The Patreon poll is up! Patrons can now weigh in on which web serial I should start work on next. The poll will close in one month, and the winner will run concurrently with the last 1-1.5 years or so of Curse Words.
Over this month, I will be releasing sample chapters for each option, so that voters can see what the stories are like.
The options are as follows:
Charlie MacNamara, Intrepid Explorer (scifi, adventure, space, aliens, YA to adult)
Amateur photographer Charlie MacNamara is out trying to get good pictures of space one night, only to be abducted by aliens. Thrown into a universe of confusing biology and even more confusing politics, Charlie needs to find a way to be useful enough to survive, navigate the politics of her captors’ ship, and eventually find some way to make them take her home. But the ship is being hunted by forces eager to kill its crew, and even more eager to kill Charlie. Can she figure out how to survive long enough to get home?
(This story is already half drafted and published elsewhere. If we do Charlie MacNamara next, it’ll involve a polish and rerelease of the first half, and completion of the story – because half the work is already done, this means it can be completed a lot faster than the other options.)
Child of a Wandering Star (scifi, aliens, YA)
Tyk is a perfectly average girl, interested in average things – maintaining the structure of the hive with her family, getting through school without dying of boredom, and keeping her carapace stronger and shinier than that mean jerk Deg, who likes to make fun of her for being hatched under a Wandering Star, cursed with a destiny to eventually abandon her hive and wander far from home. But one day, her peaceful community life is disrupted when something falls from the stars nearby.
It’s an egg, oddly shaped, and far larger than any egg that Tyk has ever seen. And when it hatches, the pupa that crawls out is far larger and far more odd-looking than any pupa that Tyk has ever seen. Wingless, hairy, and tottering on only two legs, this giant thing is like no baby that Tyk has ever heard of – but it clearly is a baby, all soft and puffy without a carapace yet, and clearly confused and unable to care for itself. A newly hatched baby star.
Not knowing how to properly raise a star, the hive makes a decision; it must be taken to the Dawn Mountain, where the land meets the sky, so that it can be returned to its people. This must be the destiny that was given to Tyk on the night of her hatching. But the journey will be long and dangerous, and neither Tyk nor the infant god in her care can predict the trials that they will face.
Silverbane (Urban fantasy, vampires, fae, adult)
Jade was just looking to fulfil her jobseeker requirements and get her Centrelink payment. She didn’t expect to actually get the job working at the mysterious new pawn shop full of weird, creepy artefacts. She had no interest in dealing with bleeding knives, ghost dolls, and whatever the hell it is that keeps using all the mugs in the break room without washing them, even when nobody’s present in the shop but her.
Jade would like to be able to shrug and say that it’s none of her business. She really, really wishes that she was the kind of person who could leave things alone if they weren’t her business. But after snooping a little too deep a little too often, she finds herself tangled up in something a lot scarier than the occasional haunted doll, working for the kind of… “people”… who are perfectly happy to eliminate something the moment it becomes more dangerous to them than useful. And through them, she can learn more about how the world really works than she ever expected.
She just has to hope that it’s worth it.
Our Side of the River Styx (mystery, romance, ghosts, adult)
A woman who can see the dead joins forces with her zombie wife to become exorcists-for-hire, helping the dead and living alike find peace. But there’s something strange going on with the barrier between worlds; something stranger than murderous phantoms in white or menacing shadowy figures in hotels. Something… organised. Something growing.
The exorcists are out to pay the rent, not save the world. But when a string of supposedly unconnected jobs forms such an obvious trail of bread crumbs, what is there to do but follow it? Will our Styx-crossed lovers figure out what’s at the heart of this conspiracy in time to thwart it, or does this adventure end in a long-overdue funeral?
Time to Orbit: Unknown (scifi, space, mild horror/mystery, YA to adult)
When Aspen went into stasis for the long journey to a new, habitable world, they knew they’d never see Earth again. But they at least expected to wake up on a planet. When they’re awoken in the depths of space on a damaged ship with no crew in sight, it’s clear that something has gone wrong.
Aspen’s not an astronaut. They’re not a navigator. But they’ve got a long journey ahead and several thousand helpless, static colonists in their care, so there’s only one thing to do – find out enough of what the hell is going on to keep the ship on course, and get these colonists to their new home.
But the dangers that the crew faced are still out there. If they didn’t make it, what can Aspen do, alone and untrained? Will they figure out what happened in time for it to stop happening again, or is the entire colony doomed?
