Introducing Careless Electronica – Book 8 in the Celestial Serenade!

It’s release time again!

I always pen these release notices with a certain amount of disbelief. I’ve never struggled to come up with ideas for stories. Many of my novels have arrived in the form of dreams and I simply explored the unexplained portions of the visions in order to fill in the story. I have a long enough list of projects demanding attention to keep me busy for several decades. (I’m not even sure I’ll ever get through all the stories on that list!)

And while I’ve been diligently typing away at these stories month by month and year by year, trying to record them as fast as possible without risking the quality of the finished product, I still find it hard to believe I actually finish anything. Time is a weird soup. It feels like just yesterday I started working on Soul of the Sun, a book that most certainly snuck up on me. Yet since I finished penning it, I’ve written 12 installments(!) of my Aruvalia Chronicles.

It’s hard to sit on the revelations of each new story as I finish it. I’m always bursting at the seams to talk to someone about the biggest twists in the story. But because it takes me 3 years to finish a project, and at least another year to get it out the door, I’ve often firmly moved on by the time I get to share the books with you.

That doesn’t diminish my excitement. But it does make each new release feel like pulling a treasured artifact out of a chest to dust it off and give it new glow.

It’s even harder to believe there’s only one book left in the Celestial Serenade before I get to call it finished!

A Character’s Legacy

During the Smooth Jazz release, I spoke a lot about the time jump between books 6 and 7 of the Celestial Serenade. The world looks a fair bit different, and I was excited to share a taste of some of the upgraded elements.

One thing I didn’t get a chance to talk about was the evolution of my characters’ stories. Because it wasn’t just their accomplishments that affected the greater world after they were gone. Lots of those characters eventually had kids.

Generational stories are particularly fun because children are rarely carbon copies of their parents. It isn’t as if there’s an army of little Antens or Gaias out there in the world doing exactly what their parents would have done. But children are shaped by the attitudes and experiences shared with them by their parents, and it’s interesting to consider how the children of all the major characters might turn out. What were their goals? How did they contribute to their family’s legacies?

And what happens when one of the family’s progenitors sticks around far longer than anticipated? How does that shape the development of later generations?

In addition to exploring the upgraded technology and evolution of the blended cultures that met in the Celestial Serenade, Soul of the Sun gave me a chance to explore the branching trees that originated with the original cast. Who followed in their family’s footsteps and who struck out on their own?

I hope the answers won’t disappoint.

Filling in the Blanks

Of course, a time jump of this magnitude doesn’t pass without consequence. I couldn’t just warp into the future without considering what happened during the intervening time. A story is more than just its setting and characters – it’s also a series of significant events.

After penning Symphony of the Stars, I thought it would be a good idea to create a master timeline. Much of the information it contained never made it to the novels. It wasn’t important enough to warrant attention without it feeling unnecessarily cramped. But I do know what happened after the Caltarans abandoned their original homeworld. And what marks the survivors left on the world that evolved after their departure.

In addition to advancing my characters via family generations and my technology via upgrades, I expanded my timeline to include a list of relevant events new generations would be familiar with. It’s all history to them, after all. This time, it was much easier to drop little references to past events, since people would eventually have to catch our returning character up on what he missed while he was away.

Of course, the more I prodded these significant events in history, the more story potential they provided. (But that’s a whole other blog post!)

Dealing with such a long timeline sometimes makes it difficult to keep track of the order of things. Not to mention who is most familiar with which pieces of information. (And who was present for which significant events.) But it’s worth it to juggle these balls because it makes the world feel more concrete instead of just wisps drifting through a vaguely nebulous timeline.

Maybe someday I’ll write a Caltaran history book. (Or some novels to fill the blanks!)

For now, though, please enjoy the next installment of the story!

Careless Electronica is Available Now!

Two lifetimes of suffering lay in his past.
One promise binds him.

Crash landed on an unfamiliar planet and hindered by the ion storm that chokes its atmosphere, Rynick and Morumi struggle to come to terms with the results of their search for the legendary Kantis. The tiny planet to which their clues led appears to have no high-tech facilities, leaving no indication where the warrior might be found.

Though Rynick is loath to give up his quest and determined to return to his sister, despair has begun to set in. If he and his new Caltaran companion have come to the wrong place, he has no idea how to get back on track. Worse, signs increasingly indicate that even if he can wake the legendary Kantis, convincing him to help Earth might not be as straightforward as he initially assumed.

Three wars lay in Kantis’s past, making him no stranger to suffering. But the world that lies before him now is entirely different than the one he left, making it feel strange and alien. Never before has he awakened to peace. This might be his first chance to avert the disaster of bloodshed.

But the Caltaran Empire has grown apathetic to everything outside of their immediate concerns. And Earth has moved beyond the border of the land to which Kantis is bound. While he cannot ignore the strange behavior of his creations, he can only do so much without committing an ethical violation.

His most difficult choice might be which oath he should break.

Grab your copy now!