Greenlaw. THE Linda Greenlaw. If you don't know who she is, and you ever saw the motion picture The Perfect Storm with George Clooney as the captain of a swordfishing boat, Andrea Gail, out of Gloucester, Massachussetts, that's the Linda Greenlaw I'm talking about. It was based on a true story about real people. And Linda Greenlaw was -- and still is -- one of those real people. The captain of the Andrea Gail's sister ship, the Hannah Boden. 

(theatrical release poster)

And that Linda Greenlaw had just joined the crew of one of the Deadliest Catch king crab fishing boats. She had somehow acquired a quota of crab and was looking for a boat to partner with. After some trial and error, including running into an old nemesis from her Hannah Boden days, she found a spot. 

In relating her backstory, they included some footage of Greenlaw talking about her life and about surviving the "perfect storm" (what they had always referred to as the 1991 "storm of the century") and how it had impacted her life. 

The motion picture had been based on a novel by Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea. There were a few things I gleaned from her story that spoke to Hollywood's version of the "true" story, such as the suggested romance between Captain Linda Greenlaw (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and Captain Billy Tynes (George Clooney) of the starcrossed swordboat, Andrea Gail. 

Apparently, they were never a "thing." Greenlaw related that they did work for the same man, and they occasionally shared info about the location of fish, but there was no tearful scene with Linda speaking at the Andrea Gail crew's memorial service. "I wasn't there. I was out fishing," Linda related. 

But that's not to say the disaster didn't impact her and her life. The owner of her boat did send her out to the last known location of the Andrea Gail, where they found a floating barrel with "A.G." painted on the side--debris from the lost ship. (Ironically, Mark Wahlberg's character, Bobby, is first viewed in the film standing on the bow of the Andrea Gail with several barrels marked "A.G." around him.) There was also a scene where a deceased member of Greenlaw's crew is carried off her vessel. That may have been based, in part, on a story she recanted on The Deadliest Catch of losing a crewmember. 

Here's an opening clip from the movie which highlights the Andrea Gail and Hannah Boden vessels and captains returning from the sea. Some of the elements I just mentioned above are included, but it's score only -- no dialogue. 

But what intrigued me the most was that I learned via her introduction and back story that Linda Greenlaw was also an author, and quite a successful one, apparently. 

A quick search on Amazon revealed quite a list of both fiction and non-fiction books, including The Hungry Ocean, The Lobster Chronicles, All Fishermen are Liars, Seaworthy, four books in The Jane Bunker Mystery series including Slipknot, Fishermen's Bend, Shiver Hitch and Bimini Twist, the non-fiction Lifesaving Lessons: Notes from an Accidental Mother and two cookbooks, Recipes from a Very Small Island and The Maine Summers Cookbook. Her books rank between four and five stars on Amazon, with at least one earning more than 500 reviews, and she was a New York Times bestseller, which seems to indicate she is quite a talent as a writer and has a few things to say that a lot of readers were interested to read about.  

It occurred to me, an author who writes many stories centered on small crews on starships, that her work might have a few inspiring ideas and "small ship environment" tidbits to lend to my work. (Wish I'd found her work a decade ago.)

So although I don't tend to read a lot outside my preferred genre, I'm going to give her books a try starting with The Hungry Ocean: The Captain's Story and Seaworthy: A Swordboat Captain Returns to the Sea. If those are inspiring, I'll read on. 

I'll post a follow-up here on The Firebird at some point in the future.

Laurie

An Acting Commander, a Network Agent and a StarDog Walk into a Lava Tube...

There's no punchline to that. It's actually the premise for Juggernaut.  

Meet Dek, Sno and Cassie in my latest release with snippets from the book.

An Acting Commander...

Lieutenant Commander Dekessa “Dek” Garr is second-in-command of a security force that protects a discovery buried deep inside an ancient lava tube. The implications of the find are staggering, and the stakes are high if their enemy—the Alliance—ever learns the truth about Site D. When her commander suddenly departs with zero warning and a mysterious visitor arrives, her job becomes a whole new level of complicated.

A Network Agent...

Sno Telon has an exercise to perform, and he isn’t about to let anyone stop him--including the dedicated acting commander known as Dek.

And a StarDog

But when his partner, CaSandra, a bioengineered dog-cat-weasel-mongoose, takes an immediate liking to the team leader, Sno realizes there’s much more to the woman than harsh words and hard scowls.

___________________________________

Snippet from Juggernaut

Graveyard shift. Four members of Dek’s security team were in their assigned sectors, manning the night watch. The science crew were all tucked in for the night. None of LaGuardia’s three moons yet cast its light through the break in the cave high above, and a deep inky blackness filled the great hole in the ground that she called home.

Dek crouched on the roof of her quarters, listening, eyes closed, senses keen. Her intuition told her something was amiss, and she’d learned never to ignore the feelings of gut-deep tension and restless unease. They were her wired-in early warning system. She slipped on her night vision goggles, checked the settings, and did a slow pan around the immense cavern. There! By the lifts. Movement.

Someone attempting to access Lower Cave?

Gigadam!

If she sounded the alarm, it would alert the prowler before she’d had a chance to ID him. Best keep this on the down low. Dek debated alerting the security detail via her wristcom and nixed it. This was one guy. She’d handle it.

_________________________________________

Juggernaut is on sale for the introductory price of .99 cents. 

The special price will be ending in the next week.

Click here to view it on Amazon

or use your cell phone camera to scan the QR code below

Fun with Juggernaut Mock-Ups

It's always entertaining to use specialized mock-ups to highlight available books. Here's a few recent ones I created for use on social media. Whatcha think?

Whoop! There it is!

Mmm. Mmm. Good!

Juggernaut: MISSING...from your Kindle

A subtle reminder  :)

And this last one's a test of the animation.

Whoa! Look at that. It worked!  

I'm curious if you have any favorites among these five? Feedback welcome! 

My New Release has an Unusual Setting

My latest release in the Inherited Stars series, Juggernaut, involves a very unusual setting for a space adventure romance. It’s underground! Most of the story takes place inside an ancient lava tube. 

Lava tubes are a natural conduit formed by flowing lava which moves beneath the hardened surface of a lava flow. They can drain magma from a volcano during an eruption, or can be extinct, meaning the lava flow has ceased, and the rock has cooled and left a long tubular, and often very twisted, cave. They can have large chambers where the lava pooled, or cliffs and drop-offs, or they can take the form of multiple tubes that split and then re-fuse. When the lava tube forms near the surface, parts of the roof can cave in over time allowing sunlight -- and curious people -- to access the underground labyrinth.

For a quick tour of a lava tube, here's a 55 second virtual fly-through of the Cueva de los Verdes lava tube in Lanzarote, Spain, done by the European Space Agency (ESA). It’s a little spooky, which is great for setting the mood of the story. 

While doing the research, I learned that a lava tube can be a cave but not a cavern. All caverns are caves, but all caves aren't necessarily caverns. Lava tubes have different properties than some of the better known caves in our country--like Carlsbad Caverns and its neighbor, the fairyland-like Lechuguilla Cave (both in New Mexico), or Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. 

Caverns are specifically natural caves that are big enough for access by humans and formed by soluble rock (usually limestone) that form speleothems--or stalactites and stalagmites. These formations are caused by water with dissolved minerals dripping from the roof of a cave that, over eons of time, form structures within the cave. These structures, stalactites and stalagmites, sometimes fuse together and form large pillar structures. Other times they flow in great curtains or weird, goblin-like formations.

I referenced a  "speleothem" in the story, even though it takes place inside a lava tube, because this particular lava tube has a secret. Something completely unexpected and incredibly important is hidden there, a finding so monumental it has it's own security team to ensure this "treasure" is kept secret. But they're about to uncover an even darker mystery.

Get your spelunking gear ready for a different kind of space adventure! 

Juggernaut is at the special price of .99 for a limited time. 

Click here to see it on Amazon.

To The Stars

Now that I've wrapped up my aquatic science fiction romance novella, The Shell and the Star (which you can now read in its entirety by clicking the link), I'm moving on to my next planned release. Here's a bit of background for the excerpt included below.

We tend to think of those who work in space as "astronauts," but that term (rooted in the Greek words for “star” and “sailor”) generally is only assigned to those from the United States, Europe, Canada, and Japan.

Russia calls its space explorers "cosmonauts" (from the Greek for “universe” and “sailor”). 

But did you know we refer to Chinese astronauts as “taikonaut,” which combines the Chinese word for “space” and the Greek for “sailor.” 

Except that term isn't used in China. They call their spacefarers yuhangyuan, which is derived from words for “space” and “traveler.”

Star Sailor. Universe Sailor. Space Sailor. Space Traveler. They're all pretty poetic terms.

Venturing into my fictional universe, The Inherited Stars Universe, those who travel in spaceships are first called Ta'kaar or Voyagers of the Vortex. The term for a single traveler is Ta'kar. They aren't exactly space explorers, since their path only leads to, through and out of a stabilized wormhole. The Vortex --also known as "a crossrip in time and space" -- was discovered and exploited as a deep space conduit by their ancient and much more advanced forebearers. 

But they don't venture beyond its immediate vicinity for the first 13,000 calendars or so of their civilization's existence. (Calendar is the term they use for a standardized year, since the term "year" is strictly an Earthly term tied directly to our single planet's orbit.) They have no need or desire to explore the great beyond.

Then things...change. And those changes lead to the known galaxy you've read about in Inherit the Stars, StarDog and SpyDog. 

In my novella, Juggernaut, first released in Pets in Space 5 (and about to be published as an individual book in a slightly longer version) is a prequel to Inherit the Stars, taking place about  five calendars before the anchor novel, but nearly 1,500 calendars after the Draxian trilogy I'm working on now. 

In this story, the heroine reveals her controversial beliefs to the hero regarding the planet where they are based to perform their separate missions -- the planet LaGuardia. 

Here's a brief excerpt from Juggernaut:

___________________________________

Dek studied his face. He maintained steady eye contact. No nonverbal cues that might suggest he was fabricating the story. He seemed…straightforward. But the truth was, she didn’t know what his motives truly were. Or what he was doing here on Site D. He was an enigma in her orderly life, and she’d never encountered a mystery she hadn’t systematically unraveled. Eventually, she’d get to the bottom of what secrets lurked behind those dark, soulful eyes. 

He turned to the door but paused at the exit. “Ask you a question, A-Com?” 

“Quid pro quo?” she countered. 

“No.” He pursed his lips, shaking his head. “I don’t expect any reciprocation for the intel I provided. I’m just curious about something.” 

“That being?” She joined him at the door. 

“When I asked if you were Draxian, you said ‘not necessarily.’” 

“Actually, it was when you said LaGuardians are Draxians that I answered ‘not necessarily.’ The Alliance insists Draxis never existed. That it’s just a myth.” 

His gaze remained locked on her face. “Somehow, I doubt you put much stock in what the Alliance claims.” 

“Not when they’re trying to bury the truth about my planet’s past so they can fabricate a history of their own.” 

“Right.” He rubbed Cassie’s pointed little ears. “For what it’s worth, I also find the Alliance’s attempt to erase twelve thousand calendars of human experience offensive. Maybe we have more in common than you know.” 

Dek opened the seal to her quarters. “I hope you never give me reason to think otherwise.” 

He paused to meet her eyes. “That’s my hope, too.”

_________________________________________

As I mentioned in my previous post on conclusion of The Shell and the Star, Juggernaut holds a clue to why the people in Jinn and Trey's time were abandoned by the known galaxy. I hope to have the expanded Juggernaut published yet in 2022. 

Have a great week. 

New Year, New Start

We had a wonderful holiday. Hope you did, too! But New Years Day is when we started packing up the ornaments and decorations and dismantling the tree, to squirrel all the Christmas adornments away for another year. 

The holidays came and went so quickly for us this year, partly due to some background dramas that unfolded. (I had to have a double root canal on December 23rd, for one, after a specialist discovered a completely painless abscess and infection that had probably been present for months. The dread turned out to be the worst part of it. I slept through most of the procedure.)  

We even got our tree up a couple of weeks early, but there it stood--stark and forlorn--bare of any lights or ornaments for nearly a week. Eventually, it all came together in plenty of time to enjoy it for the holidays.

Seeing the tree come down this year hit me particularly hard. Our pups were quite dismayed because Christmas is a Really Big Deal for them. The sad looks about broke my heart. They don't understand why we can't have Christmas -- and presents and treats and pretty lights and discarded paper to romp through -- every day. 

That made us decide to leave the lights up on the lilac bushes in our courtyard, and the three wreaths on our two courtyard doors and front door so all the magic didn't get banished. We'll take those down when we're ready.

So here I am, holidays over and facing 2022 with a big sigh.

Because of our bout with Covid in late September and early October, and the weeks of trying to recover from lingering brain fog and memory issues, everything writing related got put on hold for the last part of the year. I had two books from past Pets in Space volumes I was working on -- one a quick scan away from going to the editor and another that needed a bit more work but was almost there. In addition, I have five more books in the series and multiple one-off stories that have been floating around in my head for years, or stowed away on my hard drive as completed manuscripts. 

But I just couldn't bring myself to tackle them once I had recovered. 

Mental Jeopardy. Things Authors Deal with for $100, Alex.

But...I have to be honest. Some of my foot-dragging was due to the state of the industry, as well. 

Society in general--and the publishing industry, in particular--is taking a different tack from the  expectations I had when I started publishing my books almost six years ago. The author community used to be welcoming, happy and supportive group for the most part, but lately it seems to have turned a lot less friendly. I blame both social media and the frustrations that the present industry--and Covid--have imposed on writers. Since 2015, one of the big book conventions has all but ceased to exist for authors who aren't big names, and the other has undergone a major identity crisis. Whatever the cause, the"rising tide that floats all boats" seems to have definitely gone out. 

So I recently had to take a deep breath and ask myself if I really wanted to continue to do this. Did I want to publish another book? Did I want to attempt to kickstart my efforts in 2022, or was it time to just wave the white flag (as I've seen so many of my peers do in the last couple of months) and hang it up? Or should I, instead, try to invent some other imaginative method of getting my work out there for people to read that doesn't involve an industry that continues to make things really difficult for authors.

I ultimately decided I'm going to keep working on publishing some of my work in 2022, but with a  different focus. From now on, I'm going to work in my own time, at my own pace, with a focus on sharing some of these stories that have been rampaging around in my head (or lurking in a digital file), and not to stress over sales, numbers and stats. Stress can be a real creativity killer, and I want to start enjoying the writing process again. I want to put the fun back  in it. 

I'm now acknowledging that I don't need to be a commercial success to be a happy author. If a few people read my stories, great. If they care enough to leave a review, fantastic! It's the sharing that's important to me, not the bottom line, not the promotional push, and not the USA Today bestseller tag. Not anymore. 

So...I may be posting some of my work free online to get the stories out to readers. I tried that here on this blog with my short story The Recruit last year, and it was an interesting experiment. But The Recruit was never meant to be more than a bonus companion piece that took a scene from the novel Draxis (working title), turned it inside out and expanded it, relating it from a fresh POV. For this to work, I need to present fully fleshed out books, and the book chapters or sections will need to come a lot faster than every five weeks. I'm still working that out. 

But hey, it's 2022 and I'm still here. Let's see what the year brings. 

 

SpyDog Snippet from Pets in Space® 4 (Soon to Disappear Forever!)

I was really excited to re-join the Pets in Space® 4 crew after writing for both PISA 1 and 2, but then skipping Pets in Space® 3 to work on some of my own material.

My story, SpyDog, gave me the opportunity to explore the flip-side of the action in my anchor novel, Inherit the Stars. It was both very fun, and extremely mind-boggling, to write a book that happened concurrently with the events in the novel, so a bit like the Star Wars: Rogue One of my series, except a tale where the main characters survive.

This is the third StarDog story in my series, this time starring Maura, a bio-engineered StarDog upgrade called a SpyDog.

Here's a quick peek at a snippet from my story SpyDog [edited slightly for context]:

_______________________________

Sona relaxed the tension in her trigger finger.

So did Rigel.

“You are a Network agent,” she whispered, her eyes going round.

This changed everything.

Whoever she was, whatever she’d seen, she was even more dangerous than he’d first thought. She’d IDed him as an agent? Not good. She was privy to Network passcodes? That left some big, fat, unresolved question marks. Leadership needed to know what she knew—and how she’d come to know it. How extensively had the Network been compromised? This breach could destroy everything they’d worked so hard for.

She wouldn’t die today. He’d just bagged a counter-intel asset. He’d deliver her to Network authorities so they could interrogate her—get to the bottom of how much damage had already been done and take corrective action. Meanwhile, he’d let her think he believed her story.

Always keep your enemies in your laze-sights. That was his motto.

“Right,” he muttered, easing his laze-pistol back to low ready. “You’re Network.”

She, too, lowered her weapon then holstered it.

He scowled when Maura left the confines of his satchel and took a few tentative steps toward the woman, nose twitching.

“Hello, little one,” the Rathskian said, going to one knee. “Can we be friends now?” She reached out to let the StarDog sniff her hand then gave Maura a gentle pat.

Maura responded by quickly scaling the women’s arm. The Rathski stiffened in surprise—and so did Rigel—when Maura wrapped herself around the woman’s shoulders like a furry, golden scarf.

Maura never took to strangers like this. It had to be an act.

The Rathski smiled and stroked the StarDog’s long back.

“Way to draw her in, partner.” Rigel managed not to smirk at his SpyDog’s cleverness. “Disarm and charm her. Let her think we’re falling for her story while we set the trap.”

_______________________________

But here's an important message about Pets in Space® 4. All the Pets in Space® volumes are only offered for a limited time, and we're now on approach to another *POOF!* point.

Pets in Space® 4 is about to disappear...FOREVER..on February 29th!

So if you haven't grabbed your copy of the most successful Pets in Space® volume EVER, let me recap:

USA TODAY BEST SELLER

#1 on Amazon

#1 on B&N Nook

#1 on Kobo

115 Amazon reviews (to date) and a 4.7 STAR average

13 Stories in 13 Popular SFR Series

13 Award Winning, Bestselling Authors

Over 1,400 Pages (equal to 5 full-length novels!)

$5.99

>>  FIND IT HERE!  <<

So the bottom line is that if you love SciFi Romance at an incredible price--

~ we're talking .46 cents per story! ~

--this volume is not to be missed! At 1,400 pages, this meaty collection has an average story length of about 100 pages!

Though some of these stories may be published as stand alones, with a minimum price of .99 each (and probably more) the total cost would run you at least $12.87 -- provided they're all offered elsewhere and you can track them all down again.

So far all of the reasons listed above, Pets in Space® 4 is one SFR collection readers really don't want to miss. Once it's gone, it's gone for good. Never to return.

Grab your copy before February 29th at your favorite vendor and capture a bit of SFR history!

Happy Reading!

SpyDog Excerpt from Pets in Space® 4 (plus Reminders)

Today, I have an excerpt from SpyDog, my Inherited Stars Series story in the USA TODAY Bestselling Pets in Space® 4 collection.

Scene Set-Up:
Rigel, a Network deep cover agent--along his bio-engineered partner, a SpyDog named Maura--has crossed paths with someone he believed to be a legend, a warrior-class female Rathskian. Her knowledge of the Network runs deep, much too deep for a member of the enemy alliance. She claims to be a friendly, but Rigel decides his best course of action is to reach his transport and turn her over to Network superiors. But first he has to get her there.

She may turn out to be more of a challenge than he's anticipating.

Excerpt:
They still had a long trek ahead of them, and this woman had already learned crucial information about him and Maura. If she got away from him now, it could be very bad. True, she’d been nothing but cooperative, but he still had to be wary of the potential for ambush. His SpyDog exposing a covert capability to this Rathskian had certainly upped the stakes. Reaching the safety of a Network ship and securing her onboard was crucial. He just hoped the ship had a prisoner retention cell to reduce the risk of her sabotaging his mission.

“Walk ahead of me,” Rigel directed. “A Rathskian and a Carduwan might make suspicious bedfellows.”

Sona gave him a quick glance, one eyebrow arched in surprise—or was it scorn?

“As it should be,” she retorted, and strode ahead.

“Stay with her,” Rigel told his invisible partner then realized she was no longer at his side. Dust puffs rose where the StarDog scampered along in step with their captive. It wasn’t the first time she’d anticipated a command, but now it ramped up his annoyance a full notch or two.

“Make a right here,” Rigel instructed.

Having her walk ahead made watching her easier but calling out each turn or new direction in their path was attracting attention. They’d already snagged a few puzzled looks from passersby and he didn’t need the added scrutiny. Thankfully, there weren’t that many people moving about in the midday heat. Rigel lengthened his strides to close ground between himself and the Rathski.

“Take the left fork.”

“Get any closer and you can just whisper in my ear,” she said, without looking back.

Nonplussed, Rigel eased off a stride. Was she trying to provoke him? Rigel shook it off. He had to stay sharp and avoid letting his mind wander down paths that might lead to distraction.

__________________________

Hope you enjoyed this snippet from my story.

Reminder: Time Is Running Out!

Okay, this is where I beg a little. Oh readers, hear my humble plea.

Pets in Space® 4 has had a phenomenal run so far, but our window to donate to Hero Dogs is closing fast and we (the team behind the anthology) really want our donation this year to be the best ever in the four years we've contributed to this organization.

The donation period closes at midnight on November 11th, Veterans Day, so there's still a few days to help this wonderful charity!

Please, please help us help Hero Dogs!

For $5.99 -- about the price of a cup of coffee -- you can help a veteran or first responder have a lasting impact on their life through a trained service dog donated free of charge by this wonderful organization. We'll be donating 10% of our royalties through November 11th to assist Hero Dogs...

But the donation window ends at midnight on November 11th--Veterans' Day.

If you haven't already purchased a copy of Pets in Space® 4, would you please consider it now?

Click here to see all available vendors and scroll down to read the story blurbs

What's in it for you?

How about some great science fiction romance reading adventures--a collection that's going to last far longer and bring more enjoyment than that single cup of coffee! This volume features 13 stories by best selling and award-winning authors. It made the USA TODAY Bestsellers list the week of release and has received over 60 rave reviews on Amazon--about 94% of them five or four stars as of this writing!

And this volume is substantial--the size of nearly FIVE full-length novels--with complete, standalone stories connected to popular ongoing series.

SpyDog (excerpt above) is my contribution to the collection and it's a story in my Inherited Stars Series. I invite you to check out this pivotal (but standalone) episode in Pets in Space® 4. SpyDog is the story of Rigel Blackline, a Network agent, and Sona, a female warrior-class Rathskian as they both seek to complete crucial missions that will be monumental to the future of the known galaxy--but whose separate goals just might put them at odds. And of course being part of Pets in Space®, it involves an unique creature--a highly-trained, keenly-intelligent, and sometimes defiant StarDog upgrade known as a SpyDog. Her name is Maura and she's Rigel's partner.

Check out these Pets in Space® 4 endorsements from reviewers:

"I love these Sci-fi pet stories!" - 5 stars

"Awesome anthology" - 5 stars

"Well-written, interesting and varied" - 5 stars

"Loved all the stories, each one is so very different but wonderful in their own way." - 5 stars

"This will not disappoint." - 5 stars

~~ and even one with a special mention of SpyDog ~~

"Full of fun stories with interesting pets...SpyDog. So far this is my favorite." - 5 stars

Also, the latest book in my series, StarDog, just released on October 21st and is currently at a special introductory price of only .99 cents, but this special introductory price will end November 11th.


StarDog Goes Off Sale Next Monday

If you'd like a peek into my SFR universe, grab your copy before next Tuesday to get it at .99 cents.

Here's more about it:

Available on Amazon

Navigator Taro Shall's captain assigns him an unexpected mission–find a way to eradicate deadly vipers that have infested starship Calypso. He never expects to find the solution to his problem in the hands of Adini, a charming street vendor. But the bio-engineered StarDog he acquires turns out to be a galactic hot potato, and both Taro and Adini are soon fugitives on the run.

Adini Kemm can't deny her fascination for the honor-bound navigator, though his past and her present seem to null any chance at a shared future. Until her father's capture as a spy catapults both her and Taro into a desperate bid to save him...and straight into the clutches of a brewing insurrection.

As Taro's bond with Adini grows, so does their jeopardy. Determined not to draw Calypso or his captain into the fray, Taro must rely on his wits to keep both Adini and his secrets safe from the renegade leader who takes them prisoner.

___________________

Based on a short story in the very popular Pets in Space® 1 anthology, winner of two 2016 SFR Galaxy Awards and named by LibraryJournal.com as one of the “Best Books of 2016.”

StarDog has returned as a standalone story in The Inherited Stars Series at double the length–with expanded scenes, new chapters and a new epilogue. It's also a companion story to SpyDog (except above). Click below to buy the ebook for .99 cents:

Amazon

Thanks for stopping by Spacefreighters Lounge today. Have a great week!

Two Years in the Making: StarDog is a New Release!

StarDog, my latest release, was the first story in my Inherited Stars series that introduced the wascawy little dog/cat/weasel/mongoose bio-constructs who were created to be companion animals, ship's mascots...and sometimes...spies. (Like in the current companion story in USA TODAY bestseller Pets in Space® 4, SpyDog.)

Let me kick this off with a snippet from the start of the story and the incident that sparked an adventure for this star navigator:

_______________________________________________

“Freeze.”

When Captain Dava Jordon used that bone-chilling tone, no one asked questions.

Taro Shall, ship’s navigator, didn’t even blink as she stalked toward his navcon, weapon drawn and eyes locked on her target. Thankfully, whatever that target was, it wasn’t him. She was aiming toward the deck in the general vicinity of his feet.

She squeezed off two blasts of her laze-pistol.

Taro jumped back as the searing heat penetrated through his deck boots.

Just below his station, something long, tan, and patterned in singe marks writhed on the floor. “What the Hades, Skipper?”

Captain Jordon took two cautious steps forward and leaned down to examine the victim, sweeping back her long black hair with one hand. “Take a look.”

Taro gripped the armrest of his flight couch and went to one knee, craning his neck to get a better look at the thing on the floor. When he finally registered the shape and scales, he sucked in his breath. “Snake?”

The captain screwed up her face in disgust. “Must’ve picked it up back on Dartis. It’s a sand viper.”

“Viper?” Taro pushed to his feet and backed off a step.

“Yeah. A very deadly one. If one of these little terrors sinks his fangs into you, you’ll drop before you can spit out a curse.”

Taro swallowed the ball of ice rising in his throat. “Guess I’m damn lucky you saw it.”

“Sensed it,” she clarified. “I was plugged into Calypso. The flight deck motion sensors picked it up.” She nodded to the black drive helmet now perched on a cradle at her command console.

Taro exhaled, his pulse still in the process of deceleration. “Glad you never miss.”

“Well, it’s not the end of our problems.” She straightened, holstering her weapon.

“That’s a hatchling. Maybe a couple days old. It’s been five days since we left Dartis.

That means there’s a mother and several dozen siblings slithering around Calypso.”

“Damn. We’ve got trouble.”

“Exactly.” Captain Jordon scrubbed a hand over her face. “Looks like we’re grounded until we find a fix. Before Doc Emboratyr gets word of our little issue, we need to hire an exterminator. A good one.” She pinned him with a look. “We, of course, means you. Best get to it. We’re losing daylight.”

Taro snagged his jacket from the back of his flight couch. “Aye, Boss, I’m on it.”

With one last glance at the charbroiled little carcass, he strode to the lift.

“Better watch where you step on your way out. Could be more of them anywhere,” the captain called after him.

Taro gave her a casual salute and did a quick check of the floor as the lift rotated to descend from Calypso’s upper flight deck to the main level below. He warily scanned the corridor before venturing off.

The wall com clicked on as he headed down the curved passage toward the airlock. Captain Jordan’s voice filled the corridor. “If you see Pareen out there, tell him to stay away from Calypso until I shoot him an all-clear on his recall. I’m not going to drop the quarantine flags. Don’t want to scare off our client.”

“You got it, Skipper,” Taro answered as he reached Calypso’s main airlock and activated the controls to extend the ramp.

“And watch out for Palies. I want no trouble with the Ithians.”

“No messing with the Alliance. Check that.”

Outside the ship, Carduwa’s warm, herbal-scented air ruffled Taro’s hair and danced along the pavement in gentle eddies. A friendly sun lit the heavy greenery of tall trees and dense shrubbery just beyond the spaceport grounds. This planet was nothing like the bone-dry dustbowl of Dartis where they’d last made port. Thank the Island Spirits for that much.

Taro made his way to the nearest street just off the spaceport exit and glanced down an endless row of brightly colored vendor tents. Where to start?

He ducked his head into the entrance of the first two pavilions with a questioning, “Exterminator?” The answer on both counts was a brisk shake of a keeper’s head. Somewhere around vendor twelve, he got a lead.

“No exterminator, but you wanna see Dini Kemm. Red and yellow striper. Tiharra Lane. Three streets west.”

Taro plucked a citrus drink tube from the vendor’s laboring chiller, tossing the elderly man five replas. “Many thanks.”

_______________________________________________

The book trailer also provides the exciting tone of this adventure:

It's taken me a couple of years to get this one where I wanted it to be, expanding scenes, adding chapters, and writing a whole new epilogue.

This standalone book is nearly twice the length of the original, which gave me the opportunity to delve a little deeper into the mystery surrounding the Calypso and her captain, to better establish a new character who also has a role in SpyDog, and to give more insights into the relationship of the leading couple.

Readers loved the original story and the HEA, but a few were a little distraught that Taro had been left in such a quandary. The new epilogue addresses this and takes the relationship between Taro and Adini just a little further into the future.

I think you're gonna love it!

________________________________________

StarDog Blurb

Navigator Taro Shall's captain assigns him an unexpected mission–find a way to eradicate deadly vipers that have infested starship Calypso. He never expects to find the solution to his problem in the hands of Adini, a charming street vendor. But the bio-engineered StarDog he acquires turns out to be a galactic hot potato, and both Taro and Adini are soon fugitives on the run.

Adini Kemm can't deny her fascination for the honor-bound navigator, though his past and her present seem to null any chance at a shared future. Until her father's capture as a spy catapults both her and Taro into a desperate bid to save him...and straight into the clutches of a brewing insurrection.

As Taro's bond with Adini grows, so does their jeopardy. Determined not to draw Calypso or his captain into the fray, Taro must rely on his wits to keep both Adini and his secrets safe from the renegade leader who takes them prisoner. 

________________________________________

StarDog will be on sale for only .99 cents until November 11th, Veteran's Day. 

Get it here!

Follow me on BookBub to get news of future releases.

You all have a Happy Halloween and a wonderful week!