Randomize ME

“Our Mrs. Reynolds” where the accidental marriage actually works out.

I was lying on my bed one afternoon, thinking about the love story from Jeremiah Johnson, one of my favorite westerns. In the movie, Robert Redford plays a confederate soldier turned mountain man who accidentally marries a Native American girl through a misunderstanding with her father, the chief. Neither of them speak the same language, neither of them really intended to get together, and out in the wilderness, there’s no one else for them to talk to. Despite all this, they fall in love and make things work out.

As I lay there musing on the story, the thought entered my head: “what would this story look like in a science fictional setting?” Immediately, things just clicked, and I knew I had to write it. I rolled out of bed, fired up the computer, and a couple hours later I had the first chapter. The rest grew from there.

That’s a difficult question! I love all my characters (well, most of them anyway), so it’s difficult to choose just one.

If I had to, though, I’d choose Tiera from [my other book] DESERT STARS. She’s fiercely independent and doesn’t care what other people think of her, much like me. She also feels out of place among her own people and dreams of traveling to the stars, just like I do. The biggest difference is that she actually gets to!

In DESERT STARS, she’s more of a supporting character, but I fully intend to give her a novel of her own someday–probably sooner rather than later.

Everyone always says “don’t quit your day job.” Yeah…I graduated in 2010 from “student” to “unemployed,” and never really had one. Fortunately, through a combination of scholarships, grants, campus jobs, and affordable tuition rates, I was able to graduate without any debt, which has freed me up to do a lot of other things.

Currently, I’m teaching English in the Republic of Georgia, out in the Caucasus Mountains. It’s been a really amazing experience! Georgia is a very rustic country, with friendly people and hundreds of remote places to explore. In Racha, I stayed at a place with a wolf pelt hanging in the dining room, and drank pure sparkling mineral water straight from the rocks. Experiences like this give me interesting things to draw from when I write, as well as help to shape my outlook on the world.

I’ve found that teaching English overseas is a great way to facilitate a writing career, at least in the first few years before you’re earning enough on your books to make a living. The nice thing about being an indie writer is that I can publish from anywhere, so that really opens up a lot of options in terms of where I can live and travel. I teach about 20-30 hours a week, make enough to live comfortably (albeit modestly) by local standards, and get to experience another culture with plenty of time to write on the side. It can be emotionally draining at times, and requires some huge personal adjustments, but it sure beats temp jobs and service sector work.

I just finished the next book in the Gaia Nova series, titled STARS OF BLOOD AND GLORY. It’s a military space opera featuring the mercenaries from BRINGING STELLA HOME and their newest cyber-ops officer, Rina Najmi from DESERT STARS.

Fifteen years have passed since the collapse of the New Gaian Empire, and the Hameji have amassed an enormous battle fleet to wipe out the last remaining free stars in the galaxy. Just as the campaign begins, a mysterious assassin kills the chief commander of the Federation forces, throwing them into disarray.

The young boy emperor from the planet Shinihon tries to rally them in the defense of his homeworld, but when his sister goes missing from the palace, everything starts to go wrong. He calls on Danica Nova and her band of Tajji mercenaries to rescue her, but things are more complicated than they seem, and the Hameji are coming ever closer…

So yeah, I’m really excited about this book! It’s full of intrigue, explosions, space battles, coming-of-age stories, and all that other stuff that makes space opera so much fun!

Nathan Lowell shows up in my “also boughts” on Amazon a lot, and I think we’re doing a lot of similar stuff with our science fiction. His solar clipper books are really great–I can’t tell you how much I wish I were on the crew of one of his starships! Kindal Debenham‘s Jacob Hull novels are also quite excellent, with sprawling galactic empires and tough, hardened characters from the frontier stars. We’re actually pretty good friends from college, and alpha read each other’s books. His latest novel, BADGER, is really good!