Inigo Press

It’s been a while since I highlighted my story about the future of anti-submarine warfare. With Russia invading Ukraine and questions arising about who sabotaged the Nordstream Pipeline, the time may have come to revisit it.

Hunter

As Summer fades into Fall, I’m trying to get back into writing regularly. Between some medical issues and a prolonged visit to Florida with family, it’s been hard to pay attention.

I’m currently working on two novels that are nearing completion of a first draft.

In Watanabe’s Hammer, astronomers detect Agni, a visitor from extragalactic space, a virtual twin of Oumuamua on a similar trajectory. One astronomer, a former Naval Aviator, finds evidence of a space battle near Agni. He reports this to military authorities and is recruited into an ongoing project to investigate. What he learns will determine the future of humanity.

Fire in the Sky is the story of Will Lafontaine, a young man with a vision of using nuclear warheads to move asteroids from the Belt to Earth. He pitches the idea to Lawrence Summers, his boss at Orbital Resources, a company that mines near-Earth asteroids. Lawrence rebuffs his proposals and Will quits to pursue the project on his own. Lawrence assigns Amanda Stolz, a manager at Orbital, to make sure Will’s vision fails. As Will and Amanda pursue their competing agendas, sparks fly. Can they find common ground before Will’s impulsiveness ruins his project forever?

Stay tuned for more in 2022.

DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is a NASA mission to see whether impacting an asteroid with a spacecraft will change its trajectory. This is a very early-stage evaluation of whether and how we can change the trajectory of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The effect of the impact has been impressive.

Now we wait. More to come

The Terraformed Earth series continues with Terraformed Earth – Discovery.

In the distant thirty-third century, Earth is a Holocene paradise after an ancient genocide and centuries of environmental remediation. The gene-modified Young rule the Seventeen Cities, home to the tiny remnant of human survivors. The Young are currently debating whether to exterminate humanity entirely when the biosphere is fully healed.

Ignatius Ryan, a Jesuit priest banished by his church to the future in cryosleep, sought only to survive and restore his flagging faith. His arrival upended the Young’s carefully sculpted world.

Ignatius, his lover Morna, and their daughter Iris barely managed to escape Selloi and Brunna, rulers of the city of S’Loo. With a tiny band of refugees, they set out for sanctuary in Kaycee, the one city on Earth not controlled by the Young.

But Kaycee is not the refuge they had been led to believe. They take shelter in a cavern nearby, hoping to find a way to evade the pervasive control of the Young.

In the forest south of Kaycee, they find a group of humans living a primitive lifestyle beyond the control of the Young. Faced with a choice of whether to join this tribe, itself liable to extermination if they are discovered, or return to S’Loo and the Young, they opt for the city.

Their return leads to an event no one expects. Morna finds herself on trial before a tribunal of the Young led by Ansan, at eight hundred years of age the oldest of the Young. In the face of mounting evidence against her, Ignatius must find a way to protect Morna and convince Ansan that the future of humanity and the Earth are not incompatible.

In May 2022 I expanded into two new distribution channels. The first was Barnes and Noble, where I put up November Skies, Leaving Acadia, and Martian Requiem.
The second venue is new. Book-blip.com is a new storefront for eBooks and offered free promotional advertising of new titles. It’s early days, but I’m sanguine about my prospects.
Check them out. As always, reviews are appreciated.

Today Amazon notified me that my novel Terraformed Earth – New Millennium is available for purchase in both Kindle and paperback formats.

I started this journey in 1986 when I began commuting between Kansas City and Baltimore for a new job. On the weekly flights I started the novel that became New Millennium. After we moved to Baltimore in 1988 life conspired to keep me away from the book, although I never stopped thinking about it.

In 2016, after I retired, I found a 5-1/4″ floppy disk with the text on it. Sadly, the disk was no longer readable. Then I found a faded paper copy of about 24,000 words. I scanned it in using my printer. The resulting text took almost as long to clean up as if I had typed it in by hand, but I ended up with a usable copy.

I managed to flesh out the plot, but the characters were another matter. I took a writing class online through our local community college. Then another class. I joined an online critique group called critters.org. I’ve heard people disparage the group, but it was a big help to me. Then I found Area 42, an online writers’ workshop, that provides mutual critique in a supportive environment. It’s been a great place to grow in.

After generating a first scene in a writing course, I wrote and published another novel, Asteroid Gambit. Think Casablanca in space with asteroids and a Martian rebellion. I wrote over a dozen short stories and struggled to get them published. Thankfully, all of my short stories eventually found a home.

I began several other novels: Fire in the Sky, a prequel to Asteroid Gambit; Terraformed Earth – Discovery, a sequel to New Millennium; Watanabe’s Hammer, about a war between aliens in the outer reaches of our Solar System; and Thorium Blues, a sequel to Asteroid Gambit.

I came to realize the real action in New Millennium started in chapter six, so I reluctantly killed my darlings and took out the first five chapters. The first four I turned into a short story, Terraformed Earth – Departure, first published in the anthology Unbound III – Goodbye Earth, now available in Kindle format. The fifth chapter became my short story Terraformed Earth – Creation.

At long last I’ve come to the end of the road. The first three stories in the Terraformed Earth series, Departure, Creation, and New Millennium are all available on Amazon. Discovery, the next part of the story, should appear later this year.

My development as an author is still a work in progress, but I hope you’ll enjoy meeting Ignatius and learning about a dystopian future unlike any other.

In the course of writing Terraformed Earth – New Millennium I wrote several chapters before the main action starts. I realized this was deferring the real story too long. so I cut the first four chapters. I rewrote them as a standalone short story. Mirabile dictu!, I sold it to a Canadian publisher for inclusion in Unbound III- Goodbye Earth, an anthology where it goes it goes by an earlier title, IX – Departure. I just reread it and was really happy with the story. You might be as well.

Since it’s been a couple of years since Departure appeared, I’ve published it as a standalone Kindle story under the title Terraformed Earth – Departure.

You can order the Kindle short here and the anthology here.

Since New Millennium postulates a world with little trace of humanity in the year 3261 CE, I wrote a short story to explain how this might have happened. The result was Terraformed Earth – Creation.

What would you sacrifice to restore the environment? Seventeen climate researchers sacrificed their firstborn.

Their parents genetically modified the Young to live for centuries, increased their intelligence far beyond the rest of humanity, and took away their ability to reproduce.

As adolescents, the Young have the tools to change the world. The solution they craft will last millennia. But the side effects are killers.

Terraformed Earth – Creation is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Thirty years ago I started my first science fiction novel. I had no idea what I was getting into. Today Terraformed Earth – New Millennium went live on Amazon for pre-order!

Jesuit priest Ignatius Ryan, was banished by his church to the future in cryosleep to quiet a theological controversy, He returns to Earth after a millennium in deep space to find a constellation of military satellites orbiting silently above a pristine environment with little sign of humanity.

On the surface he meets a tiny remnant of humanity locked in a struggle with their gene-modified rulers for control of Earth and their future. To each side he represents both opportunity and threat.

When Grace, the AI who shepherded him through centuries, hacks into a military satellite and fires its laser, the rulers fear Ignatius’ power and decree his death.

Ignatius, feeling abandoned by God and betrayed by the Church, is seduced by Morna, a survivor who is not what she seems. He dreams of a quiet life with her but cannot ignore the events that led to humanity’s disappearance,

Seeking to understand an ancient genocide, Ignatius raises questions no one wants answered. As he struggles to recover his lost faith and find purpose in this new century, he finds love, uncovers dark secrets, faces betrayal, and fights for the life of a daughter he never imagined.

You can order New Millennium here.

In my Worlds of Sol future terraforming Mars becomes a project of most of the nations of Earth. Mars becomes the focus of human space activity on the outer Solar System. Learn more here.