Tag: Star Wars

Spider Star is Leaving Kindle Unlimited in 7 Days!

Posted on Posted in Cheap Books, Cool Books, Publishing Plans, Space Opera, WritingTagged , Leave a comment

Jetay must destroy the Spiderstar…with or without his new allies!

The psychic warrior Jetay has freed himself and his brother from slavery, and joined Lady Lanati and the Partisans in their interstellar war against the evil Red Knights. Unfortunately the Partisan military is an undisciplined, poorly led force, and the Red Knights grow ever closer to their goal of unleashing the ancient, deadly weapon known as the Spiderstar. Lanati has a plan to destroy the Spiderstar, but it would force Jetay to choose between love and duty. Even worse, he might have to use the same memory removal techniques which were once used against him….

Spider Star, the second and final book in my space opera series, is leaving Kindle Unlimited on June 3, 2023, at which point I plan to publish the novel to other ebook vendors besides Amazon. If you are a KU subscriber, I would advise you to download Spider Star before the deadline, and then hold onto it until you feel like reading it.

I will probably also raise the price on my first space opera, Shadow Captain, at some point after June 3, 2023, so you might want to purchase that one while it is only $0.99.

Happy Reading!

Advertisement

1984 and Sobering Thoughts on Ash Wednesday

Posted on Posted in Cool Websites, history, Weird Science, World BuildingTagged , , , Leave a comment

This isn’t explicitly religious (the source material is anything but religious in fact), but I thought it more appropriate to post the Weird Wednesday material yesterday, and put this up today.

This is a story about how people who have no values beyond their own desires and sense of mistreatment are easily destroyed by people and organizations who have no values but the will to power. The main character may be the product of his environment, but ultimately, being Winston is a choice.

Don’t be Winston or Julia. Understand what matters to you, do your best to cultivate habits of virtue and live up to whatever code of conduct you’ve managed to discern. Pray. But also, don’t feel smugly superior to Winston. Look at St. Peter the Apostle, virtue signaling about his courage and loyalty on Holy Thursday, and then denying his Lord that very night. We all have the opportunity to rise or fall. What will we do when that opportunity comes?

Weird Wednesday: Super-Deep Geothermal Drilling

Posted on Posted in Weird ScienceTagged

Normally, geothermal power is only used for generating electricity in places that have “hot spots” relatively close to the surface, like this location in Italy. Meet Quaise Energy who believe that you can generate electricity with geothermal heat anywhere in the world, if you just drill deep enough.

Here’s hoping they end up emulating this Peter Cushing character, not this one. Good luck, guys.

Done. Again. For Now.

Posted on Posted in NaNoWriMo, Publishing Plans, Space Opera, WritingTagged , Leave a comment

I just completed the new ending and some of the expansion scenes for Star Master Book 2. For more about the long, complicated evolution of this space opera novel, see here, here and here. Yes, I have been working on this book for a while, but I hope to have it out by the end of this year, especially since I have no plans to do NaNoWriMo.

For now, my plans are a short break to work up a presentation for day job, play mobile games, read Golden Age mysteries, watch Fringe and Don Matteo with family members, and brainstorm whatever comes after the Star Master duology.

Where Did THAT Come From: Essem and Co, Ularti

Posted on Posted in Fantasy, Jaiya, Mel Dunay, Publishing Plans, Space Opera, World Building, WritingTagged , , Leave a comment

Ularti, the owner of the tramp freighter Vanner, keeps Jetay and Khed in indentured servitude, and is one of the main antagonists in Shadow Captain. Jetay’s story arc, as previously told is that of the drifter Drafted Into a Good Cause, and frequently in that arc, there’s a character who the drifter used to work with, who represents the pull away from the Good Cause. I didn’t have a good sense of what that might be in this case, until I hit on the “Hansel and Gretel” framing for Jetay’s situation.

Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Essem and Co, Ularti” →

Where Did THAT Come From: Lanati, Menevis and Family

Posted on Posted in Fantasy, Jaiya, Marrying A Monster, Mel Dunay, Paranormal Romance, Publishing Plans, Space Opera, WritingTagged , , Leave a comment

This is actually a fairly large body of characters spread across the two volumes of Star Master, even if they didn’t require as much work on my part as Shenti and her family did.

Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Lanati, Menevis and Family” →

Where Did THAT Come From: Samar, the White Knights, and the Red Knights

Posted on Posted in Space Opera, World Building, WritingTagged , , Leave a comment

The White Knights are largely my response to the Jedi: a fallen order of psychic warriors formerly revered for their nobility of character, now hated and propagandized against. They were called Paladins, and the Red Knights were called Pioneers, until the early stages of editing Shadow Captain, when I decided these names would cause too much confusion with the Partisan faction in the same story. Akira Kurosawa, although certainly extremely gifted, didn’t have quite as much influence on me as Howard Pyle and the Story of King Arthur and his Knights, so that accounts for some of the differences between the White Knights and their inspiration, the more samurai-influenced Jedi.

Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: Samar, the White Knights, and the Red Knights” →

Where Did THAT Come From: The Star Master Setting

Posted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , Leave a comment

Star Wars. The Star Master setting comes from Star Wars. Maybe a little from Battlestar Galactica, because I’m pretty sure I saw the original Galactica on tv at around aged 3 or 4, based on where I was living at the time, and might have first seen Star Wars: A New Hope on tv as late as age 5. But I would go on to see A New Hope many, many times, because my family owned a limited number of child-friendly movies on videotape* and A New Hope was one that my siblings and I could all agree on. A lot of what I know about plotting, I first learned from A New Hope.

Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: The Star Master Setting” →