ALIEN BONDS is on sale! Travel to Wakanreo for only $1.99! #MFRWhooks

To celebrate the lunch of my new YA science fiction novel Drifters, I have put my science fiction romance Alien Bonds (book 1 of the Wakanreo trilogy) on sale for half off— only $1.99 for the Kindle version! Of course the entire trilogy is also free if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber,

Alien Bonds takes place on the planet Wakanreo, where the dominant species is humanoid, but a little taller than actual humans, and with fur and claws. Wakanreans are also unique in the galaxy because they mate for life through a process controlled entirely by pheromones. I had a lot of fun writing this book because I got to decide how this trait would have affected Wakanrean cultures. I concluded that Wakanreans would be less class-conscious than humans, because there would be no such thing as an arranged marriage, no upper class that could look down on "inferior" people based on their jobs or lack of wealth. If fate and pheromones are always in charge of mating, then parents could not control who their offspring brought into the family. Ergo, everyone is valued more equally.

Likewise, if two people with compatible pheromones happened to be the same gender, no big deal. If mating isn't a choice, then you can't judge people on their mates. Also, sex has nothing to do with morality so they don't worry about nudity. But there is no such thing as dating because you cannot induce the mating process. So is that a bad thing or a good thing? That's kind of the point of the book. Well, that and the love story that unfolds between a human woman and a Wakanrean man.

Another thing that was fun to do with this book was I was able to make excellent use of use the Kindle X-Ray function. X-Ray is most often used to explain who characters are (it's very handy when someone from disappears in chapter 2 and then reappears in chapter 20.. However in the Wakanreo books, I also use X-Ray to link the made-up alien words to their meanings. All you do is long press the character or place name, or in this case, Wakanrean word, and a box with an explanation pops up. And unlike looking up terms in Wikipedia, X-Ray works fine in airplane mode. [N.B. While an actual Kindle supports X-Ray, not every version of the app does. Also, it won't work in books where the publisher has not done the setup work.] There is a glossary at the back of the book if you can't use X-Ray.

So, hop aboard the StarShip Kindle and you will visit an interesting planet! One Amazon reviewer called the story "a unique and very well thought out romance, unlike any other I’ve read before."

Excerpt from Alien Bonds:

    The silver-haired Wakanrean came closer still. Under his cape he wore a long, blue robe instead of the trousers and loose, tunic-style shirt favored by Wakanreans of both sexes. He was very close now. His golden facial and body fur combined with the creamy white of his crest reminded her of some Terran animal, but she couldn’t remember which one. Other than the dark blue trim on his robe and the diamond-shaped pattern that decorated his sandals, his only adornment was a piece of silver jewelry fastened at the base of his throat; she couldn’t tell if it was pinned to his robe or his chest fur.

Dina could feel herself breathing faster, her heart pounding hard. She should walk away. Why couldn’t she move her feet? She stood waiting by the mezzanine railing, as still as if she had taken root in the floor.

    The Wakanrean stood in front of her. He glared down at her, his face contorted into a scowl, his amber eyes glowing with contempt.

    “I beg your pardon.” Dina tried to keep the quaver out of her voice. “Do I know you?”

    He was so close, she could feel the heat from his body. Either that, or the room had gotten suddenly warmer. Dina felt herself flush from head to foot.

    He didn’t answer, but all at once it was as if his anger was a physical thing, an invisible mass, pushing against her. She stepped backward, stumbled, and almost fell.

She reached for the mezzanine railing behind her, and in the same instant, the Wakanrean grabbed her arm.

    Dina froze, utterly baffled. The orientation had said clearly that Wakanreans would always avoid touching a Terran, and yet here was one not only touching her, but holding her firmly by the arm and helping her to stand.

    The orientation had also failed to warn her that a Wakanrean’s touch was so warm it almost burned. Dina could feel a flush of heat on her arm where his hand still gripped it. She stood straighter and looked into his face. He had typical Wakanrean features—an arched nose, large round eyes, a wide mouth.

    His expression changed as she watched. His anger faded to confusion. He looked almost stunned. His nostrils still flared, but from the way his eyes had opened wide, Dina knew he was surprised rather than angry.

#MFRWhooks

ALIEN SKIES is now available in paperback!

The paperback version of Alien Skies is now for sale on Amazon!  The Kindle version is still on pre-order with a release date of October 29. Amazon has not yet linked the two versions, so click here to buy the paperback.

This means the trilogy is now complete! As of October 29, all three book will be  free in Kindle Unlimited. 

ALIEN SKIES is available for pre-order!

It has taken much longer than anticipated to get Alien Skies ready to launch, but it's finally ready! The trilogy is complete! You can pre-order the Kindle version here. The Kindle version is, like the rest of the trilogy, free in Kindle Unlimited. The paperback will be out about the same time, but no link is available yet. because Amazon does not support pre-order for paperbacks. Also, at the moment they are having trouble displaying the cover image for pre-order Kindle books but they assured me they are working on it. The cover is below, in any event.

Alien Bonds was very much Dina's story, and Alien Vows was Yulayan's. All the characters are in the final book, but this story belongs mostly to Kamuhi,. Here's the back cover blurb:

 Wakanreo was not always a safe place for a half-Wakanrean—

Or for a human married to a half-Wakanrean. Unfortunately, it was where Kamuhi Hailoaka had been posted by ThreeCon. He and Yulayan work at being married and being parents on the only world in the galaxy where the dominant species mate for life. They deal with the usual obstacles to two strong-willed individuals making decisions together, but Wakanreo has some extra challenges, even dangers.  

Kamuhi finds this out the hard way when they attend Yulayan’s grandfather’s funeral. Their toddler daughter starts to fuss, so Kamuhi takes her outside for some air. He returns to find his father-in-law and his-brother-in-law lying unconscious on the steps. Worse than that, Yulayan has been abducted.

Now Kam has to figure out how to get her back!

Alien Vows has launched!

Alien Vows, the sequel to Alien Bonds, and Book 2 of the 3 book Wakanreo trilogy, is now for sale on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats.

It took more than nine months, but I still feel like a should offer you a cigar! 

UPDATE: Alien Vows already has its first review!  It's short, but very good. Five stars, in fact! 

Taking Inventory

I'm doing final corrections on Alien Vows, getting it ready for launch, but I stopped to take stock of my "stack" of manuscripts.  I put the word in quotes because the stack is digital; the books exist only as files on my hard drive.

I have been writing seriously since 1992, but I didn't start self-publishing until 2011. Since then I have published nine (soon to be ten) novels and one novella.

The unpublished novels list looks like this:

Fantasy
Bag of Tricks
The Return of Magic

Science Fiction
This Nameless World
Child of the Sand (very rough draft)

Science Fiction Romance
Alien Skies (Book 3 of the Wakanreo series)
Worlds Apart
Ice and Fire

YA Science Fiction
Nomads (or possibly Nomads of Menkar 7)
Playing with Fire -- partial m.s.  

The next one in line to publish will undoubtedly be Alien Skies because I want to finish the Wakanreo series. After that I need to decide which direction I want to go. I might alternate, and do a fantasy next and then a science fiction romance, and then repeat. This Nameless World will probably go to the bottom of the list because it's currently at 240,000 words, the longest book I ever wrote.  That's about twice as long as most of my novels, but I don't think I can split it into two books because there's no resolution point in the middle of the book.

In contrast, I have also written six short stories. It's not that I was trying to write mostly novels;it's that the stories that started in my head were mostly novels. Go figure!

ALIEN VOWS is now available for pre-order!

The Kindle version of Alien Vows is now available for pre-order! The paperback version will be along soon, but I have to make some corrections to it. I've ordered a proof copy to be sure I want the matte cover. Delivery is set for September 5.

I've finally figured out how to handle the X-Ray feature. It's not available in the KDP author dashboard until the book is loaded and ready, so you have to make it available for sale or pre-order if you want to be able to run the X-Ray tool. At the same time, you are locked out of making changes several days before the delivery date, so you need to set that far enough ahead that you can do all your corrections and reload the file well before that date. With all the alien words in this series, X-Ray is crucial!

I always give my proofreader a copy of the formatted print pages as she finds that much easier to proof from than a Kindle copy.

Writing in a series

Recently I sent my finished draft of Alien Vows off to my copy editor. Having finished a stage in the process of creating a book, I realized that wrestling with that story had made me reflect on how writing in a series is intrinsically different from writing a standalone story.

I have several book in my Three Con series, but that's a series only in the sense that the universe is shared. All the ThreeCon books assume a universe with the same history and level of technology, and there are some shared events but no shared characters. It doesn't matter what order you read them in.

The thing is, with a standalone story, clearly every reader is a new reader, With a true series where the same characters age throughout the books, you have to allow, at least to some extent, for three categories of readers:

1. Those who recently read the previous book
2. Those who never read the previous book
3. Those who read the previous book, but it has been a good while

My two Haven books, The Sixth Discipline and No Safe Haven, are a true series with the same characters, and one is a sequel to the other. But with those books, trying to accommodate the second category of readers was less of an issue because there were no aliens with different biology. There was nothing about the cultures on Haven that needed elaborate description to make things clear to the reader. In Alien Bonds, Wakanrean biology has some fundamental differences from human biology, and those differences are crucial to the story. I have to balance how much I need to repeat a) how things work and b) what, specifically, happened in the first book when I narrate the second one. I don't want to annoy Category 1 readers or even Category 3 readers by trying to not lose Category 2.

And of course, this is Book 2 of a trilogy. I already have a very rough draft for Book 3, Alien Skies, and this is one thing that I'll have to consider all over again after I get Book 2 published and go back to working on Book 3. I'll have even more places where I need to evaluate how much info can and should be repeated.

I've never put the two covers side by side before; I rather like how different they are because the second book covers a new generation. There are, in fact, two new protagonists, even though the original two make an appearance in the second story.

It's always exciting giving birth to a book.

Ta-Da! I finished the first draft of ALIEN VOWS!

I feel like a need a cigarette and I have never smoked in my life. I just finished the first draft of the sequel to Alien Bonds. In honor of that, here's the beginning of Chapter One:

“Yulayan!” Her father’s voice coming from the wall speaker make Yulayan jump. “Will you join your mother and me in the zagathuan?”

“Certainly, Ayzanai,” Yulayan said, closing her terminal.

Her parents were waiting for her in the zagathuan? This far into autumn, her mother wasn’t comfortable out of doors for any length of time unless she wore heated clothing. On the other hand, it was her father’s favorite space in all but the coldest winter months. Yulayan stood up and took a deep breath to compose herself. This might well be the moment for which she had been waiting and planning with growing impatience. She glanced at herself in the mirror, to be sure her clothes looked tidy, and none of her agitation showed on her face.

The person staring back at her looked obviously Wakanrean at first glance. Her face, covered in dense golden fur, was triangular in shape, with a curving arc of a nose and a wide mouth. Above her face, the longer crop of silver-white hair that made up her headcrest was distinct from Terran hair in that it never grew longer.

Yulayan closed her eyes as a childhood memory overwhelmed her without warning. When she was small, her mother had tucked her into bed every night. Yulayan could recall the sensory experience with aching clarity—the silky feel of her mother’s long black hair brushing her own small furred face; the sweetish scent of the perfume her mother sometimes wore; a smooth, naked Terran face looming over her, brown eyes smiling fondly.

Yulayan opened her eyes and frowned at her own image. Her eyes betrayed her Terran mother’s contribution to her genetic makeup more than any other feature. Her irises were not only an odd mix of amber and brown flecks in a murky greenish matrix, but they were too small. The whites of Wakanrean eyes showed only at the extreme corners, and Yulayan could clearly see white on either side of and even beneath her irises.

Her parents were waiting. Yulayan turned towards the door but paused as she noticed her profile in the mirror. Above her tightly fitted red trousers, not even the lose lines of her black tunic-style shirt could completely hide the round swell of her breasts. Modest they might be, but in a world where only nursing mothers had noticeable mammary characteristics, the recent flowering of her breasts had left a bitter taste in Yulayan’s mouth. This was too much to bear.

Yulayan felt a twinge of envy that Kifarao would never have to suffer this indignity, and then chastised herself for her own callousness. Her twin brother might have Wakanrean eyes, but his other features revealed his heritage to even the most casual observer.

Conscious that she owed her parents the courtesy of promptness, Yulayan walked rapidly through the short corridor that connected her room to the main room, then exited the house through the sun room.

Yulayan found the chill autumn air bracing as she crossed the lawn to the zagathuan. Located near the house and at some distance from the high boundary wall that enclosed the entire property, the outdoor room was defined by a stone foundation covered by a carpet of deep purple streaked with green and blue. The furniture was similar to that of the main room—two large sofas, a handful of chairs, each with a hassock, and assorted tables and appliances. Yulayan noted that the sound system was off and counted this as another indication of her father’s state of mind. Her father was a qatraharai, and almost always had music playing when he relaxed in the zagathuan.

“Thank you for coming, Yulayan,” her father said, rising to his feet. He stood next to the sofa where her mother still sat, and Yulayan looked at him with pride.

Kuaron Du was a true Wakanrean. He was average height for his species, but if the Terran woman beside him had stood up, the top of her head would only have come up to his chin. His silver-white headcrest gleamed in the bright sunshine, and the pupils of his amber eyes had narrowed to tiny dots. He was barefoot, too, even in the autumn chill; the claws of his toes left tiny scuff marks in the carpet. If his blue tunic and gray trousers were less uniquely Wakanrean than his features, at least they weren’t blatantly Terran, either.

“Certainly, Ayzanai,” Yulayan said, casting an appraising glance at her mother. It seemed to her that her mother looked a trifle subdued. She wore her black hair much shorter than she had in the past, barely long enough to touch her collar, which made her look older to Yulayan. Today her brown eyes were almost solemn. Even the dull red color of the fitted shirt and trousers she wore emphasized her gloom—not quite mourning clothes, but close enough to convey a somber mood.

“Kifarao will be here in a moment,” Kuaron said.

The kitchen servoid approached, but Yulayan waved it away. She was too excited to eat or drink anything.

“Here’s Farao,” her mother said, as the sun room door opened again. “Sit down, Yulayan.”

Yulayan sank into a chair and watched her brother walk across the lawn to join them. She knew from his movements that he was as anxious as she was about this family meeting. The way he ran one hand over the black hair of his headcrest was a sure sign that he was nervous. Yulayan had an epiphany as she studied her brother’s face.

It wasn’t any one feature that damned him as half Terran; it was the combination of subtle differences in the shape of his face, his mouth, his nose, his ears. There was just too much variation from the Wakanrean norm for him to pass as truly native to the planet. Not even the pure Wakanreaness of his amber eyes could save him.

“Ayzanai,” Kifarao said, with a nod to their father, “Elazanai,” another nod to their mother. “I’m here as you asked.”

“Sit down, please,” their father said.

He waited until Kifarao was comfortable to speak again, and when he did, he looked first to Dina.

She nodded, and Yulayan saw that she held something in her hands. She was twisting whatever is was back and forth as if she wanted to break it apart, but it was too strong for her.

“I’m sure you both have some idea of why we’ve called you here,” Kuaron said. It hadn’t been phrased as a question, but he waited, as if he expected a reply.

Yulayan gave Kifarao a moment, but when he said nothing, she spoke up. “One of us—Farao or I—must become yarunai—so that we don’t risk becoming shahgunrahai with each other.” She added the explanation in a tone that mimicked politeness, but the tiny frown on her father’s face told her that he had interpreted her condescension correctly.

Her mother wasn’t so forbearing as to remain silent at borderline insolence. “We know how shahgunrah works, thank you, Yulayan,” she said.

Yulayan felt her face grow hot. She knew it was a Terran trait, and she was thankful blushes weren’t visible on a Wakanrean face. It always made her blush to be reminded that, Terran as she was, her mother had experienced shahgunrah within minutes of meeting her father.

“As you said,” her father said, “one of you must become yarunai. We waited as long as we could because your mother wanted you both to finish basic school here in Wisuta, but your doctors have confirmed that you’re both on the cusp of maturity. To wait any longer is to court disaster. One of you must leave immediately—within a day or two.”

Her father added the qualification when her mother started in alarm. Her mother was obviously unhappy about complying with this universal custom of her adopted world.

“We’ve called you here together for two reasons,” her father went on. “The first is because of yarun, and the second is because tradition dictates that today is the day that you finally assume the responsibility that destiny has allotted you.”

He nodded to his shahgunrahai, and Dina held out what she had twisted in her hands.

Yulayan caught the glint of silver and felt a surge of excitement. She glanced at the base of her father’s throat where a silver heicha was clipped onto his chest fur. Engraved on the oval surface was a lopsided polygon, the mark of Paruian, and a smaller glyph, in ancient Wisutan script, that represented ancestry.

Her father looked grave. “I know you both have always understood that this day would come, but I know from my own experience how different your life will be after today. It is no insignificant thing to wear this heicha. Everyone will look at you differently once they see Paruian’s mark. You may even find that you look at yourself differently.”

If they’re looking at the heicha, Yulayan thought to herself, they won’t notice my eyes.

“I know you’ve heard many times how much consternation and dissension your birth caused here on Wakanreo,” her father was saying. Yulayan had heard it all before, but she made herself listen respectfully. “Aside from the unprecedented phenomenon of a natural hybrid birth, there were those who expressed shock at the idea that the blood of Paruian had mingled with the blood of a Terran. You were almost to your second birthday before the Disciples of Paruian decided that you were indeed true descendants of Paruian. Your mother and I have kept these for you since that day.”

He held out his hand, and Yulayan saw two silver heichas, exactly like his own.

She drew in a breath as her father stepped nearer.

“And now I give them to you,” he said, bending down to clip one of the heichas to the fur at the base of Yulayan’s throat.